Week 4: Tarangire Expedition!

Hey guys!

A big part of this week was a four day expedition to Tarangire National Park and some of its surrounding land. However, my week started out on a bit of a sour note. For those of you who know me well, I LOVE NASCAR (and no I am not exaggerating). That being said, Sunday was the Daytona 500 and it started at 3pm ET which is 11pm Tanzania time. Missing my race was not an option, so I stayed up listening to it on MRN radio while occasionally getting a live stream of it. But here's the thing, the race was super long and had two red flags so it didn't end until around 4am. Therefore my Monday started with only 2-3 hours of sleep AND I forgot that I had cook crew in the morning. So I ended up joining cook crew the next morning because I felt bad.

Anyway, back to the exciting stuff!

Monday morning we had another travel lecture for Environmental Policy class. We drove to a primary school that doubled as a tree nursery where we learned about community strategies to help the environment. They have a tree planting initiative where farmers are given free trees to plant every year. They also teach community members about climate change impacts, how to raise trees and how to combat erosion through planting trees. Rainwater harvesting is practiced at the primary school, and while the facility was funded by a foreign investor, after five years it will solely be community-led and supported. We then traveled to a local home that uses biogas (fermented cow dung) as an energy alternative to firewood: firewood is used everywhere here and is becoming harder and harder to find due to the lack of trees. Finally, we visiting a group of brick-makers and observed how they make bricks using this fancy machine. Once again, we were told that building houses out of bricks was a better alternative than wood due to the whole decreasing-wood-supply issue.

Tree Nursery

Brick making

On Monday I was also Mwanafunzi (student) of the day! The other students really liked my reflection which was to take 30 seconds of silence to appreciate and thank all of the people that have helped shape them into the great individuals they are today as well as all the mentors, friends and family that helped them get to this point in their lives. For my "presentation" I had us all play the game "Big Booty" which is basically a rapid-fire number game - so many people came up to me and said that they had a ton of fun playing it!

On Tuesday we had another travel lecture for Environmental Policy class at Selela village. We talked about the village's Participatory Land Use Plan. Since the introduction of the plan, there have been reduced conflicts between livestock keepers fighting over grazing land, and over 18,000 tree seedlings have been planted. A prevalent issue with the current land use plan is funding and resources: the village's only source of income was fines from culprits. The second half of this lecture took place in the village's groundwater forest which has insanely beautiful trees and tons of vervet monkeys! We discussed the debate over whether or not land owners should be able to kill wildlife that kills their crops and livestock - currently this action is illegal unless the wild animal is threatening your life. This whole semester we've discussed human/wildlife conflicts and while solutions like Participatory Land Use Plans are helping, these conflicts seem like they will always be present in these communities.

I was famous AGAIN for the second time in as many weeks: Penn State posted my Kilimanjaro summit picture on their Instagram (last week they posted the same picture on their Facebook page)! It made my day, not to mention getting 5000 likes is a good self-esteem booster.

Wednesday morning was our Swahili quiz which I think went really well. I'm still waiting for the grade as well as the grade from my olive baboon report which I summited what seems like forever ago. The rest of Wednesday wasn't super exciting: I played some volleyball and soccer, walked down to Rhotia with some others to buy snacks at the duka (shop) and packed for the Tarangire expedition. We also fangirled over how Jane Goodall was in Arusha doing a lecture! Arusha is only a 1.5 hour drive from camp.

Tarangire Expedition

Day 1:

Early in the morning we drove from Moyo Hill camp to Tarangire National Park. In the morning we did some elephant counts! We recorded data such as the size of each group and the sex, age group and tusk size/characteristics of each individual. We then had lunch at a picnic area with a stunning view followed by a game drive throughout the National Park. During this game drive we saw tons of wildlife as well as lots of cool trees called Baobab trees (look them up!). Towards the end of the game drive we spotted a female lion on a hunt! Sadly, we had to leave to go to our evening lecture so we couldn't see if the hunt was successful but we still witnessed the lion chasing what appeared to be a warthog. Our evening lecture was at Dr. Kissui's lion research camp within Tarangire National Park (Kissui is our camp director who has been doing lion monitoring and research for 16 years). He talked about how lions are tracked using both radio telemetry and GPS collars. While GPS collars were much more accurate, they cost about $4000 per collar whereas a radio telemetry collar, while more primitive and harder to pinpoint lions, is only $300 per collar. Conservation isn't a cheap process! After the lecture we drove to our campsite which was just outside the park. The camp was a really nice area with flush toilets and showers. The staff provided students with large tents (you could stand up in them) and I roomed with Harrison. We also got served our regular Moyo Hill food since we brought some of the cook staff with us, so really the whole experience was "glamping" more than anything. That night Dr. Theisinger and Dr. Kiffner showed us tiny scorpions that were all around camp that you could only see using black light (pretty freaky huh?!?), then a large group of us laid out on a tarp and looked at the stars...

Me in the safari vehicle!

Day 2:

Today we were in Tarangire National Park again, this time doing general animal counts for any animal we spotted that was larger than a rodent. We recorded data that was similar to the elephant counts, including group size, sex and age class. We also recorded the type of vegetation/habitat, the primary behavior of each group, the groups' responses to us, and the distance each group was from the transect/road. Lunchtime was spent at a lodge where I had some feta and spinach pizza and sat looking out over the savanna below me! Following lunch we went on another game drive before heading back to camp for the evening. Animals that we spotted over the past two days included elephants, giraffes, jackals, lions, warthogs, ostriches, several species of mongoose, impala, waterbuck, gazelle, hartebeest, dik dik, bat-eared fox and a terrapin to name a few. All of our vehicles were trying really hard to find leopards and cheetahs after there was radio chatter of them being nearby, but we sadly did not find either. A huge issue today was the tsetse flies, which were at times swarming our vehicle and biting every single part of our bodies (even through clothing!). However, some highlights included a rainstorm while on the game drive - we played Africa by Toto of course! We also got a flat tire right before the rainstorm which added to the excitement as Dr. Theisinger and Michael (one of our drivers) replaced the tire. 

Day 3:

Today we spent the morning interviewing Maasai people/households about the issue of human/wildlife conflicts. My group interviewed four people - 1 man and 3 women - all of which were farmers and pastoralists. All explained how animals like elephants and zebras destroyed their crops while animals like hyenas and leopards ate their livestock. Preventative strategies included using bright lights and dogs to deter wildlife, as well as building fences and using horns provided by the WMA (wildlife management area). Views were mixed regarding the help the WMA and/or local government provided, and all of those interviewed said that the future looks bad for them as the number of wildlife encounters have been increasing over the years. This afternoon we did a poop assessment in Manyara Ranch!!! Manyara Ranch is a multi-use wildlife conservancy, and the assessment was actually pretty interesting. We drove along a transect and every 500 meters got out of the car and checked for poop along a 10-by-10 meter quadrat. I was able to identify several species of poop including giraffe, elephant, zebra, impala, dik dik and wildebeest as well as "easier" animals like cows and sheep (some pastoralists are allowed to have their livestock graze in Manyara Ranch). A really cool factor was that we could exit the vehicles: this is because it isn't a National Park. As a result, the other students in my vehicle and I were able to walk up to a group of 10+ giraffes and get within 20ish yards of them! This was one of the coolest things I've ever experienced. Even better, since we finished early we were able to go on a small game drive, where we saw different species such as eland, guinea hens and kudu. The drive back to camp was spent playing a fun game called "contact", and following dinner at camp I had cook duty - this was a little more miserable than usual since we only had three pots and limited water to wash all of the dishes. It rained throughout the night, and Harrison ended up waking up in a puddle in the middle of the night as a hole in the tent soaked his side only (I guess I'm a lucky guy lol).

Day 4:

Today we woke up to some nasty humidity, which has been gradually increasing over the past few weeks as the rainy season draws nearer. We packed up all of our tents and gear and had a small lecture after breakfast about wildlife managements areas with Dr. Mwamhanga. We then traveled to Burunge which was the nearest WMA to Tarangire. Here we had a lecture/info session from the leadership of the WMA before driving around the land. We had lunch on top of a rocky hill with beautiful views of Lake Manyara in the distance before driving down to Lake Manyara (the non-national park side of Lake Manyara) and walking along the shore. This place had stunning views and there were hundreds of flamingos in the water! Following this, we stopped by a women's co-op where we bought hand-made basketry items before heading back to campus. Campus greeted us with a rainstorm and I spent the rest of my Sunday unpacking, relaxing, calling my parents and getting ready for my NASCAR race.

I had a great time this week and can't wait for my free day tomorrow! I hope you all have a nice week

-Matt

Week 3 - Birthday Week!

Hello everyone,

Being three weeks into the SFS program, it feels like I'm at home here in Tanzania! This week was very busy but also very enjoyable.

On Monday we had a traveling lecture where we spoke to some poachers. This is a really rare thing that I never would have expected to do here - basically the poachers are guaranteed their confidentiality (and some money) and in return us students were able to ask them any questions we had via a translator. Some of the details included: they hunt in small groups or solo depending on the animal and mainly hunt at night using traps. They also occasionally hunt during the day by chasing animals down via motorcycles. Their main animals of choice include giraffe, wildebeest, gazelle and zebra but they hunt many others depending on the demand for bushmeat. Speaking of which, they only poach for the bushmeat (they leave all skins/carcasses on the scene) which they either sell or use to feed their families. Neither of the poachers actually enjoy their line of work, but it's the easiest way to provide for their families despite the risks involved: they proclaimed that they would never want their kids to poach and instead are using the money from their sales to provide them with an education. While there's risks such as being injured by animals or being caught, some poachers actually receive benefits via corruption. One poacher spoke about how a park ranger is friends with him, and that he gives them (the poachers) details on locations to avoid and times to hunt so that they don't get caught - in exchange for free bushmeat from the poachers. Another topic that surprised me was the price of bushmeat: it's less expensive than livestock, but the poachers make more of a profit compared to being a pastoralist since they don't have to give up resources to raise/feed their "meat". One thing that bothered a lot of us was that they poached giraffes. While animals like elephants and lions are "too risky" to hunt, giraffes are relatively easy for them, as they just sneak up behind the animal and immobilize it by cutting through the tendons (achilles I think) in their legs. One of the poachers claimed to kill 6 giraffes last year, with each giraffe providing them with around 600,000 shillings ($250-300). They go hunting about 3 times a week and have a successful kill once of week. With apparently over 40 poachers just in the Mto wa Mbu area, you can imagine that a lot of animals are killed each year around the Lake Manyara ecosystem (and imagine all of Tanzania!). Despite the rough material covered in this lecture, it was still an incredible learning experience.

Before dinner on Monday, I played soccer with some of the locals (they are crazy good!) and watched the movie Sky High for the first time in the evening. On Tuesday we did a vegetation assessment in the afternoon for a future paper/report we will be writing in Wildlife Ecology class. We used quadrats and a pin frame to measure the frequencies of certain grass/vegetation species in a field within the corridor sounding Lake Manyara National Park. Being the middle of the afternoon, it was about 90 degrees with zero shade so we were all exhausted after the four hour study! Dr. Theisinger saw this and had us stop to buy ICE CREAM from a local shop on the drive back to camp! I finished the day by watching the movie Tangled for the first time.

Wednesday was February 13th, aka my 20th birthday! Of course with my luck, I had cook crew today so had to get up at 6am....BUT I woke up to a pleasant surprise: the Penn State Facebook page posted my Kilimanjaro summit pic!!! I got my little moment of fame and it was so ironic that it was on my birthday. Today we had a guest lecture from a former SFS student who is currently studying hyenas for his PhD. His presentation was super interesting and I gained an appreciation for this animal which is often hated by the public for no apparent reason (thanks Disney...).  Before dinner I  played volleyball with some students and then had my birthday celebration in the dining hall. Everyone sang and danced around me and the staff gave me a huge cake with a very tall sparkler! Overall, I really enjoyed my birthday (especially since it was 80 degrees instead of 30) and finished the evening by watering the garden after cook crew dish duty. We started a student garden and planted tomatoes, peas, dill and some other herbs which are already starting to come up.

Thursday was Valentines day, and we had a lizard identification hike in the afternoon to the top of Moyo hill which was super disappointing as we didn't see any lizards! Dr. Theisinger said this was the first time this ever happened for him. We organized "Palentines" gift exchanges and I ended up getting a cucumber (a cucumber!) from my roommate Luke. On Friday we had a guest lecture from a man and a woman who do giraffe research and advocacy/education. They are funded by several zoos across the nation and travel throughout Tanzania. That evening I played soccer again as the sun set on the beautiful mountains in the distance...

So...being a clarinet player, I decided to bring my clarinet to Tanzania. Here's one problem though...I didn't bother to check if my "crappy" clarinet case had reeds. It didn't. So I tried unsuccessfully and in desperation to make my own reeds - after all I really wanted to play clarinet for the local children's homes. But I finally gave in and asked my mom to mail some reeds to me. They'll be here in about two weeks but mail apparently gets lost frequently in route to Tanzania so we'll see what happens. Another highlight of the week was that it finally rained! In the three weeks that I've been at camp it has yet to rain, but in addition to one large overnight rainfall we now receive a small 5 minute drizzle around once a day as we transition from the dry season to the rainy season.

On Saturday we had community service all morning. I went to the Rhotia Valley Children's Home (most of the kids are orphans or come from an unstable family) where I did some playing and coloring with the kids. I was able to find some recorders and percussion instruments and created some chaos when I told the kids to make some music! But it was a fun chaos - music is good for the soul after all!!! We stopped at a neighboring lodge for some free coffee and tea afterwards and that evening we did a staff vs student volleyball game and lost but had a great time.

On "free day" Sunday I woke up early to go on a run with some other students. We did two laps on the road that sounds campus (about two miles) and I felt really good afterwards despite not running in a long time (I haven't run regularly since my marathon last May)! In the morning I went with some other students to do knife painting. In knife painting you use the knife, which is more like a small metal icing knife/spreader, to do all of the painting. We were given two demos by our teacher and could paint either an elephant or Maasai people. Everyone but me chose the elephant - I loved the structure of the traditional Maasai paintings plus I ended up purchasing a professional BEAUTIFUL elephant painting with Kilimanjaro in the background. It is a very large painting (around 3ft by 2ft) but I couldn't resist and I got a really good "student price" for it! In the afternoon I went with a large group to Karatu where we just relaxed - first at a restaurant/bar and then at a lodge. Many people drank a lot (partially in celebration of one girl's birthday next week), but once again I'm not a big fan of alcohol. However, I did end up trying/treating myself to some Savanna dry cider....it was my birthday week after all!

My Maasai painting

Thanks for reading! My blog post might be a little late next week as we'll be camping in Tarangire National Park Thursday through Sunday!!!
-Matt

Week 2 In The Books!

Hello everyone,

Week two at Moyo Hill Camp is now in the books so I thought I'd share some highlights!

On Monday we had a traveling lecture all morning: first to a hill overlooking Ngorongoro Conservation Area on one side and Lake Manyara National Park on the other. The main topic of discussion was wildlife corridors and the costs and benefits of having them within/nearby the agricultural community that we reside in. Then we traveled to Mto wa mbu where we received a lecture from a man involved in the area's water management. We discussed how the valley where Mto wa mbu is experiences flooding and droughts which is hard for the farmers to predict. I talked with Dr. Mwamhanga about how much of the irrigation system, while useful for the farming plots, contains tons of herbicides and pesticides because of the education barrier (lack of education) that local working people have. This relates to one discussion we had in my Environmental Policy class that we have to consider local peoples' priorities when working towards policy and ecosystem management: people would much rather feed their families and earn some money to support themselves than perform practices that would protect wildlife, and really, can you blame them?!?
On Monday we also tried out a program called CyberTracker in Wildlife Ecology class that creates electronic data sheets that can upload straight from an app on your phone to your computer...it took a long time to program the app via the computer (and I suck with technology) but we walked around Rhotia doing counts of different domestic animals and I could see how using the app could be easier than having a paper data sheet.

Our classroom

Besides classes and working on assignments this week, I played volleyball again (and we were all doing really good -  the game was incredible!), and we had a community service activity Wednesday morning. There were several options to choose from, and my group cleaned up trash along the trail to the top of Moyo Hill and also along the road that loops campus. I believe we filled 4 large trash bags in less than 3 hours! We also had a dog that approached us (which is very rare because dogs are generally afraid of humans here) and I couldn't not pet him! This sadly wasn't allowed because 1) many of the dogs have fleas and 2) they can carry several diseases including rabies....BUT I did it anyway because I love dogs so this is now our little secret. We named him Salama (meaning "peaceful" in Swahili) and he followed us for most of our loop around campus.

One night after dinner we had a guest speaker who is currently observing lion populations in Ngorongoro Crater. She had a ton of cool stories and went into detail about how the tracking collars work and about a new male lion who entered the crater and is possibly adding new genes to the gene pool (this will create more genetic diversity and is great for the lion population!). The next evening we went to a huge market in Karatu that happens twice a month. It was basically a huge flea market and I ended up not getting anything because it was too hectic: it is very common for "mzungu's" aka white people to get hounded by local vendors. So I went back early with some students and then went to the shops in Rhotia which are much more peaceful since all of the locals know that our campus is just down the road. I bought some cool sunflower fabric and sent it to the tailor to make me a button-down shirt (so many students have already planned out their new wardrobe that the tailor is going to make them lol). I bought the fabric and got the shirt made for a combined 32,000 shilling or a little less than $15!!! I also got my batik back from last weekend after they touched it up. I was a little disappointed in how my water buffalo design turned out but it still looks really cool (and I still have a professional batik that I bought).

Dr. Theisinger (our Wildlife Ecology professor) is a specialist in reptiles and started setting traps around campus this week. However, a highlight find was something that was found by Pascal (one of the staff) outside of campus - a chameleon!!! It was incredible to see it up close and I was even able to hold him! I also loved how his little hands looked. That evening we played a soccer game - students vs staff! Holy crap were the staff amazing! Even Dr. Mwamhanga (who is probably in his 50s or early 60s) was kicking our butts. We played for about an hour and ended up losing 4-1...it was so much fun though. Naturally, I busted up my knees again while taking a shot, the day after my previously scraped-up knees (from playing volleyball) had healed. This day was also the day I had cook duty (yay dishes) and we watched The Conjuring on the projector in the outside lounge area attached to the dining hall. I'm not a big fan of scary movies but I wanted to challenge myself so I stayed for the entire movie - I honestly thought it was pretty good.

Dr. Theisinger

Some of the ReKAP activities this week have been fun too - we made an origami giraffe one night and did finger painting the other night. I had a helper with my finger painting: Lenny. Lenny is Dr. Theisinger's 5 year old son (Lenny, Dr. Theisinger's wife and Lenny's younger brother live on campus with him). Lenny is a very energetic child and loves to tickle you! I find that he has gotten attached to us four guys on campus and we all play around with him instead of doing our work.

On Saturday morning we did a transect activity in Environmental Policy class. We were split into groups and each group was assigned a local translator. Then, we walked around different parts of Rhotia recording the vegetation, terrain, land uses, problems and opportunities of the area surrounding our transect (which is basically a pre-determined line that we walk down). During this time we talked to several locals including three Maasai men (Maasai is a tribe) that were "watchmen" for an abandoned hotel that is supposed to be renovated and reopened in July. We also talked to a lady carrying a bucket of water on her head: she travels 1km twice a day to get water and is also a farmer and makes her own alcohol! It is very common in this area (or Tanzania in general) for women to do all of the farming/working, cooking, cleaning and raising the children while the men "chill out" downtown all day and drink. In our Environmental Policy class we have frequently talked about the role of women in this area and how they get very little privileges. We also talked to a pastoralist who was watching his livestock. He was around my age and started being a pastoralist all on his own: he originally bought two cattle and has now expanded to over 30 combined cows, goats and donkeys. We discussed wildlife conflicts with him (human-wildlife conflict is a key topic in all of my classes) and he said that very rarely hyenas will kill one of his animals....he has also experienced raids where people have stolen some of his animals. Overall, I loved talking with these people, and I had a good time except that I got SUPER sun burned (again...).

That evening the entire group of students went to a lodge! Almost everybody was drinking and I'm not a big fan of alcohol so I tried a sip of beer and then went in the lodge's pool to swim with Lenny. I spent maybe and hour playing with him before the acrobatic show started! These men were INSANE and did tons of flips, contortions and formations that blew my mind - like three men standing on each other's shoulders! While we all had a lot of fun, I had a discussion with one of the students about how humbling this was...none of the locals will ever experience a lodge-"experience" in their lifetimes and a lot of us took the swimming, show, getting drunk (not me), and service for granted. It definitely made me feel a little bad as I didn't come to Tanzania to get spoiled like this. That being said, I still appreciated it.

Sunday was our free day again! In the morning I went with a group to the Maasai market in Mto wa mbu where I bought some crafts and worked on my bargaining skills (in Swahili) with the vendors who were very persistent (as can be expected). Most places offer lower prices if you say you're a mwanafunzi (student) because they give insane prices to tourists who can't tell the difference and don't know the exchange rate. You're supposed to be with a buddy at all times but I was just looking around the one shop and turned around and my group left, so I just kept walking around and talking to vendors. I was in complete control of the situation but apparently my group freaked out that I disappeared, so now I know better...  In the afternoon I went on an "elephant cave" hike in Ngorongoro Conservation Area. The hike wasn't very strenuous and at the end we got to this half-cliff-half-cave where there were six elephants including two babies!!! They come to the cave regularly to get the minerals out of the rocks. There was also a waterfall that we stopped at along the trail with incredible views! According to Amelia (our student affairs manager who went with us) this was the best elephant cave hike she's ever done, as it can't be guaranteed that you see elephants - so I felt very lucky! Once I got back to campus I wrote this blog and once again called my parents. I'm having a great time and am making some good friends here, and I can't wait for all of the adventures yet to come!

I hope you had a nice weekend! Thanks for reading
-Matt

Week 1 at Moyo Hill Camp!

Hello everyone,

Now that I've been at Moyo Hill Camp (our campus) for close to a week, I'd like to share some of the highlights thus far!

Day 1:

I was transported by Popote (my Kili company) from my hotel in Moshi to the Kia Lodge which was right next to the airport. It was here that I met the early arrival students: Libby, Jan and Evan. We then were driven by Costa (one of the SFS drivers) to the hotel in Arusha that all of the students were staying at (it was too late in the evening to drive to campus by the time everyone arrived). Here was where we met Amelia, our student affairs manager. The hotel was, let's say, a bit rough and in the middle of the bustling city, but they gave us dinner and a bed with a mosquito net so I couldn't complain! Evan and I shared a room and both slept close to 12 hours and woke up for breakfast where we met the other 22 students who didn't arrive at the hotel until close to midnight (we lucked out!).

Day 2:

We took the two and a half hour drive from Arusha to Rhotia, the small agricultural village where Moyo Hill Camp is located. About halfway there our "safari vehicle" got a flat tire, so our driver graciously changed it with one of the two spare tires we have attached to the back door. This delay was no problem though, as throughout the ride we spotted giraffes and zebras!!! Upon arrival we were greeted by all of the staff and started unpacking our suitcases in our bandas. Bandas are our little homes/dorms that we live in. Us four guys (there are only 4 of us out of 26 students) live in the Nyati banda, which means water buffalo in Swahili: all of the bandas are named after different animals. Luke and I live in the right room and share a bathroom, and Evan and Harrison live in the left room and share a bathroom. There is then a small hallway in between the rooms where there are extra desks for studying (although it's more of an empty storage space than anything...). Overall the bandas are pretty nice and "home-y": I have a bunk bed to myself and utilized the top bunk to put my suitcases. I also have my own desk and my own closet. All of this unpacking was short lived though because we had to meet for lunch and start orientation. Meals are in the dining hall, a large room with rows of wooden tables and a front table where meals are served "buffet style". The food involves a lot of veggies, rice, and AMAZING fresh fruit like watermelon and pineapple. The dining hall is also where we have REKAP in the evening: a sort of group meeting which one student leads every day and stands for "REflection, Kiswahili (we learn 3 new Swahili words), Announcements, and Presentation (where the said student presents something or leads us in a game)".

Orientation involved a ton of name games and an introduction of camp life and classes, led by Amelia. We were also given a tour of campus: there's a row of student bandas on one side of campus and a row of staff bandas on the other side with the dining hall and a gazebo in the middle. Next to the dining hall is a volleyball court and towards the front gate are the educational buildings: we have a classroom, computer room, library and then all of the faculty offices where we can meet professors for office hours. The campus is fenced-in and has a lot of trees inside (lots of shady spots), and circling the outside of campus is a running track/trail that is about a mile in length.

Meals go as follows: breakfast at 7:30am, lunch at noon and dinner at 7pm. Every day there is a group of students who do "cook duty" and help make breakfast in the morning and wash all of the dishes after dinner. Before dinner on the first day a group of us went to play soccer (whoops, football) on the local "football" field nearby with a few local kids. It was SO much fun yet SO exhausting! We also saw an incredible sunset from the fields which made our first day at Moyo Hill even more special.

Days 3, 4 and 5:

We spent these days doing more orientation-related stuff and having our first taste of classes. My classes include: Wildlife Management, Wildlife Ecology, Environmental Policy and Swahili Language and Culture. My professors for these classes (in order) include: Dr. Kiffner (he's German), Dr. Theisinger (he's also German), Dr. Mwamhanga (Tanzanian) and Frank (Tanzanian). Learning Swahili is definitely intense and fast-paced but it helps that we can use it actively both here with the locals at camp and in the community. On one of these days all of the students hiked up Moyo Hill which was about a 30 min hike and had beautiful views of the agricultural landscape and Lake Manyara off in the distance. We also spent one afternoon before dinner playing volleyball and badminton which was a lot of fun, however, the field has some thorns and I scraped open my knee while diving for the ball. Besides this, my health has overall been really well - knock on wood. In addition, I was finally able to do laundry after desperately needing to do so! I was the first one in the group to do laundry (since I was here for 10 days more than everyone else) so it was a bit experimental. We hand-wash our laundry, so I filled two buckets with water, put powder detergent in the one and just started scrubbing with the scrub brush I borrowed from Luke. It took me about an hour and a half and I had to replace the "rinse" bucket water several times because the water turned brown. Anyway, the process wasn't too horrible and hanging up the laundry brought back good memories of my childhood when my mom would actually hang up the laundry instead of using the dryer (@ mom). One of these nights we also spent having a fire at the firepit...making this experience still feel more like a summer camp than a college!

The view from the top of Moyo Hill

Day 6: SAFARI DAY SATURDAY

Typically we have classes on Saturday but this Saturday we went on a safari in Lake Manyara National Park from 8am until 6pm! We spent a combined two hours of this time studying olive baboon behavior for a report that we have to write for our Wildlife Ecology class. I personally focused on grooming behavior and did a sampling of how many times chosen baboons self-groomed over a twenty minute time frame (I will then compare if grooming frequency is higher when at a resting state, walking state, or eating state). Overall, studying behavior was MUCH harder than I anticipated because the baboons constantly move, so you'd either lose track of the 1-6 baboons you were watching within the troupe or they would all disappear from view before the twenty minutes were over. In between these viewings we saw some INCREDIBLE wildlife from our safari vehicles which can pop open the tops and allow for us to stand while driving around! The highlight was definitely seeing a momma elephant with her baby on the side of the road right next to our vehicle (maybe 5-10 feet away)!!! It was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen and my mouth was wide open the whole time! We also saw a herd of literally 50-60 elephants cross the road and saw a group of 2 female lions with 5 older cubs napping in the shade! But wait, there's more! The students in my vehicle and I (the 4 vehicles separated upon entrance into the park) went out on this sketchy boardwalk that extended into the lake where there were hot-springs along the coast - this was during our lunch break at some picnic tables (we packed our lunches in the morning). Animal-wise, we saw elephants, giraffes, zebras, hippos, wildebeest, waterbuck, lions, water buffalo, impala, olive baboons, vervet monkeys, blue monkeys, a few species of mongoose, dik diks, grey crowned cranes and hornbills (a type of bird) to name the ones I can remember! I also learned that Lake Manyara, despite its large size, is only 2-4 meters deep. I can't state enough how awesome it was, and this was only our first safari!!! Our vehicle was the only one without a shaded extended-roof, so I got pretty sunburnt despite putting on sunscreen around 5-6 times. The evening after dinner was spent relaxing and sitting around the campfire before getting some well needed sleep.

Day 7: Free day Sunday

Most Sundays are free days where we don't have classes or any scheduled activities, however, there are optional activities both in Rhotia and other nearby towns that we can do for fun that SFS drives us to. Today I was kitchen crew but breakfast wasn't until 8:30am so I didn't have to start helping until 7:30am. I personally spent the time cutting up two watermelons and one pineapple and putting them on the serving trays. After breakfast I went with a decent group of students (like 12) to do some batik making in Rhotia! Batik making is an artform where you dye cloth into beautiful pictures using wax to "protect" the colors that you don't want dyed a darker color (it sounds confusing but is an awesome process - look it up!). Once done dyeing the cloth you cover the entire canvas with wax and "crinkle" the cloth before dyeing the crinkles. I made a batik with a water buffalo stenciled on it which turned out alright and then I bought a beautiful batik of giraffes with Mt. Kilimanjaro in the background! All of the batiks in the gallery were hand made by our instructors: a man and his wife who have been studying the art for over 40 years! After this endeavor we were driven back to campus where I ate my packed lunch. I then went with another group into Rhotia town where I bought some Pringles and chocolate at a local shop (I needed junk food!), walked around the Sunday markets, and went to a touristy coffee shop called "Coffee Corner" where I spoiled myself to a smoothie, and mini-garlic bread and mini calzones which I shared with Liv. It was all really cheap though (like everything here). I arrived back to campus around 4:30pm and just relaxed and wrote this blog post before dinner. I was cook crew after dinner and spent forever washing dishes before calling my mom, doing some studying/work and going to bed.


Thanks for reading!
-Matt