Safari!

Haburi za jioni!  Good evening! Athough, with the crazy time change, as I’m writing this, its only early Saturday morning in the states.  Nothing really exciting happened today except I went on my FIRST SAFARI!!! Ok, I was lying, the day was incredible!  We spent the afternoon in Lake Manyara National Park in Tanzania and will be spending tomorrow morning in the park as well.  Goodness, I don’t even know where to begin in telling about the day. 

For starters, the field trip wasn’t all fun and games; we actually had to do assignments while in the field.  For our Wildlife Management class we had to identify ten mammals and look for various facts such as gender differences and feeding habits.  For our Wildlife Ecology class prior to going to the park we had to come up with two hypotheses we wanted to make observations on and later write a scientific research paper.  For one of my papers, I did a survey on the ungulates in the park and made observations about the variety of vegetation they were eating.  My other observation/hypothesis is about how the baboon population in the park is affected by climate change. 

Our mode of transportation was safari jeeps with pop up roofs so if you stood on the seats you could stand the entire ride, which I did!  I used to think I didn’t like off-roading, but pretty much every road in Tanzania would be considered off-roading in the states so I think I’m developing a taste for jostling around a jeep on an unmaintained road.  So there we were, seven students and a professor, driving off into the wilderness of Africa in a safari jeep; my jeepmates dubbed our jeep the Mothership as it was the first of the SFS vehicles into Lake Manyara. 

Not to give the impression that these national parks have animals everywhere, because most of the time is spent driving and looking, but within the first half-mile into the park we saw our first animal, several Sykes Monkeys (I encourage everyone to look up the animals as you can get a better picture of what I’m talking about, I would upload photos but our internet doesn’t have the capacity for all thirty students to upload a lot of photos).  A bit further down the road we saw some ungulates, Water Bucks grazing.  The next animal, I must preface made my heart drop.  I have seen this animal in zoos and what not, but there is something so powerful and beautiful about seeing it in its own habitat.  It was an elephant! Our group was trying hard to be quiet and respectful of the animals, but I definitely shrieked for joy.  It never ceases to amaze me of the size of elephants, they are huge, but as this elephant crept back into the forest, it was so silent, which further amazed me. 

As we continued our safari, we encountered many a Olive Baboon and Vervet Monkeys.  Before heading out on safari, we had a Wildlife Ecology lecture about the behavior and social structure of baboons so it was neat to transfer what we had just learned into what we were seeing in the field.  Baboons and Vervet Monkeys are so active, they were climbing all over the place and grooming each other, some were pretty curious about our jeep.  Next, we saw a Dik Dik hiding among some trees, definitely look up Dik Diks, they are tiny, it was one of those animals that we weren’t expecting to see but was definitely a treat.  After some driving we came across six giraffes! Honestly, the first thought that came to my head when I saw the giraffes was “Dinosaur”.  For some reason, the long necks and heads sticking out from trees reminded me of those long-necked, herbaceous dinosaurs.  Again, when I saw them in their natural habitat, it brought a whole new dimension to giraffes.  I actually told one of the girls in the jeep with me that I could die happy now that I saw a giraffe in the wild.  It was exhilarating!

We kept driving and saw numerous birds with beautiful plumage!  Wow, there really aren’t birds quite like the ones we saw in the states, or South Dakota/Minnesota at least.  Next, we saw the first carnivore of the trip!  It was the ferocious Stripped Mongoose!  Actually, it was the only carnivore we have seen thus far, we failed to see any famous tree climbing Lake Manyara lions.  As we drove from the wooded forest part of the park into open grassland, we saw herds of zebras and wildebeest! We got very close to the zebra and, I keep saying this, but it was incredible.  They are beautiful creatures. Next, we drove to a hippo pond and I was able to see a few hippos through my binoculars, but was unable to take any pictures of them, our professor said there is a hippo pond in the Serengeti that has a great view, so heres hoping for some good hippo pictures later!

At this point, our safari was winding down and we saw more Olive Baboons and Vervet Monkeys along with Impalas and Thomson Gazelles.  At one point we were stopped watching a troop of Baboons and an elephant came out of nowhere and walked across the road in front of us!  Apparently Baboons are not too fond of elephants as they scattered quickly after the elephant came. 

One thing that makes me wish I could transport you all over here to experience is the smell.  The smell of the forests is heavenly, and no it does not smell like animals.  It smells of some type of flower and oh my, I want to bottle up that smell.  I wish I had the words to convey even a fraction of the beauty here.  The acacia and baobab trees, the open plains, the mountains surrounding; its all indescribable.  As we were driving, I clearly got the sense that God walked through this forest.  That He walks along side his “tembo”, “simba”, and “kirafu” calling them by name.  God created all the beauty in Tanzania and lives among it. 

I hope you readers got some sort of what this safari entailed today.  I feel like it was mainly me gushing about animals and using a lot of the same adjectives but I am still at a loss for many words.  Safari!