I’ve been non-stop working on my directed research project for the last month. The first half was spent collecting data and interviewing almost 400 households on their perceptions of wildlife conflicts and values of wildlife. The second half (the past week and a half) has been spent analyzing data, researching and writing my paper on human-elephant conflicts. Because I have spent so much time in front of my computer the past month I have decided to try something new. Bear with me.

Directed Research Is…

Directed research is ten days of interviews, five days of data analysis, and a week of write up. It’s hiking 5km in the northern Tanzania sun searching for Bomas. It’s sitting on small wooden stools inside a cool hut made of mud. It’s broken Kiswahili, foreign sounds and languages I’ve never heard before. It’s holding the cold, grainy hand of a child with Ugali stuck to his face asking for money. Directed research is laughing with mama because she doesn’t understand you. It’s being offered cups of chai, and painting your nails. It’s beautiful red sofa sets and crowded school children watching you write. Directed research is hours of Excel and learning to run R. It’s learning to write code, and creating logistic regression models. It’s learning what logistic regression means. It’s waiting an hour for articles to load and power outages. It’s going for walks around Rhotia and up Moyo hill because you can’t stare at your computer anymore. Directed research is a real cup of coffee and a game of x-box connect with your adviser. It’s writing a fifteen page paper and feeling like that was a lot, then finding out some of your colleagues wrote twenty-five. It’s being proud of your final work and knowing so much about human-elephant conflict. It’s laying in bed writing about directed research and realizing it wasn’t all that bad and that in fact you might miss it…and then again maybe not.

-Thanksgiving-

The night before thanksgiving one of my Bandamates and I made pumpkin pie. I was unsure of how it was going to turn out because we lacked a few ingredients, but this is East Africa so I told myself not to worry, it was going to be god no matter what. We stayed up 'til 12am waiting for those pies to bake. Thank goodness for bananagrams. Thanksgiving morning I worked a little on my research paper and played some cards. The afternoon was spent watching one of our SAMs (student affairs manager) along with ten other students chase down our meal. Talk about some fast food. This was my second time watching them slaughter a sheep on campus (the first time was actually a goat). Our SAM also got to slaughter the sheep herself, it was her first time and she did a wonderful job. I didn’t stay to watch them skin and cut up the sheep because I had seen it before and once was enough for me I think. Some of us hiked up Moyo Hill to gather flowers for centerpieces. At the top we could see Lake Manyara (which is actually starting to look like a lake again thanks to the rain) and made it back down just in time for some American flag football. It was my first time playing flag football and while my team didn’t win I still had a great time. That night we feasted on our lovely sheep, mashed potatoes, quiche, stuffing, and rolls, corn and of course turkey. We finished with pumpkin pie (made by yours truly), apple crumble, fruit salad, chocolate ship cookie truffles, and real ice cream. It was my first thanksgiving away from home and I feel extremely blessed to have had the chance to spend it with all of my friends here at Moyo Hill who have become like family to me.

Dinning Hall full of beautiful people

 

 

Serengeti

Nothing gets you ready for finals like camping for five days in the Serengeti. I'm still trying to process all the amazing experiences I had and sights I saw in those five days. I think that if I tried to do a play-by-play of what we did, this would end up being a novel of a post, I also don't even know if I can put into words the experiences I had, so I'll stick to a picture oriented post, hope you don't mind.

"The Cradle of Life"

On our way to Serengeti we stopped at Oldupai gorge (also called olduvai). While I am not super into archeology or anything it was pretty interesting to hear about. For those you that don't know what Oldupai gorge is, it is the place where the earliest human remains were found. As I understand it is also the first place where traces of stone tools where found.

We had a guest lecture here and after we had a chance to explore the museum where I saw a cast of the earliest human footprints along with fossils and skulls of various animals.

Me and one of my lovely banda mates at the first gate into the Serengeti

We were driving for less then ten minutes after clearing the main gate when we saw two lionesses. I knew it at that moment that the Serengeti was gonna deliver. We had a game drive for the rest of the day through the park as we made our way to our campsite. Camping in the Serengeti was probably one of the coolest experiences I have had so far. Our campsite was unlike that of our other expedition, and was actually in the park and had no fences. Yes, that means that any animal could wander into our camp during the day and especially during the night. We had visits from elephants, giraffe, migrating wildebeest, hyenas, cape buffalo and baboons. There was one night when we could hear lions not too far from camp. Because of this we brought a couple of askaris (guards) from campus with us. As soon as the sun went down we weren't allowed to go anywhere with an askari. I didn't have a problem with this rule, because there was no way I was going to chance running into a cape buffalo by myself.

Wildlife valuation exercise, can you guess what they're all huddled around? Carnivores, it was male lions with a kill.

We had three main exercises that we had out in the field. One was a birding exercise where we had to identify 50 different species. I thought it was going to be pretty hard but I actually identified over 50 in one day! We also had a wildlife valuation exercise where we followed tourists around the park and recorded which wildlife they stopped for, for how long and what their behavior was (i.e. taking pictures). This was quite a fun exercise because if you didn't guess it already tourists are almost always looking for the carnivores. This was especially helpful because we also had an exercise on carnivore-prey interaction. Every time we encountered a carnivore we recorded if it had a kill or was within 100m of prey, what type of habitat they were in, and if there were any associated carnivores. Basically everyday we drove around the park conducting all of these exercises at the same time.

I was sitting directly above him. He was resting in the shade of our Land Cruiser.

We were very fortunate to have two guest lectures while we were in the park. We had one lecture form the park's head warden on the issues of running such a large park. We also got to hear from the Frankfurt Zoological Society, a non-profit organization involved in protecting and preserving endangered animals and their environments. They have played a large role in supporting all aspects of park management in the Serengeti.

Cheetahs with their wildebeest kill

It was three days in and I had still had yet to complete my "big 5" sighting. I'd seen plenty of lions, elephants, cape buffalo and I had seen a rhino in the Ngorongoro crater. But I had yet to spot the leopard. It was the second to last day in the park when we finally came across two leopards hanging out in a tree. We were able to identify them as a male and a female. Eventually we waited long enough to see them come down from the tree. I was even able to witness leopard sex.

Me and my colleagues

Migrating wildebeest

At first I had no idea what this was, my first thoughts were; baby cheetah? Stray house cat? and then since it was clearly none of the above I realized it was a serval!

My first leopard sighting

So I guess this ended up being a pretty darn long post anyways, hope most of you are still with me. It's hard to describe the Serengeti without being totally cliche. It was a life changing experience that I will continue to learn from long after I leave here. I feel confident in my choice to study wildlife management and I know that this path will only lead me to more amazing places, people and, of course, wildlife.

As soon as we got back from Serengeti we had two days of review and studying and then the past three days have been filled with exams and more studying. This morning I finished my last exam. So now what since classes are over? Well as I mentioned it in my last post the next month will be spent doing independent research. Everyone here is doing something different. The projects range from traditional healing using animals to roles of beekeeping and use of bee products to human-wildlife conflicts. I get to spend my month collecting data and researching human-elephant conflicts, which I am very excited for.

Expedition and finals have wiped me out along with the fact that we haven't had an off day in two weeks. Tomorrow I'll be adventuring into Karatu for some good food, possibly a hair cut and some celebratory drinks.
Cheers!