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With access to some of the best digital camera equipment in the world, I shoot video. Camera equipment shows up on our door step two or three times a week. Thomas' camera collection is the state of the art equipment and yet, I've chosen video. Why video? I ask myself this many times during the editing process. Final Cut Pro is no easy software package to learn to use. Disk space vanishes before my very eyes. Sleep vanishes before my very eyes. And yet, I've not produced a finished DVD our any of our trips.
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Video has many advantages: The camera is small. I can fit the entire camera, with a three-hour battery, and three hours of tape in my jacket pocket. There are no lenses to change, and I get audio with the video. I've met kids on our travels who think it is great fun to watch themselves being completly goofy. I thought this was great.
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Video picks up sound as well as the pictures. Engine noise, casual conversation in the background and shutters clicking away. There were times that the video sounded like Edie Amin was just around the corner or Andy was happy as a clam.
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We all soon found that there were other things to worry about besides what was being recorded on the video. Wildlife abounds in Africa's Serengeti Plain and has no fear of the safari vehicle.
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With our jet lag and our two teenagers along on the trip, I had trouble telling the difference between getting up and ready for a dawn photoshoot and ready for school. Confusion and lack of comprehensive speach is the same on both contentints.
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Morning coffee was the next order of business for the day. We stayed Gibbs Farm, a working coffee plantation and tourist hotel is located on the southeast side of Ngorogoro crater. The view are beautiful and the fresh coffee is everywhere. Bright red and green coffee beans are aboundant on the plants that cascade down the sides of the hills. The local fauna seemed to enjoy the red beans, but I never did have the desire to try them.
Did I mention that there were several better beamers along on the trip to focus and enhance flash photograph and to jazz up video!
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Our safari guides were great. After showing us how lions performed for the tourists, they took us the behind the sceens areas where lions can let their hair down and be themselves.
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My favorite animal of all is the wart hog. They are just so ugly that they are fun. My kids think I'm nuts. Ngiri, Kiswahili for wart hot, was the first animal name I learned.
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When ever we stopped to point the camera for a good shot, the top of our vehicles looked like a Canon comericial.
Other tourists we met along the way would look at our cameras, look at their cameras, look as us, and then slowly put their point and shoot cameras out of sight!
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Giraffes are tall, lumbering, spindly legged, long tounged, clueless creatures. Watching the tounge come out and not only clean out the nostrils but reach well up to the eye looked like a bad science fiction movie.
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The evening family stroll was much more fun in fast forward.
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Baboons were fun to watch, however they were the only animals that scared me. They could have easily enter the safari vehicle if they wanted. Gazelle tartar is one of their favorite meals. We saw several baboons carefully dismembering a gazelle carcus and enjoying finger licking good, lip smaking lunch in the shade of a tree.
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Elephants were abundant. I was amazed at the difference in size between the mature ones and the babies.
Before we left on our safari, my brother gave us some advice about elephants.
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We spent part of a late afternoon watching the water hole where a herd of zebra were drinking. The unique call of the zebra was incredible to listen to.
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Zebra, or as they are know in Kiswahili, punda milia, are incredible to watch. Punda means donkey and milia means striped. The zebra is the nature's bar code. Young of the zebra are pushed to face the flank of mom to learn her pattern.
I do wish the genetic engineers would cross the zebra with produce. Getting a unique bar code on each piece of fruit would be so helpful at the express U-Scan check-out lanes in the grocery store.
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The lone herbivore across the pond caused a great deal of distress among the herd. A simple ear twitch caused panic. The lazy yawn and roll captured the moment.
click to view movie
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While driving around the Serengeti, I was able to learn a few words of Kiswahili. Our tour leader, Andy Biggs, assured me that Kiswahili was a beautiful and easy language to learn. Based Andy's opinion of Kiswahili, my desire to return to east Africa and having learned about a fantastic school in Moshono, Tanzania, I have started to learn Kiswahili.
My tutor, Geofred Osoro, has introduced me to Hadithi za Kaka Fisi, traditional tales of east Africa for children. After six months of study, I can slog my way through a story written for a second grade student. Once was I left wondering why the protagonist of the story, one Uncle Hare, did not appear to be what he really was. I was confused by Lord Adam, a generous soul who must reside in heaven. Lord Adam was handing out male and female cows to Uncle Hare and Brother Hyena. I missed the fact that the words "male" and "female" were refering to the sex of the cows that Lord Adam was giving out. I was left thinking that Lord Adam was handing out the sex of the characters and wondered why Uncle Hare started out a male and then became female. Geofred set me on the path to a full understanding of how adjectives work in Kiswahili.
You are welcome to read one of my translations of the Hadithi. This one is:
Kaka fisi amla tembo mzima
Brother Hyena ate the whole elephant.
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Our tour included a brief stop at a Masai village where we were treated to singing, dancing a tour of the village and an opportunity to purchase hand made Masai jewlery. The highlight of the visit was watching Thomas on the dance floor with the Masai hunters. After almost 24 years of marriage I have not been able to get Tom out to dance! There may be hope.
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