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Leaving Ngorongoro Crater, We Visit a Masai Village and Olduvai Gorge
Greetings from a Masai warrior with spear -- this spear is for sale, along with a number of other Masai crafts, including beaded collars, such as seen on the women and children below.
Women and children watch young Masai men singing and dancing. At certain times, one of the dancers will jump up and down gracefully. The jumps are several feet high -- locate the feet of the dancer in the picture on the right. I tried jumping, too, but I was no match for their levitation act.
The village huts are made of cow dung plastered over stick frames. The flies and dung odor are something else! But it's quite practical, as the Masai maintain cattle herds, and the dung is always in generous supply, and it's free.
On the way to Serengeti, we stop at Olduvai (Oldupai) Gorge, where Louis and Mary Leakey discovered the skull fragments of the 1.75 million year old Zinjanthropus, aka Australopithecus. A museum there has an interesting exhibit including a reproduction of the famous hominid's skull.
We drive down into the Gorge and locate the site where the Leakeys made the find, now
commemorated with a marker. There, amateur anthropologist Lynn examines a bone
-- perhaps a new hominid discovery? Actually visitors find such objects
exposed during the rainy season and place them on the marker, where they are picked up by
rangers.
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