be prepared everyone...this may be my longest blog post yet!!! I'm writing this from Arusha in my fave internet cafe. we got back this morning from our weeklong safari so we're all pretty exhausted but here is the latest happenings from Tanzania!
We left last Sunday morning after a very long Saturday night which involved the local bar, a lot of chocolate, a lot of Konyagi, and clothing that was restricted to just a kanga (a wrap around skirt type thing). Earlier on saturday we had discovered this GREAT bookshop owned by this British woman who had all the newest books...it was like a mini Barnes and Nobles. Needless to say I was very excited and bought a book (the third girl with the dragon tattoo book, Celeste and Moni!). Oh, also this is very random but I found Vegemite at Shop Rite and I have been eating it on my toast every morning. This made me very happy because vegemite doesnt exist in the states and although i know of no one else who likes it, I am obsessed with it! I plan on buying a huge bottle to bring back. ok, sorry, back to the important stuff. We left Sunday morning for Tarangire National Park, which was about 2 hours away. The drive was very cool, because we havent seen a ton of the Tanzanian landscape yet, except for where we've been camping. THere were lots of Maasai bomas (villages) and lots of cows along the way. We got to Tarangire and for the first time since we've been in TZ it was HOT! We drove to our campsite and set up, and sadly had some very rude Italians as our neighbors. The campsite was great it actually had a real toilet and a nice little covered eating area. However, it did have thorns everywhere, so we all got our fair share of them stuck in our feet and other various body parts.
We shared the eating area with the Italians and they actually said during the middle of dinner that "one side was theirs, and the other was ours, and to stay on our side." RUDE. Once we finished setting up we took off in the Land Rovers for some wildlife viewing!!! Tarangire was SO pretty. The first night we saw a ton of impala, wildebeeste, zebra, and lots and lots of tembo (elephants!) The elephants actually came within about 10 feet of our car which was pretty amazing to see. I have some pics I'll hopefully get a chance to upload soon. That night at camp was pretty interesting to say the least....I think I had mentioned in an earlier post that the campsite isnt fenced whatsoever, so any animals can walk through camp if they want to! I woke up probably 7 times in the middle of the night to hear angry baboons, LIONS ROARING, and hyena nearby. Very cool but also a bit frightening considering we're basically only protected by our mesh tents.
The next morning we woke up, had breakfast at 6:30am and set off to collect data! We're split into 4 groups, and I'm in the Non Ruminant group, which is great because it includes the predators! :)The first morning was basically to just take a survey on what we saw 100m on either side of the road. We had a nice time watching a stampeding herd of wildebeest led by an ostrich in the front! We drove down to the river afterwards and got to see 5 cheetah! so cool because its the first wild cat i've ever seen! they were kind of far away but it was awesome. After morning data collection we have free time in the afternoon to just hang out and relax and then our evenings are spent doing more game drives around Tarangire. The first thing we got to see that afternoon was a giraffe, but im not joking, i could have reached out and touched it, it was that close. Giraffe are generally very friendly because they've never been hunted, because they're the national animal of Tanzania.
The next day was essentially the same thing, but our data collection in the morning was sexing and classifying our non-ruminants into age classes. We literally sexed a herd of about 100 zebra, which took a good hour. We also got to watch a troop of baboons around our car which was slightly frightening because male baboons can rip your face off and they probably could have jumped into our land rover if they wanted to. That night we got to go to Solelo Swamp, which was beautiful. Its the dry season here in TZ so everything is very brown and dead, but all of a sudden you drive over a hill and theres this massive green swamp, about 12 sq km right in the middle of all the brown. There were tons of warthog, zebra and elephants drinking and wading in the water. Oh we had also gotten to see a leopard earlier, which was sleeping in a tree! We were pretty lucky to see that because they're very hard to spot, as they usually only hunt at night.
Our third day there I GOT TO SEE LIONS. I literally almost fell out of my Land Rover I was so excited. We got to watch (along with about 14 other cars), 3 female lions stalk a warthog. Coolest thing of my life, no joke. It was crazy to see how well thought out their stalking was. A herd of elephant even walked in the middle of the lion and warthog at one point and the lion just sat there quietly. Sadly, the lion pounced and missed the warthog, but it was still crazy to watch. I still have to constantly remind myself these are all WILD animals, and I was watching a real lion stalk its prey.
Later that day we got to have the afternoon off to chill at a pool....in the middle of the national park! .none of us had showered in 4 days so we were taken to the Tarangire Safari Lodge for an afternoon of relaxation. it was kind of crazy to be at the pool though. I obviously highly enjoyed my shower and afternoon of reading at a pool but it was weird to think that I was doing this in a National park, in the middle of Tanzania! I could literally sit in my lounge chair and see a girafee or elephant in the background. It was a very surreal kind of experience. But the view from the lodge was gorgeous and it was our last full day in Tarangire...to top it off we had a gorgeous sunset driving back to camp in our Land Rover. :) note about the land rovers: HIGHLY uncomfortable. Most of the time we are standing with the roofs popped up, but the sides are metal so most of us have bruises around our ribcages and hips from trying to hang on for dear life while speeding 50km down a bumpy dirt road!
So on thursday (sep 23) we left Tarangire to head to Lake Manyara National Park, and the town of Mtu Wa Mbo (which means mosquito river). I was sad to leave tarangire, mostly because it was one of the most gorgeous places I've been to, but also the first place I saw a lion and the big cats!!!! Not sad to leave our Italian neighbors though. Before we left we had a lecture by TANAPA (Tanzania National Parks) about Tarangire and its history. Very interesting and I wont go into much detail here but basically I feel that everything I have thought of about conservation and national parks is being challenged so much here, and I honestly don't even know what to think anymore. Which I guess is good, I'm being challenged, but honestly my brain hurts trying to think of solutions to Africa's AID problem or whether the Maasai or the wildlife deserve the land. THe more we delve into a subject here, the more I get confused and the more I realize how helpless we are in a way. But anyways, thats a longer story for another time.
We headed to Mtu Wa Mbo and were staying at a place called Twiga Campsite (which means Giraffe). The campsite was awesome! It had a nice little pool and green grass to camp on, which was great after having camped on thorns and dirt. I would liken it to Tanzania's version of a KOA. And no joke, I actually had my first semi-warm shower since I've gotten to Tanzania, which was great. Once we set up we went on a Cultural Walking Tour...we got to visit lots of artisans and I bought a couple good christmas presents so i wont go into too much detail :) We also got to try banana beer, which was kind of disgusting in my opinion but very cool to hear how its made. They cant bottle it because it'll keep fermenting so we all drank out of a large cup. It had millet sprinkled on top and was very thick. One of my friends here Chelsea likened the taste to "a mixture of hamster food and dirty socks, " but I didnt think it was quite that bad :)
The next morning we got to do our final data collection in Lake Manyara national park, which is known for having a large population of flamingos and hippos. i was an idiot and brought my camera but forgot to put my battery back in my camera after charging it....sooo no pics from the park. But i'll hopefully steal some from friends once they are loaded. My group decided to study hippos as our last species.......probably not the best choice in retrospect. The hippos themselves were awesome to see, because i didnt realize they were that HUGE. But, not exaggerating here, i watched my female hippo for a full TWO HOURS and the most she did was twitch her ear. She didn't move once. Nor did the other 2 hippos we chose to focus on. But of course the other 30 hippos in the group decided to swim around and be aggressive and get out and lay down near some zebra. Not our hippos though! So our data mostly consisted of 7:30am: ear twitch seen, 7:35am: bird lands on hippo, 7:36: bird leaves hippo. No joke. But it was cool because we got to see an African Cape Buffalo in the background, and which ended up coming within 15m of where we were posted. There were also tons of pelicans, hornbills, and zebra, wildebeest, and impala in the background. It was basically a real life Lion King! :) That afternoon we had the choice to explore town a bit or go on an ethnobotany tour, or drive the ecological walk, which I went on. Last spring 4 students walk about 80km through the Rift valley doing an "ecological walk" for their ISP (ind. study project) which we do at the end of the semester. Some other students and I want to do the same thing this semester, comparing our data with theirs because we are in the dry season while they were in the wet season. However, our goal would be to walk 110km from Mtu Wa Mbo to Lake Natron in 20 days, which would be about 8 miles every other day, using the days inbetween for data collection. I dont know if its even going to happen yet but I'm hoping it will! We have lots of logistics to figure out, so I'll report more on that later.
That night once we all got back to camp we were taken to a disco after dinner! It was so fun! It was this cute little bar tucked away behind some buildings and they had a DJ and played some really great Tanzanian music mixed in with some random American songs. They played Shakira's Waka Waka song about 5 times. It was really fun to just chill with the group and relax. The next morning (today!) we packed up our tents (i stepped on a bee in the process) and peaced out to go back to Arusha. We all pretty much slept the entire way back. We had all of today in town and all of tomorow to do whatever and then we're back up to Bangata tomorrow night for the last week of homestay!!! We have 3 papers to write by next weekend (16 pages total) and our Kiswahili midterm.
I think that about sums up what has happened so far! I will try and upload pictures tomorrow!!!!!
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