Marabou Stork's Revenge

Well, it's about time, isn't it? I've been here in Tanzania for 2 1/2 months helping with capacity building in the arena of HIV treatment. And I am finally getting around to creating a blog so that my people can share in the experience. I am starting with the following story because I shared this story by email but the pics wouldn't send and MANY of you have asked for the photos.  This story has absolutely nothing to do with HIV. . .this took place in Shinyanga town (fondly known by locals as Shy Town) which is the center of a huge region (also called Shinyanga) in western Tanzania. It is a vast rural region that contains gold and diamond mines. The town is dusty, friendly, bustling yet laid back. My colleague Sophy wanted her photo taken with a Marabou stork. Shinyanga region is FULL of these gigantic birds. They amble around town, just like people do. You can also see 20 or 30 of them at a time hanging out in the trees. They are pretty ugly (I know that is mean, but I think you would agree). They look like curmudgeonly old men with seborrheic keratosis on their scalps, thinning hair and some of them have this long irritated-looking red appendage hanging below their beaks. A doctor I was working with in Bukombe (a town in Shy region) joked that they are Bukombe's "health officers" because they are scavengers--they hang around picking up garbage, and keep the place clean. I used to see them in Kampala eating out of dumpsters. They've always given me the creeps. Anyway, as I said, Sophy wanted a picture WITH a stork. She is only 5 feet tall and I think she wanted to see how tall she looked next to a Marabou. So we found one hanging out on a corner in the middle of town. Sophy's husband and I got our cameras ready while Sophy approached the stork slowly and quietly. In the first photo, you can see Sophy sneaking in on the right. Then, it was clear the Marabou did NOT want his photo taken with Sophy. He started looking around, and then. . . he spread his HUGE black wings, lifted off the ground, and flew right AT ME! I saw his very sharp beak pointed right at my face. In the second photo you can see me bolting as fast as I could from the giant bird. Of course, it wasn't aiming for ME, it just flew right over my head to escape the whole crazy human scene. In this photo, you can easily see the bird's shadow on my heels, but if you look closely, you can see the actual bird flying well above my head. We made quite the spectacle. We and the women cooking outside at the Garden Pub were laughing soooo hard. It created a lasting (somewhat traumatic) memory, and now I feel somehow bonded for life to the Marabou stork. Sophy even made me a beautiful origami Marabou so that I could de-sensitise myself from the trauma of it all!!