Well, I've safely made it to Tanzania, my new home for the rest of my semester in East Africa! We arrived on Monday night and are getting settled in to our new camp, which is quite different from KBC in Kenya! More on that later. Just to forewarn: internet is even worse in TZ than it was in Kenya (didn't think that was possible) so I won't be able to post nearly as many pictures unless I do so in the middle of the night or early morning when no one else is online. So, my apologies. Here are a few pics I had uploaded in Kenya from the last few days before we left!
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| elephants in Amboseli and a cattle egret along for the ride. |
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| we were so glad that Kili was out for our last day in the park. I could finally get a picture of some wildlife with the mountain in the background! |
March 15 was our last day of academics in Kenya! We had our
last exam—EP— in the morning after spending the
previous few days studying and hating life (just like finals back in the States! good times). Sunday night, Monday and Tuesday prior were all devoted to studying and preparing for our three 2-hour exams
exams (except on Tuesday afternoon we took a little study break and went to
the Kimana Market for our last market day to get any final gifts and things we wanted in town or from the mamas!)
Didn’t do much of anything to celebrate St Patty’s except
wear green. We got our exam grades on Saturday and I was pleasantly surprised. Before dinner, I went for a walk
to go see the bush babies one last time with Ally and Patrick. One cute and curious fellow up in the tree came
about 10 ft from us, but
before we knew it he was jumping away amongst the trees so we headed back to
camp for dinner. Just as we got to the bandas I stepped on this huge thorn
which stabbed the arch of my left foot and broke off under my
skin. It hurt!...Real bad. It started to swell up and was pretty painful (apparently because the thorns here commonly have toxins on the tips....great) so I told
Jenna and she said she’d get it out after dinner. She dug around trying to pull
it out, but it was pretty stuck so I had to soak my foot for a while before she
attempted again. Mollie, being the sweetheart that she is, sat with me and held
my hand because it was pretty painful getting prodded and poked with the needle
and tweezers for what seemed like forever before Jenna extracted the culprit.
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| ze bush babyyy! It was worth getting a thorn in my foot for. I will miss these little fellas. so cute and curious and small :) |
Saturday we went for an epic hike in the morning because it was a non-program day. The hill was called Oloisoto (literally "big rock" in Swahili) and had an amazing vantage point of the Amboseli ecosystem where we've been living and studying for the past month and a half. It was good exericise climbing up the steep, rocky hill and definitely a great memory I will have of the beauty of Kenya.
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| being a tree on a rock outcrop :) |
Sunday March 18 was our last full day at KBC. We had our session debrief outside under the trees where we
constructively criticized our experiences with SFS thus far and also reflected upon our time here. At the end, we
went around and shared in one or two words how we felt about our experience.
My word was eye-opening, and a few things other people said which encompassed a lot of my feelings were: life changing, opportunity-of-a-lifetime, grateful, pleasantly surprised, surprisingly comfortable, at home, peaceful, and
thankful. As soon as our sweet, soft-spoken WM prof, Shem, started speaking, we all started crying because he said he thought of us
like his family. [Cue group hugging, laughing, crying and smiling.]
The rest of the day we spent packing, cooking for our big feast and walking around taking pictures of every last minute thing we never thought to photograph before. Different people made special dishes for the feast and we took over the kitchen for the day. I made guacamole to go with someone's black bean burgers. There was also delicious chicken wings, chapatti (like a pita/tortilla), falafel, fried rice, deviled eggs, snickerdoodle cookies, PB cookies, pineapple crisp and the most amazing brownies everrrr. We moved all the tables together and feasted with the staff (who just stuck with their traditional ugali, cabbage and vegetables because they're not really fans of our food). Can you say food baby?
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walking around the inner loop one last time and taking enough pictures of kili to remember it forever! the pictures will never do it justice though.....
We left KBC at 7 a.m. Monday morning to begin our adventure to Tanzania. We frantically finished packing up our bed sheets and final things which we had unpacked only 7 weeks prior (which seems like just yesterday). I wish we could’ve had more time to enjoy our last breakfast and say our goodbyes but we were on a time budget to get to the border and swap cars, groups and countries. It was sad to say goodbye to KBC and all the amazing staff we were leaving behind, but I was excited to finally see what Tanzania was like.
One would think that the road leading to the Kenya/Tanzania border would be well marked/ patrolled/ established. ...Wrong! Kenya is never really what you would expect :) The road which we turned off of the paved main road to head towards TZ was an indistinguishable dirt path with scrubland on either side, with nothing else in sight as far as the eye could see (besdies the occasional sighting of zebra, gazelle, giraffe, ostrich and Bustard [a very prehistoric looking bird with a neck like an ostrich, but much much smaller than one] in the distance). Just as I was beginning to fondly wonder how the hell the drivers know which road and what turns to maneuver along the way, we became aware that we were, in fact, lost... except not really -- moreso just disoriented in the middle of nowehere, so the drivers asked some local Maasai at a boma which way to go. Next thing we know, we caught up to the 3 cars that we had separated from. But they were stopped and people walking around outside, which confused us....until we saw that one was tire-less! The entire wheel literally popped off and the car full of luggage was stuck partway into the ground. Whoops! On a tight time budget (which is ironic in Kenya..nothing is ever on time) to get to the border, we had to improvise quickly and squeezed everyone into 3 cars, turning the fourth one into the new luggage storage space. It was a very cozy ride (and extremely bumpy over the washboard roads--I felt like my brain was jumbled into mush and many brain cells were lost from the drive, which lasted about 2 hours until we got to the border).
"Daniel, Daniel, do you copy? do you copy? we have a problem."
It was so cool to see the transformation from Kenya to Tanzania. Even before we got to the actual border, there were huge mountainous hills covered in trees and greenery, which became increasingly common once we crossed into TZ. At the border, we had to “Exit” Kenya then declare ourselves in Tanzania and wait for our Visas. While we were waiting, we got to meet the other group leaving Tanzania for Kenya (strangely bizarre to see the “parallel universe”). None of them were very sad or seemed upset, and they were probably wondering why we were all so blubbery and crying while saying goodbye to Jenna and Tara (because KBC was AWESOME and we didn't want to leave...don't judge us!). It was a sad goodbye to our staff which we got to know so well over the last month and a half. Soonafter, we were handed over to Whitney, our new SAM in Tanzania, swapped land cruisers and began our drive to our new home.
The air is more humid in TZ (but not in a bad way) and everything is so lush and green! The roads were also all completely paved (strange) because it’s a common tourist stretch and even the buildings in the roadside towns are made of cement which makes it look more established and almost nicer. It's strange though because the level of poverty in TZ is way higher than Kenya (34.6% of people live below the poverty line). The per capita income in TZ is $592 USD; life expectancy 58.2 years and the illiteracy rate is 27%. Just to put things in perspective.
After about 2 hours, we made a stop at the Shoprite center in Arusha,to visit the grocery store (bought new PB to replace my jar of good PB that was scavenged by my fellow vulture students when I accidentally left it out after making a PB&J one morning) and also got gelato at a cute little Italian café. Nutella gelato. ‘nuf said. Once again, people went crazy for the iced coffee beverages, and we were on our way after one hour.
The land became more Jurassic-park like as we neared our camp. Does this look like a scene out of Jurassic park to anyone?
We unpacked Monday night and went to bed exhausted from the long day. Tuesday morning I was awoken by some roosters cocka-doodle-doo-ing at about 6 am (the perks of being right next to a little town). We had a little orientation to our new lives in Tanzania with and were guided along the running trail to get a feel for the area because here the loop is actually outside the fence. We then got to walk into Rhotia, the tiny town about a ten minute stroll from our camp, where we can go explore and shop and get clothing made from our fabrics when we have free time. Rhotia is really quite minimal and basic, with a few dukas selling random necessities, some bars and a tailor. We aren’t allowed to go into any of the bars here because of the program rules and the fact that the home brew/local booze they drink is a very dangerous mix of stuff that can make you go blind (maybe it's the gasoline they put in it? just an idea.). Despite this, we were told that alcoholism is a pretty bad problem around here because it’s really cheap and comes in these little Capri sun-like pouches, which are littered all over town.
On the bright side, I'm excited for Sunday because its our first non program day and we get to go into Karatu, the neighboring bigger town and go to a restaurant there which serve American-style food (pizzas, burgers, mac n cheese, ice cream) and also cold (safe) beer! We're all looking forward to it! There's also a pizza place in Mtu wa Mbu (say mmm-tuwambu) that I can't wait to go to.
We had our first actual classes on Wednesday. First things first: the breakfast here is amazing! Well, all the meals, actually. Everything is just a tiny bit more flavorful and fresh tasting (maybe because there’s actually water and not desert-like heat here all the time). The eggs seem yummier (and they have flavorful green peppers and onions, even some mushrooms!), there’s BACON, potatoes (that don’t seem so soaked in oil), thick-cut tomato slices with fresh herbs sprinkled on top, the standard pancakes, beans and oatmeal. There is also delicious fruit , cereal, and soft bread for making cinnamon toast (uber-yum) and egg sandwiches. Satisfied with breakfast, we headed over to the classroom – which is separate from the dining hall here, unlike back at KBC – for our first EP lecture. We were nervous because of none of us reallllly liked our old EP prof, but John Mwamhanga (Mwamhanga, as he likes to be called) is actually very interesting and engaging. We then had a break (nap time!) and WE at 10:30 with John Kioko (or Kioko as we call him). That afternoon, we went to Lake Manyara National Park for our first national park outing! We did a species association exercise for WM and just enjoyed the opportunity to get a feel for the park. Our WM prof, Christian, is the only white professor we’ve had. He’s from Germany but actually has more of a British accent, which is a refreshing change from the sometimes hard to understand East African accents we’ve become accustomed to.
Our drive in LMNP was absolutely beautiful. It is like a different world here! Seriously hard to believe we’re even on the same continent, let alone only one country away! The trees are very dense and some have large, tropical-like leaves that remind me of Costa Rica. The baobab trees are my favorite and there are also other huge trees with huge trunks that tower way overhead. Although we didn’t see as much wildlife as we were accustomed to in Kenya (except tons of dik diks!) it was still a beautiful afternoon enjoying the landscape and getting a feel for the area. Thursday morning we went there again for a WE exercise studying the behavior ecology and feeding habits of baboons.
A zeb right next to our car during the exercise in LMNP.
Friday we had our first traveling lecture around Rhotia and Mtu wa Mbu. I cannot begin to tell you how gorgeous this place is! I'm very excited to do DR here and call it my home for the next month and a half! Tomorrow we are going to Lake Manyara Ranch, a protected area, to study the impact of wildlife on water resources and vegetation (by counting piles of poop--bet you wish you had my life!). I'm actually pretty excited though because water quality/accessibility/management is more in my line of interest!
we sat under this tree for a brief leture...I could barely focus because I was in such awe of how huge it was! (this is a side angle....the other side is probably 3x as wide!)
A little bit about Moyo Hill Camp: it is fenced in and much smaller than KBC. Our bandas are like little duplexes with two sides: each side has two bunkbeds and some shelving, as well as a private bathroom with shower. The bathroom is a weird little room that is raindrop-shaped and has a sink (where I can brush my teeth without using a water bottle to pour water on my toothbrush!). The shower head protrudes awkwardly from the wall and there’s no shower curtain of any sort to separate it from the toilet so you just shower in this wierd little room and the water runs into this drain in the floor (but in reality everything just gets wet). It’s odd to have our bathroom attached to the banda, and I strangely (and unexpectedly) miss walking to the bathrooms at KBC and showering in the open-air stalls (maybe it was the lovely view of Kili over the top of the shower door?). There's also a gorgeous raised gazebo in the middle of camp for hanging out, doing homework or just enjoying the breeze. The staff seems pretty cool too, but they speak a little more swahili and a little less english than we were used to at KBC, so that will take some getting used to. Also, I've sort of acquired the name "crazy" here because when I introduce myself to people, they think that's what I'm saying and that's what it sounds like when anyone from East Africa trys to say my name. So it's been interesting (to say the least) introducing myself to the new staff and the little kids we meet while walking in town (and the kids think its hilarious). Excited to get to know them better over the semester and also to compare the ecology of Kenya and Tazania!
My banda! Myself, Karen and Sidra are on the left side.
We have classes this week and next week, then have an exam on Saturday the 31st and leave April 1 for our expedition at Serengeti National Park! Very very excited for that. Unlike Nakuru, we are not fenced in there (which is kinda scary because of the high population of carnivores in the park....this should be interesting). Stay tuned for more on that :)
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