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