The following write up is out of sequence. I needed some time, and Staci's input, before sending this out. The events of December 28 and 29 will not soon be forgotten.
I was an absolute turtle on December 28th. The previous couple of days had been primarily road walks, both along a paved road, and then on typical dirt, two track, mountain roads. I didn't have any serious problem keeping up with Emmanuel (our guide for the first six days in Tanzania) and Staci those first two days. The 28th was different. Staci and I had wanted to get off the roads, even the minor roads, and get on to trails.
Emmanuel finally got the idea. He started asking for shortcut trails to get us from one village to the next. It really was fascinating. Homes were built along these trails. Farms are tilled and tended along these trails. Lives are lived along these trails.
The trails are not designed, or built, up to standards recognized by the U.S. Forest Service :). They were quite steep. They were simply working paths from point A to point B, down to a creek or river, then up to a ridge. This scenario led to some pretty views in lush areas along the east slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro.
It also led to wearing me out. The heat and humidity of this area contributed to my exhaustion. Much of the last month and a half had been in desert/hot conditions. This was different. There was incredibly high humidity, it was still hot, but now with the stifling moist conditions, it drained me. I was drenched with sweat from about 8:00 a.m. and through the entire day.
In hindsight, another contributing factor in my weakness could have been not eating enough food.
The result of my being so slow was we were not able to hike as far as desired for the 28th. I was way slower than Staci and Emmanuel.
One oddity happened to Emmanuel as we hiked. A child, from a home on the hillside near Uru, threw a rock at him. The rock hit him in the back of the neck. It obviously hurt. This was not a good omen.
In late afternoon Staci and Emmanuel mercifully decided to stop when they found a little village, Uru, at the top of a ridge. What we first saw on the edge of the trail were a few shacks cobbled together in a village version of a very small strip mall. Any activity appeared to have wound down for the day.
Emmanuel found one younger (~20 yrs) worker, Helmut, and asked if we could camp there. He said yes, but he had to check with his father. He cell phoned his father, and he agreed. We started setting up camp. Then his father showed up wearing a blue shirt. I'll call him "Blue Shirt." Blue Shirt informed Emmanuel we had to hire his son, Helmut, to be our Security for the night, to keep us safe.
He asked for 30,000 Tanzanian shillings (Tsh), $18 USD. I agreed without attempting to negotiate him down. This may have been a mistake. Everything is negotiable here. He was asking quite a bit for his son's services. My willingness to pay so much, without questioning, probably made it seem to him we had lots of money.
At some point in this amiable exchange Emmanuel took off his shoes and put on Helmut's or Blue Shirt's sandals to refresh his sore feet. Blue Shirt got hold of Emmanuel's shoes.
Cell phones are everywhere in Kenya and Tanzania. Many small cell towers dot ridges in seemingly uninhabited areas. There are multiple providers, so the Tanzanian Vodaphone I have works sometimes, and sometimes standing next to a tower, it doesn't work. It must be another provider's tower.
I had zero service in the Uru vicinity. Locals had the right provider and had service.
We ate, finished setting up camp, and went to bed early, about 6:30 p.m.. I was tired. It was getting dark.
Not much after 7:00 p.m. the first bit of discontent started. A guy showed up and was agitated. Staci and I stayed in our tents, which were side by side, with Emmanuel's bigger tent about 20-25 feet away.
Helmut and Emmanuel worked to calm the guy down. Then there was another. In time three or four came and went with yelling and arguing. We couldn't really understand what all was going on, but we were pretty certain it was about us.
The snickering, bickering, and whining, all in Swahili and Chaga, went on for the better part of two hours. My general feeling was annoyance. I was so tired, all I wanted to do was sleep, but these jerks were keeping me awake.
Around 9:00 p.m. The mood changed dramatically.
We had armed guards virtually all the way through the Kenya portion of Staci's thru hike, but Tanzania was, and still is, a safer environment. We didn't have armed guards in Tanzania. It would have, however, been a good night to have had real security with us this night.
What we surmise happened was Blue Shirt went to the bar, started gloating, and possibly buying drinks for folks in the community with our security fee. They decided to get more money out of us.
They showed up with a vengeance, obviously very intoxicated. The crowd started at about 20, then grew as things got crazier to maybe 30.
Now the situation was out of hand. The screaming, clapping, and cacophony of Swahili, and we learned later another local language, Chaga, charged the air.
We heard some words we understood, most that we didn't. I had grabbed my pocket knife for protection, and found out later so had Staci. At one point just having it in my hand wasn't enough, I flipped the blade out.
Around this time Staci tried to dial 911, to no avail. Her intent was to just leave the phone on so the operator could hear. Emmanuel said talk was about, among other things, fire...burning us out. Maybe the operator would have heard that. An issue is there really isn't any law in the villages. Who knows if, how many, or from how far, it would have taken to get police help even if Staci's call would have gone through.
Violence is not in my nature. I have been in one fight in my life. In seventh grade Kerry McDonald hit my Mennonite friend Kim Brunk, and Kim wouldn't fight back. I stepped in. To say the least I'm inexperienced at the MMA type skills. Staci and I had both decided, without the other knowing, that if we went down, we were going to go down fighting.
Emmanuel came to the tent a few times to report in, and pass messages.
First, we heard they wanted $1000 USD, because we were camping in their village without permission. We suspected this as we had heard some in English, and know our numbers in Swahili now. We heard elfu moja (one thousand) and mia moja (one hundred) often from a big, loud mouthed guy.
We didn't have near the amount they wanted, as we told Emmanuel. The craziness and screaming and clapping continued. Staci was in her tent right next to me and most of the night we couldn't hear each other.
Emmanuel was doing the negotiating through me. Staci was listening and responding. She adamantly didn't want to pay.
At some point the 'village chief' arrived. After a bit Emmanuel came over and said the chief was asking for 50,000 Tsh (about $30 USD).
The screaming included things like mzee (old man), that was me, mia moja (one hundred, as in dollars), elfu moja (one thousand, as in dollars), Al-Qaida and Al-Shabaab (we think just thrown in to scare us). Helmut and Emmanuel tried to calm folks down, and it kept amazingly getting louder and more anger filled.
Staci didn't want to pay because she didn't think it would do anything. At one point I relayed to her my quandary. I really didn't know what to do. This situation wasn't in any manual I had ever read.
I decided to concede, and gave 50,000 Tsh (~$30 USD) to Emmanuel to give to the Chief. My logic was that I wasn't in a position of power in this negotiation, and the amounts originally being talked about had come from totally out of the realm of possibility, to the point I could live with. Realizing it was extortion made it frustrating, but I wanted this to end so I could sleep.
Staci was right, it didn't work. The crowd was dominating the chief. In particular one taller, loud mouthed, imbecile would not shut up. He was a ringleader the entire night. He was constantly screaming, clapping maniacally, and just being a total ass.
Also in the crowd was Blue Shirt. He was now apparently asking for more money because of the problems we caused him! I didn't realize this until later, and this made me even more bewildered and angry. How dare he, of all people, demand more money from us.
Emmanuel came and relayed the mob wanted our passports. We had been told only to carry our passports when crossing the borders. Our passports were in the safe in a hotel in Arusha. Thank goodness.
There was no reason for them to have our passports anyway. If they had them, they could demand money for them in return.
We just didn't have the big money they wanted. We didn't carry a lot of money, and we didn't have our passports. Maybe we weren't a great target.
Chaga is a local language of this area. Swahili is the more universal language of Eastern Africa. Often children first speak their local language, and learn Swahili when they go to school. And then, when/if they go to high school, they may learn English.
Emmanuel had grown up further down the mountain, but still in this same general area. His first language was Chaga too, the local language, but he didn't let them know it. They assumed he just spoke Swahili. He later relayed it was helpful he was able to understand the internal talk they thought was out of his grasp.
The crowd thought we were from Europe, Emmanuel didn't correct them. Generally Americans are despised more than Europeans, so that was a good thing. One guy said they spend more than $1000 just getting here, that's why more was deserved and should be demanded.
There was something different in the crowd. A female voice or two. And a couple of children's voices. Even an infant crying.
The words being spoken I will never know. The tone was clear. The tone was reason. Two women went and stood directly in front of Staci's tent! This was the turning point. I still held my knife, but I folded the blade back out of harm's way. The younger one, standing guard, started using her cell phone. Was she calling friends? Maybe these guy's wives? We'll never know.
The noise was nearly as loud. The chants were the same. But everything had changed. Everything was going to be all right.
I could hear nothing that happened at Staci's tent, she related it to me later.
A woman near my age, and her daughter Mary, maybe mid-twenties, were the ones at Staci's tent. Mary couldn't speak much English, and had probably practiced what to say to Staci. In order to hear each other they had to get nearly face to face, inches apart, with just the mosquito netting of the tent between them. Her first words to Staci were that everything was going to be all right. Then she said they were all just drunk and on drugs. Staci obviously knew that part....that's what scared her!
The raucousness continued. It was sometime around 11:00 or 11:30 with no signs of letting up. This was insane. But at least we had Mary and her mother as Staci's protectors, so there was some improvement. It seemed this nightmare would never end.
Then instantly it ended! The crowd went from hours of constant roar, to nothing, in what seemed like a second or two. We didn't know why until the next day at noon.
Emmanuel gambled. He went to his tent, started unzipping it, and told them he was going in to get his gun. He had no gun! They were drunk enough to believe him.
Instantly only Emmanuel, Mary, her mother, Staci, and I were all that was left. Staci quickly unzipped her tent to come out. Mary and her mother almost tackled her to stay inside. They didn't realize why Staci wanted out. She had to pee. She'd had to pee for hours. Staci was going to blast through those two tacklers like she was Frank Gore.
Once important functions were taken care of, all agreed we had to break camp and leave.
Hiking the PCT this summer I became quite fast at taking down my tent and getting on the trail. Staci and Emmanuel were both faster than me! And I was the fastest I had ever been. There was no finesse. Everything was jammed in packs and we were moving in record time.
Mary and her mother led the way down a trail in the dark. We went behind a small house into a tiny shed, with no windows and a dirt floor.
I whispered something about Emmanuel's shoes and Mary's mother communicated in a very understandable way, even though she was speaking either Chaga or Swahili. The gist of her communication was "shut up, don't make a single sound, we're all at risk here!" There were probably some Chaga adjectives in there too. Charades is an international language.
Mary and her mother left with Blue Shirt/Helmut's sandals to get Emmanuel's shoes. They returned with neither. We never figured out what happened on that foray.
It was time to sleep. The three of us lined up, side by side, like sardines in a shed after an insane day, and night. We didn't speak. All we heard was the raucous revelry and music! There wasn't much sleep to be garnered.
We believe they all went down to the bar. They now had our 80,000 Tsh, and it was time to party.
We had noticed, and been told, that it's basically a party from Christmas until New Years in Tanzania. The 28th of December fit right into the middle of the previously scheduled party calendar. The party went on until at least 2:30 a.m..
As I was laying there, unable to sleep even though physically exhausted, I was thrilled they were partying. The longer they partied through the night, the greater the chances were for us to escape unscathed in the morning. It turned out Staci was thinking similar thoughts throughout the night.
I worried about Emmanuel's shoe problem. He had nothing to hike in. We would need to do some serious hiking in the morning. I had flip flops. Not a great solution. Staci's solution, as her mind was racing through the night, was to have Emmanuel wear her shoes (if they fit) and she would wear her sandals like she had earlier in the hike when the hyena stole her hiking shoes in Tsavo West National Park. It was a conundrum, no solution was good.
Nobody got more than two, or two and a half, hour's sleep. I woke up at just after four wondering about our immediate route out of town, and Emmanuel's footwear. It got light enough to start hiking at about 6:00 a.m.. I wanted to be on the trail no later than 6:01 a.m..
I just layed still until 5:00 a.m., when I saw Emmanuel stirring. Immediately Staci woke up and we packed up and were ready to go quickly, with one exception, shoes.
Mary and her mother showed up at the door of the shed. They took Emmanuel. Staci and I sat on a bench in the shed and whispered for the first time about events. She talked about feeling like Anne Frank. I talked about feeling like this was the Underground Railroad. The irony. These two African women hiding and protecting two white Americans in their shed in Tanzania from angry locals.
It all seemed surreal.
Mary was beautiful and strong. Part of me wished the big, loud mouthed drunk would have come a little closer to Mary. Staci was ready to go after him. He wouldn't have had a prayer against the two of them. The problem was what would Emmanuel and I have done with the rest, armed only with a pocket knife, an imaginary gun, and the experience gained from a fight forty-five years ago. Our significant advantage...sobriety.
We'll never know all the details about how Emmanuel got his shoes back from Blue Shirt. Mary had taken Emmanuel to Blue Shirt's house, Blue Shirt's wife got involved. The details are hazy.
When Emmanuel returned he had his shoes. Blue Shirt was there. We'll always be confused as to why that #%*! was there.
Mary then whisked us down a trail. Our take off time was about 6:15 a.m.. About ten minutes later she had us on a dirt road. She started to head back on a trail to her home in Uru. I couldn't say "asante sana," thank you very much, enough. As I hugged her goodbye I have to admit I may have failed to keep my eyes dry.
We hadn't eaten, we didn't care. Adrenaline does great things. We went about four hours at a strong pace without a break. We weren't holding anybody back the 29th!
Certainly in my life there have been some frightening times. This was different in a few significant ways. First, the feelings of helplessness caused by the language barrier. Discussions about us were taking place, and we couldn't participate. Who knows if we could have talked the insanity down, but the total language barrier prevented any attempt. Emmanuel's grasp of English was tenuous at best, and he was all we had (until Mary). Second, there was no backup. Our only backup plan was running. It wasn't feasible. Third, the fear wasn't a flash. It didn't happen, and in a second, a minute, or five minutes, go away. It continued for more than half a day. It seemed like longer than that.
The world needs more Marys.
