First Days of DR!!!

Vipi (what’s up)!!!

So the next day it was finally time for us to start our Directed Research, and I couldn’t be more excited to get going.  We hear about DR the entire semester, and even before I left the states, I was wondering what I would be doing.  By this point, I had an amazing project that I was really interested in, a great professor leading it, a fantastic group in my car with me collecting data, and 9 days of being away from camp all over the area looking for animals!

The first place we were headed was Manyara Ranch, a conservation area run by the African Wildlife Fund, that is a pioneer project in the area.  It aims to protect the wildlife moving from one national park to the other, while still allowing pastoralists to use the area for their livestock.  We left all three days at around 8 in the morning, and the drive to the ranch is quite a long one!  I loved the drives because even though we were up and moving pretty early in the morning, I was able to take a good hour and half nap on the way there!  When we arrived at the ranch for the three days we were doing research there, we would go to the main headquarters and pick up our guide so that we wouldn’t get lost in the ranch.  We had a Maasai guide who spoke no English and barely any Swahili so it was really hard to communicate with him throughout the days in the ranch.  We even had to pack him a lunch like we did for ourselves, but the Maasai like their roasted goat and ugali, which we never had for him.  He seemed pretty disgusted with our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and other fruits and veggies our cooks would make for us to take.

The first day in the ranch was super frustrating, and I realized quickly that was going to be the case in each of the study areas we would be visiting.  There is a very limited map of the ranch, so trying to map out where our professor wanted us to go was extremely difficult.  Somehow, I got put in charge of the map and had to call our professor over and over to clarify what roads we should be on and what way we should be heading.  Not knowing the area was difficult, but with the rest of my team and our driver, we were able to figure out a good route that was hopefully repeatable for the rest of the days spent there. 

During the days in the ranch, we saw tons of animals, especially wildebeest, zebra, elephants, giraffes, and eland.  I have never seen so many giraffes in my life.  Between the other car and ours, we saw groups of giraffes as big as 15, and our total for the day was near 100!!!  And eland was the same thing.  Eland are not very common, yet we were seeing herds of them containing at least 40 animals, which our professor had never seen before!  And finally, there was one group of wildebeest and zebra that literally haunted us.  We saw them all three days of research and it was a total of 500 animals, all mixed together.  Somehow we were supposed to gender all of them, count how many babies they had, and try to guess their age class.  We always dreaded turning the one corner in the ranch because we knew the giant combo herd would be waiting for us to count all over again!

The weather was so different between the three days we were in the ranch!  The first day, we were all bundled up, it was sprinkling rain, and it was not very enjoyable sticking our heads out of the hatch.  The second day was gorgeous bright sunshine but not terribly hot, and the third day was so hot and humid, it felt like we were being suffocated!  In the Tanzanian cars, we have roofs over the hatches, and even though I am a little too tall for them, I was very thankful to have them for protection from the spitting rain and the beating down sunshine while we were at Manyara Ranch.  After the first day of DR, we met the rest of the WM group at the Pizza Point in Mto wa Mbu, had a cold soda and a quick meeting and then got back to camp around 6pm.  It was such a long 10 hour day, and I was hoping the other 8 days of research would not be as long!  The last day was also pretty long because instead of having the normal 5 people in our car, we only had 4, so organization had to be great and we had to focus to cover the same amount of area in the same amount of time!  After that day though, we had a big pizza party with the entire group and got to sit and talk to Christian and hear all of his stories about doing research in the past and all of his past jobs.  He is a great professor to have for DR because he is not that much older than us and is so easy to relate too.  Also, he is not on African time, so things are much more efficient compared to the other groups in WE and EP!

The next day was our extremely well-deserved off day!  We were headed to Mto wa Mbu again to walk around, try new food, and get anything else that we wanted to shop for.  But in addition to just going straight to town, we stopped at a curio shop on the way that is known for its Tanzanite.  They have incredible stones set in rings and necklaces, or just the fired stones that you can buy and set later.  Tanzanite is a gorgeous blue stone that is only found in a 4km² area in the entire world, and it happens to be right near the base of Kilimanjaro.  Its supply is running out very quickly, so we were all excited to see the genuine Tanzanite from Tanzania.  The things that they had at this shop were out-of-control expensive!  Some of the simple necklaces and rings could total over $1000!!!  Even just the cut and fired stones started at around $200 each and they were tiny!  Fortunately, they had really cool uncut and unfired stones that we were allowed to purchase.  These stones are so beautiful in a more natural kind of way, and cost less than $30.  I picked out a gorgeous stone with a slight blue tint and a really neat shape.  I can’t wait to bring it back home and set it as it is!  I think it is so beautiful as it is and I hope to make a ring to help me always remember this trip! 

The rest of the curio shop was really neat and had a lot of really well done arts and crafts.  They had these amazing arm chairs that were COMPLETELY beaded like all of the Maasai beaded jewelry that we have gotten here.  If I had the money, that would definitely be something I would love to have in my tiny college apartment haha.  They had really great wood carvings and cool shirts, but I was happy with the Tanzanite and ready to move on.  Our first stop in Mto wa Mbu was the pizza stop once again.  I would have to say, the worst part about doing DR is the packed lunches every single day.  I don’t even like PB and J in the first place, so when that is one of our only options, it gets old very quickly.  There are only so many things that they can make here for us to take.  Everyday consists of some sort of potatoes, a sandwich, a hardboiled egg, and some weird packaged cookies that pretty much all taste the same.  Not to be a whiner, but by the time DR was over, I would never want to eat another peanut butter and jelly again.  So when the option of pizza arises, I always take it.  Me and one of my friends split an amazing margarita pizza at the pizza point, enjoyed a cold soda, and started the trek into the main part of town.  Along the way, we started getting harassed like always to buy things, but I think the people in Mto wa Mbu are getting used to seeing our faces.  After about 5 minutes, I finally convinced the persistent salesmen to leave us alone for the rest of the 25 minute walk.

The rest of the day, Chelsea and Patrick and I had specific things in mind that we wanted to buy during our day in town.  The problem was that Mto wa Mbu, an extremely touristy town, was FILLED with wazungu (white people) that day and the salesmen were much more interested in ripping them off than bartering with us.  I found the most amazing paintings that I wanted to get for my room, but with this giant group of ignorant tourists, the salesman brushed me off like nothing.  It happened a lot during the day in the market, and by the time it was over, I had only bought one or two things for friends back home.  I was extremely ready to leave by the time our SAM called us to head out, and was happy to take my frustrations out in a nice 30 minute nap on the way back to camp.

Once we got back to camp, we headed out to the primary school and played some soccer with the staff and a lot of students.  It was one of the biggest games we have ever had and it got so confusing who was on what team!  It was so fun though and it was great to run around and get all my energy out.  Sometimes, we run into times here that women don’t get as much respect as the men.  When I am on a team with a lot of the askaris, mostly males, I really have to prove to them that I am good at soccer.  It makes me run faster and kick harder, and usually by the end of the day, we are the best team in Tanzania hahaha just kidding.  I do love playing with staff though.  Especially in Tanzania, it is a great way to break the language barrier and just all be on the same level playing and laughing together and getting competitive with the other team.

As things start to slow down around here, we have definitely been doing a lot more low key activities to make up for the stressful days filled with research.  I miss the fast past days when we had a billion things to do, but I appreciate the time we have been given to enjoy camp and our friends and the town nearby.  The rest of DR research was amazing, and I will tell you all about it in my next blog!  Thanks for staying tuned!

Love,

Mollie Ann