Last Day in Tanzania

3/23/11

I am currently sitting on my bottom bunk in Simba A banda surrounded by suitcases, spending my last night in Tanzania with my roommates. We have spent the past two hours packing up everything and cleaning our banda. It feels so surreal that I’m moving to Kenya. Strangely this place has become my home and I don’t want to leave Tanzania. I’m nervous for Kenya, but really excited. Apparently the wildlife is much more abundant and close to the camp and it is much more isolated from everything. Our technology is even more limited than here in Tanzania. We will have only cold showers, communal bathrooms outside and all our electricity is from generators which only operate at certain hours and our internet is only in the classroom. We will be “unplugged” as Okello our center director puts it. We have all new staff and a new Student Affairs Manager, Molly. I really don’t want to leave all the amazing people I’ve bonded with here. Paulo, Charles, Yohanna, Aschum, Boora, Moses, Kioko, Erica, Safari, Yuri, Gerald, Arthur and many more staff members have made Tanzania unbelievably awesome! We had dinner and then had reflections and said goodbye to the majority of the staff, it was sad and no one wants to leave. We may get to meet the other group that we are switching with tomorrow as we cross the border. Maybe I should explain what is happening with my program. As part of SFS Kenya and Tanzania it means that we spend half the semester in Tanzania and then switch to Kenya for the second half. But while my group of 29 students has been in Tanzania, there have been 30 students in Kenya. So we are switching places with the other group. They don’t want to leave Kenya either. It will be a 6 ½ hour drive to the Kenya camp. About 4 hours to get to the border and then we have a lot of chill time at the border depending on how busy it is. That is when we may get to meet the other group. I don’t know how I feel about them. They are taking our places at Moyo Hill which is not alright. The Kenya camp is a lot more isolated and very different from Tanzania. Apparently elephants break through the fence sometimes, and there are lots of snakes and scorpions so we always have to have closed toed shoes; which is very different. The only wild animals at Moyo are dik diks and feral cats and dogs. I’ve never seen a snake or scorpion here either, but we do have a pet leopard tortoise that some staff rescued a year ago and now it wanders around the camp. Tomorrow should be a very interesting and long day. Our new camp will be located between Mombasa and Nairobi. 

I guess I should tell you all about Serengeti… Honestly it was the most amazing trip of my life. I camped for an entire week in the middle of Serengeti National Park in the Seronera area. We were camping during the wildebeest migration into the park for the wet season and there were so many! There is a total of 1.4 million wildebeest that migrate into the park and our campsite was right alongside their migration route. Every night I fell asleep listening to them grunting and hoping they weren’t going to stampede our campsite like how they did in Lion King. We were so centrally located that wild animals were everywhere. Hyenas wandered through our campsite and monkeys tried to steal our food, one vervet monkey succeeded in stealing Joshie’s chips off of his bag. The monkey stole the bag of chips, ripped it open and then proceeded to eat the chips directly out of the bag as if it were human. It was hilarious and horrible.

 Although we had wild animals wandering freely through our campsite, we had excellent security measures. Boora, our security guard (in Swahili askari), patrolled the camp every night, and one night he actually hit some hyenas with his long stick. He is a former military man from the Tanzanian army and he is hilarious. He does these animal impressions that are priceless. His impression of hyenas is hysterical. He will look at you and his eyes will get really big, then he will scoot towards you slowly and tilt his head and get a crazed look with his tongue out. Then he will start making cackling noises and reaching towards you as I can only assume a hyena would. Then right as he grabs your arm he makes a chomping noise and then says “Boora come” and the hyena cowers away and stops eating the delicious students. It is so funny and he does it all the time. In order to go to the bathroom at night we had to have Boora accompany us to the toilets. So there would be these huge groups of girls headed to the bathrooms and he would walk ahead with his huge flashlight and shine the light into the woods looking for eyes. As we walked we could hear lions roaring in the distance (their roar can travel as far as 15km so they were most likely nowhere near us), and there were buffalo or impala eating grass behind the bathrooms. We also had to be on the alert for elephants because apparently they like to knock the water towers down behind the stalls. (Even though there was water and no elephants knocking things over none of us showered) It wasn’t until the fourth day that some of us went swimming and showered at the lodge we had lunch at. The lodge was unreal. I’ve never seen such a beautiful hotel in my life. It’s the Seronera lodge and it costs $500 - $700 a night to stay there, which may not be as expensive as some hotels in the states that are considered top quality but in Africa that is very expensive. Everything about this place was beautiful and the pool was sublime, although cold. The showers felt so good after 4 days of grime and sweat. Sorry to gross you out! The all you can eat buffet, cost $20 and included showers and swimming, was delicious!! Totally worth all that money! I bought a beautiful handmade leather journal with recycled paper there that I fully intend on using the rest of the trip.

Every day in Serengeti was a game drive through the park. We had numerous field exercises where we observed elephants for 2 ½ hours or bird watched for 2 hours or had a guest lecture from the Chief Ecologist of the Serengeti or even had a lion lecture from an American grad student. We ate lunch one day on Pride rock, the actual rock that inspired the rock in the movie Lion King where baby Simba is displayed to the animal kingdom. I’ve never seen so many amazing and unique animals in my life. I saw a leopard every day for the first three days. I saw one cheetah and mating lions on the 4^th day and on the last day as we did a game drive out of the park we saw 6 cheetahs total. Three at once, then ten minutes later a different two cheetahs and an hour later one cheetah hunting along the border of the park.

We went to a hippo pool, which was foul smelling and full of hippo feces. Pretty much all hippos do during the day is sleep in the pools, socialize and poo/pee. The worst part is that their pooing/peeing is not just for necessary waste disposal but for social interactions. There were baby hippos which were adorable. Oh and hippos are the loudest animals ever! They make so many grunting and farting noises when in water, but when on land they are completely silent as they graze at night. I saw crocodiles in the hippo pool too, but they were sunning themselves. I learned how to identify at least 20 different birds, out of 540 bird species in Serengeti. I saw a serval cat, many hyenas, buffalo, tons of zebras, wildebeest and three huge herds of elephants.

When we were doing our field exercise to observe elephants and focus on one individual elephant’s behavior for 2 ½ hours, we saw something really interesting. My jeep of all girls (the boys decided to have a man car that day on St. Patrick’s day), had been observing a family herd of 10-15 elephants with lots of adorable little babies less than a year old when the adult females started freaking out. They were in the middle of crossing a very steep dried up river bed when the adults started trumpeting and their ears were lifted as if listening to something and they started rushing the babies out of this steep ditch. The matriarch elephant pushed an adult female out of the way by putting her tusks on her back and pushing her. Then once they were out of the ditch the elephants rushed to circle the babies and the matriarch stood off in the distance with her ears listening and trumpeting into the distance. It was an amazing sight! The babies were so surrounded that I couldn’t even see them! I would love to know what scared these elephants, they have excellent sense of smell and hearing but they can’t see very well. I didn’t see anything extraordinary except for five minutes before their freak out two male Topi (large antelope with ugly coloring) came bolting across the road in terror, but when that happened the elephants didn’t even freak out. I guess I will never know but it was an experience I’ll never forget. I took a video of the tail end of the freak out but I don’t believe that will post with my internet! Remind me someone when I get home to show you!

That’s more than enough for now. I have many more stories to share but seeing as I have a long day tomorrow with a very early start I need to go to bed! I posted a few photos on facebook that most of you have already seen I’m sure but if not check them out! There are three of lions, elephants and a hippo.

I hope I have strong enough internet to blog in Kenya! UPDATE: I am safely arrived in Kenya and the internet is strong enough at certain times to blog and email and facebook. But we only have electricity (generator) form 6:30 pm till 11pm and during the day we use solar power which is quickly drained. I love it here but it is completely different!

Hakuna Matata,

Julie

Battle of Wills

3-13-11

(PHOTOS at the end)

This may disturb some but a slaughter of crickets has just taken place in my banda. They are so loud and always chirp right as you are trying to sleep. This morning after class (where we watched a movie about Serengeti) Erica pulled her bag out from under the bunk beds and a horde of crickets emerged. Erica ran screaming out of the room and Courtney and I grabbed hiking shoes and whacked away. The gore was horrifying and the only things left of the crickets are their smashed remains. I literally have a war wound, a scratch on my finger that looks all bloody. I have never been so grossed out and as we whacked with the shoes Courtney and I screamed a LOT. I’m sorry if this offends some people, but it was a necessary war. We’ve allowed two daddy long legs (or as Austin says a woodsman spider) to reside in our banda, one next to the front door and another in the corner of the shower and we’ve named them both Henry. We also have an ENORMOUS unidentifiable spider in a hole in our bathroom that Erica named Eragog (misspelled) from Harry Potter. Living in Africa is a frequent battle with the insects. Thank goodness for bug spray!

I leave for Serengeti tomorrow for five days. I will be unreachable with no technology. And the showers there are normally broken so I may not be able to shower either. The showers always break because the elephants think its fun to tip the water tanks over and off their perch above the bathrooms. LOL I wanted to post this blog since I’ll be unavailable for a week. Apparently we will be woken up by lions roaring and elephants grazing near our camping ground. I’m so excited!! I have to go help pack the rhino truck with our water and food. Later today we have to pack for the trip, and I have a paper due tomorrow morning. Oh and we leave at 6:30am. EARLY!!! Before we reach Serengeti we are going to the Olduvai Gorge where the first human was found! LOL so cool!!

Yesterday was our day off and Jess, Christina, Liz and I all went to Mtu Wa Mbu to paint. We went to this tourist souvenir shop and in the back where they do all their painting they will show you how to do it and let you paint. Of course it costs money but it was a blast. We learned how to put the canvas on the wooden frame and then using their traditionally painting knives and acrylic we painted whatever we wanted. Afterwards we walked through the town and ate some cool local food (don’t worry all of it was boiled and cooked).

My painting of jumping Maasai

PROM: our 80’s themed prom took place last night and it was a blast! LOL we all dressed up as crazily as we could! A couple days ago I bought bright pink skinny jeans at the market for 5,000 shillings (basically $3) and I wore a leopard print dress I have but tucked in with my jeans belted so I looked really 80’s or at least early 90’s. Everyone had bought clothes from the market, and everything is so 80’s there, that we all looked ridiculous. All the girls borrowed makeup from the select few who actually brought it. Although none of us have makeup remover so today the remnants are still there LOL. Courtney and Will were voted prom queen and king and they were so cute. They had fake crowns and did a slow dance. Erica and Boora (a security guard or askari) did the worm. Everyone was there and it was so much fun. Our teacher Kioko was dancing even though he told us he wasn’t going to come. I had a blast and even though it was really similar to middle school dances it was better because we are all so comfortable with each other. After Serengeti we will be even more comfortable with each other. Five days with no showering, in tents of 6 people and no alone time. I can’t wait!! We have to put our bags in the Rhino truck or lorry tomorrow morning at 5:30am. AHHHH.

Christina and I before prom (she was my date)

I’ll keep a journal while in Serengeti so that I can blog about my trip. I’ll miss talking to everyone! Oh and its really weird they don’t do time change here so instead of being 11 hours ahead of home I’m now 10. I thought that was cool!

Two Maasai warriors and a child herding cattle with the first part of the crater in the background

As much of Ngorongoro Crater as would fit in my camera lens

Two male lions at Ngorongoro Crater

Austin on our grass transect near Lake Manyara found a whole skeleton, this is just a part of a spine of some animal probably a cow or buffalo

The moon at sunset from Moyo Hill Camp

Peace,

Julie

Food is where the home is

3-9-2011

My life has been so busy and that is why I haven’t blogged, sorry! I also felt bad that my last blog post was so long that everyone deserved a break! I have today to study, then Wildlife Ecology final tomorrow, then on Friday I have Wildlife Management and Environmental Policy finals. Saturday is our day off then we pack on the 13^th for Serengeti. And we are going to one of Erica’s friend’s high school graduation at Shalom Orphanage where he is throwing a fundraiser for the orphans. His name is Innocent and he is so cool. He is an artist that designs shirts and cool shoes. He has been volunteering at the orphanage for the past year and loves working with kids. On the 14^th we leave for Serengeti and return the 19^th. I will have no internet or means of communication during those five days, so no one worry if you don’t hear from me!!

For lunch we are going to this Art Gallery that has these beautiful paintings and statues for tourists (really expensive but actually unique). It also has amazing food and real ice cream! I’m splitting a pizza with Christina and strawberry ice cream. What I’m homesick the most for is real food. I want sushi and seafood a LOT for some reason, considering I really don’t eat that all the time at home. I want to go to an Italian restaurant and eat pasta and breadsticks. What I want the MOST is to go to a movie theatre, see a movie with large buttery popcorn, a huge soda and candy!! I don’t actually miss soda because our duka sells bottled sodas that are cold. So I’ve had coke and fanta, hehe. I miss chocolate a LOT, but they sell Bounty (European version of Mounds) that has chocolate and coconut so I’m happy.  I am so hungry all the time for real food. I’m well fed and I should stop complaining but I WANT to be able to eat whatever I want whenever I want. I miss that freedom. 

If I see ugali one more time I’m going to start a food fight. Ugali is this ground maize that’s white and thick and has NO flavor. Locals LOVE it! When I was at my homestay we had ugali and no silverware so we had to eat like the locals. Basically you use the ugali to pick up other food and eat it with your fingers. It is good every once in a while, but every day!!?????!!!! I’m going to hurl it at Arthur the head cook next time I see him. For Joshie’s birthday a bunch of the girls cooked a traditional southern meal with fried chicken, mashed potatoes, potato salad and sweet iced tea. It was as close to the real thing as we will get here, but it still tasted different, and it was delicious. The staff refused to eat most of it and pretty much only ate the ugali and fried chicken which they thought was good. We teased them for not trying American food when we eat their food all the time. When they saw the cake with frosting they ran away LOL I’m excited for Courtney’s birthday on the 25th, we are going to make Italian food and it’ll be our first real day in Kenya. Hehe or at least we’ll try, we don’t know how the kitchen stuff works there and it will never taste authentic.

Erica taught the staff how to make mac and cheese so that is awesome!! They don’t have cheese here. The staff thinks it’s the weirdest texture ever! We have to go to Arusha, a long drive away, to buy it and then by the time it gets here it’s pretty much all melted. But it’s delicious! They also put onions in EVERYTHING! I love their solutions to leftovers. When there are leftover pancakes from breakfast they cut it up into small pieces and put it in the spaghetti. It’s hilarious and doesn’t taste half bad either.

We all make breakfast every morning and alternate cook crews, who also have to do the dishes from the entire day at night. I’m cook crew tomorrow. We are called Iraqw after the local tribe. My cook crew is legit, we always finish breakfast ten to 20 minutes earlier than other crews and we finish dishes super fast too. Breakfast is the same thing EVERY DAY! We have toast, pancakes, scrambled eggs, oatmeal, sausage, potatoes and fruit every morning. Except NOTHING tastes the same as when we are in American. We make the toast by heavily buttering both sides of a slice of bread and then putting it on this pan to toast, most people burn it so it looks and tastes charred. The butter here I’m pretty sure is just lard and fat so it is really thick and heavy. The oatmeal is from a large packet and tastes really bland so my cook crew usually puts cinnamon and brown sugar in it to add some good flavor. The fruit is fresh every day and is always delicious, although I found a bug in the Mango the other day, icky!! To make scrambled eggs we have to crack three dozen eggs so there is enough for all the students and staff. It could be more than that, it’s a LOT of eggs regardless and takes forever. Then we put in pepper, onions, maybe even tomato and mix it all together. Then we put it on this large metal bowl on the stove and stir it until it is hard enough to eat. The pancakes are so thin they are more like crepes, and on our day off we are going to make crepes with chocolate syrup and fruit! The potatoes we peel, but the staff cooks fry those in oil. And the cooks also do the sausage. We get to chop the fruit which is fun. I now know how to cut a mango, pineapple, water melon and bananas.

As you can see I am obsessed with food. Right now I can honestly say that is what I miss the most. Sorry Patrick and family, just kidding! LOL I have not studied at all, I need to do that now before I go to lunch!

Oh, apparently I slept walk last night. I sat up in bed and was mumbling about Timbuktwo and being tired while I poked my toes. A little while later I was walking around the banda talking to myself. Erica, my banda mate, officially thinks I’m an alien; aliens are her worst fear. Courtney and her both were asking me what I was doing and why I was walking around until they realized I was sleep walking. I’m a little worried I’m going to sleep walk in Serengeti and get eaten by a lion. I told Erica, the SAM, and she said they’ll tie a bell on me LOL. I think she was kidding, I hope she was.

I am actually going to nap because my sleep walking adventures have made me exhausted. I can't wait for FOOD!!! I have two new blog posts, one posted before this, so read both!!

I probably won't blog again until after Serengeti! Miss everyone tons and tons!

-Julie 

Stung

3/4/2011

I HAVE NO FACEBOOK!! If you are trying to contact me on facebook send me an email instead!! SFS Headquarters blocked facebook, youtube and flicker because it kept crashing our internet. Although we still don’t have internet all the time so it was a little pointless! LOL I don’t really miss facebook, except for being able to talk to everyone, so please email me!!  

Right after lunch, while I was hanging out in the duka (the store at our field location) I got stung by an African wasp. Not kidding. I was standing there talking to Moses and some others when all of a sudden I felt a stab on the side of my right foot. I look down and see a bug, I assumed it was a Nairobi fly and freaked out and brushed it off of me. Nairobi flies are really bad because if you squish them they explode acid that can burn you really badly. I realized it was not a Nairobi fly when I saw a stinger in my foot, I don’t think I pulled it out because I brushed my foot again and the stinger came out. It was HUGE! My foot felt tender for the rest of the day and I was so shocked that I was stung! I didn’t even do anything to the freaking wasp; I was standing there minding my own business when it stung me! The next day I awoke to a slightly swollen foot which was very itchy. I restrained from itching it, but the swelling just got worse and worse. When we went on a field exercise to do grass transects next to Lake Manyara my foot was killing me. It hurt really badly to wear sneakers and socks, I had loosened the shoe as much as possible and it still made no improvement. Plus it was around 2pm under the hot sun so my feet were really hot and sweaty which I think aggravated it even more. By that night my foot looked unrecognizable. It was stung right above the arch of my foot, but the swelling extends on the top of my foot all the way to my toes, under the large toe, and above my ankle bone. It looks like I have a deformity or crippled foot. It doesn’t really hurt, but it itches really badly sometimes (I don’t itch it I promise) and feels super tender, plus it bothers my ankle to have it so swollen. I have been taking Benadryl, but it makes me really hyper so I was up really late last night as a result. It was worth it to have some of the swelling go down. Because of this stupid foot I am not going to do our non-program day activities. Almost everyone is going into Mtu Wa Mbu to do a bike ride tour to the lake, or learn how to paint and go shopping for really cool souvenirs. UPDATE (3/9/11): I went to the clinic two days ago where they gave me stronger anti-histamine and my foot is almost a 100% better today.

Besides my freak wasp sting, a lot has happened since Tarangire National Park. Yesterday we were driving through Mtu Wa Mbu after our grass transects and Erica pulled off the road and started driving on the sidewalk. She then explained that there is a baboon named Hominid that walks upright and can open doors and chase human women, who lives in the town. So we drove on the sidewalk following his troop but we couldn’t see him. Then she talked to a local, who was staring up at the trees, “where is hominid” and he said that Hominid was in the tree he was looking into. The locals call hominid Tuesday instead of hominid, I don’t know why. Then he explained how he had a slingshot to scare away Hominid and he would try and get hominid out of the tree for us. We spent ten minutes watching this man look for Hominid, but the baboon is as smart as a human and had disappeared. Erica says we will look for him another time. We got off the sidewalk and drove back to camp.

The other day we went to Ngorongoro Crater, the largest crater in the world and a national park. It was a volcano thousands of years ago that exploded and collapsed in on itself. Now it has so much wildlife and is very lush. I saw 9 lions, a black rhino, spotted and striped hyena, mating Koori Bustards, zebras, wildebeests, buffalo, antelope and gazelles, an elephant, and so much more. I’m bummed we didn’t see a leopard or cheetah even though they are known to be in the region. Nothing happened like in Tarangire! But it was a blast!! It is SO beautiful there! It rained while we were eating lunch which is a good thing because it kept us in the cars. Apparently the baboons and birds are so used to humans that they will take your food from your hands. Last year Erica got a bloody nose from a Kite bird snatching her PB&J. This year Joshie had an orange stolen by a baboon and Kim lost her sandwich to a Kite bird but was only scratched a little bit.

On one of our travelling lectures we stopped at a major agricultural site in Mtu Wa Mbu and interviewed the head farmer. After explaining to us that the rivers dried up after the canals were put in he then told us that the water was drying up because of climate change and not their intensive irrigation. He then proceeded to tell us that their water comes from the Nile and not upstream. The Nile not only is really far away, but it flows in the other direction!! We all just stared at him and then asked more questions. I’m probably only think that is crazy because I’m an environmentalist, but it is amazing the misconceptions locals have here. 

There are other misconceptions that are appalling. Mwamhanga, our environmental policy teacher, told us in class after I asked about population control not working with polygamy that polygamy stops people from cheating on each other and that they have no divorce here but it is rampant in America. When asked why only men can remarry after their wife dies and women can’t when their husband’s die he said that it is because if the women and men both remarried the family lines would get too complicated. Then he told us that men need to remain the dominant ones because if women and men were equal there would be mass civil unrest. His father had six wives and 50 children… There is a nearby primary school that was built by a man for his 167 children. There is another misconception that was really upsetting. Moses was asked what he thought about rape and he said it is the woman’s fault. She should call for help or fight him off. When asked if he would feel the same way about his daughter being raped he said that she should know better and that it probably won’t happen to his daughter. A secondary school we visited was purposefully built so that girls in the region have a shorter walking distance to school so that there are fewer pregnancies. These pregnancies are from being raped on the walk to school. I love Africa, but there are things about Tanzania that are so different from America that I can’t wrap my head around it.

More later!

-Julie