» posted on Thursday, September 22nd, 2022 by Linda Lou Burton

Famous Restrooms

Linda Lou Burton posting from Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania– I thought of Glenny today. A coworker from way back in the 80s, she made the funniest remark about vacation photos I’ve ever heard. This was the era of the Brownie-Camera-Kodak-Film mode of remembering, when you couldn’t afford to take 20 shots of the same rock. Nor did you know how a shot would turn out until weeks after you returned home, got your six rolls developed, and stuck your 34 decent photos in an album. Glenny’s remark was “We always forgot to take pictures until we got out of the car at a restroom. So we’d ‘family group’ in front of the restroom doors and smile. My albums are Famous Restrooms of the World.”

My gangmates and I didn’t “group up” in front of restroom doors today, but we did take photos INSIDE a positively glamorous construction as we blathered on about IT (the restroom) without even having a clue as to WHERE we were. I suppose, having signed up for a “safari tour” that was designed to see as many wild animals in Africa as possible, it wouldn’t be part of the Guide Dialog to focus on archeological and/or cultural sites, so when our 4x4s turned right at the “skulls” and then stopped at a washroom, no mention was made that we were stopping at some part of the Olduvai Gorge-Leakey Research-Museum complex. We didn’t get to the Museum, but heck, I surely “went” where early people “went” a few million years ago, according to the Leakeys. “Well, good on ya’, Mary and Louis Leakey,” I thought to myself. “Glenny, here’s one for the Famous Album!”

We left Ngorongoro Serena Lodge at 8:30, passed the skulls at 9:30, and arrived at the Serengeti National Park Gate at 10:30, if you want to track our dirt-road route past all the things I mentioned in my last Post. Following are photos of what we saw, beginning with the giraffe on the Crater rim early on. Know why there are no giraffes IN the Crater? The descent is too steep for their long slender legs and neck. Note the herders and donkeys on their way to get water, the dry plains, the water sources, the everything. Funny – just as I said I’d never seen a dog helping with the Maasai herding, there was a frisky dog! Everyone waved.