Prayer Request for the Roomies

Hey there!  I hope all of you are doing well.

I need to call on all those prayer warriors back home.  My poor bandamates are struggling health wise, in fact most of the camp is currently experiencing or just getting over having a cold, including myself.  My bandamates are struggling though.  I don't think I've talked much about my bandamates.  There are four of us in our humble banda.  Elaine is from Massachusetts and goes to Havard Extension, Manasi is from California and goes to Williams College in Massachusetts, and Kylie is from Wisconsin and goes to the University of Wisconsin Madison.  All three of them are great.  Last week I was feeling pretty lonely and convinced I wouldn't make any friends here and unsure if I wanted to make friends.  However, my bandamates have always been great.  We like breaking out into loud singing of Disney songs which sometimes concludes with standing on chairs and trying to jump on the top bunkbeds... I have really enjoyed getting to know these three girls.  We're all pretty different, but so far its worked out well.  Elaine doesn't have much experience with Disney movies so Kylie and I are making it our mission to educate her on the finer points of Disney.  Last night we watched "Sky High" and last week we watched "Pocahontas".

Now to the prayer requests.  Elaine was the first person in camp to get a cold, which was about two weeks ago.  Since then both Kylie and myself, and most everyone else in camp has gotten a cold.  Elaine seemed like she was finally getting over her cold when she suddenly "relapsed" and seemed a lot worse.  The past few days have been bad, she has been out of it and feeling really crummy.  Finally, our student affairs manager took her to the clinic in Karatu today and turns out she has Giardia.  Giardia is a nasty little parasite which is usually found in contaminated water.  Please, pray for Elaine and a speedy recovery, but also for the rest of the camp and that no one comes down with Giardia.  On to Manasi, a few days ago she realized she had a weird little sore on her foot and showed it to our student affairs manager who told her she had a jigger in her foot.  One of the local staff has apparently had 15 or so jiggers in his feet so he took it out for her, oh did I mention a jigger is like a little worm? Once again, please pray for a speedy recovery, we dont want her to get an infection because infections in Africa are much worse than America.  Finally, Kylie has been feeling under the weather today especially.  Im not sure whats up exactly, but I know she has a bad headache.  I came back from cook crew after supper around 8:45 pm and found both Kylie and Elaine in bed, a sure sign that neither are feeling very good.  Please pray for health!  Its awful to feel crummy or sick anywhere, but it's even worse in Africa.  We are also going on safari to Ngorongoro Crater tomorrow so no one wants to feel crummy tomorrow especially.  Thanks!

Under the Yellow-barked Acacia

Today we had a unique opportunity.  We did another field exercise for our Environmental Policy, but this time we studied village and community governing bodies and leadership.  We traveled to a nearby village called, Kainam, to meet with the local leaders and village elders. 

In African tradition, particularly in the Iraqw tribe, meetings are held under trees.  Before the meetings would start, the elders would give thanks for the tree, which provided shade and usually fruits for food.  Most tribal stories are connected to a specific tree, and each story must be told under its correlating tree.  For example, if I had a story that was first told under the tree in my backyard that our swing set used to be next to, under that tree is the only place I could tell the story.  I think it is a beautiful tradition, though as we have learned, with deforestation has also come a loss of the traditional stories because they can’t be told if the tree is now gone.  I love trees so I love the idea of holding meetings under trees and giving thanks to Mongu (“God” in Swahili) before beginning the meeting for His sustenance and His creation. 

Though we did not give thanks before our meeting, we did hold our meeting under a yellow-barked Acacia tree, which may be one of the prettiest trees in creation.  The elders brought out a bunch of benches and we sat in a circle under our tree.  There were about 12 village leaders and all thirty of us students as well as two of our professors who acted as translators.  The meeting started with introductions of everyone in the circle, then the village leaders went one-by-one, describing their role in the village governing committees. 

There are several tiers of governing committees in the village.  There are sub-villages, which are committees dedicated to economy and finance, security and safety, and social services.  Within each sub-village there are more divisions.  We only met with the members of the social services sub-village which was divided into the education, health issues, water, and environment committees.  Above the sub-villages is a village council, comprised of selected village members.  There is also a general assembly, which is the entire village and in order for a meeting of the general assembly to not be considered null and void, there must be a member from at least 50% of the households present. 

The village leaders were all the chairman or chairwoman or members of one of the four divisions of the social services sub-village so each division stood and told us their main responsibilities and challenges.  After they briefed us on their responsibilities and challenges, we had the opportunity to ask them how their councils worked and enter into a discussion.  We had four hours for this meeting and it flew by, in fact most of my classmates that I talked to all thought we should have gone longer.  After our discussion, the village members were adamant that we give them suggestions how to be more efficient or how they could do things better.

When we got back to camp we had a time for reflection.  We were all very impressed with how the village councils were run and organized.  I was kinda taken aback by their insistence that we give them suggestions.  I felt like, here we are, thirty college aged students who don’t know anything about running a village, but they still want our suggestions.  The goal of the meeting was to learn from each other, however I got this feeling like our being Americans had something to do with it as well.  I have gotten this feeling a lot in Tanzania, people thinking that because we’re from America that we automatically have the answers to a lot of questions and know the right way to do things.  Honestly, I think that is a unhelpful mindset.  I do feel like America pretends to know the right way to do everything, like the right way to do business, government, school.  I don’t think we do. 

These incredible people in Koiman work under extremely tight budgets and often can’t fulfill their action plans because there isn’t enough money, but they continue to stay motivated and push for improving their village.  Another thing that stood out to me was the communal mission.  The people in Koiman, and from what I’ve seen, most villages in Tanzania are very focused on community.  They aren’t trying to see how they can get the most for themselves, but if their neighbor is lacking something, they share what they have.  Everything is about community here, washing clothes, fetching water, cooking, farming, herding animals.  I especially saw this in the education division of the sub-village.  The main goal is ensuring there is education for every child so that the whole community can prosper from the education the children receive. 

I don’t know if we have as much emphasis on community in America.  I don’t want to demonize America and herald Tanzania, but I think there are tough questions that Americans need to ask themselves.  We as Americans can learn a lot from our global neighbors.  During our reflection time, one of the students mentioned how he really liked this community government, that in his community he never feels like he has much say in the way policies and decisions are made.  I believe that to be true as well.  Our government is supposed to be “for the people and by the people” but I think a lot of people would agree there is a lot of disconnect today.  Goodness, I hope this post isn’t coming across as political because I don’t want that to happen, I just want to share what I’m seeing and learning and hoping to take back. 

Another insight shared during our reflection time: a girl brought up the divisions of “developed” countries and “developing” countries.  Essentially what she was saying was how the language calling America and other westernized countries “developed” and countries like Tanzania “developing” hinders growth.  It makes America sound like we don’t have any more growing to do, and that we have everything settled while it sounds like were waiting for places like Tanzania to get to the place where America is.  I completely agree.  Granted Tanzania has some growing to do in areas, but America isn’t exempt from growth.  America doesn’t have everything figured out and neither does Tanzania.  I see a lot of enthusiasm about learning and striving for the best communities in Tanzania, I just hope America can catch some of that enthusiasm for growing and if need be, adapting and learning from places like Koiman, Tanzania. 

Maybe someday I’ll take my children to Koiman, Tanzania and tell them a story under the Yellow-barked Acacia.  

Joy and Strength

“Though the fig tree does not bud

 and there are no grapes on the vines,

though the olive crop fails

and the fields produce no fruit,

though there are no sheep in the pen

 and no cattle in the stalls,

yet I will rejoice in the Lord

I will be joyful in God my Savior.

The Sovereign Lord is my strength”

-Habakkuk 3: 17-19

Habakkuk isn’t a very well known book, I had never read any of it before last night, but a book that I’m reading called, Calm My Anxious Heart, mentioned this passage so I checked it out.  Most of my posts in this blog since I’ve come to Africa have been pretty perky and just based on what we’ve been doing, I haven’t said much about how I am actually doing.  I don’t want to discount anything I have been doing because it has all been fabulous and I am enjoying being in Tanzania, I love Tanzania.  However, at the same time, these past weeks have been hard.  It’s hard to be away from my family and friends, people who know me and encourage me.  It’s hard to be in a new place and have to figure out where you fit in the group.  It’s hard to have minimal contact with the people I love back home.  I have had a lot of encouragement from people back home through emails, but its hard not to have that encouragement be in the same time zone.  There isn’t anyone hear who really shares my faith and it’s really hard to be only one who believes something.  Part of me just wants to be connected to my email all the time in order to get strength from people back home, but I know that doing so isn’t feasible or isn’t pushing me to get strength from God.  I have been asking God, “Why”, a lot lately, like “Why do I feel alone?”, “Why did you bring me here?”, “Why why why”.  This is why I put the passage from Habakkuk in the beginning.  Habakkuk was telling God, though all this stuff in my life seems crummy and things aren’t going the way I would like, I will find my strength and joy in you.  Goodness, that is hard to say and even harder to follow through with actions.  So far, I haven’t done so well with following through with actions, but today is a new day. 

Thank you for letting me share where I am at and thank you for your numerous prayers.  I really appreciate them. 

Now I actually have something interesting about what we have been doing to share.  In Environmental Policy, we have been learning a lot about organizations called PRAs or Participatory Rural Appraisals.  Essentially PRAs are a different way to look at outreach and community programs than the traditional outsider donor programs.  They are a response to the disillusion in most developed countries that have given millions of dollars to developing countries but haven’t seen much change.  For instance, Americans have given billions of dollars to programs to halt poverty in Africa, however the poverty rate hasn’t budged and donors stop giving money because it doesn’t do anything.  Most of these programs haven’t accomplished much because they have outside technical experts come into communities and introduce a program to the community, but once the experts leave the projects fall apart because the local people don’t know how to continue or fix projects.  Therefore, PRAs come alongside local communities and use local participation as it main focus to empower communities.  There is a lot more effort that goes into PRAs because teams need to make relationships with communities, gather lots of data, and give up control to the local people, which means even if a PRA knows a better way to solve a problem, if that isn’t feasible for the local community, the local community needs to do what they want.   I think I’m probably rambling about something not very interesting to the majority, but I have really enjoyed learning about PRAs and really agree with their methods. 

Anyways, today we were able to test out some of the methods of PRAs in our own village of Rhotia.  We were split into groups, assigned a local guide who would act as our translator, and a specific problem we were to ask people about.  My group had to go around to farmers and ask about their crop preferences in terms of profitability, inputs such as water and fertilizer, capital inputs and arduousness. First of all, our guide, Harry was fantastic!  He is from Rhotia and has lived here his entire life.  He wants to go to college somewhere and study wildlife management.  Once we were done with our assignment, we were just talking and he was asking us if colleges or organizations in America ever sponsor international students because he doesn’t have enough money to go to school in Tanzania, but his dream is to get a degree in wildlife management.  The three other girls in my group and I are going to research that and get back to him, it is the least we can do and can be our way of saying thank you to him for being our translator and guide.  He would be a great candidate; he is trilingual and very competent and bright.  I hope something can be done for Harry. 

It was also really interesting talking to him about the differences between Tanzania and America.  He was telling us how everyone in the world wants to live in America, that it symbolizes hope and a better life.  He told us, “Ask anyone anywhere in the world if they would want to live in America, and they would all say yes”.  He was asking us if we had any tribes in America like they do in Africa and what the people are like.  I tried explaining about Native American tribes and how they aren’t really able to practice their culture and traditional practices like the tribes in Tanzania can.  We had some good conversations. 

For our actual field exercise, we interviewed seven families who are farmers. Wow.  Being farmers in Tanzania is so different than in America.  First of all, they plant corn they can actually eat off the stalk.  The vast majority of farming is subsistence farming, you can’t sell corn in the markets so unless farmers grow beans or wheat, they don’t sell any of their crops.  The four main crops are maize, pigeon peas, beans, and wheat; though we saw lots of tomato plants by homes and one family farmed sunflowers for the seeds and oil.  It’s really hard for crops here, especially in the dry season.  All the farmers we talked to told us how droughts have been getting worse each year and how the climate is making it hard to have good yields.  A few years ago they could produce a yield of 15 bags of pigeon peas from two acres but now they can only get about 7 bags.  The only irrigation the farmers around Rhotia use is rainfall, so during the dry season they can’t plant crops that need a lot of water, like fruit or bananas.  When we went to Mtu wa Mbu last week, we saw huge banana plantations, but they have many streams in and around Mtu wa Mbu that allow for bananas to grow. 

All the people we met were very friendly and helpful.  Most of them tried to teach us more Swahili so we could converse more.  I really like this aspect of environmental work, finding where the environment and people meet.  I’ve been hoping this semester would offer some more insight into what I want to do in the future because I don’t really know what I want to do, and I think I’m finding I want to work with the environment and with people.  I think I am finding I don’t want to work in wildlife management either.  I love animals, but I don’t think I love them in the way that I want to dedicate my life’s work to animals.  I really like the idea of being apart of a PRA. So we shall see what the future holds.  Until next time!

Tarangire National Park

My mind has no Swahili greetings so a hearty Hello must suffice. 

I need to start off just stating how blessed I am.  I am in Africa! How many people get that opportunity?  I’m blessed with this experience, with what I have seen, the people I have met, and the beautiful creation I have witnessed.  I’m blessed to live in a base camp with running water, hot showers, electricity, Internet, and a great staff.  My boyfriend, Joel, pointed out to me that while my living standards may be fairly close to the poverty level in America, that in Tanzania I live like a king.  I’m blessed with enough financial means to come here and to buy souvenirs and all that jazz.  I’m blessed to have friends and family back home who are praying for me, who support me, who love me, and who email me encouragements.  I have a God who loves and who created a stunning world.  I have a God who never leaves nor forsakes me or anybody else.  Really, what more could I want?  There may be days that are frustrating and I often times long for my home and people back home, but I am blessed. 

Today we embarked on our second safari! We set off early this morning to go to Tarangire National Park which is about 1.5 hours from our camp.  I can’t tell you much about the ride because I slept both there and on the way back (land rovers just rock me to sleep now), all I know is I fell asleep when we were in the mountains and woke up to wide expansive plains.  Our home in the mountains is gorgeous, but it was not what I was expecting Africa to look like.  Where we were today was the picture of Africa I more expected.  Flat, open grasslands with a few Acacia trees sprouting here and there, it was definitely beautiful but in an obviously different way than the mountains.  In the same way, Lake Manyara National Park is in the mountains so its more woodlands while Tarangire is grassland and open brushland.

In order for the safari to be educational, we spent the morning practicing a method of counting wildlife, which we have been learning about in our Wildlife Management Techniques class.  Every land rover had their own route and would count every animal within 500 meters from the car for a 2 kilometer transect then go 500 meters and start a new transect. 

We saw wildebeest, zebras, impalas, giraffes, and elephants, which we had seen in Lake Manyara ( they were still very cool), but today I saw my first Ostrich! I have decided Ostriches are very ugly creatures though, but they are much larger than I expected.  We also saw warthogs! They were kinda cute, when they run their tails stick straight up and they have this lush, floppy hair starting at their head and running along their back which makes them look like they have mullets!  I also have animal #2 for my Big Five list.  The Big Five animals include, elephants, cape buffalo, lions, leopards, and rhinos.  We saw several herds of cape buffalo, which are huge! I had no clue.  I actually think they look pretty neat, I wish I had gotten better pictures but they were off hiding behind trees. 

Before we left for Tarangire, we were promised by several of our professors that we would “definitely see lions”.  In fact, our site director, Kissui, who I talked about in the last post about being a top lion researcher lived/worked in Tarangire NP for eight years tracking all the lion prides.  Hopes were definitely high.  Needless to say…. My land rover did not see a lion… We did see a cheetah though! Cheetahs, in my opinion, are almost better anyways, they are sleek and have a beautiful coat.  We saw two cheetahs sitting up in the distance and pulled over, then they decided to lay down so we sat for 15 minutes hoping they would sit up again.  Once again my camera failed to get any good pictures, but I saw them through my binoculars! Our professor, Kioko, told us that there is a 100% chance of seeing lions in Ngorongoro Crater NP and in the Serengeti, so we have time to see Simba! “Simba” actually means “lion” in Swahili, Disney was not very original with that name!

After lunch, we headed back out in search of lions, which you know by now was an unsuccessful search.  Instead of finding lions, we found a whole herd of elephants playing in the river and decided to watch them instead.  They were great!  There were two babies, who our professor Kioko (the elephant expert) told us couldn’t be more than two years old.  The babies would take off, running and splashing through the river, chasing birds! It was perhaps one of the most precious things I have witnessed from animals.  Our car was parked right on the embankment of the river and a mature female walked over to the mud maybe 15 meters from us and just collapsed in the mud.  She rolled around in the mud and spread her legs out.  We also heard some bubbling and figured out she was sticking her trunk in the mud and blowing bubbles! It was great!  (This paragraph was dedicated to my Bethel roommate, Kelsey, who loves elephants.)

People always talk about the mammals in Africa, but I think the birds should get more credit.  The birds here are stunning.  They have the most gorgeous feathers of iridescent blues, purples, pinks, and greens.  I wish I could take pictures of all the of birds.  I see the birds sitting in trees and think “Oh, that bird is pretty” then they fly away and open their wings and I just gasp.  I wish I could describe them better. 

Well, I’m pretty tired after spending the day in the sun and I have a cold.  If you could pray for fast healing, that would be great! My roommate, Elaine, is just getting over a cold and now my other roommate, Kiley, and I are coming down with colds!  Its nothing bad, but prayer would be appreciated nonetheless.  Side story about the sun, my Bethel roommates and I were joking around about how dark I will be when I come back from Africa; today I noticed the intense farmers tan I am getting and my professor, Kioko, came up to me and put his arm next to mine and said “You’re getting pretty close, just a few more days and you’ll match me”.  Don’t worry Mom, I am putting on sunscreen, Africa’s sun is just intense.  Good night all!

A Few Explanations and My Day Off

Hello! Hopefully you are all enjoying a nice Autumn day, I could go for some cooler temperatures right about now.  Though, mornings and evenings cool down quite, especially in the mountains where we are, during the afternoon however it gets hot!

Last night I was able to talk to my family on Skype (woohoo!) ,which was great other than apparently my voice sounded like Mickey Mouse’s.  I was telling my mom about some of the professors and our classes and she thought I should put some of that information up on the blog, just so everyone knows a little more about the program. 

One of my classes is Wildlife Ecology and is taught by our professor (mlimu is the Swahili word for teacher) who we call, Kioko.  Kioko is from Kenya and is one of the world’s top elephant researchers.  I don’t know the full extent of his research, but I know he has done a lot on elephant behavior.  Our Wildlife Management Techniques class is taught by Christian, who is from Germany. I’m not totally sure what he got his PhD in, however he got his undergrad in Forestry and his masters in Wildlife Management.  Our Environmental Policy class, which is really interesting as it deals with the ethics and policies East Africa has on environmental and wildlife issues, is taught by a Tanzanian professor named Mwamhanga (his name is my favorite to say).  Our Swahili class is taught by Cecilia, who is from the Kilimanjaro region of Tanzania and has her masters.  Finally, our site coordinator who is also from Tanzania is named Kissui, and is one of the top lion researchers in the world.  He gave a lecture yesterday about lions and it was fascinating!

I also thought it would be interesting to tell you about the Swahili language since it is so different from English.  First of all, learning Swahili is really hard.  I definitely went into learning Swahili overconfident, thinking it would be like Spanish for some reason and that I would pick it quickly.  That has not been the case.  Swahili uses a completely different mindset when it comes to sentence structure, verbs, nouns, tenses, and really everything.  Even time in Swahili is different, their clock begins at 6 am instead of 12 am so at 8 am, they will say “Saa mbili kumili” (Its two o clock).   English is a bad language to compare Swahili to because English is weird as well, so I’m going to relate it to Spanish more. 

In Spanish, you conjugate verbs based on who is doing the action.  In Swahili, there are verb stems so “–kaa” means “to live, to stay”.  In order for the verb to mean anything, you have to attach a subject prefix and a tense.  If I wanted to say “I stay in Rhotia” I would attach “Ni” which essentially means “I” and “na” which is the present tense therefore “Nanikaa Rhotia” would mean “I stay in Rhotia”.  It gets really tricky when you want to add nouns because there are like 13 noun classes and in each noun class, the way you say “those” or “that” changes, the way you say “the” or “of/for” changes, and possessive agreements, like the way you you say “Mine” or “My” changes.  So essentially you don’t know how to form a sentence unless you know what noun class the nouns are in.  I don’t even want to think about if you ever have to use two nouns!  An example on the sentence structure, I was showing one of our drivers the present I bought for my younger brother and I said “yangu kaka midogo” which I thought meant “for my younger brother”, but he corrected me, telling me it is “ya kaka yangu midogo” which literally translates as “for brother my younger”.  Swahili is nuts! Like I said earlier, Swahili is a lot harder than it seems! I definitely wont be fluent in a semester!

So now that I have probably bored you all with a brief language lesson, Ill tell you what we did on our day off today!

This morning about fifteen of us students went into a town near Lake Manyara National Park called Mtu wa Mbu (this is probably one of my favorite words in Swahii to say) and went on a bike ride tour.  The tour took us through this grassland where herds of wildebeest and gazelles were grazing to Lake Manyara where there were probably thousands of flamingoes!  We watched the wildlife for a while then went back into town to this wood carving studio where we were treated to a song and dance and a history of the tribe that does these beautiful wood carvings.  I bought my mom a present here that I’m pretty excited about; I think she’ll like it! After the wood carving studio we went to a painting studio where the artists showed us how they knife paint. 

All the sights on the tour were great, the bike riding….not so much! Only the main roads in Tanzania are paved.  Riding on the other roads in our land rover/jeep vehicles are somewhat bumpy so imagine going on these roads on bikes.  It was essentially mountain biking the whole way.  And for some reason my seat kept falling down so my knees were hitting the handlebars and it made for a uncomfortable ride.  Needless to say, that’s the last time I choose a bike based solely on the color ( though it was a very nice seafoam green color). 

After the bike ride we walked around Mtu wa Mbu.  Once again, being a nzungu in a market place is hard.  All the merchants chase after you and today they were fighting over us with different merchants, trying to get us into their shops.  I did a lot better job at bargining, our student affairs manager even overheard one of my purchases and complimented me on my bargining skills!  Though they weren’t good enough for one store. 

I wanted to buy a Maasai blanket and everyone has told me to not spend more than 12,000 shillings on one. I went to a duka and found this really nice green “shuka” (that’s what the Maasai blankets are called) and asked the price. The man said 15,000 and I said “No way, 10,000”.  But he would not relent on 15,000.  I even tried saying “My friends bought the same blanket in Karatu last week for 10,000, I want it for 10,000”.  But he still didn’t budge.  Another girl with me jumped in offering to buy one as well so we could have two for the price of 20,000 (they lower prices when you buy more things).  But he said 15,000 for each.  Finally we told him we didn’t like that price and maybe we should go find another store to give us a better price, thinking for sure that this would be the way to change his mind.  Nope.  He let us leave.  I did end up finding another store to sell me a shuka for 12,000 finally. 

We learned later that because Mtu wa Mbu is more of a “touristy” town, they hike up the prices.  I also learned you can’t show interest in any item, touch them, or compliment items out loud unless you want to buy them because the merchants will take that as you’re interested in buying the item. This is difficult for me because I like to touch things, as my boyfriend can attest I have even gotten in trouble for almost touching artwork in art museums (I think I might have sat on some artwork as well, it was a chair but we’re not sure if it was part of the exhibit or not…)  It’s hard being in markets because you almost have to be rude to the merchants if you don’t want to look in their store or buy their goods.  A nice “hapana” (no) doesn’t do it a lot of the times.  This is hard for me because I don’t want to be rude or come off as arrogant, but the only way to get away from the merchants is if you are a firm. 

For lunch we went to a place that served pizza! My first American food in 15 days! It was delicious.  The food here is good, mostly rice, potatoes, lentils, beans, and veggies; but I definitely miss American food, especially junk food.  I could really go for some ice cream right about now. 

Well that’s pretty much it for today.  We are going to Tarangire National Park tomorrow for another field exercise disguised as a safari! But hey, I wont complain, Ill take a field exercise in a national park any day! 

Thank you for all your continued prayers and support.  I’ve settled in more, but that definitely doesn’t mean I don’t miss home.  I think by the time three months rolls around, I’ll be very ready to be home.  This week is hectic as far as schoolwork goes.  We have one scientific research paper due on Tuesday, another due on Wednesday, and a Swahili essay due on Thursday.  Fortunately, I started far enough in advance that I am pretty much done with all three assignments, but I can’t say the same for the other students.  Also, the power has been out for about twelve hours today, which means no charging computers or getting the Internet for research; which puts a damper on homework.  Well, I should probably finish my scientific paper on the diet and behaviors of baboons! Baadaye! (Later!)

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!  

Soil, Elephants, and Markets

Well hello! Today is our first non-program day, which means we have a day free of classes and instead get to do fun activities! Not that classes aren’t fun, but it’s nice to have a break.  Usually on non-program days we have some form of community service for half the day, then a more social activity for part of the day.  Today, we didn’t have the opportunity to do community service as our student affairs manager who sets up the non-program days is still making connections.  Instead we went on a hike in the rainforest and spent a few hours in Karatu at a market.  Its about 5:00 pm and we’re back at our camp and I was trying to work on my scientific papers but the Internet isn’t allowing me to find journal articles so I’m taking this opportunity to update my blog. 

Our hike was to a place called Elephant Cave, more on the actual place later, but it was fantastic! My group was led by an older man named Mao (who reassured us several times that he wasn’t Chinese but Tanzanian), who was a naturalist in Ngorongoro National Park for thirty some years.  Along the way, he pointed out so many species of plants and what the tribes have used them for; every plant he pointed out had some medicinal quality and had cured people of headaches, asthma, stomach cancer, you name it!  He also pointed out wild mint and an odiferous plant commonly called “Elephant Perfume” which the Maasai people apparently use as perfume.  He also made great care to show us which leaves to use if we ran out of toilet paper, and which not to use.  One of the exciting parts for me was when he pointed out a tree which from some past research projects I have done, I recognized to be a tree that farmers in some parts of Africa use in agroforestry tree fallow systems!

When we got to Elephant Cave, which isn’t actually a cave but numerous hollows in softer sedimentary rock, Mao explained why the place got its name.  Apparently, the bush elephants that live in the area (and there are a lot as we were constantly trying to avoid elephant droppings on the hiking trail, but we didn’t see them) come to this area and eat the soil in order to obtain specific nutrients.  The soil there contains large amounts of iron, calcium, and phosphorus so not only elephants, but pregnant women in the area will eat the soil to obtain the nutrients they need.  As we explored the hollows, we saw all these ruts in the walls, which we learned are made by the elephant tusks!  It was so neat!  Also, elephants are afraid of steep inclines, and this special soil and rock is on a fairly steep incline so we learned they sit on their behinds and slide down so they won’t break their legs!  It was such a neat place and experience, and for the soil science nerd in me, I want to learn more about the area!  The hike with all the interesting information about the plants, trees, and soil may have been one of my favorite activities thus far in Tanzania. 

Also, goodness, the views were spectacular.  I stood there amazed at God’s creation.  It’s very hard not to see the Creators fingerprints in the natural beauty in Tanzania.  And I was thinking, how great is God that he would not only create beautiful plants but give them such function like being used for medicinal purposes and what not. 

After the hike, we went into Karatu. Tanzania and spent a few hours browsing the markets.  Goodness, I was so out of my element! Before we even got out of our jeeps, children and people trying to sell us things surrounded us; it was very overwhelming.  Three or four men selling things appointed themselves our tour guides and would ask us what we wanted to buy then bring us to the stalls themselves.  Now nothing has a set price so you’re supposed to barter with the merchants, which is something I have never done and is quite unnerving.  My first purchase, I forgot to barter so I just paid the first price the woman said, but as the day went along I got better.  My last purchase was originally priced at 45,000 Tanzanian shillings (the exchange rate is about 10,000 shillings to $7.50) but I told him 20,000, which he thought was incredibly too low and almost walked away, but we haggled it to 40,000 shillings and he gave me three necklaces as well.  But my, the merchants are persistent!  Even if you keep saying “hapana, hapana” (no, no), they try to lower the price to entice you and they follow you around so it’s hard to get away from the merchants.  It was definitely a cool experience though.  We were so out of place though, thirty “Nzungus” (foreigners) got every ones attention and we were probably the talk of the day. 

Well, my plan is to spend the rest of the day working on my three scientific research papers.  It seems weird to have to do homework in Africa.  Thank you so much for all your continual prayers and support! I feel them all the way over here! I hope everyone is doing well!