>Liz writes ...
>
>As Bill says, it doesn't seem like the drought is biting Tz as much
>as northern/eastern Kenya.
Just to be clear on this, I don't think the Tanzania drought is as bad
in that people aren't dying in the fields like some of the NFD Kenya
stories one reads, but they are still in a three year drought,
according to our drivers. They said thousands of animals have died and
the Masai are unable to roam as much because they have to stay close to
the existing water holes to keep their cattle alive. Ndutu supposedly
had only two rainy days in Dec and January and it was extremely dry,
with the lake shrunken to a fraction of its normal size. We saw about
10% as many wildebeests here as they did last year at the same time.
For us the relatively minor problems included a lot of dust and no
laundry service at some of the lodges like Sopa Ngorongoro (so don't
plan on having laundry done at each stop). For someone like Michael
who mainly wants to see a mass of migrating animals I'd say it makes it
less certain as to where they will actually be, but I'd try the
Seronera area early (June, July?) and the north Serengeti area like
Lobo Hills later (July, August) and of course Kenya in Sept or Oct, but
no one knows for sure what will happen if the rains are light and
there's no grass for them to migrate to.
Bill
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