Among the Elephants

For the past 2 or so weeks I have been living in Samburu, Kenya at the Save the Elephants research camp. My journey from Tanzania to Nairobi was long and uneventful. I stayed at a hostel in Nairobi that was really nice complete with hostel dogs! I finally could enjoy petting and cuddling with some dogs that weren’t full of fleas or likely to bite me. My time with elephants began with a visit to The David Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage in Nairobi which is only open for 1 hour daily. I navigated the matatus of Nairobi to get there which I really enjoyed but got me to the orphanage a little late. I hurried through the gate to where there were a bunch of baby elephants with keepers inside a roped off area. There were tourists all around but I managed to find a good spot where I could see and kind of hear the man talking. All the babies were about 2 and younger and had been rescued when their mother’s were poached from different parks in Kenya. The calves were happily munching on leaves and wandering around as they talked. The littlest ones had blankets strapped on to keep them warm which was pretty adorable. It was amazing to be that close to them and watch them. Then some of them began to come up to rope where people were standing and we were able to touch their rough skin. They babies were soon led away and the older calves were brought in. They ran into the ring with excitement because there were bottles of milk waiting for them. Some of the calves quickly wrapped their trunks around the bottles and held them up pouring milk into their mouths and splashing it all around them while the younger ones had to have the bottles held for them. After the milk was quickly chugged down they also began to walk to the edges of the ring, interacting with people. I think they were mostly looking for more to eat and luckily I was standing in front of a big bush. There were many elephants that stretched against the rope to reach the leaves behind me and I was able to rub their trunks and ears. At one point one of the calves snuffled my leg with the tip of his trunk, almost pinching my leg with his trunk fingers. Many of the calves also played in the center of the ring by climbing on top of each other, a big game of dog pile. They were adorable and so funny and awkward in their movements. I was sad when the hour was up all too quickly and I had to go. I took a taxi to the Save the Elephants (STE) office where I would sign some forms and meet the administration of the organization. I had a nice lunch there and headed back to the hostel to prepare for my early departure the next morning.

The calves with their milk at the Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage

The next day I made my long journey north by matatu to Isiolo, Kenya. The time on the road wasn’t too long but I switched matatus twice and each time I waited almost 2 hours for the matatu to fill up before we could go. They really filled those things too! Finally I arrived in Isiolo and met staff from STE who would drive me to our camp inside Samburu National Reserve. I met my roommate Viona who is Samburu and was a sponsored student through STE working as an intern. We made it to camp after a few stops in town and a leopard sighting in the park.  I settled into our tent which had two beds and a desk inside. In the next few days I met everyone in camp and settled into the daily routine. I was assigned to help George Wittemyer, a professor at Colorado State and the scientific director for STE and his PhD student Shifra with their research.  My daily schedule is basically divided into two; half working with data and half out on drives in the park. The data work is mostly mindless cleaning of data that has been entered into the computer by comparing it to what is on the paper file. I’ve been cleaning two sets of data, one about elephant carcasses and one about the long term monitoring of elephants in the park. The carcass data is part of the international effort to monitor illegal killing of elephants so each carcass report includes the date, place, and cause of death and sometimes pictures. It got to be pretty depressing reading about all the poached elephants! The long term monitoring data involved going through the daily recording of groups of elephants, their activities, and location. The whole project here is based on knowing each elephant individually in order to fully study social structure, behavior, and the effects of poaching. So each elephant has a number and they are grouped by families, the elephants they associate with the most and happen to actually be related to. When they reach sexual maturity elephants also get a name which has to relate to the theme of their family. When I go out on drives to find elephant families I am helping to monitor the elephants identified, to record deaths and births and see which different families might be associating. At this point I’d say I’m more experiencing the process rather than helping because learning the identities of the elephants takes some time. There are 700+ possible elephants that have been identified which we could come across in the park. However they are split up into families that spend most of their time in the park and those that sporadically visit the park. I have observed about 30 families and have been trying to learn how to identify them. This is done by looking at their ears. Elephants tear their ears along the edges and get holes in the middle which make them unique and which change much less frequently than their tusks. There are also some elephants which are radio collared which is a nice clue to which family could be there. Once you figure out one individual it’s just a matter of putting together the puzzle and matching pictures in the ID book to elephants. There are many who don’t have pictures as well which you have to try to age and sex in order to figure out who they might be. It’s really fun to try to figure out unless the elephants are in thick bush or far away across the river when it becomes very difficult.

Monarch of the Butterfly family, she is a tuskless cow but she is also identified by the notches in her ear which distinguish her from the other tuskless female in her family

A year old calf spreads his ears because of our car

Usually we will drive up right next to a group which is truly amazing. They are generally undisturbed by the car and sometimes will just shake their heads in annoyance when we start the engine. Some curious calves will get really close and when our human stench will reach their outstretched  trunks they will snort and spread their ears in surprise. The calves are definitely the most amusing to watch, head butting each other and struggling to learn to use their trunks. We have also been very close to bulls in musth (their sexually active state) when they can become aggressive. The bulls loom over our cars and we are very careful not to disturb them when we see them in this state. Shifra’s research involves observing social interactions in families that have been disturbed (their matriarch was poached) vs. intact families. I have been helping her do focal follows of individual elephants, recording every interaction with other elephants over a 30 minute period. These observations are my favorite activity because you are really tuned into every aspect of their behavior. It’s so interesting to see their interactions, from friendly body rubs to agonistic pushes. Originally I was only going to be an intern for a month but I was asked if I wanted to extend my internship for another month, so I am happily staying here until July 22^nd. Then I travel to Nairobi to meet my family who are flying in the next day for a Kenya vacation!

Daud, a member of the research team, recording the elephants by our car

Shifra doing a focal follow of the cow walking away from us               

 Life at camp here is really interesting and relaxing. We are located by the Ewaso Nyiro river in a wooded area next to the sandy banks. It’s a beautiful site and we have many visiting animals daily. There are kudu that graze outside of my tent, a klipspringer that we feed acacia pods, and the resident vervet monkeys that broke into my tent and ravaged my snack supply. We also often have guests for breakfast and dinner. There is a pair of hornbills that hang out in the morning and receive bread crumbs from everyone. There is also a genet that comes to dinner and will even take food from your hand. One morning I awoke to loud sounds outside my tent and opening my window flap I saw a big bull elephant right outside! His name is Yaeger and he frequents the camp every once in a while so we always have to keep a look out for him when we are walking around at night.

A view of the Ewaso Nyiro River from a hill by our camp

The kudu grazing next to my tent

Feeding "Klippy" the klipspringer with Gilbert outside our camp office

 One of our hornbill friends at breakfast.

The genet checking something out in the bushes during dinner.

Human visitors come and go from camp quite frequently too. Iain Douglas-Hamilton (the founder of STE and one of the big names in elephant conservation) has come several times to discuss operations at camp. It has been amazing to actually meet the man who did the research I have read so much about. He is a spirited character who is very enjoyable to talk to and hear stories from. I’ve met many of the other conservationists in this area working with lions and zebra who have visited camp to compare notes. A few days ago we had journalist Jefferey Gettleman from the NY Times and photographer Tyler Hicks visiting because they are working on a story about poaching. They are both Pullitzer Prize winners and have done amazing work. Jefferey’s reports from Somalia are depressing but very well written and I would recommend reading them. They spent time with the community scouts who work to deter poaching in this area and to thank the scouts and STE they bought a goat to roast. So on their last night in camp we piled in a car and drove to a bridge to cross the river to the scouts’ camp. The bridge has been washed out since a flood 2 years ago so we all walked across to the sheer edge of the concrete where the ground loomed 12 feet below. A sketchy metal ladder was propped up against the edge and we carefully passed our chapatti (African flatbread) and vegetable dishes down as we climbed to the ground. On the other side we got into the back of a truck and drove to the scout’s camp, enjoying the shining stars above us. When we arrived the goat had been roasted and they were just preparing ugali. We all sat around campfires and ate the most delicious goat I’ve had in Africa so far. It was a great night and so interesting to hear the journalists’ stories about their escapades.

So I’m enjoying myself immensely here among the elephants and I’m sure my next month will continue to be just as amazing!

This is a view of the hills surrounding Samburu National Reserve.

WWOOFing in Tanzania

For the past two weeks I have been living and working with a Tanzanian family in the Pare Mountains outside of Moshi. I was WWOOFing with them but didn’t actually end up working on the family farm. The man who was hosting me is named Seraphine Mungulu and he had many other projects that he was working on to improve the farming practices of his community. The house in the Pare Mountains where I spent most of my time was actually his father’s house and he owned a large plot with bananas, maize, ginger, beans, and some other vegetables. The farm was on the side of the mountain like most of the farms around them. They have always practiced organic farming in the sense that they didn’t use fertilizers but now they were starting to set up terraces and figure out a way to irrigate. The main project I helped Seraphine with was walking around to gather names of groups that could benefit from receiving a magazine about organic farming. The magazine’s production was being funded by an outside organization that had employed Seraphine to try to gather names of rural farming groups. So almost daily we would walk along the thin winding trails of the mountain-side to visit churches and leaders of other villages. It wasn’t a very efficient way of doing everything, but Seraphine had said that many people wouldn’t give him names just over the phone and he had to find many of the people in order to get their numbers. So we would show up at the house or church unexpectedly and I would listen as they talked in Swahili or Mpare, the local language of their tribe. It is still funny to me that you can just show up at a house without them knowing and they are ready to sit down and have a conversation. Some of the people we would try to find would be out in their farms but mostly people were around. So different from the US!

Most of the family I stayed with, from left to right: Everest (Seraphine's brother), Chaz (his nephew), Seraphine, his son Betodi on the ground, Rosie (his sister), Delphina (his cousin), Peter (his brother), and his father who I called Babu.

The winding paths through the banana farms on the mountain.

The mountain area was such a beautiful place with a view of the lowlands and other mountains in the distance. The lowland area was a national park and you could see the wilderness stretching for miles. On the mountain sides were mostly farms and houses but there were a few patches of forest around streams and a big forest reserve on mountains nearby. One morning I got up really early to try and catch the sunrise. It was so beautiful since we were on the eastern side of the mountains and could watch as the sun rose over the lowlands, bathing it in a red glow. I went on a couple hikes around the area, one to the top of the closest peak and another to a waterfall.  The waterfall hike took about 2 hours to another part of the mountain where the river was diverted into many farms. We walked out to a view of this thin, but super tall waterfall. Seraphine said it wasn’t very impressive right now since people were using too much of the river water for irrigation but I thought it was really cool. We also hiked around to the top of the waterfall which required some scrambling over river rocks. It was a nice hike!

The waterfall from the overlook



The view of the lowlands from around my home in the Pare Mountains

My general daily routine was to wake up, drink chai and eat mandazi (fried dough balls) with the family. Then I would help Seraphine by typing up the names and contact information for groups that we had gathered since he couldn’t type very quickly. I would often do all the dishes from the night before and breakfast to help out. In the afternoon we would either walk to find groups or I would help with some aspect of cooking or preparing farm products. I learned to cook many African dishes over a wood fire which I’m excited to prepare for people back in the US.  The preparation was de-corning dried corn cobs so they could be pounded into maize flour and peeling bean pods so the beans could be used for cooking. I would sit and help with these tasks with Seraphine’s father and sometimes Seraphine. As we worked people passing the house would stop and chat for a bit, maybe even sitting down to assist too. Another project I helped a little bit with was the piping of water from a spring on the mountain-side to irrigate part of the farm. They had already helped to set up water systems from two sources for the drinking water of the surrounding area and now they hoped to start some irrigation. Seraphine also wanted to change the system of irrigation that most people use in the area which is just channeling streams and flooding the entire area with water. On the mountainside especially, all of the fertile soil is washed away by this technique. He was interested in introducing drip irrigation but it will be an expensive project. I helped them lay out all of the plastic piping and bury it from the source to his farm.

The pile of bean pods we had worked to de-pod in the yard between the house on the right and the kitchen on the left

Every afternoon the choir of the Catholic Church the family attended came to practice at the house. If I wasn’t walking around with Seraphine I would watch them sing and dance. They sang in Swahili but I could understand bits of it. They had beautiful harmonies and everyone from the young to the very old performed a synchronized dance to the song. They had two drums and a shaker to sing along to. The energy and joy of everyone was infectious and I joined in to dance with them a few times. The choir singers also brought a lot of the neighborhood kids to the house who were all really fun to play with. They loved it when I picked them up and spun them around. I played with Seraphine’s niece, Jacinta and nephew, Michael the most. On several occasions Jacinta had me follow her to one of the many roadside stands to buy candy. She didn’t speak any English so many times I would just rely on her gestures. She also took me to some houses of her friends which I always felt awkward about but as usual I was welcomed into their houses warmly.

The choir singing outside of the house

Some of the kids I would play with, Michael is on my lap

We had three meals a day but they were all later than what I am used to, lunch at 2 or later and dinner at around 8 or 8:30. I enjoyed so many of the foods we ate but especially the huge avocados! I surprised everyone when I told them that an avocado that size would probably cost 3 dollars where in that area they were around 20 cents or so! Many of the meals consisted of ugali, okrah in a tomato stew and dried fish. The dried fish were the only thing I was served during my stay that I couldn’t really eat. You just bite into the whole fish and eat the head and everything. It’s like a fish chip. I tried them a couple times but couldn’t make myself eat more than one. Another dish I enjoyed was cooked bananas with potatoes and a little tomato. They used green bananas to make a tangy starchy dish. It was also wonderful to eat some of the fruits that grew around the mountain. I tried a really sweet fruit called topay topay, some guava and passion fruit that grew wild on the mountain, and I chewed on delicious stalks sugar cane.

My visit came to an end after leaving the Pare Mountains and spending two days in Moshi at Seraphine’s other house. I enjoyed exploring the city’s markets and streets a lot. It is a nice area because there are many trees along the streets of the city and it was very green. It was sad to leave everyone who had become my Tanzanian family, but I was very excited for my internship with Save the Elephants to begin next.

Kilimanjaro

I survived the mountain! From Moshi, Tanzania to the top of Africa at 19,590 ft and back in 6 days. It was the hardest thing that I’ve ever done in my life but also probably one of the most rewarding. I left my SFS family on May 7^th with lots of tears in Arusha. I caught a bus to Moshi which was a very different bus experience than what I’m used to. The bus was crammed with people to its maximum capacity. I sat between two men with very little personal space and people stood on the bus in the aisles. The bus would pull over to the side of the road periodically and the door would swing open with people hanging out calling out our destination. Also in some areas where we stopped people would run to the bus carrying snacks, drinks, and candy that they thrust at the windows for people to buy. I arrived in Moshi sweaty and thirsty and got a cab to the hotel where I was meeting my fellow climbers and where we were departing from in the morning. The people from the other SFS group were Ashley, Riley, and Arjun and we all had dinner together at the hotel, compared our experiences in the program and prepared for our hike to begin the next morning.

We were picked up by Job, the trip organizer and a car-full of porters and equipment. We drove to the Machame gate where it promptly started to rain and everything was packed up. We donned our raincoats and gaiters and started our hike at about 4,000 ft.  Our two guides were named Simon and Laurent. As we hiked we discovered that Simon had been up the mountain more than 200 times and Laurent more than 100, definitely comforting. We began hiking in the rainforest which is the 2^nd zone of Kilimanjaro after the agricultural zone. The hike was beautiful in the rain and reminded me so much of California that I started having Big Sur flashbacks, especially with the rain. Luckily my raincoat kept me pretty dry! We passed many huge trees that were completely covered in moss as we climbed up the mountain. For most of the hike we were walking into mist and there were clouds on either side of us so we couldn’t see what was beyond the trees. It was eerie but really cool! As we walked the porters who carried the tents, food, and majority of equipment passed us. I expected that they may have big backpacks to put everything in, but no, they carried big plastic bags on their heads and necks. Their strength amazes me! We hiked into the next zone of them mountain which was moorland which also had a lot of moss but the vegetation changed a lot. The trees became more like bushes and it got a little more rocky. We reached our camp much quicker than expected because we were all in good shape (thank you Shawn-T from Insanity). Our camp was called Machame camp and it was at about 9,900 ft. We were supposed to wait while the porters set up camp which felt really weird since I've never had all that done for me. When they called us down they showed us to a dining tent where a table and chairs were set up. We were served chai and popcorn for a snack and then a really nice meal for dinner. The meal included leek soup, fish and potatoes, a vegetable sauce, and bananas. It was delicious! After more chai it started to get pretty cold so we got into our sleeping bags and slept.

The porters hiking ahead of us in the moorland zone.

The next day was short but steep. It started out clear and sunny which was a nice change from the rain. We caught our first glimpse of the distant peak we were headed for. We hiked up a slippery rocky trail passing streams, waterfalls, and caves. As we walked the clouds rolled in and we were covered in mist droplets. We reached an overlook where we could see the blanket of clouds below us covering the land. Our lunch break was at the top of a ridge where large ravens circled us eyeing our food. It was downhill to Shira camp at 12,672 ft which we reached at about 1:30. We had a chance to explore the area around our campsite where lava flows had created ridges. We walked along one ridge and sat watching the clouds moving up the mountain. They cleared from the peak again and we had a great view of Kibo (the main peak of Kili). Another yummy dinner and then bedtime!

One of the ravens at our lunch spot

Our third day was our acclimatization day and it was a long hike. We hiked up into the alpine desert zone of the mountain. Our highest point of the day was called Lava Tower at 15,180 ft, the highest I’ve ever been! I could definitely feel the altitude up there! The lava formations were huge and we descended among them into the moorland again. Our camp was in a beautiful valley which many rivers ran through. This was Barranco camp at 13,035 ft.

Our campsite in front of Barranco wall

The next morning we had to climb the Barranco wall which required some scrambling up rocks. It was a lot of fun for us but I don’t know how the porters did it! We kept hiking up to Barafu camp which was our base camp to reach the summit. This was at 15,180 ft. We had a partially sunny day which was nice because it started to get pretty cold up there. We ate dinner and went to sleep as soon as we could because we were exhausted from the day and we had to wake up at 11:00 pm to start our ascent to the summit.

The view of the top from base camp

So after about 4 hours of sleep we got up and began to hardest hike of my life. The first part was all rocks but we soon reached snow that we had to trek over. The wind whipped at our faces and when we stopped for water our bodies quickly got cold. We slowly went up and up and the altitude made everyone feel a little sick. The sunrise began at 5:30 in the morning and we all couldn’t wait to feel the warm sun on our bodies. It was a beautiful deep red sunrise above the sea of clouds that stretched below. We could see Mawenzi peak, the smaller peak of Kili as we watched the sun come up. Finally we made it to Stella Point at 18,938 ft where we rested in the sun before our final climb to the summit. The last climb was very slow completely on snow and I stepped slowly one pole at a time feeling pretty dizzy. There were huge glaciers on either side of the trail. I made it to the very top at 8:10 am and got pretty emotional up there looking out across everything. It was amazing and I was in disbelief that I actually made it. We took pictures at the top and then headed down to base camp.

Sunrise as we climbed

At the top of Uhuru Peak!

Walking down felt great on the lungs but was hard on the knees on the slippery scree. We were SO tired too since by the time we reached base camp again we had hiked for 11 hours! We took an hour nap, ate lunch and then had to leave for the next camp. As we napped it snowed and hailed outside but when we left it was only raining a bit. We hiked 4 hours through more rain to Mweka Camp at 10,230 ft. Descending to that altitude felt so good even on my exhausted body! We ate dinner and immediately passed out. Our last day we woke up early to try to beat the rain but it was still there. We heard that there was a lot of snow on the peak so we were grateful to have done it when we did. It was a 3.5 hour hike down, down, down through the rainforest. My legs and especially knees were very sore but my lungs felt great. We made it to the bottom, signed ourselves off of the mountain, and piled in the van to go back to the hotel. At the hotel we organized the tip for our crew who were wonderful! When we gave out the money there was a huge celebration with all the porters yelling, doing handstands, forming a dance circle, and hugging us. It was hilarious and a moment I don’t think I’ll ever forget. We must have given them too much but they deserved it and we had gone with the cheapest tour company so I felt good about it. We jumped in hot showers, ate fries, pizza, and milkshakes, and tried to dry all of our wet clothes. The next day Arjun, Ashley, and Riley would leave for Nairobi early in the morning and I would take a bus to Same (a town outside of Moshi) to meet my WWOOFing family.

Goodbye SFS

There are three days left of my program here in Tanzania so things are really starting to wrap up. It’s amazing how fast the time went by! The last two and a half weeks have been spent researching, analyzing data, and writing a paper for our directed research projects. We were all split into groups based on the three main subjects Wildlife Ecology, Wildlife Management, and Environmental Policy. We were able to request the project we wanted to work on but there had to be an even number of students working on each project. My first choice was Wildlife Ecology because the professor is really interesting and he was working on two projects involving elephants. One was about the Maasai use of and beliefs about elephants and the other was about elephant demography. I ended up getting my second choice which was the Environmental Policy project involving interviewing the local people about their knowledge of climate change and the effects its had on their lives. I’m so glad that I ended up working on this project because I think it was truly a unique experience to meet and talk with so many of the local people. Within the group we all decided to look at different aspects of the local peoples’ knowledge. I focused on their knowledge of changes in water availability in their area, changes in agricultural production, and any strategies they used to increase productivity. Others were looking at knowledge about environmental conservation, climate change, effects of climate change on pastoralists, and on gender roles. The 8 days of research we did were full days out in three different villages with a partner and a local guide. We would go from house to house and interview whoever was there as long as they were older than 18. One of the first things that struck me was that this technique would NEVER work in the US. It really exemplified some of the cultural differences. First, there was usually someone home at every house we went to and second, most everyone was welcoming and willing to be interviewed for about half an hour. I think if anyone tried this in the US the majority of the time doors would be slammed in your face and if you were able to ask questions they would have to last no longer than 5 minutes. The hustle and bustle does not exist in daily life here, people are laid back and don’t always have somewhere they have to be. We interviewed such a variety of people from different tribes, some mothers who were our age, some ancient men and women, young Maasai moran, and there were always adorable children. I was able to photograph everyone who would let me as part of the research too!

Our guide Julius and I walking to the next boma for interviews

One of my favorite pictures of an 84 year old woman we interviewed named Elizabeth

The most interesting responses to our questions were about what climate change was and what caused it. There were very few people who understood climate change on a global scale. However, the majority of people understood it to be the changes in rainfall and temperature that they had experienced. Some knew that it was due to environmental destruction, a few mentioned the industries of developed countries, many believed that it was the work of God and we had a few responses that in order to reduce the effects of climate change, a goat should be slaughtered as a sacrifice. The younger people we interviewed who had attended secondary school generally seemed to have been educated about the environment more. However, the majority of people we interviewed had only completed primary school, the equivalent of elementary and middle school. This experience impressed upon me one of the most powerful things I think I’ve learned so far here, that climate change has real effects. Hearing person after person talk about how the lack of rainfall was affecting their agricultural production and therefore leaving their family hungry really began to make me angry. So many people in the US deny climate change or even if they believe it they won’t make conscious decisions to change their lifestyle to be more sustainable. We Americans don’t care enough because we don’t feel any of the effects. Maybe there are a few more natural disasters these days but it obviously hasn’t made enough of an impact for people to change or demanding the government to make changes. The Tanzanians that we interviewed here may not all know what climate change is, but they see its effects daily. The people here live very sustainably compared to us. They walk or bike everywhere and eat food from their own farm so when our interviewees would ask us what they should do to reduce the effects of climate change, all we could really say was plant trees. It's frustrating that they are not the cause of the problem but feel all of the effects.I could probably rant for a while about it, but I'll leave it at that.

The interviews were always interesting but definitely tiring since we were out in the sun all day walking around. For my project we also mapped some water sources using GIS, so I learned a tiny bit about using the program. Our last day of research was especially fun because we were mapping a spring at the bottom of the escarpment. It was an hour long hike to the spring through a palm forest, a banana farm where we saw marijuana growing, and along the rocky banks of a river. We had to wade up a small creek and scramble over some boulders. It felt so great to be hiking and the spring was beautiful. There were streams flowing down a rock face and big fig trees on the banks. A wonderful way to end the research before beginning the analysis and writing!

Chrissy and I with our guides Cecilia, Harry, and Emmanuel from left to right at Miwaleni spring

The rift valley escarpment, a view from our hike

We’ve had a few non program days in the last couple weeks as well where we’ve explored Mto wa Mbu and Karatu more. Becca and I visited the same guy (Steve) who had made us a CD before and spent most of the afternoon trading music with him. I traded songs from De la Soul, Tribe Called Quest, Jurassic 5, and more that he had never heard for Tanzanian hip-hop. It was a great way to spend our time since we weren’t trying to spend more money shopping in Karatu. We learned that he was actually a local DJ as well and his DJ name was Blackzungu, combining his skin color with the Swahili word for white person (mzungu). Earlier that day we had visited an organic coffee plantation where we were finally able to try some real Tanzanian coffee. It was delicious, especially compared to the instant coffee that is available in camp! On the most recent non program day we were able to go on a bike ride through Mto wa Mbu and out to Lake Manyara. It was a beautiful ride but a somewhat painful experience because the bike frames were all too small and the seats were really hard. We rode close to zebras, Thomson’s gazelle, and wildebeest. Then we were able to walk up to the lakeshore and watch the flamingos feeding in the lake. The tour also included visiting a place where people from the Makonde tribe were making the wooden carvings that are popular throughout the shops of Mto wa Mbu. It really was impressive to see the people actually carving such intricate pieces. We also stopped to see artists painting and to learn about how the local banana beer was made. Definitely worth the sore butts to see everything! I spent the rest of that afternoon with Becca playing Cardi Moja outside of a store with some of the guys that show us around the town and try to sell us stuff. They were really good at the game and definitely gave us some competition.

Becca and I with DJ Blackzungu in his shop 



Our bike ride by Lake Manyara

It’s been a great end of the semester and now we just have the group presentations to the community left. Then everyone will fly home and I will travel to Moshi to climb Kilimanjaro! Since no one was interested in climbing in my group I asked people from the other group of students who switched with us to go from Tanzania to Kenya. There were 3 of them who were already planning on climbing so I was able to join their trek. We are doing the Machame route which is a little more difficult than the most popular route up the mountain. I’m very excited and hope that I’ll be in good enough shape for the hike! After the 6 days it takes to get up and down the mountain, I’ll be meeting up with the family I will be WWOOFing with in Moshi. Their farm is 150 km from the town and I will be helping them start a tree nursery and set up an irrigation system. From email correspondence with the owner of the farm, the family sounds very welcoming. I am very excited to live in an African household and try to speak only Swahili, although it’s also a little nerve-wracking. After WWOOFing for about 12 days I will bus to Nairobi to meet with some of the Save the Elephants administration to learn about the research going on in Samburu. The next day I fly to Samburu to begin my month long internship! So many things to look forward to, but it will still be so hard to leave the family that my group has become here. Now it’s time to begin packing and hoping that all my stuff will fit in two manageable bags for travel..

Serengeti and other adventures

Due to my recent obsession with playing Cardi Moja (a version of Uno with a regular deck of cards) with the staff here in Tanzania and the amount of work we’ve had to do for our directed research projects, I haven’t posted in a while. In the past few weeks we had an amazing experience in the Serengeti, some adventures around Karatu, and a homestay in our local community.

The Serengeti is definitely my favorite park that we visited. It’s huge and is the quintessential image of Africa that I had in my mind before coming. The central area that we were in consisted mainly of grasslands that stretched for miles with a few hills or rock formations in the distance. There were some rivers running through the grasslands that formed pools where hippos and crocodiles gathered. We were lucky because our Student Affairs intern, Jenna, from Kenya was able to come on expedition with us! She is a lot of fun and everyone missed her a lot since we had moved to Tanzania so it was great to have her with us. On our way to the Serengeti we drove through the Ngorogoro conservation area and stopped at the Oldupai Gorge. As I mentioned in my last post, this was an area where the oldest human remains were found. The Leakey family did archaeological digs there for over 50 years and found bones and tools that were from over a million years ago. They also uncovered footprints that were 3.6 million years old! It was pretty cool to be standing in the area where humans began to evolve. We enjoyed the view and wandered through the museum looking at the old pictures and artifacts for a while before piling back into the cars to continue onward. At the gate to the Serengeti we were able to open the car hatches and game drive to our campsite in the park, about 2 hours away. We saw our first glimpse of a cheetah, a blurry shape in the distance, which was only a preview of what was to come. We arrived at our campsite and set up tents while being attacked by tsetse flies. They were the worst part of the Serengeti because their bites hurt as badly as being bit by a horsefly and then itched for a week afterward. They were everywhere and hard to deter, killing them was definitely a major goal for the next few days. Unlike in Lake Nakuru, our campsite was not fenced so we had one of our own askaris and a park guard with a rubber bullet gun to protect us. Bura was our askari and he enjoyed telling us how he would protect us by hitting hyenas on the head with his stick.  Our first night we could definitely hear the whooping calls of hyenas and guttural sounds of lions around the camp which was pretty crazyyyy.

Oldupai Gorge

One of the hippo pools

The next two days we had game drives all day where we identified birds and observed giraffe and elephant behavior. I actually started to develop an interest in bird watching which was something I never thought I’d enjoy. The birds here are so different and colorful! Watching the giraffe and elephants was definitely my favorite exercise though. Most of the giraffes were really close to us so we were able to really see their behaviors. It was a lot of eating, but it was interesting to actually see their long tongues wrap around the thorny branches to pull off the leaves. Unfortunately all the groups of elephants were pretty far away so we weren’t able to see the details of what they were doing. The first day we went to lunch at Maasai rock, a big rock outcropping where the Maasai would hit some of the boulders which made a sound like a steel drum. The acoustics of the area must have been just right to allow for the ringing rock. There was a beautiful view from the rock and we had a lot of fun making beats on the pitted boulder. We also went to a cave nearby where the Maasai who had rested there when they roamed in the park had painted on the walls. There were also a lot of old bones that were remnants of Maasai meals with the marrow sucked out of them. The next day we went to the visitor’s center in the park which was really cool. They had a lot of information about the Great Migration of wildebeest and other animals that occurs throughout the park. Here’s a fun factoid I learned: when the wildebeest are in the southern plains of the park 20,000 calves are born a day! Then only 40% make it back to the south after their migration north and back again. The wildebeest were in a different area while we there unfortunately. As we explored the visitor’s center we saw a bunch of hyraxes which are rodent-like creatures that are related to elephants. They are pretty funny looking. That day we also were one of the first cars to come across a cheetah about 30 feet from the road. It was exciting to finally see one so close! As we watched, more and more cars arrived and competed with each other to get the best view of the cheetah as it walked. We began to realize that the cheetah wanted to cross the road but each time it got close to the road, a car would pull up blocking its way. The amazing experience of seeing the cheetah so close became really upsetting because it was obviously being very harassed by the cars. We quickly left so we wouldn’t be participating in the harassment. This was the first time that it was obvious to me how this kind of tourism is a guilty pleasure. Our last day in the Serengeti we saw some adorable lion cubs lying on a downed tree, a ton of hippos, and a leopard really close to the car. We watched it use some of the cars on the road for shelter as it tried to hunt baboons. The baboons saw it and the big males chased it away and began patrolling the area. Their response was so quick and the baboons were pretty menacing looking. The next morning we woke up bright and early, broke down camp and loaded up the cars to head back to Moyo Hill.

The cheetah we saw very close to our car



Elephants walking through the plains on our drive out of the park

The next day was a non-program day where a few of us went to a cultural boma that had been set up by an Iraqw family. They are one of the local tribes in this area but most of the people don’t live traditionally anymore. This family lived in one of the common concrete houses of the area but had two traditional Iraqw structures set up on their property. We learned how they made their local beer by fermenting sorghum, millet, and maize and I tried a little sip. It tasted like chunky, sour beer, not exactly what I would want to drink all the time. Apparently the Iraqw would brew a bunch of it when they wanted help building a house and many people would turn out to help and then party at night. We saw the traditional wedding skirts that the women wear and we were able to try them on. They are made of goat hide and then beaded with designs representing family, rivers, and the clay pots they make. The house was similar to a Maasai house but the walls were made of clay and it was much bigger in order to house all the livestock as well as people. The house was built into a hill and grass was grown on the roof to disguise the house as part of the hill. This was supposed to be a technique to defend themselves against the Maasai who would steal their cattle at night. The Maasai would walk on the grassy roof thinking it was part of the hill and the people inside the house would hear the footsteps. Then the Iraqw could grab their spears to stab the thieves through the windows when they jumped down from the roof. A pretty good way to protect your livestock if you ask me… We were getting ready to watch a traditional dance when a car full of old American tourists arrived, fully khakied and as enthusiastic as ever. It was fun to participate in the dancing with them. The rest of the day was spent in Karatu. My friend Becca and I paired up and were escorted around by a little boy named Michael whose main goal was to sell us necklaces, but also seemed to enjoy hanging out with us and helping us find whatever we wanted. We did our best haggling for fabric and then decided to try to find some Tanzanian pop music, specifically “Bongo Flava.” Michael led us to a stand on the road where a guy sold music and DVDs. We sat in the stand while he burned us a mixed CD of some fun Bongo Flava music. It’s pretty great and the experience was especially interesting. On the inside of this guy’s stand were two CDs that had been written on. One said “Thug Life” and the other said “I love you Jesus,” pretty much summing up this guy. After burning our CD he began showing us some videos he had about Jay-Z being a Free Mason and all the conspiracy theories about the Masons control of crucial world events. A lot of people here are really into the theories about secret societies, it’s pretty funny. Next we visited the Karatu market which occurs once a month in a big field that is away from the town center. It was HUGE! There were probably a thousand people there and apparently it wasn’t as big as normal since it was rainy. The tarps where people had fabric and clothes laid out formed a maze with the stands selling any sort of object you might need. There was a whole section of food stands where goat was being roasted and other foods prepared. Live shoats and cattle were also available for purchase in another section of the market. We only stayed for 45 minutes since it was pretty overwhelming and we tried to do a 3,000 shilling ($2) challenge to find the coolest thing for that amount of money. I passed up some Ms. TZ underwear and some funny spandex in the beginning to look for anything that might be better but it started raining and everyone started packing up all their goods. In the end I wasn’t able to find what I had seen before and didn’t get anything. The winner bought a shirt that said Obama and Adercromble and Fltch with a Native American in a headdress on the front. Definitely a winner!

The next day was Easter and my partner Sidra and I had our homestay with an Iraqw family. I felt kind of bad about intruding on their family holiday, but we were welcomed warmly into their home. This homestay was very different from our stay with the Maasai because we were in very modern homes. Sidra and I were greeted by Emma, the 18 year old daughter who was home with a few other kids while the rest of the family was at church. I was kind of sad that we didn’t get to see what the church service was like on Easter, but it was also really nice to talk to Emma. She spoke pretty good English and we asked each other about the differences in our lives while sitting on plush couches in the living room. The room was decorated with ribbons for Easter and pictures of Jesus covered the walls. The walls and floors of the house were made of concrete and there were many rooms separated by a courtyard in the middle. Outside on their property they had a garden with vegetables, mango and papaya trees. They also had a cow for milk and chickens. Their home was supposed to be able to sustain the family but because of shortage of rain it wasn’t currently. I was impressed by the rainwater collection system they had set up for their house too. As we talked to her we learned that her aunt and uncle actually owned the house but had taken in her mother, brother and herself when her father had died. She had four cousins, some of which were away at school, and the family had also taken in an orphaned girl. I was extremely impressed by the generosity of her aunt (Paulina) and uncle (Baba Bambare).  After talking for a while we cleaned the house (which already looked super clean to me) by using rags to mop the floor and wipe the surfaces. The rest of her family arrived home from church and we ate ugi, a millet and maize porridge with lots of sugar. It’s pretty delicious. We learned that Baba Bambare worked at Serena Lodge as a clerk and Paulina was a primary school teacher. Afterwards we began to prepare the big Easter meal for the entire family using the food that we brought as a gift. We made ugali, cabbage, beef with vegetables, and rice. Once the food was ready we gathered around the dining room table, a prayer was said, and everyone chowed down. It was delicious, especially because I was pretty hungry by the time everything was ready at around 3:00. After eating we helped clean all the dishes. Then we played Cardi Moja with Emma’s younger brother Joseph until it got close to the time we were being picked up. While waiting for our driver, we sat outside with the family and drank chai.  We said goodbye hoping we would visit again if we could figure out how to get to their house from camp. We said goodbye, hoping we would be able to visit again if we could figure out how to get to their house from camp. It was definitely a unique Easter that I’ll remember forever!

Sidra and I with our homestay family. From left: Baba Bambare, Paulina, Emma's mother, Emma, and Joseph

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!

Kwa heri Kenya

Today is my last day in Kenya, atleast for a couple months before I return for an internship with Save the Elephants in Samburu. Tomorrow we will travel to the SFS site in Tanzania for a few more weeks of classes and then our directed research project. It is exciting to go to a new country and meet a whole new group of staff. I'm very sad to leave the staff here at KBC though. This camp has definitely become our first African home. I will miss our many volleyball and soccer games, running the mile loop around camp with Kili rising in the sky, the same song that plays in the kitchen every day, Arthur's delicious food served with a joke, Charles' funny dancing, Jackson's crazy driving, Ernest's constant smiles, and our two student affairs managers Tara and Jenna, among many others.

In the past week we studied for and took our final exams in Kenya in Wildlife Management, Wildlife Ecology, and Environmental Policy. We have done some fun things too! We had our last visit to Amboseli where we walked around in an elephant exclosure in the park with KWS rangers measuring grass biomass. This was done by randomly throwing a wire square within our assigned area and cutting all the grass within the square, with one pair of scissors... it was a slightly tedious exercise. It was cool to be walking in a National Park and helping to collect data about the differences in the exclosure due to the lack of elephants though.

Last Sunday was a non-program day and we had a chance to go into town for a church service. It was a very interesting experience! The service was mostly song, with a little bit of preaching by the two ministers. One spoke in Swahili and one spoke in Maasai to the congregation. They spoke in a synchronized tempo where one would say something and the other would immediately follow in the other language. Their energy and enthusiasm was captivating even though I could only catch a few Swahili words. The most hilarious part of the service was the accompanying electric piano backbeat with a few well placed cords. The piano was also used every once in a while during the sermon to emphasize a few important ideas with repeated pounding on a chord while the congregation yelled hallelujiah and waved their arms. The songs were very energetic too and it was so much fun to clap and dance to the music. All the churchgoers were dressed up, especially the children. Some of the boys wore collared shirts and ties and the girls were in fancy dresses that resembled princess dresses for girls in US. We left the service so sweaty from two hours of dancing in the crowded building. The rest of the day was spent hanging out in Kimana.

After our last exam we went to the primary school we had previously visited to help them paint a mural on the school. We asked the kids what they wanted to paint and they named a bunch of animals and an airplane. Some of the more artistically endowed people in our group painted an outline on the wall of the school and the kids helped paint everything. We had a tree drawn out for the kids to add their handprints as leaves. There were 100+ kids trying to have a turn to paint which turned out to be pretty chaotic. The final product was beautiful though with such a unique look from all the different kids, especially a couple kids who painted their own cars on the wall. Many of us played with the kids while the painting was happening since there were so many of them to entertain. One boy in particular, Datiki, attached himself to me calling me mzungu wangu (my white person) and holding my hand the entire time. He painted my nails with the oil paint and I let him decorate my arms with handprints. I’m pretty sure he was telling the other kids that he loved me too. It was pretty cute!

                                                 The finished product, notice the airplane

Our last non-program day consisted of a hike to a hill called Lesoto. It was a steep hike up this hill with a lot of rock outcroppings. The trees and rocks there were so different from the surrounding area. The rocks and type of outcroppings reminded me so much of Colorado. We got to the top of the hill and were able to explore the rocks. It was fun scrambling around and seeing the view from the top. After our hike some of the Mamas came to camp to teach us how to bead the jewelry they make. I worked on a bracelet that was quite an endeavor! I now really appreciate all the work that the Mamas put into the jewelry they are making. The one bracelet took me probably 5 hours… not even kidding. In the evening we made volleyball teams and all played each other. Volleyball with the staff is my favorite activity because they are so competitive and love to play.

                                                           View from the top of Lesoto

                                                               Volleyball at sunset
Our last day at KBC was one of my favorite days of the semester so far. We planned a big feast of different food we wanted to cook including bean burger patties, falafel, deviled eggs, coleslaw, chicken wings, fried rice, fried bananas, pineapple crisp, brownies, and cookies. It was a ton of food and it took everyone working in shifts about 5 hours to cook everything but it was really fun! We also decided to use the leftover paint from the primary school mural to paint the ceiling in the gazebo that was finished in camp while we were there. We painted a sun on one side with a sunset transitioning to a night sky with a moon on the other side. Our dinner was delicious and a lot of fun with all the staff. Afterwards some people decided to get red ochre in their hair which is a traditional decoration used by the Maasai moran during celebrations. I decided not to put any in my hair because it utilizes oil which sounded messy but I got a little body paint. The red got all over everyone and everything they touched. We all looked pretty ridiculous!

                        The mural in the gazebo, the stars by the moon say Spring 2012 Session 1
Now it’s on to Tanzania, a country that I expect to be very different even though it is right next to Kenya. I’m excited for the green landscape I have heard about which will be a huge contrast from the dusty bushland of Kenya.