Month: September 2018

Karibuni!

After a long expedition at Tarengire National Park, we visited some families around the camp and spent most of our day with them. This experience allowed us to be more immersed and connected to our local community! Three students, including myself, were able to visit Mama Regina’s house. We spent the majority of our time with her and her two daughters that day. We wanted to help her with her everyday tasks. In addition, we brought the family some food and water as a gift since all of them volunteered to host us for the day.

First we swept the floors in front of Mama Regina’s house using big branches of trees, which actually worked better than I through! Then, we helped collect cow dump and transported it to her farm since it acts as a fertilizer for her vegetation. Next we helped the girls make tee and cook food for lunch, it was a lot of fun to learn how to cook using firewood! Throughout the day we practiced our swahili and bonded with the girls and Mama Regina!

Hanging out with Mama Regina’s daughters, Janet and Patricia 

Made milk and tee to drink

While waiting for the food to cook, we got preoccupied with braiding hair

It was a blast, the braided our hair multiple times with different designs 

Riga was able to teach Patricia how to juggle  

Mama Regina setting the table with all the delicious food we cooked

A little photoshoot with the family

Baadaye!

 

Habari!

Today twenty of us decided to walk from Rhotia village to Karatu which is about a three-hour hike/walk. This idea was introduced by our leader and it sounded like a nice easy walk for a not so athletic person like me, but that was not the case, it was a full out hike! Even though I was not expecting the intensity of this hike, it was beautiful, the path and views were absolutely amazing. The views were so beautiful that sometimes my friends and I would stop for pictures and one time we might have stopped for a little longer and fell behind a little bit. In the beginning, we were distanced from the rest of our group, but they were still in our site of vision until we went through a town with a lot of people and started to encounter multiple paths. There were a lot of people coming out of church as we were walking so we ran into them and started socializing. With all the talking and slow walking, we might have gotten distracted and lost site of the group even more. At that time, we had to navigate and ask people for direction using our poor Swahili skills, but nonetheless, we managed! There were definitely some nervous laughs throughout the way but all was good after we found the rest of the group.

After that long hike, I went to the African Galleria with a few people. This place is for tourists and is more Americanized with a lot of typical souvenirs. It is however famous for selling Tanzanite. There, were able to get a nice American pepperoni pizza, after about a month of eating Tanzanian food, it was a nice change.

The views form our walk

We’re the three musketeers that eventually get a little lost

Riga enjoying the hike and the pigeon pee farms we’re walking through 

Goats, sheep, and cows on the side of these paths

Made it to the top, I’m smiling but I’m also out of breath (2 hrs in… 1 hr to go!)

A beautiful abandoned building at the top of the mountain 

The African Galleria 

Wooden statues all around the entrance of the African Galleria 

Until next time, Baadaye!

 

Another week, another free day! This morning, my friends and I went hiking at a beautiful waterfall at Mto Wa Mbu with a couple of local tour guides. Then I attended a knife painting workshop in which we used butter knifes, dye with grease, and specific techniques to create our artwork.

Hiking up to the top

Looking sharper than the steep rocks we just hiked

Team work makes the dream work (also Carla looking great with her “I <3 Worcester “shirt- aka come to Holy Cross)

Beautiful views at every corner of that hike 

The whole group all in one piece at the top of the waterfalls 

Our guides for the hike discussed the uses and farming strategies for the banana trees next to the waterfalls 

-they can eat bananas fresh or cook them; they can also use the wood from these trees for the rooftops of their home or for art.

-Also, banana trees are cut at a certain location that allows the water obtained from that tree to be used for the surrounding growing trees in order to ensure water availability for their plantations!

Our station for the knife painting workshop

My knife painting of Simba!

Until next time, Baadaye!

Mambo!

This week has been, learning more and more everyday in the classroom and the field! Today, we decided to take a break from our work and explore town to go to one of the biggest markets here! This market only takes place once every two months. The whole community comes together to sell fabric, clothes, food, and even livestock! Even though it was very crowded that day, we enjoyed experiencing a non touristy market in our own village.

On another day of this week, we were able to go stargazing and enjoy the natural beauty of Tanzania at night!

The Karatu market

Being basic as can be with the girls 

Mousa here helped us with Swahili and finding these sugarcane!

Cutting down some sugarcane; they’re basically wooden ice cream

Stargazing + headlamps = : D

Baadaye!

Mambo everyone!

Today was one of the best days of my life! It was our first expedition of the semester in which we spent about 12 hours in a safari at Lake Manyara National Park! We were observing and trying to identify all the animals at the park, both in English and Swahili.  Some of the wildlife we saw that day included, elephants, giraffes, zebras, hippos, wildebeest, impalas, different species of monkeys and gazelles and much more!

The main reason for our visit, other than seeing all this wildlife, was to conduct a research project on olive baboon’s activity patterns in the wild. My friends and I learned, identified, and recorded different behaviors of targeted baboon troops. After collecting their behavior, we wrote a research paper regarding this data. It was interesting to analyze our results and find out why baboons displayed movement and foraging as the two most frequent activities. Some of the reasoning behind these activities is their location, resource availability, season, distribution, and individual traits such as the sex, age, and hierarchical class of the troops observed.

Enjoy the pictures!

It’s our first time doing a safari

Olive baboon posing for the picture and eating palm tree nut

Mama and her baby on a mission to find food

Baboons right above our safari… a little scary but super cool!

Zebras and wildebeests running behind me  

Pictures do not do zebras justice, their beauty is so detailed and hard to explain!  

The zebra family showed up… the baby is so cute! 

Spending 12 hours in the safari with these lovely people made my experience even better!

Hippos! Lazy as can be : )

Enjoying the beautiful views with these ladies at our mini break at the park

Vervet monkeys chilling by the trees

Grant’s gazelle

Our next expedition is at Tarangire National Park, cannot wait for more wildlife!

Baadaye!

Mambo everyone!

This is my first weekend at the School of Field Studies Program at Tanzania and I am happy to say we get Sundays off to relax and explore some off-campus locations!  Each week there is a list of activities and workshops to participate in that feature the touristy and not so touristy places in Tanzania.

This Sunday, I decided to have an artsy day since the art workshops here are so unique! In the morning, I attended a wax painting workshop at a local home. The people guiding us through wax painting techniques have been doing this type of art for the past 50 years and are therefore very experienced. The majority of their art work featured African culture and wildlife. This included people practicing daily activities, like going to the market, or dancing traditional dances. Some even represented certain rituals through different symbolic meanings.

In the evening, I went to a wood carving place! It was so interesting to learn, see, and be a part of the wood carving process.  A particular technique is necessary to achieve a beautiful wooden work of art.

Fransha and Elaine are already skilled wax painters

Me trying to not mess up infront of Ali

Sarah and I working hard to get the waxing technique down

The whole crew drying their wax paintings at the fire pit 

Professional painting of three women dancing

A beautiful painting of people heading home from the market

Just one of many wildlife paintings at that house

Working hard at the wood carving place

We were all successful in making our wooden animals with a little help by the professionals! 

They used mango trees that were licensed to be cut down and carved to make these beautiful animals and other statues    

Always excited to share more next time!

Baadaye!

The majority of our lectures are inside the classroom but we have field lectures, exercises, projects, and safaris at least 2-3 times a week! This is the type of learning I enjoy and understand the most.

So today we went to Mto Wa Mbu, a city close to Rhotia (my home location) and had class out on the field. First we went to a location that used to be populated with many elephants but due to agriculture and human settlements, elephants are rarely seen there now. Our professors talked about some of the issues involving the human wildlife conflict by considering the wildlife, the local people and their culture, as well as, the politics behind these wildlife conservation and management efforts.

After this introduction on the history of the area and community occupying it, we had the opportunity to talk to some local people and an amazing guest speaker to represent that community. He discussed the human wildlife conflict in more detail and specifically focused on the management efforts. He told us that a big issue the local people used to face as human settlements increased in areas populated by wildlife was loss of livestock, crops, and destruction of homes in some occasion. Also, the increase of human settlement caused blockage of many corridors used for animal migration. The co-living of humans and wildlife, encouraged the spread of more issues.

Wildlife efforts provided protected areas for animals with national parks. Additionally, they designated a no man’s land to act as a buffer for animals and people for them to commonly use. This land is government property in which people can use for agriculture at their own risk as animals may trespass this area freely. It is illegal to kill wildlife in this area or their living place unless, these animals threaten the livestock and the well being of the people. Even though, conflict is reduced and it is rare that animals cause issues for the people, it continues to be an issue.Thus, wildlife conservationist have been trying to reduce some human wildlife conflict by providing a more affordable fencing technique to keep elephants out of the people’s land. These techniques include, chili and beehive fencing; these are some things that elephants are afraid of and would therefore be discouraged from entering such a space.

My classroom : )

My classmates and I paying attention to our guest speaker

So many little kids saying hi to us and joining us on our walks!

It was very interesting to learn about how much these people know and how much work is needed to manage human wildlife conflicts

I am learning so much here, can’t wait for the next field experience at Lake Manyara National Park!

Baadaye!