Five cups of chai later...I say

hungry, hungry hippo
(I love baby hippos!)

Friday afternoon we arrived back from our camping expedition in Serengeti National Park. Overall it was an amazing week and we had some time to relax and enjoy the park without any graded assignments looming over our heads! Saturday was an awesome non-program day and Sunday was our homestay with a family in Tanzania (turned out much better than my Kenya homestay--details below!). Now we are beginning directed research and I'm eager to get working on my project!

We had left last Monday morning around 7:15 after packing up the white rhino with all our camping gear and piling into the cars. We first stopped at Oldupai Gorge, “the cradle of man”.  This place is where in the year 1959,  Mary and Louis Leakey discovered fossils that are millions of years old and footprints of early hominids, immediate ancestors of the modern human. We had a brief lecture about the history, discoveries and some geology in the area which was super interesting, then drove on, arriving to Serengeti National Park around 2 pm.

We popped the hatches and game drove on our way to the campsite. Right away we saw two male Grant's gazelle start fighting and their horns got stuck! I was convinced that we would see a neck get broken or something bad happen, but after a few brutal minutes they managed to free themselves from their self-inflicted imprisonment. Phew...Pretty intense. When we got to our camp, we set up our tents in a semi-circle fashion with a fire pit in the middle and the staff set up their tents scattered about the perimeter of the camp ground. The bathroom, which we had to get escorted to when it was dark out by our askari, Bura, was about 150 meters away. Bura is this younger askari who is really funny and doesn’t speak much English but still manages to joke with us. He does a great hyena impression and would tell us each morning about the wildlife he would see or hear around camp, complete with proper animal noises.

boys boys boys.....always fighting.

tents and the sunset on our first night! lovely

Tuesday morning we packed lunches and left for our full day driving around the park. It started out with birding for the first two hours in preparation for our exercise the next morning. We saw and identified more than 30 birds of all different sizes – some crazy colors, others drab, and others yet with crazy patterns. We saw some beautiful lovebirds, lilac-breasted rollers, and even some creepy vultures with bald pink heads (like the ones in Jungle Book). Throughout the day, we were also looking for giraffes and elephants to do behavioral observations in the event of a sighting. We saw plenty of giraffe but barely any elephants—they were only far off in the distance. For the exercise, we would name the giraffes and then record observations on their feeding behaviors and techniques. It was highly entertaining to watch the giraffes slowly step their front legs apart one at a time to lower their heads down to the ground and drink. It was also cool to see the variation in color, sizes and patterns among the giraffes (and of course, see the little babies!). They are a truly fascinating animal! For lunch, we stopped and ate on top of “Maasai Rock”, a place with this beautiful vantage point of the park. “Serengeti” means endless grasslands or never-ending plains, so as you can imagine, we saw plenty of open plains, but it was absolutely gorgeous! There are mountains as the backdrop, and beautiful Acacia trees dotting the landscape, as well as random rocky features which are really cool. I kept hoping to see some lions on top of the rocks, Lion King-style, but alas, no such luck.

a lilac breasted roller. beautiful!

After lunch we continued game driving around, observing giraffes meanwhile looking for cheetahs and leopards (the students’ main goal, obviously).

the male impala

awkward central! soooo funny to watch giraffes drink.

Wednesday morning, we woke up at 6:30 am to head out for our bird behavior and distribution exercise. Unfortunately five out of the six tents woke up soaked from the previous night’s rain (thankfully my tent was the one that stayed dry—yusss!) so we had some unhappy campers. I was luckily in the car with Kioko, our professor who is a birding fanatic, who helped us ID rare birds and also spot some hard to see ones in the wetland areas we were studying. Our group “won” the competition of who could see the most birds, but our real prize was the cheetah that we got to see on our way back to camp around for breakfast!  Never mind that we were late for breakfast (it was already 10 am) but as we were passing through this one area, we noticed about 15 cars lined along the roads, a telltale sign of a carnivore sighting in these parks. We soon noticed a cheetah walking through the tall grass, which had drawn the crowd. We were all super stoked because we had been itching to see a cheetah, so we frantically snapped pictures and we were baffled when she suddenly just sat down in a small clearing.

Oohing and ahhing at her beauty, I absentmindedly said, “I will poop my pants if she gets up on that fallen tree” which she proceeded to then saunter over to and jump up on, and Kioko from the front seat turned around and quietly inquired, “who is pooping?”  We all had a good laugh and watched the cheetah slowly stalk away through the tall grass (never understood the concept of spots as camouflage until that moment). I felt bad for her though because of the excessive harassment that she was getting from tourists. Each time she would move, many cars would start up, revving their engines, and drive forward to follow her. If she were trying to hunt or mate or anything important like that, it would be nearly impossible. This is a huge issue for big cats in parks like this because they are so highly stressed that they can sometimes have difficulty surviving and/or reproducing. I get comfort knowing that more than a third of the park is classified as wilderness and can only be minimally disturbed, so the animals at least have that (and the other 42% that is low-use) to retreat to. Maybe she was just showin off because she knew she was cute :)

duma = cheetah

I spy....

After returning to camp for a delicious breakfast (I love making breakfast sandwiches here with the obscenely buttered toast, eggs, bacon, potatoes, peppers and onions….. needless to say, I am really going to miss all my meals being made for me, especially breakfast), we hung out and relaxed. Paige and I took a “shower” with baby wipes since we didn't have access to showers really.  Around one we headed to the visitor center for a cold soda and a lecture from a TANAPA official. He told us about the park and some statistics about it, as well as the challenges faced by the park management and wildlife. Let’s just say that they get lots of visitors, as well as passerby-ers, which anyone who enters the park can see the effects of. There are roads and trails all over the place, frequent signs of cars being stuck in mud, and plain and simple just a lot of visitors. After the lecture, we continued game driving while looking for elephants to observe for our exercise. (Sometimes I can’t help but notice that we in some ways contribute to the problem….) However, being done with our classes for the semester, this expedition was our first chance to just relax and enjoy ourselves (and look for cheetahs!) before we start DR and get back down to business. As the sun was setting – which was absolutely amazing – we saw two lion cubs playing on a dead tree trunk so we stopped to watch before heading back to camp for dinner. As far as the exercise went, we never ended up being successful seeing elephants until Friday morning on our way out of the park (ha). After dinner, we sat around the campfire telling ghost stories and other scary true stories before heading to bed. That night I was woken up on multiple occasions by hyenas laughing (at one point, I think one was literally right next to my tent!) and heard some lions, buffalo, wildebeest and hippos, too. Luckily no encounters on the way to the bathroom or anything!

twiga! nom nom nom. See those thorns? they use their long tongues to eat while avoiding those

storks perched in the trees

Thursday was a half day, so in the morning we once again game drove around the park while continuing our giraffe and elephant exercises. It was kind of funny because after hearing hyenas, lions and buffalo calls all night, we did not see much of any wildlife in the park that morning! It was like they were mocking us!! We would see zebras or hartebeest or impala about once every half hour but literally just saw the open plains otherwise (which was gorgeous, so I actually didn’t really mind). Around 11 we found the same momma lion with her two cubs (the ones that we saw Monday night—we knew this because momma had on  a radio collar because she was being studied by Serengeti Lion Project researchers) lounging on this fallen tree trunk in the sun. It was picture purr-fect and the babies were too cute to handle. Made the slow morning a little more worth it. 

You can't see mommas collar, but you can see how friggen cute her babies are!!

 We then ventured into a new part of the park on our way to the Serena Lodge for our relaxing afternoon at the pool. First, we made a stop at a hippo pool with a viewing area where we got to get out of the car and see probably close to fifty hippos – big ones and little babies! – floating around, play fighting and flinging their poop everywhere.  I, personally, love hippos, but was a little off-put by their method of using the restroom in which they flick their tail back and forth like a boat propeller and splatter their poo everywhere. Gross. Despite this interesting approach to going to the bathroom and the resulting nasty smell, we happily watched the hippos playing in the murky pool, randomly disappearing and popping up again for about half an hour. My favorite was probably the little babies because they are absolutely ridiculous looking. What’s not to love?! Just as we were about to leave, someone spotted a cheetah way down at the end of the river/dam thing where the hippos were swimming.  It was an interesting species association to note, so we stayed to see what would happen. It seemed as though the cheetah had been chased down there or was scared by something because he was sketchily slinking around and ran into the woods two separate times before disappearing for good.

me, happy as a hippo in a hippo pool!

little hippos playing in the water

We then drove onwards to the Serena lodge where we enjoyed a few cold beverages and some snacks. Since I had forgotten my swimsuit back at Moyo Hill, I sat with a few other girls and appreciated the gorgeous panoramic view from atop the patio on the hill while enjoying our drinks.  On our way back to camp that evening, we were lucky enough to see a leopard sitting on a fallen tree, which then proceeded to cross the road and scope out some baboons in the nearby trees. We were hoping to see some action, but they just scared him away and he ran back across the road and hid in the grass, too well hidden for us to see him again. Kioko told us that last year a baby leopard got killed by baboons while they were there :( They also got to see some of the great migration of wildebeest, but unfortunately we were a little too late for that, too. We did get to see another killer sunset that night while driving back to camp though. Love me some African sunsets!

thinkin I should submit this to Tusker for an advertising campaign....

chui on a termite mound the prowl for some babs....no luck this time.

Friday morning got up at 5:30 before the sun rose to pack up camp, eat breakfast and say goodbye to the beautiful Serengeti. We popped the hatches once last time for our drive out of the park, enjoying the lovely landscape.  Lucky for Sidra and Becca who were in my car and had yet to see a cheetah in the park, we saw 3 cheetahs off in the distance just before we got to the park gate. They were super excited and we were all glad that everyone got their chance to see a duma! We got home around 3 (after one car continued the tradition of getting in a minor car accident on the hairpin curves along the way home from expedition—everyone was okay, thankfully) and we settled back in to our bandas(oh, I forgot to mention that probably 5 or 6 people were sick with some stomach business throughout the trip--not ideal when camping or for being in a car all day....they were definitely glad to be back to regular access to bathrooms at MHC). I went for a short run and took a refreshing shower for the first time in 5 days (Nice, right Shelly?!). We were all sad though because we knew that come Saturday morning, Jenna and Sipaya would be leaving us to go back to Kenya. It was great to spend the week with them though  :)

the beautiful serengeti national park (and the roads all tore up)

DIK DIK! this guys are so friggen adorable! and they are monogamous. cuuuute.

Saturday was a non-program day and we went to Karatu for some shopping, then to the huge once-a-month market that semi-resembled a big flea market. Everything from food to clothes to livestock was for sale and thousands of people bussling about. Walking with my friend Ally, I nearly got pick-pocketed but managed to quickly figure out what was going on when my heel got stepped on from behind and I looked back then turned around to find an old man was wayyy too close to me, trying to unzip an outer pocket of my purse. Before anything happened, I gave him a swift elbowing and yelled a few choice words, and he ran off.  Funny for him because all that was in there was my nearly empty chapstick. Whitney had warned us to keep close tabs on all our stuff but I didn't imagine it would actually happen to me...it was pretty freaky and didn't hit me until a few minutes after it actually happened.  I am just glad that nothing was taken because I have heard scary stories about other friends studying abroad in Europe and getting mugged at knifepoint and their stuff stolen. So at least I got away unscathed. Ironically, this all happened approximately 5 minutes after Ally and I were saying how much we love the people here and how we'll miss how friendly everyone is (and the daily ego boost haha). Same thing happened to 2 other people, but nothing bad happened to anyone or was taken. I guess there's a few bad eggs anywhere you go. I am glad it took this long for something bad to happen though....kind of surprised, honestly--probably mostly because so many people imposed their concerns for my safety/security/etc. on me when I told them I was going to Africa, when in reality, scary things like that happen every day anywhere back in the states and elsewhere. Besides that brief moment, I have never felt unsafe here because SFS does a great job taking care of us -- and I'm a pretty smart gal;)

 After the market, some of us went to Happy Days to have a drink and relax (that makes a whopping total of 4 beers I’d drank among the last 3 days!).

April 8, Easter Sunday, we had our home stay in Tanzania with an Iraqw family. I was feeling really hopeful about it and optimistic that it would be a better experience than my Maasai home stay in Kenya (I figured the chance of me having two traumatizing experiences was probably pretty low)…luckily I was right. It was an awesome day! I was paired with Laura, a girl from New York who goes to school in Vermont, who is a sweetheart and cracks me up. After breakfast at camp, we left Moyo Hill in the foggy rain at 8 a.m. to get dropped off at Mama Imbori’s home in Rhotia. Once again, we went carrying two big grocery bags full of food – cabbage, bagged milk, sugar, rice, beans, tomatoes, onions, peppers, carrots, cookies, chai tea, and meat – and a big jerry can full of our filtered water. Our mama welcomed us to her home, a relatively large rectangle-shaped home made from clay with a metal roof and a frame of large branches and sticks. The door led into this small sitting area with low benches on both sides and a couple stools, where she gestured for us to sit down. On either side of the room was a doorframe with a sheer curtain covering the entrance to the other rooms, which had modest beds (a frame made from sticks with an animal hide or woven reed mat on top) and a small window.

We sat for about 30 minutes and introduced ourselves to the 5 or so people who came by to see us wazungus (the white people). Our mama was actually a grandma who spoke Iraqw….no English and very little Swahili. We realized this while listening to her from the other room trying to figure out some technical difficulties with her cell phone (I still wonder where they charge their phones).  She played phone tag with a mysterious female on the other line for a while. There was one younger girl who was popping in and out of the house carrying different things. She was probably 13 years old and we asked her “Jino lako ni nani?” (what is your name?) to which she responded, “Name”. We nodded our heads yes to try to get her to tell us what her name was, asking again, this time in English, “What is your name?” “Name,” she replied. This happened one or two more times before we figured out that her name was something that sounded exactly like “Name” so we smiled and nodded and introduced ourselves. Soon after, two boys came in and introduced themselves at Reginaldo (Reggy) and Charley. They were also grandkids in their late teens and spoke Swahili, as well as plenty of English so we were relieved. Reggy asked for my digital camera and began taking pictures of us awkwardly sitting in their home while our mama continued to call back and forth on her cell phone in an attempt to reach someone. We were confused, but didn’t think much of it and we decided to head outside to look around.

After a while, we went into a nearly identical looking house that was basically attached, which was for cooking and had more beds for the kids. After our eyes adjusted to the dark, we sat with Reggy as he heated our water and some milk in a pot to make chai, then added a crap load of sugar from a brown paper bag. We used a strainer to filter off the tea as we poured it into a thermos and headed back to the main house to sit and take chai. Taking that first scalding sip while they eagerly watched as I burnt my tongue, we realized that we hadn’t added sugar to the chai in the dark room but rather some RICE! We all had a good long laugh and Reggy proceeded to scoop heaping spoonfuls of sugar into our cups. We sat and enjoyed the chai and lovely view, which included farm fields amongst fog settled in the rolling hills, tropical trees and even some makeshift grave/burials marked with flowers and crosses yonder on the hill. (Immediately I was glad that I hadn't asked Reggy where his parents were and why he lived with his grandma...)

Reggy drinking chai, our mama (grandma) washing a bucket and Charley sweeping away all the mud people scraped off their shoes before entering the home.

 After a cup and a half of chai, Laura and I came to the consensus that we needed to brave the bathroom situation and asked where the choo was. Turns out, it was this small structure of sticks, grasses and leaves in the shape of a square which we had speculated before was the toilet.  The potato sack door opened to reveal a small 6-inch diameter hole in the middle of the room to which it was quite difficult to aim (slightly jealous of guys at this point).

Anywho, we went back to the home and sat on our stools again for a short while before Reggy told us that our mama wanted us to cut cabbage. He halved the head of cabbage in this large, shallow woven basket and handed us each knives to get to work. Tiny slivers, we were instructed, and they watched and giggled at us as we attempted to cut the cabbage correctly. A few more visitors stopped by and poked their heads in, welcoming us and asking questions which for the most part we didn’t understand. After a while of our inefficient cutting, Reggy took my knife and began slicing cabbage when a familiar face walked in. It was Adeola, the woman tailor we had visited a few times in Rhotia!  I got a skirt made that I love and just yesterday dropped off a shuka to get a sweatshirt made. She is our mama’s daughter and that was who they were trying to reach on the phone! Suddenly it all made sense. (And thank God, because she speaks a decent amount of English, is super friendly and was quite helpful all day). We all walked over to the cooking house and helped slice up carrots, tomatos, onions, green peppers and meat to cook in pots over the fire for lunch. We also sifted the rice by shaking and tossing it up in the air with the same wide, shallow woven basket (while trying to not make a huge mess) meanwhile chatting with Adeola and Reggy, and learning different words in kiswahili and kirqaw. We also learned that Adeola is actually married to Paolo, a camp assistant at Moyo Hill! Such a small world. When lunch was ready around one, we headed over to the first house and ate our rice, cabbage and veggies—it was amazing! I even braved a few pieces of the chewy meat (which I think was goat). They kept trying to get us to eat more, but we were stuffed and insisted we were full.

Laura and myself cutting cabbage in the multi-use basket.

After lunch, Adeola asked if we wanted to go see her home and meet her two children. We walked about 15 minutes along a dirt trail through various farm fields and up a few hills before reaching her extremely nice home made of cement and furnished with real furniture and white linens. It was amazing! Her two kids, Josefu and Novatus (Nova) were looking fly in their Easter clothes, ready to go to church. We sat down and Adeola explained that custom is to sit and have chai and chakula (food) with their guests, so despite the fact we had just eaten at her mother’s house, she served up more rice, meat, potatoes and veggies for us from some shiny silver pots. After forcing myself to finish the little bit of food I was given, we finished our chai, took a few pictures of the cute kids then headed back to our mamas home. They asked to look through all of our pictures on our digital cameras (they are fascinated by them) so we showed the animals pics from Serengeti and told stories. We then said our goodbyes to Adeola who was going to church with her family for Easter Mass (we had assumed prior to coming that we would probably wouldn't be doing much work but might get to go to church, but it turned out our mama had gone the night before at midnight so that didn’t happen….whoops). 

We asked if there was anything to do, and were given some dishes to wash in this large plastic bowl that contained what I would classify as dirty water. After that was done, Reggy offered us more tea and I drank two more cups, making my total a whopping five cups of chai. I am turning into an East African! I swear Laura and I were drunk off the absurd amount of chai (or at least sugar high) and we sat their giggling with Reggy and saying “I say” after everything we said, because that’s what a lot of people in Tanzania do (“Mambo, I say” [a greeting to which you respond “Poa, I say”] and of course we took it too far and put it after everything we said….e.g. “This chai is great, I say” “I’m quite sleepy, I say” and “Charley, take more chai, I say”)…..I dunno, like I said, it was funny at the time. We were getting quite sleepy, however, and despite the morning flying by, the afternoon seemed to drag on from about 3-5 pm because it was Sunday and there wasn't much they wanted us to do. We ended up getting picked up at 5 pm, so we took a few last pictures with our mama and Reggy and the beautiful view that have from their home.

Laura showing off the lovely toilet....see that tiny hole on the ground?!? (it's kind of hidden -- to the right, just above the lowest bunch o' leaves)

I couldn’t be more grateful for such an amazing and unique way to spend my Easter. Even though I could really go for some cheesy potatoes, delicious desserts and the other delicious foods that regularly accompany my Easter feast with my mother’s side of the family every year, I thoroughly enjoyed my meal of cabbage, rice and goat while sitting on a wooden bench in a small house made of clay and sticks.  Overall, it was a phenomenal experience and despite the difficulties with the language barrier at times, it still provided lots of laughs and good memories that I will cherish forever. I think I will stop back and give them some of my clothes I brought here which I am planning to leave behind in order to clear up some room in my suitcase (well, and not to mention the fact that the ten shirts and few pairs of pants which I brought to Africa is probably more than most people here own at all…and just thinking about how what I do have here is only a mere fraction of my wardrobe at home is more than enough incentive to leave most of it behind…jeesh).  I do miss my family a lot and would’ve loved to been able to see them, hug them and spend some time with them, but seeing as that’s not possible, I couldn’t have asked for a better way to spend my Easter. I have so much to be thankful for!!!

Monday we began drafting our proposals for our DR projects. I am doing my research in Environmental Policy since I don't have a particular interest in wildlife, unlike some of my peers who are animal science, wildlife bio, etc. majors. My project (which collaborates with other students work) will be focusing on the strategies that households and families use for coping with the changes in water availability resulting from climate change. This involves how long it takes them to go get water, who does it, how frequently, etc. Pretty excited to go out in the field (with our translators) and interview people and hear their stories!

I also spent a good 1.5 hours washing my clothes on Monday afternoon....I am quite eager to be able to just throw my clothes in the washing machine to do laundry when I get home. Although that seems like such a foreign concept, it sounds like an immense relief. Also looking forward to having a freezer and ice cubes!! The concept of opening up a refrigerator or cabinets to just grab whatever food or drink I want also seems so strange...already dreaming about how much cheese, Mexican food and bbq I am going to eat when I get back. (Wow, I sound like a fatty...) Might just have my mom bring some BWWs and a bagel with cream cheese to the airport when she picks me up...not that I've been planning it out or anything ;)

Well, thanks again for sticking with me for another loooong blog post. Don't know how this one got to be such a novel, but I hope you enjoyed it. Also hope everyone had a happy Easter! I wonder if you guys are getting the same April showers we are here in Tanzania...there are crazy random downpours every day now that its the rainy season. I'm expecting some May flowers when I get home to the great Midwest (and not any snow, Mother Nature!)