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