Spent an entire day watching Olive Baboons

The crew that hiked out to the elephant caves

Vervet monkey resting

Tomorrow will be the two week marker here in Tanzania. So far I have had classes in the Lake Manyara National Park (LMNP) studying baboon behavior, practiced tracking and identifying animal scat across the savanna, and talked to local people about what resources were critical to them. I've been to a monthly market in Karatu where I got to bargain for a Maasai shuka, hiked to elephant caves and a waterfall, biked around Mto wa mbu, hiked through banana plantations and even tried to slack-line. But the highlights of this past week? I got to see wild elephants, zebras, impala, gazelles, monkeys, giraffes, hippos and so many more. We were also given a traditional Tanzanian welcoming with a goat roast. Both goats were slaughtered here at the station. Yes I watched and yes I ate, and yes I enjoyed it. It was such a cool experience and I really do think every meat eater should experience something similar. I think we'll be doing another goat roast for thanksgiving. I love that every week is different from the one before. Each day except Sundays and the days we go out into the field we have about three to four classes which have all been very interesting (except that one day we had five and half hours of environmental policy, it wasn't as bad as it sounds though). Each night we do something called RAP (Reflection Announcements and Presentation), where the mwanfunzi (student) of the day gets to reflect on what we did that day, people give announcements of upcoming events and projects that are going on with the local community and around campus, and then a presentation which has been lots of fun games so far. The assignments are already rolling in. I have a paper on the behavior of Olive Baboons in LMNP and one paper of my choice about any interactions I observed in Lake Manyara, I think I will write about human-elephant interactions in the park since they were my favorite part (I'm currently procrastinating and decided to update my blog). We have a home-stay coming up for our swahili class, which has been really fun by the way. That's all from the field for now.

Hippo Pool

First wild African elephant sighting!

Giraffes are the tallest animals in the world!