This week was the second and final week of collecting data for our Directed Research (DR) projects. Within Dr. Kiffner's group, we spent four days analyzing the landscape of Manyara Ranch Conservancy for plastic pollution - this is the basis of my team's research project/paper. Every day we drove from Moyo Hill to the ranch which is about an hour away.
Manyara Ranch Fieldwork:
On Monday our focus was going to certain spaced-out GPS points within Manyara Ranch and walking out four 10m x 5m plots, scanning for any presence of trash. There were 20 GPS points split between two vehicles of students, with the four plots per GPS point. As most of the day was spent off-roading in the middle of the ranch, we saw lots of wildlife including giraffes, elephants, wildebeest, zebra, gazelles and impala! It was also fun to literally drive through bushes and trees with our powerful safari vehicle. At one point, we saw a domestic dog chasing after some mongoose, and our ranger (who had to accompany our vehicle for safety reasons) was seconds away from shooting the dog. The dog was owned by one of the pastoralists that graze their cattle in the ranch, and dogs are not allowed in the ranch since they are considered "poachers" (they kill wildlife therefore the statement isn't wrong) - because of this, rangers shoot all dogs on the spot. Me and the other students in my vehicle basically refused to let him shoot the dog and we drove off to the next GPS point quicker than usual in order to "save" the dog from the ranger! My vehicle's 10 GPS points ended up turning into 12 as we were faster than the other vehicle and took some of their points. Since these plots were done in the middle of the ranch, we expected to see very little trash and were right: there was only one piece of trash found (a plastic bottle) throughout the 80 plots surveyed! After this, we had a bit of a game drive while opportunistically looking for feces samples that we will later analyze for evidence of plastic consumption. Before driving back in the late afternoon we stopped by the ranch's ranger station which is also its dog facility (the dogs are used for law enforcement) to play with the dogs!!!
On Tuesday we started the hard part of our fieldwork: going up and down the tarmac roads that border Manyara Ranch and performing 26 100m transects per road. Within each transect, we picked up every piece of trash throughout ten 10m x 5m plots....this totals to A LOT of tedious work picking up trash and weighing/categorizing each piece in the sweltering Tanzanian heat. Before all this work started though, we got to see Mt. Meru during our drive to the ranch since it was super clear this morning! We also gave a ride to some SIT students who were also doing research in Manyara Ranch. SIT is SFS's "rival" study abroad program, and a big difference is that SIT is much less structured. Their students have to arrange all of their travel and mostly walk everywhere, they don't have a campus but live in hostels, and they don't really have classes to take nor professors but get credit through their fieldwork. While I like the independence of SIT, I am so incredibly happy that I chose SFS to study abroad in Tanzania with! Anyway, back to our trash transects....my vehicle was able to get 10 of our 26 transects done by 3:30pm. The other vehicle only got 6 done. The work was very hot and exhausting but we were definitely getting good data: you could visibly notice the drop-off in the density of trash the further we got from the road. We also had some fun while we did our work, for example at one point I was "fencing" with Dr. Kiffner with the 5m poles we use to measure our plot widths with! At the end of the day we had another game drive to drop our ranger back off at the ranger station. During this game drive we saw an elephant with just one HUGE tusk that almost touched the ground! We then got a flat tire while driving back but made up for this by stopping for ice cream and mango juice in Mto wa Mbu.
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Doing trash plots
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Day three started the way day two ended...with another flat tire as we drove to Manyara Ranch. Today our transects went much quicker as we were able to get 14 transects done by 4:30pm leaving only two to do tomorrow. The other vehicle miraculously did the remaining 20 of their transects leaving none to complete tomorrow! We did have a slow down though...Kiffner got a thorn stuck INTO his ankle to the point where you couldn't see the thorn anymore! He claimed that the thorn was facing upward parallel to his Achilles tendon. Because of this, he couldn't walk or drive so we needed to wait for Amelia to show up and take over our car as one of the SFS drivers took Kiffner to FAME which is a local medical facility/small-scale hospital. One thing we noticed throughout data collection in Manyara Ranch was the atypical heat and dryness. By this time the rainy-season would already be in full force where it would rain for days at a time, however, the rainy season is getting later and later each year. Because of this, so many crops are dying and people are struggling to grow food and purchase enough for their families. I know I'm definitely praying for rain!...it's also incredible how some people still refuse to believe that climate change is real....
Our day ended by petting the dogs again and getting another flat tire (go figure).
Thursday was our final day of DR fieldwork in Manyara Ranch. Today we only had one car with six students as the other four went to Lake Manyara National Park to collect more data on ungulates (since they didn't get enough data in Makame). My vehicle finished the two remaining tarmac transects and then proceeded to do eight transects along the western border of the ranch where there are many bomas where people live. We wanted to see whether trash densities were higher near the roads or near the community areas. As expected, the amount of trash was much lower along this border. Instead of walking the plots like I had done the previous three days, today my job was weighing and classifying the trash. We were super quick and finished all of this work by lunch! Then, we collected the last few feces samples that we needed (we are analyzing 5 samples of zebra and 5 samples of giraffe feces to compare grazing animals vs browsing animals). It was during this time that we saw (and resultantly "chased") a group of 40 giraffes!!!! Fun fact: a group of giraffes is called a "tower". They are so majestic and I'm still in awe every time I see one, much less 40! It was also an incredible experience to walk within half a football field of these animals (since Manyara Ranch isn't a national park, we are permitted to get out of the vehicles). Today we were back at Moyo Hill by 3pm which was well deserved after the past three days of intense work where we didn't get back until 6pm.
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| So many giraffes off in the distance! |
Rest of the week:
During one of the evenings, for the mwanafunzi presentation we proceeded to fit all 26 of us into one safari vehicle successfully! Also, MY CLARINET REEDS FINALLY CAME after 8 weeks!!!! On Thursday I was mwanafunzi of the day and showed everyone a video I created about my Kili hike which everyone seemed to enjoy. We also watched the movie Spirit this night.
Friday, let's just say, sucked.
It was the first day of data entry/data analysis and I literally spent 7 straight hours glued to my computer screen as I entered endless amounts of data - and I only entered a third of the data since there are three in my group! Combined we probably spent about 24 hours entering data into Excel...
I took a break from data entry to play soccer before dinner, and at dinner we had a Passover ceremony (four of the students in the program our Jewish), where I ate some yummy matzah with haroseth! We also had a campfire this night where we witnessed our last full moon together in Tanzania and I finally played the clarinet for everybody.
So...maybe Friday didn't suck too much.
On Saturday my group finalized our data entry and I started literally digging through our poop samples. I have a mini lab setup in the one gazebo and today I collected the dry weight of each sample, rehydrated them, and started to separate the solid from liquid components in search of small pieces of plastic. In the afternoon I did a little photoshoot on top of Moyo Hill! I wanted some quality pictures taken with my facial hair before I shave off the beard (which is happening sooner rather than later), so Alma was kind enough to take some awesome pictures of me! In the evening, we all went to Happy Days which is a pub in Karatu: here I held a WILD hedgehog which was so incredibly cute. When we got back I called my mom since today was her birthday!
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| The background of my photoshoot - dust storm plus thunderstorm plus rainbow! |
Sunday was our free day AND Easter!. I went to Mto wa Mbu in the morning to go to the Maasai market and trade some of my things for souvenirs. I also went to Mosquito Creek café where I ate some cinnamon buns and pet some dogs! In the afternoon I took a longggg nap and played some volleyball before dinner, which included goat as our special Easter entre! After dinner I typed this blog and MIGHT have shaved off part of my beard with the rest of the boys...you'll find out next week!
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| Lucy at Mosquito Creek Café /// What is my beard becoming?!? |
Thanks for reading!
Matt
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