Final Safari Day

Today was my last day to take the kids on safari. We have been planning for a while to go to the "forest" nearby the school, which is actually a plot of government owned wilderness. It is about a 45 minute walk to the forest from where we teach. The students were really excited about the trip. There was some debate about whether to go or not because we didn't really have anybody (other than Amani) to keep the kids in line. But with the addition of a few of the mamas that we have been teaching, we decided it would be okay to go. We walked down to the forest and when we got about 15 minutes in, two women sitting on the side of the trail stopped us. It turned out that I was supposed to have a permit in order to go into the forest, as a mzungu. I was supposed to get this permit from the government office in town. The amount of bureaucracy here is astounding. Amani sweet talked us in, saying that I was here to help with a women's group and that I was just a volunteer. They gave us thirty minutes in the forest.

This meant that the kids, who wanted to show me this giant tree, had to run down the path in order to get to the tree in time. There were some monkeys jumping around too which were cool but mostly we were there to see the tree. It was really tall, not as wide as I have seen, but incredibly big. The crazy thing about it is that the kids were PETRIFIED of the tree. They only took their picture by it after a bit of coaxing and immediately ran away from the tree after touching it. They were screaming and running around like it was going to jump up and bite them. Behind the tree we saw laying on the ground a piece of white paper with an egg and two bits of sugar cane on it. One girl just pointed at it and said "witch craft!". We were only there for about 2 minutes until the kids got so freaked out we had to, literally, run away.

It turns out that this tree is thought of to be possessed by demons. It is thought that at noon, demons come running out of the tree and will kill you. The tree is also thought to be impossible to cut down (you will die if you try) and it is also rumored to bleed. On the flip side, the trees leaves have healing powers. Local witches (they exist around here) bring people there to be cured. It was an enlightening experience, for sure. People are very superstitious around here. On the way out, the women who had stopped us before sat all the kids down to explain about all of the tree lore.