tarangire with pictures? wawaaawa

yesterday was our trip to Tarangire National Park! It was another early morning- woke up at 5:45 for breakfast at 6:00 and then headed out at 6:45.

It only took about an hour and a half to get to the park. I kind of wish it was a longer drive cuz it's so nice driving around here. There are always happy people waving at us and such beautiful landscapes of fields and rolling hills.

When we got to the park we were re-briefed on the exercise we were going to conduct while in the park. We were doing an animal counting exercise; drive for 2 km and record the species of animal we see, the population, the distance they are from the road, and the distance from the starting point. After 2 km we reset the count, drove 500 m and started the 2 km again.

We saw mostly the same animals and a few new ones.
The new animals we saw: water buck, banded mongoose, lesser kudu, ostrich, hartebeest, a bunch of vultures, and a dead genet. Sadly no lions, cheetahs, or leopards.

Even though we saw the same animals, this park was a lot more interesting than Lake Manyara. Firstly, it was much bigger than Manyara. There were many more roads to go down and larger roaming space for the animals. I think I heard someone say it has the largest elephant population out of all the national parks (something like an elephant for every 1km²), which was obvious because we saw elephants EVERYWHERE.

There was also a big river that ran through the park. We got to get pretty close and saw a heard of elephants playing in the water. At one point we had to stop because there was a baby elephant playing in a puddle of water in the middle of the road.


ahhh didn't think that picture would load! I'll try to do a few more.

There were a bunch of frickin little titsi flies. They're like regular flies but bigger and bite. They're disgusting, annoying, and hurt. They seem to just bite for no reason too, I really don't get it.

After our safari we went to the Tourist Lodge in the middle of the park. We got to go swimming and ate at the buffet. It was delicious and fun. The pool was greaattt. It was a pretty hot day so it was nice to cool down in a cold pool. It had a little water slide too! The lodge itself was gorgeous. It stood on top of a hill and overlooked the park. You could see the river from this giant overlook- and a few animals roaming around.

After lunch and swimming we went to Dr. Kissui's (our wildlife management teacher) research lab. We didn't get to see lions or anything, but we did see a bunch of animal skulls that they found around the park. They had an elephant skull that was gigaaantic.

That was pretty much our trip to Tarangire.. I'll upload a few pictures from earlier in the trip!



dumb giraffe in Lake Manyara National Park.


gray crested cranes in Manyara


warthog, wildebeest, and zebra


Esther and me at the Maasai Manyatta


Primary school kids we visited


Most of the group at the Iraqw village


Crazy market in Karatu


Elephants in Tarangire

hikin' up the rift valley!

yesterday was our nice but very short day off.

I still woke up at the usual 7:00am for breakfast and headed out at 8:00am for the bottom of the Rift Valley. Our campsite is at the top of the valley so it only took about 10 minutes to get to the bottom/starting point of our hike. The hike started out pretty steady and flat. & we passed by a huge clan of baboons before we started ascending. Oh and one of my contacts fell out during the car ride there..

THe hike was amazing. The first 20 minutes were pretty gruesome but after a while my body got used to the strain. We stopped every once in a while to look at and identify animal tracks and different bugs. There was this one bug called the ant lion that digs little inverted cones in the dirt to trap ants in it. We dropped a few ants in and watched the ant lions snap out of the dirt and drag them under. Back at camp Nixon, the camp managers son, caught a few and put them in a bowl of dirt to play with.

The rest of the hike was great and at the top we got a beautiful view of Lake Manyara. Oh and before we reached the very top a giant herd of goats stampeded into us. Two stopped on the side of the trail and started to go at it.. kinda gross.

After getting to the top of the valley, we had about an hour and a half of walking to get back to camp. On the way we stopped by a beautiful lodge that Yuda, our swahili teacher and guide for the day, used to work at. He led us to the outdoor bar that had a patio that looked over the side of the mountain and out onto Lake Manyara.

After a refreshing soda we walked the last 45 minutes back to camp. Back at camp we had lunch and then headed out to Karatu Town for another lunch at Happy Days. I got the mac n cheese which was deliciousz.

Ater lunch some people headed into town to explore, but me and a group stayed back because almost everything was closed because it was Sunday afternoon. We stayed back and had some drinks then went back to camp at around 6:00.

Overall it was a great day off, but way too short. Now back to classes for another week until our next day off. But Wednesday were going to Tarangire National Park! Our teacher, Dr Kissui, is taking us into the park. He's been doing lion research there for years now so hopefully he'll be able to find us a pride!

I'll update after our trip to Tarangire!

writing papers

the work load is starting to build up! and classes are starting to look a lot better. the teachers are starting to organize their lectures and reading so everything's starting to fall into place.

our first assignment so far: come up a research topic and create a research proposal.

this research topic is based on our second trip to lake manyara. while we were there we took notes on any animal behavior that we observed in giraffe, elephant, warthog, or zebra. we came up with our research question and hypothesis depending on what we observed and found the most interesting. I was going to write about elephants because I thought they were the most active and compelling animals that we saw in the park, but so did everyone else. sooo I decided to research giraffe, even though they were extremely boring and inactive.

I kind of used this to my advantage by discussing the effects of tourism on wild giraffe. I figured all wild giraffe can't be THAT boring.. and that there must be a reason that they just stand around and stare at tourists that drive by.

it's starting to come together on paper.. but very slowly. it's just such a boring topic to be researching that I have no motivation.



our second assignment is a lot more interesting. before our trip to the maasai manyatta we were given the assignment of writing about the effects of tourism on maasai sociocultural and economic values. this'll be a much more interesting paper to write. I got a lot of information from the interview with Esther, the maasai woman we questioned, so it'll be a pretty easy paper to write.


besides the work load things are going great in tanzania! today, after lunch, we went to a local lutheran church for some community service. we paired up with a secondary school student (us high school equivalent) to plant trees with. Sateeth, a student in sfs, and I paired with a 4th year student named Alphan.. I think.. it was kind of hard to understand what he said his name was.

we dug 4 holes and planted 4 tree saplings. it was a lot of fun and my first time tree planting!

the church we planted the trees for was a tiny little church in a small town 5 minutes from camp. it was decorated with white and purple drapery with random plants everywhere. there was also this cool guy in the corner that played an electric keyboard while the secondary students sang and danced.

when we got back from the church, the highly anticipated group of students finally arrived to camp. (we were told a few days ago that a group of 30 something students were coming to stay at the campsite for a night.) they ended up being from england.
we played a few games of volleyball with them, we won the first lost the second. but probably would've beat them twice if we had played to 25 the second game.



tomorrow we're going to another village! we're gunna do some PRA (participatory rural appraisal) research. I'm still not entirely sure what that means. something along the lines of doing community projects while working directly with the community and their needs. it'll be fun to do more interviewing and research.

and sunday is finally our day off!! which we only get once a week..

I think we're going on a morning hike and then heading back to happy days!!! woooo

missin everyone! hope life is good in the usa

a few things I've learned

1. humans(apes), squirrels, giraffe, & maybe lions are the only mammals with color vision.
2. lion prides are composed of permanent female members and temporary traveling male bachelors. males show no sign of dominance amongst one another.
3. laki tisa elfu tisini na tisa mia tisa tisini na tisa means 999,999 in swahili.

so

SFS is going great but I'm starting to find a few flaws that are really getting to me..

One, the teaching is pretty disorganized and doesn't foster a good learning environment. I found out that this semester is the first time that they're doing a program in both Kenya and Tanzania (prior to this year they had only ONE program that started in Kenya and ended in Tanzania.) So this semester is the first time that my teachers are teaching for the program or teaching at all. It gets really frustrating because the lectures are scattered and there seems to be no connection between each lesson.

Swahili is especially frustrating. The teacher is trying to teach us the 8 noun classes of swahili, all of which have their own subject prefixes, without even teaching us the basics of verb conjugation or basic conversational phrases. So basically I know how to say the singular or plural form of random nouns but can't even make use of the word. It would have been much better the lessons were based on practical phrases that will help us get around and converse with the local children.

The other classes are not nearly as bad, but are still hard to follow. If there was more cohesion between each course and the reading assignments, it would be so much more enjoyable.

The work load is really disorganized also. Today we got an assignment at 7:30pm on a flash drive from our swahili teacher. This may not seem that bad but since we have dinner at 7:00, presentations at 7:30 which usually last till 8:30, readings to do for other classes, and then breakfast at 7:30am the next morning, it makes it really inconvenient.

A few students spoke with the Student Coordinators and they said that it's just hard right now because this is a very new program and that the semester just started. Hopefully things will start getting better soon.


...there are a few downers in the group too and I do not do well with downers. But I'm stuck with them for 3 more months so I'll just make the best of things.. aka stay as far away from them as possible.

For lunch today we had a tasty tasty mango cobbler! It's really nice to get these occasional new dishes because the food is starting to get a bit monotonous.. But at least it tastes good!

For someone's presentation yesterday we voted on practical items to ask our cook to make us.
Top choices were:

-Fresh veggies
-Passion Fruit Juice
-Corn Bread
-Chocolate Chip Banana Bread
-Chips and Guacamole
-Burgers (typical)
-Sausage

I was really surprised about the corn bread.. I guess a lot of people like their corn bread.

Manyara, Iraqw, Karatu, Maasai, Burgers and Beer

Friday---

Friday we started off the day with a few classes and after lunch we headed over to Lake Manyara National Park!! Our land cruiser driver was our wildlife management teacher so we got a great tour. The park was amazing. When you first pull in there's semi-tropical forest filled with baboons, warthogs, birds, and other monkeys. It's also the areas that elephant herds like to roam around.

We quickly drove through this part of the park and came out to an open plain with hundreds of Impala, herds of zebra, water buffalo, wildebeest, and giraffe. They were all intermixed and grazing on the grasses. Giraffe are one of my favorite animal but jeezuz are they boring. All they do is stand perfectly still in groups, only moving to swat flies with their tails. Observing them is kind of funny though because when they see safari trucks they turn and stand directly perpendicular to the cars so they look like tall, skinny sticks.

After driving around for a few hours we saw pretty much all of the animals in the park except leopards, lions, and elephant. On the way out of the park we drove through a dense part of the forest and luckily saw a herd of elephant in the distance between some trees. Our teacher slammed on the brakes and we were able to snap a few pictures of a female herd of elephants with their babies. After about 10 minutes, we noticed that there were more elephants behind us and backed up to get a closer look. RIght at that moment a herd of about 10 elephants started crossing the road 30 feet away from our truck! After that herd another herd crossed, and another after that. We saw about 30 elephants, including a bunch of little babies. It was a perfect end to our first trip to Manyara National Park. oohhh we saw hippos too!



Saturday--

Saturday morning was my turn to do cook crew and since we were heading out to Manyara at 6am, we had to be in the kitchen at 5am to get breakfast ready for the group.

After a horribly early breakfast we jumped into the trucks and went back to Manyara. This trip was about the same as the last, except we saw a few Jackals and ridiculous birds. On the way out of the park we played 'no hands safari truck' which was us standing on our chairs trying to keep our balance on the bumpy road without our hands. real fun.

We got back late cuz an elephant was blocking the road, had lunch, played volleyball, and had a wildlife ecology class. Then dinner and a good nights sleep.



Sunday--

We finally got to leave the campsite!!! well I guess we left the site before but we usually turned left onto the road out of camp, but this time we went right! We were heading to Karatu Town to go to the giant, once a month market! Before we went to the market we made a stop at a Iraqw Tribe's village. An Iraqw man described the daily life of men and women and told us about the changes to their traditional culture in recent years. He also allowed us to all dress in traditional clothes and taught us dances while the women played a drum and sang. I got some good pictures but, alas, the internet sucks. He then gave us a tour of the houses that they used to use in the past. They were built into a hill so that when Maasai warriors came to steal their cattle they didn't know that they were walking on the roof of the house. This gave the Iraqw time to prepare to defend their cattle and fight off the Maasai.

After the great presentation we went to Happy Day's lodge for delicious delicious burgers, fries, and beer. I'm already starting to crave different foods and it's only been a week ah. After lunch we headed back into the main area of Karatu Town and went to the huge market.

There were literally thousands of people, crammed onto this field, selling the strangest variety of goods. They had dried anchovies, used clothing (hipsterheaven), touristy souvenirs, lots of obama gear, shoes, pans, baskets, and so many other random things. I left with a great 4 meter cloth with Obama's face sandwiched between two maps of Africa, a cheesy USA/Obama belt, and a hat. The best part was that I spent less than $15 for everything!

After the market we went back to the Happy Day's Lodge for 'a few' drinks. Everyone went kinda crazy and started dancing around with the bar tenders and servers. Our Swahili teacher went crazy too; dancing with the waitress while wearing a neon green hat that said "general tool" on it.

The ride back to camp was torturous. I had to pee so bad and the bumpy curvy roads were not helping. After a race to the bathroom everyone ran to the field court for a quick, tipsy game of volleyball.

We ended the day with a tasty meal of Tanzanian influenced pizza and silly renditions to Yellow Submarine.



TODAY!!

was GREAAAT. In the morning, instead of our culture lecture we went to a Maasai Manyatta! We went to interview the local Maasai tribe about how converting their Manyatta(village) into a tourist business as a solid source of income has effected their traditional values. Since they don't speak english we had someone translate our questions/their responses. It was a really great experience. We were invited into the home of a Maasai wife (the Manyatta's are composed of huts for the 20 something wives and the 1 husband) and asked her about her changing views on her own culture due to this new business. She brought an interesting perspective that I did not expect. She said that having the business allows her to have her own source of income, making her financially independent from her husband but with unchanged female roles. The husband is okay with the business because they don't have to worry about children/wives asking for money for daily needs. I asked her if having the business would wash out the traditional Maasai values and she replied saying that having the business helps her remember the values since she has to tell them to all the visitors. Without the tourism she would be more likely to forget from the influence of the modern world on their lifestyles.

We also learned that many of the kids no longer help the family out at home as much, now that there are strict regulations on Primary school. Before, all of the boys would help with the livestock and grazing (by the time boys are 7 they are taking the cows out on their own) while the girls would help the mommas rebuild the houses, take care of dinner, and watch young ones. Now the children go to school. In Tanzania primary education is free while secondary education is private. The children that make it through schooling usually move out of the Manyatta and live in towns where they work. If children fail school or can't afford secondary education, they return to the Manyatta where they carry on traditional Maasai life. This was an extremely enriching experience and I can't wait for March when we have our Maasai home stay in Kenya! Oh and before we left, we stopped by the shop that the Maasai, along with the African Wildlife Foudnation, set up to help the tribe continue to grow and survive. I picked up a few cool necklaces and bracelets. Mostly gifts. OH! and the SFS staff told us today that we can order handmade Maasai spears for $35 each. I think I'll take a few home.. carry on?

waaa

the internet is broken and doesn't really work.. and the IT guy that is supposed to fix it travels between the Kenya and Tanzania so it'll take a few more days until he comes and it's fully running again. luckily I found a spot right next to the internet box where it works.

so in the past few days a lot has happened! on tuesday I started running around the loop that circles the surrounding farms. It's a really beautiful trail that passes through the backs of houses, through open fields, and pastures. Along the way the local children run along side us and stop to shake our hands. Yesterday a little girl tried to steal my inhaler and kept calling it "pee-pee" which means candy in swahili. I told her "hapana pole" which means no sorry (I think) but she kept pulling my arm to try and steal it. I'm really grateful for the kids along the path because 1. they're adorable, friendly and give me the opportunity to practice my swahili, and 2. it gives me a a chance to stop and catch my breath before I start running again.

Also, yesterday in the morning I woke up at around 6:00 for the nature walk that a staff member, Yuda, gives almost every morning. We didn't see much, only a few signs of Guinea Fowl, a type of wild chicken, and a few birds that resembled doves. but it was still nice to get off of the campsite and explore some of the local area.

Today the weather really cooled off and it even sprinkled for a bit while we were playing volleyball. Normally (as in the past 3 days that I've been here) it's pretty hot, reaching the high 80s low 90s. But it's bearable because it's dry heat and there's usually a nice breeze.

We also started classes yesterday. I'm really in love with all of the courses that I'm taking here; swahili and local culture, wildlife ecology, wildlife management, and wildlife policy and socioeconomic values.

All of the classes are taught by local Tanzanians that really know what they're teaching and are very familiar with the surrounding area, except for the wildlife ecology teacher who is from Oklahoma. She is still very knowledgeable and has done extensive research on various ecological topics, including a chimp study with Jane Goodall!!?? so jealous

The workload is pretty tough, classes Monday through Saturday from morning till late afternoon, but it's what I'm interested in so it doesn't seem so bad. Except for a 50 page article that I had to read yesterday that detailed grazing habits of the different species of antelope.


Tomorrow is going to be a great day! we start early per usual with a class at 8:00, but later in the afternoon we're taking our first excursion to Lake Manyara National Park!!! We're going for our Wildlife Management class to observe the distribution of the various large mammals found in the park. I'm most excited to see the elephants and hippos. We again go back Saturday morning (the morning I have breakfast cook crew so I'll probably be up at 5) for our Wildlife Ecology class to study the behaviors of the different animals. I get the impression that we're being split up into groups and each group follows and observes either elephants, zebra, giraffe, or buffalo, and compiles a report up at the end.

And Sunday we get to go to Kuratu, the local town, to explore the giant market that they have!

super excited for the weekend!!! Will update with details of what I see and do, hopefully on Sunday night.