laval flows that we drove through on our way to Tsavo West NP - view of chyulu hills in the background.
Mzima springs- saw some crocs here
Driving through the serene chyulu hills
hikinh up a cloudy hill in chuylu
The elephant that tried to charge our car!
So two nights ago, the wonderful social committee put together a festive halloween party, to celebrate finals being over, DR starting, and to just bring everyone's spirits back. The event was actually a brain child of Caroline and me; when we're bored we sit around and think of random themed days that we could have- in Tanzania we had Blue Day where we played depressing music at breakfast, put blu food coloring in all of the breakfast food, and made morbid/depressing place mats for everybody (it actually turned out to be a really sad day - we had an extra hour and a half of ecology class with the bitchy Dr. Wallis, and our amazing swahili teacher quit to start a new job in Dar es Salaam.)
Anyways, halloween started at dinner, where everyone was obligated to show up in a costume. I was so surprised at how everyone participated and how creative people managed to be with such limited costume resources! After dinner we had a costume parade down the middle of the chumba, and an awards ceremony to give out medals to the most creative, most africa appropriate, most awkward, sexiest, funniest, most ecologically destructive, cutest, smelliest, most magical, best cat walk, and a few others I can't recall.. Oh and the whole time we played the nightmare before christmas soundtrack.
Columbian drug load, pirate, and velma.
Everyone lining up for dinner in their awesome costumes.
Award winners!
Yesterday was our fist non-program day in weeks! it was amazing! we started the day late, at around 9:30, with a hike down to a beautiful gorge in the middle of nowhere. We drove for about 45 minutes to a random field of corn. We got out, hiked through the corn fields for about 30 minutes (corn stalks are a lot taller than I imagined ~10-15 feet) and descended a slippery hill into a tropical gorge filled with gigantic viney trees. At the bottom of the gorge was a waterfall and stream that separated the side that we hiked down and a giant rock cliff. The cliff was covered in huge loose roots that hung down all the way from the top of the cliff to the bottom of the gorge. We crossed the stream, with the help of Molly, and hung around on the roots for a while. Then we had a nice relaxed lunch by the waterfall and headed back up to the cars.
After we drove into Loitokotok town and stopped at an HIV clinic and then went into town to look around. I, along with a few others, skipped the clinic because I felt a little weird going in.. and just went straight to the town. It was nice to have the freedom to just walk around and cross streets without having to ask permission. We walked up and down almost every street looking through the different shops and market stalls. After about an hour we got back into the cars and went to a few curio shops with the whole group.
After some souvenir shopping at the curios we went to Club Kimana again for a few drinks!!
TODAY!! was our first day of data collection for our directed research! My group, environmental policy, went out to Entonet, a small town at the base of kilimanjaro, to interview the locals on the tourist industry and their economic background. We got some pretty interesting answers, and a lot more people were involved with the tourist industry than I thought. Being in the tourism industry here is a pretty big deal; it's a solid and stable source of income and it pays much more than agriculture or pastoralism.
One household that we went to was extremely friendly! they let us into their home, allowed us to eat our packed lunches in their living room, and even bought cokes for us! They turned out to be our translators family friend, so the exceptional hospitality wasn't that surprising. When we left they even gave us bracelets as a thank you for taking interest in their worries.
Now that DR has started things are going to get pretty busy.. I have data collection for the next week and then write up for the week and a half after that. During data collection we get to go to more local communities to interview farmers, lodges to interview tourists/lodge managers/tour guides, and we also get to have discussions with Group Ranch managers and government officials (Kenya Wildlife Service.)
so excited!! and after we finish with our research reports we get to present our findings to the community!
wooo
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