Tanzania

I’ve been in Tanzania for two weeks now so it’s starting to feel like home at Moyo Hill Camp. It is very different here from where I was in Kenya! Instead of red-brown dust covering the ground there are actually trees and grass around our camp. There’s no beautiful view of Kilimanjaro, but when you step outside the gates you see rolling hills of farmland. Moyo Hill Camp is in northern Tanzania on the Rift Valley. Our camp is actually in the town of Rhotia so it’s much smaller than KBC, but we can leave camp and go into town whenever we have free time. There is a very hilly running route around Moyo Hill (the big hill nearby that is our camp’s namesake) that is really hard but enjoyable. Whenever we walk or run outside of camp we are greeted by kids who want to hold your hand, even if you are running. They always ask “what is your name?” because that is pretty much the extent of their English. Tanzania’s national and official language is Swahili unlike Kenya which has English as an official language, so it is much less common here. My Swahili has definitely improved since most of the staff don’t speak much English, although most of the words I use revolve around volleyball and soccer. I suppose gonge (attack) and njee (out) will come in handy elsewhere too. We’ve already finished all of our classes for the semester and tomorrow we depart for our expedition to the Serengeti. When we return everyone will begin our directed research projects with the professors. In the past two weeks we visited two parks, had a few field exercises, and explored some towns.

                                         Moyo Hill Camp, including my new banda Simba

The parks we visited were Lake Manyara National Park and Ngorogoro Conservation Area. Lake Manyara is about a half hour drive from Rhotia down the rift valley escarpment. The park was very different from all the other parks we’ve been in because there was a lot of forested areas and rivers running through the park. It was a more jungle like atmosphere, very different from the barren landscape of Amboseli. After game driving through the park in the afternoon, we came back the next morning to do baboon behavioral observations. This was definitely one of my favorite exercises because they are so funny to watch! Some of their behaviors are so humanlike. The Ngorongoro crater (inside the conservation area) was definitely the coolest place we’ve driven around so far. We had to drive up the edge of the crater and descend into the crater where the majority of the animals were. It was so crazy to be driving inside the old volcanic caldera (a collapse of land following volcanic eruption). Near the crater is the earliest sign of mankind and the area is often referred to as the cradle of man. Tomorrow on the way to Serengeti we will actually go to the Olduvai Gorge, one of the areas where a lot of old human remains have been found by the crater. I’m so excited! I think I liked the area so much because of the contrast between the open grasslands inside the crater and the thick forests on the crater walls rising around us. We saw a lot of lions in the crater and got pretty close to one. Our vehicle and another SFS vehicle was parked on the road watching a lion walking and it walked right across the road next to the other car! It must have been looking for shade from the car but there wasn’t enough so it moved on towards the wildebeest. Then we enjoyed watching the wildebeest try to intimidate the lion and drive it away, although it didn’t look like it was in a good condition to hunt them. Another interesting thing about the Ngorongoro Conservation Area is that it’s the only area where wildlife conservation and use by indigenous people for pastoralism occurs together legally. The majority of the people occupying the area are Maasai and they receive many benefits from the conservation area including free education, medical services, and grain. These benefits promote wildlife conservation and allow for the continued livelihood of these people. It’s an interesting model that surprisingly hasn’t been repeated anywhere else in East Africa. The reason it works so well in Ngorongoro is that the area has a huge income from tourism so it can support those services.

                                            The lion in Ngorongoro walking towards the other car

One of the more interesting field exercise we did involved assessing vegetation density and animal use around a water source in an area open for wildlife use and use by pastoralists. This involved identifying poop found along transects and estimating vegetation cover to determine whether particular species’ use of the source had any effect on vegetation cover. When we were first arrived at the water, we were standing around looking at a bunch of different poop samples we had collected when elephants started walking out of the forest to the water about 75 yards from where we were standing. It was amazing to be that close to elephants while we were on the ground. We were also surrounded by elephant footprints in the muddy pond surroundings and of course elephant poop.

Exploring the towns in this area has been really fun! I’ve gone into Rhotia a few times mostly to get some of the beautiful fabric I bought made into various clothing items (this is a warning to everyone that I will be wearing lots of wild African prints when I return because I’m obsessed with them J) I bought some of this fabric on our first non-program day in Karatu, a larger town close to us. We had a lot of fun exploring Karatu and trying to haggle all of our purchases down to acceptable prices. The town is on the main road to Serengeti so the people are used to tourists who can easily be ripped off. We employed “sina pesa, mimi ni mwanafunzi (I have no money, I’m a student) many times. It was interesting to notice the differences between our previous experience in Kimana and Karatu. In Kimana the Maasai Mamas would be constantly trying to sell us jewelry and in Karatu there were many little boys trying to sell us things. One boy told me his name was Mr. Cheaper. It was an interesting switch in the market dynamic and was a lot less aggressive than the swarming mamas. Also when we would go into a store looking for something that that store didn’t have, many times the shopkeeper would lead us to another store down the street to check there. The people were very helpful and friendly! Along with exploring the many fabric stores, I also walked through the food market. It was a maze of wooden stands in a building where tons of vegetables and fruits were being sold. The most interesting items being sold were the dried fish. There were huge baskets of dried sardines and many larger fish that looked quite crispy. I started to wonder why all the fish was dried and then remembered that I hadn’t seen ice since I got here. Also, I don’t think many people own a refrigerator although this area is a lot wealthier than the Kimana area due to the tourism in the many nearby parks.

The morning before we went into Karatu we had a chance to hike around a conservation area to see elephant caves. We had a hilarious old guide who looked like he could be in his 60s yet sprinted up the trail every so often. He knew everything about all of the plants off of the trail and their traditional uses. The area we were hiking in was forested with vines hanging off of trees, reminding me slightly of a rainforest. We hiked to an overlook where we could see a beautiful waterfall and the view of the gorge. Then we continued on to the caves themselves which have been carved by elephants out of a hillside. The elephants rub their tusks against the hard packed dirt wall which contains many minerals that support their diet. Other animals also come to these caves to eat the minerals that have been dislodged by elephants. We were able to walk into the small alcoves and see the elephant tusk marks that covered the walls closely. I liked touching the grooves formed by elephant tusks and consequently was covered in the reddish brown mineral dust.

Most of the group in an elephant cave

On our other non-program day we explored Mtu wa Mbu. It’s a more touristy town which had a lot of Maasai art on display. There are so many shops everywhere with very similar paintings but they are all original pieces. It was slightly overwhelming the first time, so I’ll have to go back to choose a piece of art. Everyone there was also very helpful and a lot of guys who wanted to be tour guides helped us find what we were looking for at good prices. They wanted to practice their English with us and I had fun practicing my Swahili with them. I also ate some very cheesy pizza for lunch in town which was delicious and satisfied my cheese craving.  The food we are served at camp actually has a lot more cheese available than what we got in Kenya (this means that every once in a while there is grated cheese for pasta) so I’m not quite as cheese starved as I was, but it’s still nice to eat something really cheesy.

Well I'm off to Serengeti and hopefully I'll have some good stories to tell when I return!