Directed Research

The last month at SFS in Tanzania was when we all did our directed research! This experience was definitely challenging and it put many of us, myself included, out of our comfort zones. We had three professors, each mentored and guided 12 students through different research projects. I chose to be in Professor Kioko’s research group because of my interest in the surrounding communities and I wanted to understand the human-wildlife conflict in more detail from the source itself. The question of interest that my partner and I explored was understanding the costs and benefits of protected areas towards neighboring village members.

Other research projects included very interesting topics that my friends become experts in. They involved: wildlife population, distribution, and tracking; while others explored the use of natural resources in various ways, traditional, medicinal, and practical. Some of the students’ work will be published but all will be presented to the community. We all discussed our topics of interest in detail and shared our finding with surrounding communities for them to hopefully benefit from them! Plus, it was so nice to have invited so many of the community members that we interact with daily or that were welcoming when we interviewed them. It was finally our turn to repay them for their generosity and invite them to what we considered home, Moyo hill camp!

S/o to Ramla, one of our translators/ guide, for capturing some action shots of us interviewing community membersAll the people involved in our research project… team Kioko Interviews are always better under the shadeMe focusing really hard on the interview or being blinded by the sun

 Emma, me, Ramla, and Halee smiling after a long day of interviews

During our camping trip we were able to interview community members and village leadersAfter 4 days of camping and 10 days of over 700 interviews in 6 different areas… we did it!Presentations!All dressed up for our community presentations!

After this I have one last farewell post, so stay tuned for the finale to a great adventure and semester!

Baadaye tena!