River of Ants and Other Critters

I mentioned that we hadn’t seen many mosquitoes, and thought I should probably comment on the wildlife we have seen just in our everyday comings and goings. We will travel this weekend to Manyara and Tarangire parks where we will “see the game,” as our travel guide puts it, but there is also “game” right here at KCMC to be observed. There are lots of anthills here and termite mounds as tall as us. The ants relocate frequently, in huge rivers of ants. We saw one on our first day here that lasted for hours and hours. The pincer-headed soldier ants made barriers on either side of the ant flow, and the worker ants busily moved the food and larvae inside on the huge highway wide enough for us to have to jump over. We have seen several more of these across the footpaths since then.



Also at night (outside, on the path) we have seen huge black centipedes coiled up tightly, about the diameter of garter snakes. Many of the insects are similar to home but twice or three times as big. The bumblebees, for example, are enormous and black with iridescent patches on their backs.

Lizards are frequent visitors to the porch and house, small ones about 2-3 inches long, and we see many in the yards and on the trees. Jacob has caught a couple (he put it in a plastic bag because I said he couldn’t put it in any of the kitchen dishes, and we don’t have many other containers, but it was on its way outside for safe release).



There are a few dogs, some with collars, some without, but people tend not to have dogs as pets. Or, really, pets in general. At the home where the preschool is located, the family tends chickens and raises short-hair rabbits and guinea pigs for meat. They were surprised to hear that in America people keep guinea pigs as pets and do not eat them. Lots of the house mama families also keep chickens which roam pretty freely through the compound, and the roosters are part of the morning symphony.

We see and hear lots of songbirds of various sizes and colors. There are also large black ravens here that have white feathers on their backs and chests that make it look exactly like they are wearing white sleeveless undershirts. They are as common and bold as pigeons in an American city. Any scavenger bird is called “kurungu” here.

Yesterday morning we woke up and the raucous goose-like birdcalls seemed closer than usual outside, so we went out to take a look and found two huge black hornbills sitting in the tree right above our porch. Amazing! They sat there, preening and having a loud conversation with each other for a long time.