Classes and Getting Oriented

The past few days have been full of orientations, classes, and other opportunities to get to know the staff better!  We finally dove into classes, starting with Kiswahili language course, wildlife management, wildlife ecology, and socioeconomic policy.  I love taking Swahili.  It is so fun to speak, and the words sound exactly like they look.  After bad experiences with languages in the past, it is such a relief to have a language that is really fun to learn and everyone around here loves to help you and teach you new phrases.  So far, I can say hello, goodbye, how are you, fine thank you, I’m sorry, goodnight, see you later, and Charge (always handy for soccer and volleyball games) :)

The other classes are great too.  Everything is so relatable here and exactly what I want to be doing with my life.  And another great thing about them is that I am able to apply things from Penn State to my studies. I know at times, classes at PSU tend to drag on when we are learning about things so far from home, but it’s amazing having the opportunity to take some of that knowledge and apply it to specific situations in the environment that I am living in!

Some of the bugs and snakes here are ridiculous!  At night, we are require wearing closed toed shoes and long pants because of the baby poison snakes called Black Mambas that are here.  I was one of the first to see one today in the fire pit!  They release all of their venom when they bite, so we have to watch out.  Other bandas have had tarantulas, scorpions, and other critters crawling around.  It always makes everything we do an adventure, that’s for sure!

I have fallen in love with the camp that I am living at, and we have two walking/running loops that circle the camp that I love taking time to walk around.  The inner loop is around a mile long, and the outer loop is double that and takes you down through farms and houses and you have the chance to talk to the neighbors and their kids always love to come and shake your hands and walk with you for a while.  Everyone is so friendly and happy here, it blows my mind.  It’s so great to be able to get away from camp and just go explore the area that we are living in and studying.

The professors that I get to spend so much time with are some of the most incredible individuals that I have ever had the privilege to meet.  They are the most visionary, wanting to make a difference, influential group of people.  They always work for what is best for us.  They have the greatest inspirational quotes and words of wisdom for every situation and they make me want to work harder than I ever had.  It’s incredible what a difference a professor can make, and I feel that in only 3 days here, these professors have had more of an impact on me than most I have met in my academic career.  They have the greatest stories, including the locations that they have completed their PhD’s at.  Our Program Director, Okello, is absolutely hilarious.  He was invited as a student to go to Idaho from Kenya to complete his degree.  He had never even seen a plane when he left, yet journeyed across the world and made his own adventures.  He tells us stories about discovering M & M’s and washing machines.  And he commonly uses phrases such as “you overflow my cup of joy” when we share stories of our own.  I could never imagine a better staff here.

My favorite thing here so far is definitely playing random sports with all of my classmates as well as the staff!  Soccer is amazing, as I had described before.  Yesterday, while playing, I got tripped up on a staff members feet and tumbled straight into this huge dirt pile!  I scraped my knees up, had cuts from all the thorns, and of course, a face full of lovely dirt.  But it was the funniest thing of my life and I popped right up, ready to go again.  Today we played volleyball in another area of the camp and I have not laughed that much in a long time.  The staff had never really seen the game before so we were teaching them too!  And I made an amazing block against one of the guys here that is 6’3”.  Everyone cheered while laughing hysterically.  It’s so fun to play in the dirt again, like a little kid, and not care what anyone says :)

Another great part of last night was the music.  One of the girls in our camp brought along a ukulele to play, and we sat outside together and she played and I sang for hours and hours.  I couldn’t even believe how late it was when I checked the clock.  It was so fun to just let loose and sing for the fun of it.  She even taught me how to play a bit, so I might just come back a ukulele master hahah :)

The mosquitos are coming out and it is getting late, especially since I wake up every morning and watch the sunrise and bush babies all around the camp!

I hope everyone is doing great and I can’t wait to hear from all of you soon!

Love,

Mollie Ann