Dung Day

I’m finding out that the days we go “off campus” are the best parts of this program.  Before I explain our off campus activity, I have to give some background of our Wildlife Ecology class period this morning, as it was a class I will probably not forget.  The topic was “Identifying Wildlife through Trails and Dung”.  Now for even more background knowledge I have to go back two days to our safari, our Wildlife Ecology professor was driving the jeep I was riding in and at one point he stopped the jeep, got out and picked up a large sample of elephant dung and just plopped it on the dashboard.  Fast forward to today when he plops down this large cardboard box and begins taking plastic bags of dung out.  He had almost any imaginable sample of African mammal dung.  He had us pass around the samples of dried dung to better familiarize ourselves with the nuances and differences between the dung of different species; and surprisingly there are a lot of differences.  Apparently he even wrote his Masters thesis in part about dung. 

One of Eastern Africa’s major problems regarding conservation is the competition between the goats, sheep, and cows the locals raise and the wildlife that need to migrate and graze on the same grasslands.  There is far more to this problem than just that, but that’s all the pertinent information needed at this time.  Today we went to a huge expanse of grassland where Maasai people graze their animals but is also part of a wildlife corridor, which is an expanse of land between home ranges of migrating animals, like wildebeest, zebra, gazelle, take to go back and forth.  This grassland then is grazing territory for wildlife and domestic animals.  We went to this grassland to do an analysis on the dung to estimate how many species actually use the grassland and hypothesize if there is competition between the wildlife and domestic animals. 

The grassland is next to Lake Manyara, which is very low right now since it is the dry season but is also a very salty lake so salt flats surround the entire lake.  When we first got there, our professor told us we could walk to the lake for 15 minutes before starting our educational activity.  As we were attempting to walk to the lake, the salt flats made it look like we had just been dropped off in the middle of a desert.  In addition to the salty ground, the sun was blazing hot and we could see mirages of the lake in the distance, adding to the effect.  Several people commented on our walk, saying it was walking to our death.  Though no one is sure what hell is like, I feel like this area could have been fairly accurate depiction.  It was blazing hot and no matter how long we walked, it seemed like we weren’t getting any closer to our destination, it was endless.  In addition to the heat and endless walk, the further we walked in, the more our shoes sunk into this dank, tar-like substance, several times it splashed on me and it was very hot.  Needless to say, it was an interesting experience but not one I’d like to repeat.

After our near-death adventure across the salt flats we actually had to do some work.  Splitting into groups, our groups were each assigned a Maasai guide who didn’t speak any Swahili or English, but we were told the words for all the animals whose dung we would find so we could understand what they would say when we pointed to certain piles of dung.  Armed with GPS and Maasai guides we headed out into the grassland surrounded by lots of cows and goats and lots of dung.  We had to make 4-by-4 meter plots and count all the dung inside the plot and identify from which species it came.  After about 2.5 hours of this, I had the Maasai words for cow, sheep, goat, zebra, wildebeest, and gazelle down pat and could identify the dung by sight! Though goat and sheep dung look similar, they have quite a few differences if you ever wanted to know.  Along with our assigned guide, two other younger Maasai boys joined our group.  One of the boys and I hit off a friendship and he gave me two vulture feathers, a flamingo bone, and a goat bone!  I also found a Maasai “arrowhead” on the ground, which he showed me was once used to whittle sticks.  After I joked around about spearing an Impala in the distance, he took it upon himself to teach me how to throw a Maasai spear, which I completely failed.  He laughed at me quite a bit. 

Even though neither of us could speak a common language, it was great interacting with him and essentially playing charades to communicate!  I never even learned his name or anything about him, but he will stay in my memories forever.  As we finished the dung counting and were leaving, he made it pretty obvious that he wanted my watch.  I tried telling him I needed it and couldn’t give it to him, but ended up giving him my hat instead.  He was definitely one of the people in Tanzania who have captured my heart and just increased my love for the Tanzanians. 

On the way back to base camp our driver, Johana, was telling me all about the Maasai traditions and cultures because he himself is Maasai and was the translator for the guides and ourselves today.  It was fascinating to hear about the people.  When we switch to Kenya we will do a home-stay with a Maasai tribe for a day, of which I’m very excited.  We also do a home-stay with a tribe in Tanzania.  The tribe in Tanzania is the Iraqw tribe, they are far more abundant in Tanzania while the Maasai are more abundant in Kenya.  The locals in Rhotia, where our base camp is, are all part of the Iraqw tribe and so are most of the local staff who work at our camp.  It will be interesting to see how the tribes differ and are similar.  I know I came here to study animals, but I think I may be finding that the people are more interesting.  Until next time!