I’m sitting on the roof top terrace enjoying the view over Lamu town out towards Manda Island. There is a cool breeze coming off the ocean. Swallows are dipping and diving through the sky and the white moon shows against the soft but bright blue sky. The afternoon sun casts dusky shadows and golden light on everything.
Jambo House
We (two friends and I) are currently staying at Jambo House which is a beautiful bed and breakfast run by a very sweet German man who has been wonderful. The hallways in the building are covered with pictures of his travels and the marathons he has run. The rooms are clean, simple and beautifully kept. Breakfast has been wonderful. It consists of fruit (papaya, mango, bananas, passion fruit, or pineapple), tea, coffee, juice, toast and our choice of eggs (omelet, scrambled, soft or hard boiled, or fried) or French toast! Breakfast is served on the roof top terrace which is partially covered and partially open. The man who runs the place, Arnold, has told us every place to go for good grilled fish, or smoothies, or the best tomato soup, or the seafood platter etc. Its been great to try his recommendations and enjoy every bite. The sea food has really been incredible.
Sunset sail
We took a dhow (the traditional sailboat) on a sunset sail with dinner on the beach. We went with another young couple who were peace corps volunteers. It was a great boat ride, the sunset was incredible, we had a walk on the beach and the best meal I have had in four months. It was amazing!!!! Grilled fish, coconut curry vegetables, chipati, and spicy vegetable sauce. We laid on the beach and talked after dinner and saw the biggest and brightest shooting star I have even seen. There was enough time for my friend to gasp and say oh wow, for me to look up and still see it for a good two seconds!
The whole time has been pretty amazing and now I’m off to find my family and go on Safari!
Love Sara
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
done with it all (Dec 12)
Well for a long time there was nothing to write because all I was doing was write write write write. After we finished our data collection we spent a bit over a week doing data analysis and writing enormous papers. It was the most concentrated amount of work I have ever done. Around 4:30 every day we would reach a breaking point and go out side and to run around a bit play some games and remember that we were in Kenya. It was a bit of a strange way to spend our last two weeks. working so hard and not being in the community much, but in the end it was worth it.
The reason I chose to come to the SFS Tanzania Kenya program was because they have a huge emphasis on communicating about research with the community that the research affects. After we did our research and finished our papers we gave a presentation to any and all community members who could come. We sent out invitations to officials and the community counsel. We told our neighbors and on the day of the presentation we sent cars all over this area starting around 7 am to pick up people who live to far to walk all the way to our camp. Our community presentation was on the 9th at 10 am and I remembered that morning standing in front of all of those people why I had just spent the last week and a half in a room writing and analyzing and taking notes and pulling my hair out of my head in frustration with formatting and excel. I remembered why it was important to me to come to this place and do this research. We gave our presentation to over 100 people who were engaged and ready to ask questions and challenge our findings and really deeply wanted to understand what we were telling them. The presentation lasted around four and a half hours and was full of life and engaging interactions.
There were three directed research projects that all of the students participated in. One was focused on rangeland degradation, one was focused on the viability of pastoralism as a supportive livelihood, and the project I participated in was focused on the ecological viability of wildlife sanctuaries which are community managed dispersal areas for wildlife outside of the national parks. Each group (8-10 students) presented for half an hour because the presentations were translated into Kimaasai as we went sentence by sentence. At the end we took questions from the community which was overwhelming in the least.
My groups presentation as well as the pastoralism presentation were the hot topics. When you talk to people who have historically lost land, money, and resources to the protection of wildlife about protecting wildlife it can be a stick subject, but it was also fruitful and enlightening. I felt so alive standing up there waiting with baited breath for Daniel to translate questions into English and for us to fumble around for a while before we found the best answer we had which sometimes was wow that’s a great question. I think one reason that scientists don’t communicate with the community more is because its scary. The scientist is supposed to be the expert the one who knows the most about what ever subject they are giving a talk on, but in this case the scientists (us) are the ones who know a piece, a small sliver of the whole picture. This came across very clearly when we were asked questions about the intricate overlap between pastoralism and wildlife, and how these two go hand in hand or are at odds with one another. by the people who are living this reality. Even our professors who have been working in this area for years and years learn something at every community presentation. It was so humbling to be in that position.
Since the community presentation we have spent two days not quite knowing what to do with our selves and finally packing up our home and heading out. Currently I am sitting in the airport waiting to board a flight to Lamu (an island off the coast of Kenya with beautiful Indian ocean beaches and a strong Muslim influence). I just left my family for these past three and a half months. My heart is a bit sore and my eyes are a bit puffy, but its also been an interesting reflection of my life right now. It just interesting how people flow in and out of my life. When I get off the plane in Lamu a friend of mine from the Outdoor Academy (a semester boarding school I attended sophomore year of high school) will be there to meet me. The plan is to hang out with two friends and breathe salty air for five days on Lamu and then take a bus back to Nairobi where I will meet up with my Mom, Dad, and sister Abbie! Wow if that’s not nuts I don’t know what is. I am very aware of this present moment partially because I have no idea what the future holds and there is a lot of heart sickness as well as joy in the past, so the best place for me in the now. Its kind of a relief to just feel my fingers on this keyboard and eat my apple (I bought two apples at the grocery store yesterday! It was pretty incredible!) and listen to the going ons in many different languages and accents and nationalities within the airport.
Love Sara
The reason I chose to come to the SFS Tanzania Kenya program was because they have a huge emphasis on communicating about research with the community that the research affects. After we did our research and finished our papers we gave a presentation to any and all community members who could come. We sent out invitations to officials and the community counsel. We told our neighbors and on the day of the presentation we sent cars all over this area starting around 7 am to pick up people who live to far to walk all the way to our camp. Our community presentation was on the 9th at 10 am and I remembered that morning standing in front of all of those people why I had just spent the last week and a half in a room writing and analyzing and taking notes and pulling my hair out of my head in frustration with formatting and excel. I remembered why it was important to me to come to this place and do this research. We gave our presentation to over 100 people who were engaged and ready to ask questions and challenge our findings and really deeply wanted to understand what we were telling them. The presentation lasted around four and a half hours and was full of life and engaging interactions.
There were three directed research projects that all of the students participated in. One was focused on rangeland degradation, one was focused on the viability of pastoralism as a supportive livelihood, and the project I participated in was focused on the ecological viability of wildlife sanctuaries which are community managed dispersal areas for wildlife outside of the national parks. Each group (8-10 students) presented for half an hour because the presentations were translated into Kimaasai as we went sentence by sentence. At the end we took questions from the community which was overwhelming in the least.
My groups presentation as well as the pastoralism presentation were the hot topics. When you talk to people who have historically lost land, money, and resources to the protection of wildlife about protecting wildlife it can be a stick subject, but it was also fruitful and enlightening. I felt so alive standing up there waiting with baited breath for Daniel to translate questions into English and for us to fumble around for a while before we found the best answer we had which sometimes was wow that’s a great question. I think one reason that scientists don’t communicate with the community more is because its scary. The scientist is supposed to be the expert the one who knows the most about what ever subject they are giving a talk on, but in this case the scientists (us) are the ones who know a piece, a small sliver of the whole picture. This came across very clearly when we were asked questions about the intricate overlap between pastoralism and wildlife, and how these two go hand in hand or are at odds with one another. by the people who are living this reality. Even our professors who have been working in this area for years and years learn something at every community presentation. It was so humbling to be in that position.
Since the community presentation we have spent two days not quite knowing what to do with our selves and finally packing up our home and heading out. Currently I am sitting in the airport waiting to board a flight to Lamu (an island off the coast of Kenya with beautiful Indian ocean beaches and a strong Muslim influence). I just left my family for these past three and a half months. My heart is a bit sore and my eyes are a bit puffy, but its also been an interesting reflection of my life right now. It just interesting how people flow in and out of my life. When I get off the plane in Lamu a friend of mine from the Outdoor Academy (a semester boarding school I attended sophomore year of high school) will be there to meet me. The plan is to hang out with two friends and breathe salty air for five days on Lamu and then take a bus back to Nairobi where I will meet up with my Mom, Dad, and sister Abbie! Wow if that’s not nuts I don’t know what is. I am very aware of this present moment partially because I have no idea what the future holds and there is a lot of heart sickness as well as joy in the past, so the best place for me in the now. Its kind of a relief to just feel my fingers on this keyboard and eat my apple (I bought two apples at the grocery store yesterday! It was pretty incredible!) and listen to the going ons in many different languages and accents and nationalities within the airport.
Love Sara
Friday, November 19, 2010
Day one and two in the field
We have just started our Directed Research (DR) projects. I am in the Wildlife Management DR where we are looking at the ecological and economic viability of wildlife sanctuaries. These are areas that either groups of people or individuals own and have been set aside to protect wildlife and attract tourists. They are not National Parks because the people own and manage the sanctuaries to generate income, and they are allowed to graze and/or water their livestock inside the sanctuary during the dry season. It would make a lot of sense if people ecologically assessed areas to see which habitats have high concentrations of wildlife or which areas need to be set aside so that they are not over grazed, and then made them into wildlife sanctuaries. But there are not the resources to do this for the sanctuaries, so they just get set up wherever people think might be a good place and can set aside the land. So our job/project/thing we are interested in is what is the ecological viability of the sanctuaries. Within that broad question we are looking at the densities of wildlife within the sanctuaries, the densities of livestock, and the way these are spatially overlapping and if they are competing for space. To do this we go into the field and do walking transects (1 km long) where we gather GPS points of all of the species and numbers of wildlife and livestock we see. Yesterday (our first day) we began by mapping one of the sanctuaries because we are the first people to be allowed to do any research there. All of the other sanctuaries that we are working in have already been mapped by previous students, so we will only take animal GPS points in those ones. Today (day two) my group walked four transects and gathered GPS points for every animal we came across. This included lots of Grant’s and Thomson’s gazelles, impalas, zebras, wildebeest, and warthogs, as well as, one giraffe, a group of elephants, and three buffalo (the elephant and buffalo were super scary, but really exciting as well). The coolest part of this whole project is that at the end we get to share our results and suggestions for the future with all of the community members in the area. These people really want to know what we have to say and they come back every year listen to our presentations.
Aside from all of this we also drive around through areas that have no roads for the most part and when they do have roads they are in such poor condition that you are better off not driving on them… as we found out. We finished our very first day of field work and were heading home when we went crashing into a puddle that was a bit more than a puddle and our professor said “I think I made a blunder” as our wheels spun and mud flew everywhere. We were at a 45 degree angle with the back wheel in a giant hole. We ended up hooking up our land rover to another land rover with a cable that they have (just for this purpose I guess) attached to the front of the car. We pulled the car out after about twenty minutes of working on it and ripped off the hook on the back of the other car, but at least we got it out! It was an incredibly amusing event all in all, and definitely warranted an afternoon nap.
Off to a third day of fieldwork! More adventures to come,
Sara
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Mountain Struck
This morning I woke up and my jaw hit the ground out side my banda. This is why...
Every day I think that Mt. Kilimanjaro can't get any more impressive, but then it snows.
This is the second natural event to be noted in the last twenty four hours. Yesterday around 5:30 golden sunlight was bathing our whole camp and then it started to pour. You could see rain coming down in streaks like someone was pouring buckets of water out of the sky. We saw the rainbow up above us and were marveling at it when it came down from the sky and ended right in the middle of the soccer field in our camp. I could see where is touched the ground. We all just stood laughing and asking each other if it was really there until it finally dissipated and the rain moved on. I could make some corny comment about how we must be in the pot of gold, but I think its pretty obvious that this was quite an event.
Got to go to class and start our Directed Research Projects. We just finnished our other classes and took exams, so we are getting closer and closer to the end of this adventure.
In awe,
Sara
Thursday, November 11, 2010
I wrote this a week ago but we didn't have internet and then we went on expedition (quintessential east africa!), so here it is.
Kenya
This camp continues to amaze me and make me appreciate daily life every day. I was telling my dad that its hard to be stressed in a place where the light plays off of the yellow bark acacias every evening and our class room is a giant open-air wooden structure. We do have cause to be stressed right now as we have had the busiest week and a bit of our semester yet. I must say I am wiped out, but it’s been great. I have totally enjoyed the learning we have been doing about this area. Its fun to see what’s different here in Kenya in terms of the area we are located in, the culture of the area, the subtle differences in the way people behave here and so on. In Kenya life is a bit more business-like. People are more on time and things happen more according to schedule which on one hand is nice and on the other hand is a bit of a bummer. Breakfast actually happens at 7:30 not at 7:36 or 7:40 or 7:48, but actually at 7:30:00. It seems that this general attitude permeates through the culture at least where we are.
This attitude is interesting because Tanzania was a mandate not a colony, and a mandate decrees that the country in governance must benefit the native people (as opposed to a colony where you can come in and do whatever you want), and because of these requirements the British didn’t really settle Tanzania. They didn’t take the time to establish themselves or set up infrastructure or promote their language. This means that today Tanzania doesn’t have very good facilities and infrastructure and their percent of population living below the poverty line is higher, but that their culture is more intact and their language is officially Swahili and their whole attitude is less “western”. In Kenya (a colony of the British govt) the British settled in for a longer stay and with that came infrastructure, the English language, and a “western attitude”. Here in Kenya things happen on time and people aren’t as skilled at just being. Its interesting because I spent the last two months learning how to be and relax and know that things weren’t going to happen when they said they would on paper. Now that I am flexible in that way, it's hard to be flexible to a new system that is on time and more business-like. Funny that works.
Halloween
I really didn’t know you could have a Halloween party in Kenya but I guess when there is a concentration of 28 young Americans and a wonderful pseudo mom (Molly our Student Affairs Manager here in Kenya) you can do anything. We had a full out Halloween party with jack-o-lantern carving, and bobbing for apples, and everyone had a costume and we even performed fun dances for each other and the had a dance party. I was really quite stunned and had a total blast!
Kimana market
We live outside (about a ten min drive) of Kimana a small town that is more established than Rhotia and has small shops and a market every Tuesday. We went to the market last Tuesday. What a world full of color. The Maasai here in Kenya are more colorful in the things they wear, the jewelry they make and they way they present themselves and interact. The Maasai are the main tribe here in Kimana and it really makes a huge difference in the culture of this area. In the market there are always three Maasai mamas following you out dangling beaded jewelry in your face and saying “200 only 200, very cheap……….”. On some occasions it’s enough to drive a person crazy, but on others it can be fun and interesting to interact with them and look at their jewelry and learn how to say no in affective ways. I had a wonderful time looking at clothing that was selling for 100 KSH an item (the equivalent to $1.35), picking out bead colors so that we can learn to make bracelets from the mamas, buying a pair of bright blue shoes, and admiring the hilarious array of Obama t-shirts and yellow satin ruffley skirts.
Amboseli
When we left for Amboseli we were supposed to have a traveling lecture through different parts of the park by stopping places and standing out of the hatches of the land rovers and having our professor give his lecture, but it was pouring down rain. It’s interesting how either the heavy absence of rain or the overwhelming deluge of it is always a factor of life in East Africa. So instead we sat in our cars peering out of our cloudy windows and received our lecture over the walky-talky system in the land rovers. It was thoroughly entertaining. By the end of our lecture the rain had started to taper off and so we by the afternoon we were able to game drive out of the park standing out of the hatches. Amboseli is a very small park that is basically a dry season source of water for many animals, elephants especially. As it is the beginning of the wet season the animals are moving out of the park so there is less to see, but there were still tons of elephants everywhere. We watched a young male who was in musth (ready to mate), and was very aggressive towards one larger male in particular. The younger male kept instigating fights with the older male and getting beaten. He was obviously frustrated, so when we tried to drive away he came charging at us trumpeting and shaking his head making his ears flap. After we got away, we drove through the swampy grass lands and were blessed with the most spectacular cloud show I have even seen… the golden light, the puffy cotton candy clouds, the stringy soft clouds, and sky reflecting off of the water in the swamps, the green green grass, the birds soaring and calling above our heads. I have rarely felt so wrapped up in each aspect of the world. And just to put the cherry on the ice cream we got to see a cheetah as Mt. Kili was poking out of the clouds and the sun was setting.
Sending my love,
Sara
This camp continues to amaze me and make me appreciate daily life every day. I was telling my dad that its hard to be stressed in a place where the light plays off of the yellow bark acacias every evening and our class room is a giant open-air wooden structure. We do have cause to be stressed right now as we have had the busiest week and a bit of our semester yet. I must say I am wiped out, but it’s been great. I have totally enjoyed the learning we have been doing about this area. Its fun to see what’s different here in Kenya in terms of the area we are located in, the culture of the area, the subtle differences in the way people behave here and so on. In Kenya life is a bit more business-like. People are more on time and things happen more according to schedule which on one hand is nice and on the other hand is a bit of a bummer. Breakfast actually happens at 7:30 not at 7:36 or 7:40 or 7:48, but actually at 7:30:00. It seems that this general attitude permeates through the culture at least where we are.
This attitude is interesting because Tanzania was a mandate not a colony, and a mandate decrees that the country in governance must benefit the native people (as opposed to a colony where you can come in and do whatever you want), and because of these requirements the British didn’t really settle Tanzania. They didn’t take the time to establish themselves or set up infrastructure or promote their language. This means that today Tanzania doesn’t have very good facilities and infrastructure and their percent of population living below the poverty line is higher, but that their culture is more intact and their language is officially Swahili and their whole attitude is less “western”. In Kenya (a colony of the British govt) the British settled in for a longer stay and with that came infrastructure, the English language, and a “western attitude”. Here in Kenya things happen on time and people aren’t as skilled at just being. Its interesting because I spent the last two months learning how to be and relax and know that things weren’t going to happen when they said they would on paper. Now that I am flexible in that way, it's hard to be flexible to a new system that is on time and more business-like. Funny that works.
Halloween
I really didn’t know you could have a Halloween party in Kenya but I guess when there is a concentration of 28 young Americans and a wonderful pseudo mom (Molly our Student Affairs Manager here in Kenya) you can do anything. We had a full out Halloween party with jack-o-lantern carving, and bobbing for apples, and everyone had a costume and we even performed fun dances for each other and the had a dance party. I was really quite stunned and had a total blast!
Kimana market
We live outside (about a ten min drive) of Kimana a small town that is more established than Rhotia and has small shops and a market every Tuesday. We went to the market last Tuesday. What a world full of color. The Maasai here in Kenya are more colorful in the things they wear, the jewelry they make and they way they present themselves and interact. The Maasai are the main tribe here in Kimana and it really makes a huge difference in the culture of this area. In the market there are always three Maasai mamas following you out dangling beaded jewelry in your face and saying “200 only 200, very cheap……….”. On some occasions it’s enough to drive a person crazy, but on others it can be fun and interesting to interact with them and look at their jewelry and learn how to say no in affective ways. I had a wonderful time looking at clothing that was selling for 100 KSH an item (the equivalent to $1.35), picking out bead colors so that we can learn to make bracelets from the mamas, buying a pair of bright blue shoes, and admiring the hilarious array of Obama t-shirts and yellow satin ruffley skirts.
Amboseli
When we left for Amboseli we were supposed to have a traveling lecture through different parts of the park by stopping places and standing out of the hatches of the land rovers and having our professor give his lecture, but it was pouring down rain. It’s interesting how either the heavy absence of rain or the overwhelming deluge of it is always a factor of life in East Africa. So instead we sat in our cars peering out of our cloudy windows and received our lecture over the walky-talky system in the land rovers. It was thoroughly entertaining. By the end of our lecture the rain had started to taper off and so we by the afternoon we were able to game drive out of the park standing out of the hatches. Amboseli is a very small park that is basically a dry season source of water for many animals, elephants especially. As it is the beginning of the wet season the animals are moving out of the park so there is less to see, but there were still tons of elephants everywhere. We watched a young male who was in musth (ready to mate), and was very aggressive towards one larger male in particular. The younger male kept instigating fights with the older male and getting beaten. He was obviously frustrated, so when we tried to drive away he came charging at us trumpeting and shaking his head making his ears flap. After we got away, we drove through the swampy grass lands and were blessed with the most spectacular cloud show I have even seen… the golden light, the puffy cotton candy clouds, the stringy soft clouds, and sky reflecting off of the water in the swamps, the green green grass, the birds soaring and calling above our heads. I have rarely felt so wrapped up in each aspect of the world. And just to put the cherry on the ice cream we got to see a cheetah as Mt. Kili was poking out of the clouds and the sun was setting.
Sending my love,
Sara
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Jambo Kenya!
Wow, its really funny to finally be here. There are vervet monkeys and baboons, and bush babies, and birds of every size and sort IN our camp! There is Mt Kili. in the back ground who was spectacular today! I say "who" because the mountain is such a presence that it is like a person. The trail around the inside of the fence is gorgeous and its a blessing to be able to go places in camp and feel totally alone. It rained twice about four days ago and everything is fit to bursting with fuzzy green buds and little shoots of grass coming up everywhere. Its really a treat to be here...in spring...I guess! Just letting you all know that I am here and alive and well.
Love Sara
Love Sara
Monday, October 25, 2010
Kwaheri Tanzania!
As we finish up everything in Tanzania and get ready for the switch to Kenya, I am especially aware of time here and how time moves. We had umpteen assignments to finish and there are umpteen last things to do before we go. Everything moves so slowly here that you are never rushed, things just happen when they happen. But because things move slowly there is never quite enough time to do all of the things we were trying to do. Its odd how in the end it all works out. I am not quite sure what makes it work out, but so far it has managed to. Perhaps it is the accepting present attitude of the Tanzanians that just makes the whole world flow.
On Saturday we worked at the primary school just down the road to help them build a kitchen. We have just begun to build what will eventually be a closed stove type cooking area, which will use less than half of the firewood than the open fires they have been using to cook. It was exciting and fun to help out and give our service and work with the kids to cement the floors of the new structure. We had a few adventures along the way… we were cementing the second and last room, and we were almost finished so only Aaron and I were in the room smoothing the last of the cement. All of a sudden the children who were leaning in the windows watching started shouting and pointing. Coming out of the newly put down and still soft cement was a medium sized black mamba! It slithered its way right out of the cement only two feet away from Aaron and maybe five feet from me. We all backed quickly out of the room and one of the Tanzanian men came over with a rake and killed it. I was a bit taken aback, as were many of us, and then we started thinking about the reality of a black mamba around children. If one of them were to be bitten out here where there is no immediate medical care available, that child would almost certainly die. After that realization I decided I understood their actions (interesting how this place puts things into perspective).
We worked all day long and at the end of the day we finally dragged our weary selves to camp. As I walked back to camp, I looked out over the mountains and valleys, the trees and fields, the cows and people, and realized that I truly felt like I was walking home. I felt deeply at peace with this place. It is definitely a challenge after finally feeling at home to pick up and transition to Kenya, but it also puts my heart at ease to know how quickly I feel so comfortable here.
I will miss hearing the pigeon peas rattling in their husks as the wind sweeps over the fields. I will miss the sunsets out side our gate and the way the mountains turn a hazy blue. I will miss our walks around this area and greeting everyone we pass. I will miss reading with the children at the primary school and having each one hold my hand and pet my arms and stare up at me with wide eyes. I will miss our incredible staff and the family we have built together. We have started saying goodbyes and after leaving a dear friend tonight I sat down with tears in my eyes and said “I hate this!” a fellow student came to comfort me and replied “I know, but the best part is you love these people more than you will miss them and that’s what matters in the end.” What a piece of wisdom, and what an incredible thing to know in my heart.
With that, I will write next in Kenya!
Much Love, Sara
On Saturday we worked at the primary school just down the road to help them build a kitchen. We have just begun to build what will eventually be a closed stove type cooking area, which will use less than half of the firewood than the open fires they have been using to cook. It was exciting and fun to help out and give our service and work with the kids to cement the floors of the new structure. We had a few adventures along the way… we were cementing the second and last room, and we were almost finished so only Aaron and I were in the room smoothing the last of the cement. All of a sudden the children who were leaning in the windows watching started shouting and pointing. Coming out of the newly put down and still soft cement was a medium sized black mamba! It slithered its way right out of the cement only two feet away from Aaron and maybe five feet from me. We all backed quickly out of the room and one of the Tanzanian men came over with a rake and killed it. I was a bit taken aback, as were many of us, and then we started thinking about the reality of a black mamba around children. If one of them were to be bitten out here where there is no immediate medical care available, that child would almost certainly die. After that realization I decided I understood their actions (interesting how this place puts things into perspective).
We worked all day long and at the end of the day we finally dragged our weary selves to camp. As I walked back to camp, I looked out over the mountains and valleys, the trees and fields, the cows and people, and realized that I truly felt like I was walking home. I felt deeply at peace with this place. It is definitely a challenge after finally feeling at home to pick up and transition to Kenya, but it also puts my heart at ease to know how quickly I feel so comfortable here.
I will miss hearing the pigeon peas rattling in their husks as the wind sweeps over the fields. I will miss the sunsets out side our gate and the way the mountains turn a hazy blue. I will miss our walks around this area and greeting everyone we pass. I will miss reading with the children at the primary school and having each one hold my hand and pet my arms and stare up at me with wide eyes. I will miss our incredible staff and the family we have built together. We have started saying goodbyes and after leaving a dear friend tonight I sat down with tears in my eyes and said “I hate this!” a fellow student came to comfort me and replied “I know, but the best part is you love these people more than you will miss them and that’s what matters in the end.” What a piece of wisdom, and what an incredible thing to know in my heart.
With that, I will write next in Kenya!
Much Love, Sara
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
EXPEDITION!
Below are the long overdue snippets of our five day expedition to Serengeti National Park. I hope you enjoy!
The Serengeti…
Serengeti comes from a Maasai word meaning endless plains. When I heard that I though it was nice, but when I saw it my jaw dropped. These so called “endless plains” are an ocean of grass. Sometimes we would drive along a road in our land cruisers and 3 of 4 sides would be completely flat grassland until the horizon and on the 4th side there would be some small hills in the distant blue background. I have never experienced the feeling of smallness you get from being in the ocean, when I wasn’t in the ocean, but standing up in the land cruisers seeing stretches of grass up on grass blowing in the wind made me feel smaller than I ever have before.
Serengeti National Park is located on the northern boarder of Tanzania. It is especially famous for over 1.5 million wildebeest that migrate back and forth between Serengeti in Tanzania and the Maasai-Mara in Kenya. The wildebeest are just now beginning to make there way back down from Maasai-Mara, so we did not see many in the Serengeti, but we saw so many other amazing animals I wasn’t really thinking about what we weren’t seeing.
Favorite Moments from Serengeti
A New Cat
Driving back to our camp on the last afternoon and we saw something moving through the grass. It was too small to be a lion or even a cheetah or leopard, but it looked a lot like a cat. Finally we got a clear look at it, and it was a Serval. They look a lot like house cats but about three times the size. They have long legs and striking patterns and enormous ears. They hunt by hearing their prey until they are close enough to pounce on it. Their long legs help them get above the grass height so that they can hear rustles made by prey. It was an incredible creature and a very shy one at that so we were especially lucky to spot it.
And It Rained
On our second day we came back to camp from our morning drive and lecture to eat lunch and rest. After lunch it looked like it was going to rain so I climbed into my tent to have a nap and pass the storm. I woke up when a tent mate said “Sara, is this all water under our tent?” she had here hand on the bottom of our tent and that looked like a water mattress. I put my rain gear on and went out in the a down pour like I have never seen. I didn’t know there was that much water in East Africa or that it was possible for it to all come out of the sky at the same time! It was such an unbelievable thing to see it rain after a month and a half without it that we just laughed and watched as a small creek formed and flowed directly under two of the tents. I have more respect for African Safari tents than just about any inanimate object in this world. Our tents were a bit damp and the bottoms of our sleeping pads were wet, but for the most part and especially considering the amount of water that had come out of the sky, our stuff was shockingly dry!
Ancient Footprints
Oldupai Gorge, the cradle of humankind. It was pretty amazing to really be there. They have this funny little falling apart museum that is full of replicates of all of the incredible artifacts they have pulled out of the gorge. They made a large emphasis on the fact that it was named after a plant in the Maasai language spelled Oldupai, but the first scientific papers that were written said Olduvai, so most people know it spelled with a “v” but they were trying to correct that misconception. So I am passing that info on to you and furthering their attempt at correcting history. The display and replicate (plaster mold) they had of the set of the Laetoli Footprints were truly amazing. The information plaque talked about the importance of a print versus a fossilized bone. The bone gives you the structure and alignment, but the print tells you exactly how weight was distributed on the foot and the movement that created that particular print. I could hardly comprehend that a being, very similar to me, with feet that look just like mine, had moved in such a way, in such a place, in such a time, so that it happened to be preserved, captured in rock, for millions of years. The whole exhibit was amazing.
Cheese.
We bought the buffet for lunch at the Lodge in Serengeti and I have truly never enjoyed cheese as much as I did that afternoon. Things they don’t tell you when you are going to Tanzania 1. There is no readily available cheese 2. You will miss cheese tremendously 3. When you do finally eat cheese you will think you have gone to heaven. My friend Sally was sitting next to me at the table as we ate our cheese (we ate other things too but most importantly cheese) and she said with a smile on her face “Oh my god, I just died. I’m dead.” Pretty much sums our cheese experience.
Pride Rock
There are kopjes all over the Serengeti. A kopje is an outcropping of rocks in the middle of the plains (think Pride Rock, Lion King). They are really cool and bizarre looking structures in an otherwise completely flat area. We got to visit one of them and climb around on it (“but not too much because you might hurt yourself” tut tut tut… says our stand in Mom named Erica. Really, she’s awesome. I can only imagine the stress of being responsible for 27 20-ish-year-olds who had been cooped up in cars for two days and now they have giant rocks to climb around on). It was super fun and beautiful and there were pink/purple/blue lizards running around on all of the rocks.
Birds!
We did a few field exercises on ungulates and birds. I learned a ton! For those birders who are reading this and especially requested to know the birds we have been seeing here is a partial list!
Abyssinian Black Wheatear, African White-backed Vulture, Bare-faced Go-away Bird (really big and totally cool bird!), Black-backed Weaver, Common Bulbul, Dark-backed Weaver, Drongo, Grey-backed Fiscal, Helmeted Guinea Fowl (tons of them everywhere!), Von der Dekens Hornbill, Lilac-breasted Roller (such beautiful birds. They are purple, and blue, and turquoise, and pink), Little Bee Eater (also super cool green and yellow bird!), Magpie Shrike, Martial Eagle, Red-headed Weaver, Ring-necked Dove, Sandgrouse, Scaly Francolins, Superb Starling, Blue-earred Starling, Brown Parrot, Brown Snake Eagle (super intense birds, wouldn’t want to be small and fuzzy), Egyptian Goose, Fischer’s Lovebirds (I thought these only existed in book and maybe pet shops), Hildebrandt Starling, Hoopoe (very large rust colored bird with an extravagant crest), Marsh Sandpiper, Three-banded Plover, Black Crake, Blacksmith Plover (the previous four are really interesting water birds. We got to watch them looking for food for a bit which was quite entertaining),White-browed Coucal (craziest call I have heard so farthe description in my bird book which is ver accurate is “hoo-hoo-hoo-huhuhhuhuhuhuhuhuhu… and a series of gurgling notes likened to water being poured from a bottle”), Yellow-billed Oxpecker (they really do hang out on the buffalo)…! Ok, I hope that was incredibly satisfying for some and sorry for other’s who were 100% not interested.
We also saw an incredible amount of lions, male, female, and little ones, leopard, cheetahs, elephants, giraffes, zebras, topi (they are really interestingly colored), gazelles, impala, hippos (saw two out of water! They are the most enormous creatures! Where did they come from and who thought it was a good idea for all of the hippos to hang out together cuz they are the grumpiest animals I have yet to come across!), crocodiles (ah scary!), warthogs, hyraxes (related to elephants even though they look like rabbits), banded mongoose (mongeese?), Buffalo (saw a herd of them that must have been a few hundred strong. Wouldn’t wanted to have been on foot I can say that much), hyenas, and jackals.
In a nutshell it was astounding!
The Serengeti…
Serengeti comes from a Maasai word meaning endless plains. When I heard that I though it was nice, but when I saw it my jaw dropped. These so called “endless plains” are an ocean of grass. Sometimes we would drive along a road in our land cruisers and 3 of 4 sides would be completely flat grassland until the horizon and on the 4th side there would be some small hills in the distant blue background. I have never experienced the feeling of smallness you get from being in the ocean, when I wasn’t in the ocean, but standing up in the land cruisers seeing stretches of grass up on grass blowing in the wind made me feel smaller than I ever have before.
Serengeti National Park is located on the northern boarder of Tanzania. It is especially famous for over 1.5 million wildebeest that migrate back and forth between Serengeti in Tanzania and the Maasai-Mara in Kenya. The wildebeest are just now beginning to make there way back down from Maasai-Mara, so we did not see many in the Serengeti, but we saw so many other amazing animals I wasn’t really thinking about what we weren’t seeing.
Favorite Moments from Serengeti
A New Cat
Driving back to our camp on the last afternoon and we saw something moving through the grass. It was too small to be a lion or even a cheetah or leopard, but it looked a lot like a cat. Finally we got a clear look at it, and it was a Serval. They look a lot like house cats but about three times the size. They have long legs and striking patterns and enormous ears. They hunt by hearing their prey until they are close enough to pounce on it. Their long legs help them get above the grass height so that they can hear rustles made by prey. It was an incredible creature and a very shy one at that so we were especially lucky to spot it.
And It Rained
On our second day we came back to camp from our morning drive and lecture to eat lunch and rest. After lunch it looked like it was going to rain so I climbed into my tent to have a nap and pass the storm. I woke up when a tent mate said “Sara, is this all water under our tent?” she had here hand on the bottom of our tent and that looked like a water mattress. I put my rain gear on and went out in the a down pour like I have never seen. I didn’t know there was that much water in East Africa or that it was possible for it to all come out of the sky at the same time! It was such an unbelievable thing to see it rain after a month and a half without it that we just laughed and watched as a small creek formed and flowed directly under two of the tents. I have more respect for African Safari tents than just about any inanimate object in this world. Our tents were a bit damp and the bottoms of our sleeping pads were wet, but for the most part and especially considering the amount of water that had come out of the sky, our stuff was shockingly dry!
Ancient Footprints
Oldupai Gorge, the cradle of humankind. It was pretty amazing to really be there. They have this funny little falling apart museum that is full of replicates of all of the incredible artifacts they have pulled out of the gorge. They made a large emphasis on the fact that it was named after a plant in the Maasai language spelled Oldupai, but the first scientific papers that were written said Olduvai, so most people know it spelled with a “v” but they were trying to correct that misconception. So I am passing that info on to you and furthering their attempt at correcting history. The display and replicate (plaster mold) they had of the set of the Laetoli Footprints were truly amazing. The information plaque talked about the importance of a print versus a fossilized bone. The bone gives you the structure and alignment, but the print tells you exactly how weight was distributed on the foot and the movement that created that particular print. I could hardly comprehend that a being, very similar to me, with feet that look just like mine, had moved in such a way, in such a place, in such a time, so that it happened to be preserved, captured in rock, for millions of years. The whole exhibit was amazing.
Cheese.
We bought the buffet for lunch at the Lodge in Serengeti and I have truly never enjoyed cheese as much as I did that afternoon. Things they don’t tell you when you are going to Tanzania 1. There is no readily available cheese 2. You will miss cheese tremendously 3. When you do finally eat cheese you will think you have gone to heaven. My friend Sally was sitting next to me at the table as we ate our cheese (we ate other things too but most importantly cheese) and she said with a smile on her face “Oh my god, I just died. I’m dead.” Pretty much sums our cheese experience.
Pride Rock
There are kopjes all over the Serengeti. A kopje is an outcropping of rocks in the middle of the plains (think Pride Rock, Lion King). They are really cool and bizarre looking structures in an otherwise completely flat area. We got to visit one of them and climb around on it (“but not too much because you might hurt yourself” tut tut tut… says our stand in Mom named Erica. Really, she’s awesome. I can only imagine the stress of being responsible for 27 20-ish-year-olds who had been cooped up in cars for two days and now they have giant rocks to climb around on). It was super fun and beautiful and there were pink/purple/blue lizards running around on all of the rocks.
Birds!
We did a few field exercises on ungulates and birds. I learned a ton! For those birders who are reading this and especially requested to know the birds we have been seeing here is a partial list!
Abyssinian Black Wheatear, African White-backed Vulture, Bare-faced Go-away Bird (really big and totally cool bird!), Black-backed Weaver, Common Bulbul, Dark-backed Weaver, Drongo, Grey-backed Fiscal, Helmeted Guinea Fowl (tons of them everywhere!), Von der Dekens Hornbill, Lilac-breasted Roller (such beautiful birds. They are purple, and blue, and turquoise, and pink), Little Bee Eater (also super cool green and yellow bird!), Magpie Shrike, Martial Eagle, Red-headed Weaver, Ring-necked Dove, Sandgrouse, Scaly Francolins, Superb Starling, Blue-earred Starling, Brown Parrot, Brown Snake Eagle (super intense birds, wouldn’t want to be small and fuzzy), Egyptian Goose, Fischer’s Lovebirds (I thought these only existed in book and maybe pet shops), Hildebrandt Starling, Hoopoe (very large rust colored bird with an extravagant crest), Marsh Sandpiper, Three-banded Plover, Black Crake, Blacksmith Plover (the previous four are really interesting water birds. We got to watch them looking for food for a bit which was quite entertaining),White-browed Coucal (craziest call I have heard so farthe description in my bird book which is ver accurate is “hoo-hoo-hoo-huhuhhuhuhuhuhuhuhu… and a series of gurgling notes likened to water being poured from a bottle”), Yellow-billed Oxpecker (they really do hang out on the buffalo)…! Ok, I hope that was incredibly satisfying for some and sorry for other’s who were 100% not interested.
We also saw an incredible amount of lions, male, female, and little ones, leopard, cheetahs, elephants, giraffes, zebras, topi (they are really interestingly colored), gazelles, impala, hippos (saw two out of water! They are the most enormous creatures! Where did they come from and who thought it was a good idea for all of the hippos to hang out together cuz they are the grumpiest animals I have yet to come across!), crocodiles (ah scary!), warthogs, hyraxes (related to elephants even though they look like rabbits), banded mongoose (mongeese?), Buffalo (saw a herd of them that must have been a few hundred strong. Wouldn’t wanted to have been on foot I can say that much), hyenas, and jackals.
In a nutshell it was astounding!
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Songs and Sundays
Church and other thoughts:
On Sunday we had a non-program day, which is like a pseudo weekend. It’s a day where we don’t have classes, but do have optional organized activities. We get them every 5-10 days depending. Sometimes on Saturday or Sunday mornings when we do have class (which is much more often than not) while we are at breakfast at 7 am we will think about how our friends back in the USA are probably out on a Friday or Saturday night (the time difference) hanging out with friends knowing that they can sleep in till noon the next day. Our lack of weekends is more often humorous than painful, so we laugh if off and go to class where we learn about lions and giraffes, and rhinos, oh my!
But this Sunday, for the first time, we had a non-program day on the actual weekend which allowed us to go to church. We went with a few staff members to the Catholic Church in Rhotia. There were five students who went which was lovely because sometimes when we go out into public all together (all 28 of us) its incredibly overwhelming. We were still quite a spectacle, but at least it was less cumbersome to maneuver and we could more easily interact with people. We arrived a bit early so that we could get settled without there being a million people around. I wore the shirt I got tailored here and a long black skirt (mostly we wear skirts in town out of respect for their cultural norms and modesty). The church was painted in greens and blues and had simple stain glass windows made by the community. It was a beautiful building. There were gobs of children everywhere, whispering and pointing and staring at us from every corner of the room. The pews were plain a wooden with no backs, but with places to kneel. The service began as the choir entered singing and a little group of younger kids who kept the rhythm with a walking clapping sequence (the choir was all young people 16-25-ish). This set the tone for a wonderful alive energy during the whole service. Although everything was in Swahili it was soothing and beautiful just to be there absorbing and watching everything that was happening. It brought me back to going to church in American Samoa for the same reason, just to take it all in. The choir sang often and we stood and sat and prayed many times during the service. I could follow the general sequence of events and watched as closed communion was performed and the choir sang and did little movements to their songs (think dancing, but appropriate for joyful church). We were thanked for being there and then went to meet some of the important people of the church afterwards. It was a wonderful experience.
It is very interesting to be the first group of students here at this camp in Rhotia. Essentially we are making the first impression. Sometimes it feels like a lot of pressure to be the ones forming this picture of “Americans” for the people in this village, but it is also a gift. I am amazed by all different aspects of our interactions with the people here. Sometimes we are welcomed at church and people want to talk with us and hear our story. Other times it is challenging when little Tanzania children see me and run up to shake my hand and ask me for money, or pens, or candy. Through all of it, I try to understand where they are coming as I wish they would do with us as well. Maybe in time the children here will learn that we are not here shower them with material things, but rather to build a community and an understanding and help repair their school and work with them on different projects. Perhaps every semester that comes here and reinforces our intentions will generate a community understanding about us and our purpose here.
Well that’s all for now. We have exams tomorrow and the next day (which I really should be studying for, but I have been and needed a bit of a break), Friday to prepare for our expedition, and then we go one expedition for a week in Serengeti National Park. I can’t tell you how ecited I am to get out, do some fieldwork, and camp for awhile. I probably won’t write until I get back so enjoy life until next time!
The sun is shining on pink bougainvilleas outside the library window,
Sara
On Sunday we had a non-program day, which is like a pseudo weekend. It’s a day where we don’t have classes, but do have optional organized activities. We get them every 5-10 days depending. Sometimes on Saturday or Sunday mornings when we do have class (which is much more often than not) while we are at breakfast at 7 am we will think about how our friends back in the USA are probably out on a Friday or Saturday night (the time difference) hanging out with friends knowing that they can sleep in till noon the next day. Our lack of weekends is more often humorous than painful, so we laugh if off and go to class where we learn about lions and giraffes, and rhinos, oh my!
But this Sunday, for the first time, we had a non-program day on the actual weekend which allowed us to go to church. We went with a few staff members to the Catholic Church in Rhotia. There were five students who went which was lovely because sometimes when we go out into public all together (all 28 of us) its incredibly overwhelming. We were still quite a spectacle, but at least it was less cumbersome to maneuver and we could more easily interact with people. We arrived a bit early so that we could get settled without there being a million people around. I wore the shirt I got tailored here and a long black skirt (mostly we wear skirts in town out of respect for their cultural norms and modesty). The church was painted in greens and blues and had simple stain glass windows made by the community. It was a beautiful building. There were gobs of children everywhere, whispering and pointing and staring at us from every corner of the room. The pews were plain a wooden with no backs, but with places to kneel. The service began as the choir entered singing and a little group of younger kids who kept the rhythm with a walking clapping sequence (the choir was all young people 16-25-ish). This set the tone for a wonderful alive energy during the whole service. Although everything was in Swahili it was soothing and beautiful just to be there absorbing and watching everything that was happening. It brought me back to going to church in American Samoa for the same reason, just to take it all in. The choir sang often and we stood and sat and prayed many times during the service. I could follow the general sequence of events and watched as closed communion was performed and the choir sang and did little movements to their songs (think dancing, but appropriate for joyful church). We were thanked for being there and then went to meet some of the important people of the church afterwards. It was a wonderful experience.
It is very interesting to be the first group of students here at this camp in Rhotia. Essentially we are making the first impression. Sometimes it feels like a lot of pressure to be the ones forming this picture of “Americans” for the people in this village, but it is also a gift. I am amazed by all different aspects of our interactions with the people here. Sometimes we are welcomed at church and people want to talk with us and hear our story. Other times it is challenging when little Tanzania children see me and run up to shake my hand and ask me for money, or pens, or candy. Through all of it, I try to understand where they are coming as I wish they would do with us as well. Maybe in time the children here will learn that we are not here shower them with material things, but rather to build a community and an understanding and help repair their school and work with them on different projects. Perhaps every semester that comes here and reinforces our intentions will generate a community understanding about us and our purpose here.
Well that’s all for now. We have exams tomorrow and the next day (which I really should be studying for, but I have been and needed a bit of a break), Friday to prepare for our expedition, and then we go one expedition for a week in Serengeti National Park. I can’t tell you how ecited I am to get out, do some fieldwork, and camp for awhile. I probably won’t write until I get back so enjoy life until next time!
The sun is shining on pink bougainvilleas outside the library window,
Sara
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Blue sky and red dirt
Home stay:
On Monday we had home stays with different families in our village, Rhotia, from 8am-5pm. I went with another student here, Allyson, and we stayed with an Iraqw family (the local tribe, and yes that is actually how it's spelled. I think I spelled it differently in a previous blog post). There was a great-grandmother (~60 years old), a grandmother (~40 years old), a mother (23 years old), and some young children of the grandmother and the mother (a seven year old and a baby). We just lived with them for a day and did whatever they did. For Allyson and I the day consisted of making chai (milk tea with so much sugar it makes me cringe), lots and lots of ugali (corn-flour-thick-grits-like-stuff), cabbage with tomatoes and onions and more chai. We milked cows (we were both terrible at it/it was very funny and very difficult), carried sticks on our backs by tying them with rope that basically makes backpack straps, sorted and de-cobbed corn, cleaned the old goat house/pen by scraping all of the poop out into a big pile (yum!), visited some relatives and neighbors, took care of the baby, made rope out of a plants veins (?maybe I am not sure what they were), and spent a lot of time sitting and being as people cam and went from the house. It was very interesting to be in their houses (mud and stick built homes that were a few rooms large, and to learn many of the different things they did on a daily basis, but most of all it was interesting to be with them. I am noticing more and more how challenging it is for me to be, just be. I would consider myself of the more slow present Americans and yet still my being skills pale in comparison to Tanzanians. These Iraqw are professional be-ers. It wonderful to be around! You can see their be-ingness in the way they walk as well. Their entire energy stays centered in both their front and back of their body even as they are moving forward. I am so aware of how much our (American’s) energy is projected into our front space we are always going, doing, making, producing, but never being here. All day for different amounts of time we would just sit in our families house and drink chai or be with the baby or just sit, sometimes the women would talk and converse and sometimes not, but we would just hang out there. The part of the day that I liked best was making the rope. The grandmother (~40) picked some leaves of a plant that looks like a giant aloe plant but it is super tough and sharp on the ends. She then made a wooden tool with a stick and machete and stripped the tough leaves. This took away all of the tissue between the veins or some sort of fortified sting-like innards of the plant. Then while they were still wet and flexible we braided them together. It was totally cool. I was amazed to then make the connection between the rope that we were making and the rope that we had used this morning to carry the wood on our backs. It was a wonderful, overwhelming, exhausting experience.
Ngorongoro Crater:
Yesterday (Oct 1st) we went to Ngorongoro Conservation Area where we visited the largest caldera in the world. It was unbelievable! I was blown to smithereens with amazement at the natural world, the animals, the plants, the landscapes, the geology. The crater is 250km on the floor. The sides are super steep and 610 m tall which crates this little world in and of itself with animals galore. What a day full of lions! We saw lions stalking, lions pregnant, lions sleeping, lions playing, lions lazing around in front of the public bathrooms, lions resting after their feast of a buffalo they killed, mama lions, papa lions, teenage lions, baby lions. WOW. I am still reeling from the day. We also watched a hyena run around with a wildebeest leg in his mouth swinging from the knee. I must say they are very scary animals. We saw two more jackals and tons of zebras, wildebeest, gazelles, and buffalo. I think African buffalo are about the coolest things. They are enormous. If you look across the plains and see some dark things that look about as big a cars then you have found the buffalo. They are dark and huge and have enormous horns and move at about 0.00000001 miles/minute. We only saw two elephants because its very hard for them to get down into the crater as the rim is incredibly steep. There are no Giraffes for that reason as well. We also saw Kori Bustards, Black Kites, bee eaters, and crested cranes which were all very impressive. Whew it was quite a day that is still sinking in!
Tailor:
Here in northern Tanzania there is beautiful cloth that is sold and worn and used as blankets, table clothes, and anything else they can think of. I have bought two different kinds so far, one that is blue green turquoise and has birds on it and one that is bright green and yellow/tan it geometric patterns. They are soooo beautiful. We went to a tailor who lives just three houses down from our camp, and I had a dress and a skirt made. They are absolutely beautiful. They are so well made. The tailor lined them, reinforced areas prone to ripping, and finished all of the edges even on the insides. If I wear them together I look just like the women in town! It was very exciting to get them back and see how well they were made. I paid ten dollars for both the shirt and the skirt and don’t think I could have spent my money better!
Food:
Here we eat yummy food! We usually have rice and or ugali (corn/flour grits like stuff with less flavor that they use to pick up their food and eat it with their fingers), some kind of lentils/beans, pasta/potatoes, some kind of green thing or veggie, and sometimes we have green bananas in a sauce, usually fruit (watermelon, papaya, pineapples, bananas…) sometimes a super liquid-y soup that we then put rice or veggies or anything else in, and, if we are lucky, bread! Arthur, our head cook makes the best bread EVER. He makes soft hot rolls that are super moist and squishy and he also makes chipati (its like African version on nan. It’s a bit less stretchy/doughy and more like a fat thick soft tortilla made with some lentils. Sooooo basically amazing!). In other words I am completely enjoying eating at every meal!
Blogging is a funny thing because I never know who is reading this and learning about my life. Its like doing a performance but not knowing who's in the audience. Kinda fun, as well as bizarre! Hope you (whoever you are) are enjoying this and if you want to hear about anything in particular let me know!
Much Love and exhaustion (thank goodness we have a day off tomorrow),
Sara
On Monday we had home stays with different families in our village, Rhotia, from 8am-5pm. I went with another student here, Allyson, and we stayed with an Iraqw family (the local tribe, and yes that is actually how it's spelled. I think I spelled it differently in a previous blog post). There was a great-grandmother (~60 years old), a grandmother (~40 years old), a mother (23 years old), and some young children of the grandmother and the mother (a seven year old and a baby). We just lived with them for a day and did whatever they did. For Allyson and I the day consisted of making chai (milk tea with so much sugar it makes me cringe), lots and lots of ugali (corn-flour-thick-grits-like-stuff), cabbage with tomatoes and onions and more chai. We milked cows (we were both terrible at it/it was very funny and very difficult), carried sticks on our backs by tying them with rope that basically makes backpack straps, sorted and de-cobbed corn, cleaned the old goat house/pen by scraping all of the poop out into a big pile (yum!), visited some relatives and neighbors, took care of the baby, made rope out of a plants veins (?maybe I am not sure what they were), and spent a lot of time sitting and being as people cam and went from the house. It was very interesting to be in their houses (mud and stick built homes that were a few rooms large, and to learn many of the different things they did on a daily basis, but most of all it was interesting to be with them. I am noticing more and more how challenging it is for me to be, just be. I would consider myself of the more slow present Americans and yet still my being skills pale in comparison to Tanzanians. These Iraqw are professional be-ers. It wonderful to be around! You can see their be-ingness in the way they walk as well. Their entire energy stays centered in both their front and back of their body even as they are moving forward. I am so aware of how much our (American’s) energy is projected into our front space we are always going, doing, making, producing, but never being here. All day for different amounts of time we would just sit in our families house and drink chai or be with the baby or just sit, sometimes the women would talk and converse and sometimes not, but we would just hang out there. The part of the day that I liked best was making the rope. The grandmother (~40) picked some leaves of a plant that looks like a giant aloe plant but it is super tough and sharp on the ends. She then made a wooden tool with a stick and machete and stripped the tough leaves. This took away all of the tissue between the veins or some sort of fortified sting-like innards of the plant. Then while they were still wet and flexible we braided them together. It was totally cool. I was amazed to then make the connection between the rope that we were making and the rope that we had used this morning to carry the wood on our backs. It was a wonderful, overwhelming, exhausting experience.
Ngorongoro Crater:
Yesterday (Oct 1st) we went to Ngorongoro Conservation Area where we visited the largest caldera in the world. It was unbelievable! I was blown to smithereens with amazement at the natural world, the animals, the plants, the landscapes, the geology. The crater is 250km on the floor. The sides are super steep and 610 m tall which crates this little world in and of itself with animals galore. What a day full of lions! We saw lions stalking, lions pregnant, lions sleeping, lions playing, lions lazing around in front of the public bathrooms, lions resting after their feast of a buffalo they killed, mama lions, papa lions, teenage lions, baby lions. WOW. I am still reeling from the day. We also watched a hyena run around with a wildebeest leg in his mouth swinging from the knee. I must say they are very scary animals. We saw two more jackals and tons of zebras, wildebeest, gazelles, and buffalo. I think African buffalo are about the coolest things. They are enormous. If you look across the plains and see some dark things that look about as big a cars then you have found the buffalo. They are dark and huge and have enormous horns and move at about 0.00000001 miles/minute. We only saw two elephants because its very hard for them to get down into the crater as the rim is incredibly steep. There are no Giraffes for that reason as well. We also saw Kori Bustards, Black Kites, bee eaters, and crested cranes which were all very impressive. Whew it was quite a day that is still sinking in!
Tailor:
Here in northern Tanzania there is beautiful cloth that is sold and worn and used as blankets, table clothes, and anything else they can think of. I have bought two different kinds so far, one that is blue green turquoise and has birds on it and one that is bright green and yellow/tan it geometric patterns. They are soooo beautiful. We went to a tailor who lives just three houses down from our camp, and I had a dress and a skirt made. They are absolutely beautiful. They are so well made. The tailor lined them, reinforced areas prone to ripping, and finished all of the edges even on the insides. If I wear them together I look just like the women in town! It was very exciting to get them back and see how well they were made. I paid ten dollars for both the shirt and the skirt and don’t think I could have spent my money better!
Food:
Here we eat yummy food! We usually have rice and or ugali (corn/flour grits like stuff with less flavor that they use to pick up their food and eat it with their fingers), some kind of lentils/beans, pasta/potatoes, some kind of green thing or veggie, and sometimes we have green bananas in a sauce, usually fruit (watermelon, papaya, pineapples, bananas…) sometimes a super liquid-y soup that we then put rice or veggies or anything else in, and, if we are lucky, bread! Arthur, our head cook makes the best bread EVER. He makes soft hot rolls that are super moist and squishy and he also makes chipati (its like African version on nan. It’s a bit less stretchy/doughy and more like a fat thick soft tortilla made with some lentils. Sooooo basically amazing!). In other words I am completely enjoying eating at every meal!
Blogging is a funny thing because I never know who is reading this and learning about my life. Its like doing a performance but not knowing who's in the audience. Kinda fun, as well as bizarre! Hope you (whoever you are) are enjoying this and if you want to hear about anything in particular let me know!
Much Love and exhaustion (thank goodness we have a day off tomorrow),
Sara
Monday, September 27, 2010
An overflowing heart of thankfulness!
Some moments from the past week, both the mundane and the exceptional…
Laundry:
I did laundry by hand for the first time. It was quite a lovely experience. Here there are two options for laundry. You can pay three dollars and get the mamas to do it for you. They come Mon/Wed/Fri and wash your clothes so well you wouldn’t know that that your socks had been red-brown with dirt before the mamas turned them white again. The other option is to do it yourself in a bucket with some soap and whatever skills you happen to have. There is a print we have in my house in North Carolina of some Samoan women gathering in seaweed along the rocky shore of Samoa. When I was doing my laundry I felt just like those Samoan women, except I was doing laundry in a bucket instead of gathering seaweed in the ocean. I worked super hard at getting my clothing clean and darn if I didn’t do a good job I don’t know who did (besides the mamas!). It was also a wonderful moment for me of really being present with what I was doing. Here, there is so much to process and think about and understand and learn, that my brain is working overtime even while I dream. But as I washed my clothes there was nothing for me to think about or do except just be there with my soap and my red-brown water and my slowly getting whiter and whiter socks. I thoroughly enjoyed this, and I also enjoyed putting on my clean socks today and knowing that it was all due to my own hard work.
Orphanage:
Well, we went to an orphanage, just like every other cliché American group of students… and it was quite incredible! We built them a seesaw and a clubhouse to play on and in, laughed and ran around playing ball and soccer, and loved every minute of the dusty afternoon. There was so much joy and love and real life inside of the children. The orphanage we went to is known for their deep care for the children. It turns out that people in this area of African have started orphanages purely to make money for themselves. This may seem contradictory, but orphanages often get a fair amount of money from NGOs, the gov, and private donors and so people are able to fee the children the minimum, and make a fair amount of money for themselves. I know this may come as a shock or just pretty messed up, but at this point I feel like I am learning all the sides to every coin (it turns out most of them have more that two). I can imagine that maybe the family who started the orphanage had nothing before and now they can feed themselves and send their children to school. I am not saying that this is the case for all of them, or that it justifies using the orphans as means to make a living, but I am saying that the story may not be as clear as it first seems. In any case, we went to an orphanage with a very good record of sending the almost all of the money and donations they receive towards the health and well being of the children and it was a beautiful and rich experience of joy, love, and play.
Jiguz Night 2010:
Jiggers (spelled jiguz by our Swahili teacher when he was sounding it out!!!) are sand fleas that burrow into your fingers and toes and make egg sacks and live in your skin until they feel like going somewhere else or die. In a nutshell, they are repulsive! I have so far had three, as has my roommate and another student. Jiguz night 2010 was an evening spent in the chumba (dining room area) digging jiggers out of at least three students feet one of which was the biggest jigger anyone in the whole camp has ever seen! Eeewwwwww! It was huge and the egg sack was giant and the whole thing was super satisfying and utterly gross! So far no one has had a jigger get infected or anything else bad happen (besides having them in your feet or hands in the first place), which has been nice. It has also made me incredibly aware of my feet and their cleanliness, which can’t hurt.
Hope you enjoy!
Lovingthepinkandorangesunsetseverynight,
Sara
Laundry:
I did laundry by hand for the first time. It was quite a lovely experience. Here there are two options for laundry. You can pay three dollars and get the mamas to do it for you. They come Mon/Wed/Fri and wash your clothes so well you wouldn’t know that that your socks had been red-brown with dirt before the mamas turned them white again. The other option is to do it yourself in a bucket with some soap and whatever skills you happen to have. There is a print we have in my house in North Carolina of some Samoan women gathering in seaweed along the rocky shore of Samoa. When I was doing my laundry I felt just like those Samoan women, except I was doing laundry in a bucket instead of gathering seaweed in the ocean. I worked super hard at getting my clothing clean and darn if I didn’t do a good job I don’t know who did (besides the mamas!). It was also a wonderful moment for me of really being present with what I was doing. Here, there is so much to process and think about and understand and learn, that my brain is working overtime even while I dream. But as I washed my clothes there was nothing for me to think about or do except just be there with my soap and my red-brown water and my slowly getting whiter and whiter socks. I thoroughly enjoyed this, and I also enjoyed putting on my clean socks today and knowing that it was all due to my own hard work.
Orphanage:
Well, we went to an orphanage, just like every other cliché American group of students… and it was quite incredible! We built them a seesaw and a clubhouse to play on and in, laughed and ran around playing ball and soccer, and loved every minute of the dusty afternoon. There was so much joy and love and real life inside of the children. The orphanage we went to is known for their deep care for the children. It turns out that people in this area of African have started orphanages purely to make money for themselves. This may seem contradictory, but orphanages often get a fair amount of money from NGOs, the gov, and private donors and so people are able to fee the children the minimum, and make a fair amount of money for themselves. I know this may come as a shock or just pretty messed up, but at this point I feel like I am learning all the sides to every coin (it turns out most of them have more that two). I can imagine that maybe the family who started the orphanage had nothing before and now they can feed themselves and send their children to school. I am not saying that this is the case for all of them, or that it justifies using the orphans as means to make a living, but I am saying that the story may not be as clear as it first seems. In any case, we went to an orphanage with a very good record of sending the almost all of the money and donations they receive towards the health and well being of the children and it was a beautiful and rich experience of joy, love, and play.
Jiguz Night 2010:
Jiggers (spelled jiguz by our Swahili teacher when he was sounding it out!!!) are sand fleas that burrow into your fingers and toes and make egg sacks and live in your skin until they feel like going somewhere else or die. In a nutshell, they are repulsive! I have so far had three, as has my roommate and another student. Jiguz night 2010 was an evening spent in the chumba (dining room area) digging jiggers out of at least three students feet one of which was the biggest jigger anyone in the whole camp has ever seen! Eeewwwwww! It was huge and the egg sack was giant and the whole thing was super satisfying and utterly gross! So far no one has had a jigger get infected or anything else bad happen (besides having them in your feet or hands in the first place), which has been nice. It has also made me incredibly aware of my feet and their cleanliness, which can’t hurt.
Hope you enjoy!
Lovingthepinkandorangesunsetseverynight,
Sara
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Bits of Life
Hamjambo friends and family,
I know this is a lot. I was going to post them as separate sections, but our internet is off and on (just like our water, and electricity, and schedule, and so on) and sometimes I am not able to be on line, so you can pace yourself and read one or two at a time!
General life and Culture:
I was talking with a friend today about what it is like when people ask us, “how are you?” or “How is it in Tanzania?” and I feel like standing open mouthed in front of them not knowing what to say. I told another friend today “there is nothing I have to say about my time here that is in any way mundane.” I think that just about sums up my feeling lately and yet slowly day by day I am starting to feel more and more at home (perhaps it is just that home doesn’t have to mean mundane!). Today and yesterday we visited two bomas, one of the Maasai tradition and one of the Iraki tradition (note- Maasai is pronounced MA-sigh not ma-SIGH as most people pronounce it). A boma is a place where tourists (mostly European but also Tanzanian) can come and see certain tribes cultural heritage. Both of these experiences were very interesting and very different from one another. At the Maasai Boma people live in huts made of sticks and mud and have a pen for their goats and cows. When we arrived they greeted us by singing and dancing in their traditional cloth and jewelry. We were then led around by one of the young men who spoke English and showed us their way of life. It was interesting to see how they portrayed their culture as a primitive way of living, as if it and they were stuck in a historical moment. Although many Maasai live in similar ways there are distinct advances in basic technologies in their villages today.
The Iraki Boma (Iraki is the main tribe in this area of Tanzania and many of our staff come from the Iraki tribe) was very different. The people who showed us around living in a modern cement house next to the recreated examples of historical houses they had made of sticks and mud. They showed us how the people used to live and showed us an example of the beaded wedding skirts they used to make and the way the made clay pots. It was clear that they were not living like this anymore, but that this was a part of their ancestry. It was very interesting to think about how each tribe chooses to portray their culture and how it appeals to tourists looking at the cultures.
Safari!
Last Saturday, while most of you who are reading this were fast asleep, I was on Safari in the middle of the day. We left early in the morning to catch the animals at their prime active time, but stayed all day and continued to see animals throughout. I will give a list of some of the animals we saw and then I will tell you about my favorite things! We saw many baboons, impala, wildebeest, zebras, hippos, an African fish eagle, giraffes, elephants, dik diks, bush bucks, hyraxes, African buffalo, yellow billed storks, pink backed pelicans, Little bee-eaters, superb starlings, a malachite kingfisher, both helmeted and crested guineafowl, vervet monkeys (which have sky/bright blue balls), a black-backed jackal, a mongoose (not sure what kind), warthogs, ostriches, an African harrier hawk, and probably a few that I am forgetting. I was blown away. I had no idea we were going to see that much in one day and at one of the smaller National Parks. I remember being in our land cruisers (yes we get to stand up on our seats so that we poke out of the skylights in the top of the cruiser) and we rounded a corner to come upon a plain full of zebras, wildebeest, impala, and African buffalo grazing. After being speechless for a few moments, a friend who was standing next to me said “Seeing this plain full of animals makes me realize that I didn’t really believe this still existed.”
After hearing that I realized that I didn’t truly believe that most of the animals I saw that day still existed. I cannot describe to you what it is like to see a baby elephant, not more than waist high, nestle partially underneath its mother, as its mother pulls browse from a tree with her trunk and feeds herself. I think my heart fell out of my chest as I was watching the elephants, but I am sure they will take good care of it. Another wonderful moment was when we were driving back thought the park we were passing a territory of hyraxes that we had seen on the way, but this time they were making a complete racket. Then, out of the brush, came a black-backed Jackal loping along. The hyraxes were sounding their predator alarm for the Jackal. I must admit I have not been all that into animal behavior, but watching interactions like these is enough to sway anyone!
Daily Life
Classes have also been wonderful, but we have a lot of them. It is hard to fit everything into one day. We go on nature hikes at 6:30 am, have breakfast at 7:30, classes till lunch at noon, then classes from 2-5. Sometimes we have other activities like visiting the Bomas, but many days we just have lots and lots of class. It is super interesting because we are beginning to understand the whole picture of the environment and conservation efforts here (including the wildlife, the people and their culture, the language, the political and historical background, the different ecosystems…), but also exhausting. Our professors are wonderful, but sometimes it is challenging to understand them in terms of their pronunciation and accent.
Swahili
One of the hardest things about being here is that Swahili is the national language of Tanzania, which means that very few people speak English outside the cities. This is super interesting, but also challenging because we have no way to communicate… yet. We are struggling to learn Swahili, which is much harder than learning any language I have ever tried. When learning Spanish, French, German, Latin, Italian, Portugeas… we understand where many words are coming from. We understand relationships between words and their roots, sentence structure, and their derivation. Swahili isn’t like any language I have ever come into contact with. Without those associations, learning Swahili is like memorizing sounds. Since I am not an auditory learner this is even harder for me! Oh goodness, if you have any good language learning wishes to send my way, I sure could use them!
Much Love
I have been missing all of you and homely things a lot, but I am so full of learning that it is hard to even have time to communicate how much I think about you. I hope you are enjoying all of this and I am sending my love and hugs all around the world to whatever wonderful place you might be in (New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Canada, France, Peru, California, Maryland, Italy, India, Missouri, Indiana, Puerto Rico, Kenya, Austraila and many more I am sure I am forgetting)!
Lovelovelove,
Sara
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Beautiful places and beautiful people
Hello from Tanzania!
What an amazing four days this has been! I spent Sunday night/Monday on the plane and in the airport in Nairobi continuing to get to know my group of people and playing a lot of card games in between napping. We flew to Kilimanjaro on Monday night, but we got in too late and so we stayed in a hotel. We then left for our camp in Rotia (a tiny village). We drove across Savannah and grass land with acacia trees. We saw two giraffes, a few zebras and buffalo, huge termite hills, some baboons and many people with their livestock! It was overwhelmingly beautiful, shocking, and hasn’t completely sunk in. We then arrived at the most beautiful new home I could have wished for. We have hot water for showers, delicious food, a beautiful garden, and gracious and smiling Tanzanian staff and faculty. I am blown over! I am also amazed because this entire place was built in about 2 months. Many things here don’t work or are forever being fixed, but it is not an inconvenience, merely a reminder that this place is new, and is a work in progress in an African country.
We have spent the last two days doing orientation and today we began class. We have four classes; Wildlife Management, Wildlife Ecology, Swahili and Social Culture, and Socio-Economics and Environmental Policy of East Africa. Learning Swahili is super challenging and as it is the official language of Tanzania (Kenya’s is English) you need to speak it to communicate with the people here, including some of our staff. Yesterday we learned some greetings and were then sent out into Rotia to greet people and walk around a bit. You can imagine that this was pretty intimidating, but also exciting.
Two other students and I went walking with one of our staff, Elias, who took us on quite an adventure. We were walking down a dirt road greeting people we passed when we heard drums and people singing. Elias told us in broken English that it was his tribe’s dance and took us to see. We came upon a small group of people, four elder women who were drumming on one drum with sticks, and a group of mostly men who were doing a bouncing-jumping dance and singing (very different from West African dance, but very interesting). One of the women gave us sticks and sat us down in front of the drum without any direction or a moment to think or watch or take the scene in! We did the best we could while Elias laughed and laughed and everyone continued to dance and drum. It was an overwhelming and hilarious situation. I found myself trying to keep up with the elders in a jumble of rhythms and song, and as soon as I thought I might have the rhythm, it would change! After that, Elias took us by the two churches in town, a Lutheran church and a Catholic church, and then visited the local clinic. He took us into each room with sick people and we greeted them and smiled and told them we were sorry they were there… as best we could in Swahili. Well, it was more than we had bargained for on our first day in town I can tell you that, but it was also a humbling and exquisite experience.
It is still sinking in that this is my new home… this beautiful place with yellow birds and fuchsia bougainvillea and smiling people (both students and staff). I am trying to remember to breathe and take time to slow down so that I can let everything sink in.
inspiredandexhausted,
Sara!
What an amazing four days this has been! I spent Sunday night/Monday on the plane and in the airport in Nairobi continuing to get to know my group of people and playing a lot of card games in between napping. We flew to Kilimanjaro on Monday night, but we got in too late and so we stayed in a hotel. We then left for our camp in Rotia (a tiny village). We drove across Savannah and grass land with acacia trees. We saw two giraffes, a few zebras and buffalo, huge termite hills, some baboons and many people with their livestock! It was overwhelmingly beautiful, shocking, and hasn’t completely sunk in. We then arrived at the most beautiful new home I could have wished for. We have hot water for showers, delicious food, a beautiful garden, and gracious and smiling Tanzanian staff and faculty. I am blown over! I am also amazed because this entire place was built in about 2 months. Many things here don’t work or are forever being fixed, but it is not an inconvenience, merely a reminder that this place is new, and is a work in progress in an African country.
We have spent the last two days doing orientation and today we began class. We have four classes; Wildlife Management, Wildlife Ecology, Swahili and Social Culture, and Socio-Economics and Environmental Policy of East Africa. Learning Swahili is super challenging and as it is the official language of Tanzania (Kenya’s is English) you need to speak it to communicate with the people here, including some of our staff. Yesterday we learned some greetings and were then sent out into Rotia to greet people and walk around a bit. You can imagine that this was pretty intimidating, but also exciting.
Two other students and I went walking with one of our staff, Elias, who took us on quite an adventure. We were walking down a dirt road greeting people we passed when we heard drums and people singing. Elias told us in broken English that it was his tribe’s dance and took us to see. We came upon a small group of people, four elder women who were drumming on one drum with sticks, and a group of mostly men who were doing a bouncing-jumping dance and singing (very different from West African dance, but very interesting). One of the women gave us sticks and sat us down in front of the drum without any direction or a moment to think or watch or take the scene in! We did the best we could while Elias laughed and laughed and everyone continued to dance and drum. It was an overwhelming and hilarious situation. I found myself trying to keep up with the elders in a jumble of rhythms and song, and as soon as I thought I might have the rhythm, it would change! After that, Elias took us by the two churches in town, a Lutheran church and a Catholic church, and then visited the local clinic. He took us into each room with sick people and we greeted them and smiled and told them we were sorry they were there… as best we could in Swahili. Well, it was more than we had bargained for on our first day in town I can tell you that, but it was also a humbling and exquisite experience.
It is still sinking in that this is my new home… this beautiful place with yellow birds and fuchsia bougainvillea and smiling people (both students and staff). I am trying to remember to breathe and take time to slow down so that I can let everything sink in.
inspiredandexhausted,
Sara!
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Hello from London!
Talk about surreal. We just spent our 13-hour layover in London touring the city with 75,000 bikers that happened to be here for an annual bike-around-London event. We walked the tourist attractions in London, just about all of the main ones… Big Ben, Parliament, the Thames, Westminster Abby, the London Eye, St. James Park, and Buckingham Palace. We got sandwiches and ate them in a park lying under a sycamore tree. I put a leaf in my journal with the thought that I might not see a sycamore for the next four months. Do they have large hard woods in Tanzania/Kenya? I sort of assumed not, because they would need a lot of water and nutrients to be so big and tall, neither of which are in abundance all year round in Northern Tanzania or Southern Kenya. I am really curious to see the vegetation there and how it varies with the water availability and distance from the mountains.
Next time from Tanzania!
Sara
Next time from Tanzania!
Sara
Friday, September 3, 2010
There she goes...
Hi Everyone,
I have been singing this song in my head a lot lately, thinking of all of my friends and I who are gallivanting around the world right now (I guess it should go "there they go..."). The thing is I only know the first two lines so it quickly becomes repetitive, sort of comforting, sort of aggravating.
Anyways,
I hope everyone is settling into their fall and enjoying life. Tomorrow I leave for Kenya and Tanzania for the fall semester, so I have started this blog so that you can track me (I will also have e-mail access so send me an update about your life when you get a chance!). I am going on a study abroad program through The School for Field Studies. I will be living in a bush camp in southern Kenya at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro and in Northern Tanzania in a similar bush camp. The bush camps are fenced in areas with cabins and a dining hall/common building (where the is electricity and internet at night). There are thirty kids, mostly from the states, who are going with me. We will take classes daily about the birds, plants, and animals in the area. We will also be collaborating and doing service work with a community of Maasai people in a village near by. We will go on a few hiking trips (including touring Amboseli National Park) as well as spend the last month participating in directed research projects.
Just to give you a bit of back ground...The program is trying to mitigate the tension between the Maasai people, who have just started farming what was open grass lands, and the animals (giraffes, zebras, eland, wildebeest, elephants...) who use(d) that open grass land as a migration route between two national parks. You can tell there would be conflict if an elephant was trying to migrate through a cornfield (probably for the farmer and the elephant). The program is gathering information that is needed to figure out if the Maasai people can have a sustainable livelihood that does not interfere with this migration route.
So, I am off (if I can get everything in my suitcase...)! Traveling from Raleigh to Newark to London to Nairobi to Northern Tanzania (where I will spend the first half of the semester). It will take at least two days and may be more like two and a half. Ugh. But then I will be there! Hope everyone is well.
Farewell from North Carolina!
Sara
I have been singing this song in my head a lot lately, thinking of all of my friends and I who are gallivanting around the world right now (I guess it should go "there they go..."). The thing is I only know the first two lines so it quickly becomes repetitive, sort of comforting, sort of aggravating.
Anyways,
I hope everyone is settling into their fall and enjoying life. Tomorrow I leave for Kenya and Tanzania for the fall semester, so I have started this blog so that you can track me (I will also have e-mail access so send me an update about your life when you get a chance!). I am going on a study abroad program through The School for Field Studies. I will be living in a bush camp in southern Kenya at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro and in Northern Tanzania in a similar bush camp. The bush camps are fenced in areas with cabins and a dining hall/common building (where the is electricity and internet at night). There are thirty kids, mostly from the states, who are going with me. We will take classes daily about the birds, plants, and animals in the area. We will also be collaborating and doing service work with a community of Maasai people in a village near by. We will go on a few hiking trips (including touring Amboseli National Park) as well as spend the last month participating in directed research projects.
Just to give you a bit of back ground...The program is trying to mitigate the tension between the Maasai people, who have just started farming what was open grass lands, and the animals (giraffes, zebras, eland, wildebeest, elephants...) who use(d) that open grass land as a migration route between two national parks. You can tell there would be conflict if an elephant was trying to migrate through a cornfield (probably for the farmer and the elephant). The program is gathering information that is needed to figure out if the Maasai people can have a sustainable livelihood that does not interfere with this migration route.
So, I am off (if I can get everything in my suitcase...)! Traveling from Raleigh to Newark to London to Nairobi to Northern Tanzania (where I will spend the first half of the semester). It will take at least two days and may be more like two and a half. Ugh. But then I will be there! Hope everyone is well.
Farewell from North Carolina!
Sara
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