Helping the Kenya Wildlife Service and the Lodge!

Hi again!

I wanted to sum up the rest of the week that we had in addition to the homestay and things mentioned in the blog before this!  Currently, we are in the middle of a very heavy week filled with days and days of classes and assignments.  I sometimes wish that there was a better balance of leaving camp and staying here for class.  It seems like we are gone for a week and then trapped for the next week!  It’s really not too terrible however, because we are taking amazing classes that play right into the experiences that we are having outside of camp.

On Saturday, we got to go to Amboseli National Park again, this time for actual data collection for assignments in class.  Not only were we using this data for in-class assignments, but the animal information collected will go to the Kenya Wildlife Service to help them better manage the animals that they have in the park!  I think it’s so amazing that the data we are collecting is actually going to help a real organization that can make changes in the park to benefit the animals and the humans in the area!  We split into four different groups, around 6 people per car, and left for the park at around 8.  When we got to the park around 8:45, there was a huge conflict with our passes to get in.  A lot of other professionals were waiting for us to come and divide the park up for the counts, so it was really frustrating that the guards weren’t letting us in.  We sat outside the gate for an hour and a half in the hot sun, just waiting to get in to the park.  When they finally let us in, we all cheered because the cars moving meant we got some air movement!  We traveled to the lodges that are actually found inside the park to where the other counters were waiting for us.  We picked up a KWS official that was joining us in our car to help with the counts of the animals.  He had an automatic weapon and when he placed it on the ground, it was facing right toward my friend and me.  We both noticed and said a quick prayer that the safety was on tight haha!  The entire park was broken into eight blocks and each group had a block.  The data that we were collecting was total animal counts in our assigned block.  This meant counting everything from guinea fowl to zebra to lions and everything in between.

Our block started right at the lodge where we picked up our friend Peter, so we started counting baboons from the second we were in the car.  We had around 4 people counting, sexing, and aging animals that we passed and two people recording all of the information on the data sheets.  I was one of the recorders, sitting in the middle seat toward the front and acting as the liaison between the driver, the KWS official, and the rest of the group.  And oh my gosh did I love it!  I felt so important, recording all the animals, the total counts, their age, the exact coordinates where we found them, and the habitat types they were in.  I would yell up to everyone with their heads out the window, asking for exact numbers, letting them know which side of the vehicle to count on, and where we were heading next.  I would also communicate with our driver, Charles, and tell him where to stop so that we could get the best counts and confirm with him the numbers we were getting.  It was so fun and high energy and important, and I loved being right in the middle of it.  This was one of the first activities that we have completed here that I could see myself doing as a career.  Maybe not a career counting animals every day, but just the feeling of being in the park, surrounded by these gorgeous mammals, coordinating an important study and working with park officials and other volunteers.  I seriously found myself smiling when we were right in the midst of the counting, realizing how happy I was and how I would love to do something like this for a career!

The block that we were assigned to was one of the smaller ones, so we finished our counts before everyone else and got to see KWS headquarters in the park.  On the way back, I was talking to our driver and telling him that I have not seen any giraffes close to us the entire trip.  He promised he would show me some by the end of the day, and I took it with a grain of salt since I hadn’t seen any before.  But on the drive to headquarters, we saw a whole herd of giraffes!  Big ones, baby ones, dark ones, faded ones, tall ones, everything!  I was so excited, I almost jumped out of the hatches in the roof.  I could not have been happier and had to thank Charles for delivering on the giraffe sightings!

We hung out at headquarters with a bunch of employees and their families, watched the Chelsea FC soccer game on TV, and had a Coke, Fanta, or Krest.  We had to wait for all of the other groups to return, and it turns out one of the groups car broke down!  We played cards and just enjoyed our time off since we knew the upcoming week would be filled with a lot of assignments.  As soon as we all returned, we loaded up the cars and headed back to camp.  Even though it was a really great day, it was exhausting being in the sun for so long and we all just hung out in the Chumba for the rest of the day!

The next day was finally our day off and it was much needed after an action filled week!  We had the option of staying at the camp and just hanging out, or heading to a local lodge to go swimming and have their buffet.  I chose the lodge, just wanting to relax and be away from camp, and have some great dessert at the lodge.  The lodge was called Kilima, and it was absolutely gorgeous.  It was so clean and so bug free.  It was shocking to me because it’s so dusty here all the time and I don’t know how they kept everything so nice.  It was very touristy though, and I could see how people staying there would have a completely different experience than what we are having here at our camp.  The pool was also amazing.  There was a deep pool in the middle, around 6 feet deep, and an outer pool that was 3 feet deep, with gorgeous Kilimanjaro in the background and Amboseli National Park right outside the fence.  The buffet had a lot of similar foods to what we have at camp, but it was done really well and made in slightly different ways.  The dessert was fantastic though.  We had pineapple crisp, chocolate lava cake, and all sorts of fruit jello and flan.  We don’t get dessert a majority of the time at camp, so we all indulged in what the lodge had to offer.  The rest of the afternoon, we all hung out by the pool and the huge observation deck in the main lodge, having pina coladas and cokes and relaxing.  It was a stress free day and I loved spending time with the group of people that decided to go.  Although it was so nice and relaxing to spend the day there, I love our camp and the experience that we are getting in Kenya.  It would be a completely different perspective if we were staying somewhere similar to this lodge.

After the lodge, we had dinner and it was my night to do our student RAP.  RAP stands for reflection, announcements, and presentation.  I reflected on Penn Stat e Dance Marathon, since the night before we raised $10.6 million for pediatric cancer!!! I was so excited and happy to share it with my group here!  For my presentation, I decided to teach everyone how to line dance! I go all the time at home, so I thought it would be something fun and interactive to have everyone do.  I wasn’t sure how everyone would respond or if they would join in, but as soon as I showed them one dance, everyone leaped up and were so eager to learn it!  We danced for at least half an hour and I taught them all the dances I could remember!  It was so fun and I was happy to find something everyone had so much fun with.  Even the staff joined in and tried to keep up. I was thrilled at everyone’s enthusiasm!

Now we are deep into classes, with around 5 major assignments due this week!  I can’t wait until we leave for our expedition next week, where we get to stay in tents in one of the National Parks around 6 hours from here!  It will be quite an experience to be right in the park with everything we do!  Having so much to look forward to definitely helps you get over the humps of these long classes.

Thanks so much for reading once again.  I hope everyone is having a great week and I look forward to talking to all of you soon!

Love,

Mollie Ann

Cultural Experiences with the Maasai!

Hello Everyone!

We have had a crazy past couple of days, going everywhere from the National Park near us to doing a homestay with one of the local Maasai Mamas.  It’s been so exciting, but definitely exhausting in this bright sunshine and heat!

One of the really great things that we had the opportunity to do in the last week was go out to the local community and get a feel of the surrounding area and the people that live there.  I was in a group with 5 other girls, one of our student affair managers, and a local guide to help us translate what the locals were telling us.  The goal of the exercise was to get an inside scoop of daily life in this area, including the major limiting resources, interactions with neighbors, interactions with wildlife, and sources of income.  Our guide was from Kimana and spoke English, Maasai, and Swahili, so we were able to talk to everyone we came across.  We had the chance to go to five different farms, all near the primary school that we visited the day before.  It’s amazing the hospitality that every person showed us.  They had no idea that we were coming to visit, yet a majority of the people we interviewed invited us into their modest houses, offered us chai, and provided chairs for all of us.  I feel like it’s hard to find anyone that would have that much hospitality with completely strangers if I was in the United States.

 The first woman that we interviewed was this beautiful woman, around 23 years old, that owned a farm as well as worked at the local seamstress’s shop in town.  She was so honest with us and answered our questions so completely.  I think I learned the most from her, and I felt like she was telling 100% truth and not trying to sugar coat things from us.  It’s insane to hear their stories about the elephants coming and trying to eat her corn.  Sometimes, they never get to sleep because they have to stay up and be ready to chase the elephants away using spears and torches and making as much noise as possible.  She even told us that they only have access to water 3 hours a day!  I cannot even imagine not having a constant source of water and it once again made me feel so thankful for everything that I have in my life. After thanking her and moving on, we stopped at a farm right down the road, but this woman was there all alone and didn’t seem as willing to answer our questions.  We didn’t want to inconvenience her, so we wrapped up our interview a little quicker.  The next interview was with a Maasai mama, but her English speaking son took over very quickly, wanting to practice his English with us.  He was so energetic and loved having us there.  The next interview, there was this crazy old Maasai mama that decided one of the girls in our group looked exactly like her first born daughter that she hadn’t seen in years.  She grabbed on to my group member, and hugged her and kissed her and was just in disbelief at the similarities.  We were all laughing so hard at her reaction to us.  The final interview could not have been more different from the 4 before.  We knocked on the door, politely saying “hodi” which asks if we are allowed to come in.  When the door finally opened, there was a group of 4 boys, around 20 years old, and in the background, the walls in the house were completely covered in American Pop Music posters.  I am talking Lil Wayne, Rihanna, Chris Brown, Avril Lavigne, Britney Spears, 50 cent, and more.  It was so funny because it turns out this group not only had crops and livestock, but they were also a local rap group that performs in the clubs in Kimana.  They were all amazing at English, hoping to go to University soon, and we spent too much of our time asking about their rap career than about their crop management.  We couldn’t help it!  But overall, the experience was so incredible.  I had no idea how much I would be interacting with the people that live in this area, and I think it’s such a priceless experience.  I cannot think of a better way to really know the problems in this area and what these people have to deal with every day.  It was so fun and so helpful.

The next day, we had yet another opportunity for a cultural experience in the community.  In one of the classes we are taking here, we talk a lot about the tourism industry and how the government benefits from it much more than the local people that are right in the middle of it.  As I talked about before, we visited the homes of the Maasai Mamas, called the Boma.  For this field trip, we had the opportunity to visit another boma, accept this time, the boma was right at the entrance to Amboseli National Park, and we had to pay to visit.  The goal was to see what these people have had to do so that they can gain something from the tourists in the area.  It was so crazy to see the differences.  This boma was still a real boma, with the Maasai living there; however, everything seemed so staged.  The performed a dance for us, and it was much more forced than the dance we had seen before.  Their houses were set up differently, making them look larger and also more tribal.  The entire experience was the Maasai attempt to show tourists the tribalism that they are looking for.  Yes, these people have preserved their culture more than anyone in this part of the world, however, not to the extreme that this boma attempted to portray.  We even interrupted a class at the school that neighbored, and they said that every tourist group had that opportunity.  I felt so bad that these kids get interrupted every day over and over.  I felt that subjecting them to the tourist industry was not called for.  It angered so many of us, but it really opened my eyes to what these people must do to make a living for themselves.  The government has taken their land without asking for the National Park, so of course they will do what they need to so they can combat that.  It was a very eye opening experience, especially since most tourists would never know that there was anything wrong with that experience.

The next day, after finding out who our partner was, we loaded up the cars once again and had the chance to do a homestay with one of the local Maasai Mamas that live close to our camp!  I had an amazing partner named Anna and really enjoyed spending one on one time with her.  Every group of two was dropped off at separate bomas in the area, carrying cabbage, sugar, milk and other gifts to thank the mamas for hosting us for the day.  Our boma was actually the one that we got to tour the first time we ever met the Maasai people!  The mama that we were with was named Jen and she was 25 years old and had around 6 kids, although we weren’t exactly sure.  It was an insane experience from the second we got there because these mamas speak zero English and only a few words of Swahili!  The entire day was based on body language, very basic words that we all knew, and following her lead.

When we were first welcomed into her home, she immediately started making us chai, definitely the local favorite.  You would not believe the size of the home and the conditions that she cooks and lives in.  In the corner of this tiny boma, there were three stones arranged so that her pots could sit on top and she could make a fire underneath.  The bomas have no windows other than 3 or 4 holes the size of my fist, so you can imagine the smoke that builds up quickly.  My eyes were burning and watering so badly, I thought I would never have tears again!  They are so immune to so much that they do, yet Anna and I were struggling to sit right by the fire.  The chai was amazing though!  So fresh with milk and sugar, and we drank our cups quickly.  As soon as we finished, the mama stood up and said “come!” and marched out of her house.  She grabbed some of the water cans sitting outside and we started to make the trek to fetch water.  The source of water for this particular boma was a mile away!  We just kept walking through trees and tall grass with the water cans until we finally reached a watering hole, filled with cows!  Jen immediately started unscrewing the caps and filling the cans with the water flowing from the water hole into one of the nearby furrows used for irrigation.  The water was so muddy from the cows, but it was not even a consideration.  The immunity of the Maasai is second to none!  After filling about 6 cans with water, Jen turned around and told us to come closer.  The way that they carry their water is by placing a belt or strip of material around the can and putting that belt on your head, with the water on your back.  It was so heavy and gave you such a headache, especially carrying it for over a mile! I have no idea how she would ever carry all this water on her own, but I was so impressed at the amount she could carry, being around 100 pounds max!

After getting back with the water, she once again thought that we should have more chai, so we went back in the boma for more tea.  She also started making lunch and let us help with all the little things.  The mamas were supposed to treat us as workers as opposed to guests, but our mama definitely treated us like her guests.  As the food starting cooking, some of her adorable children flooded into the boma to visit us.  There was a set of 2 year old twins, a 4 year old, and a few older boys that all stood and stared at us.  These kids were so beautiful and their laughs were even better.  I started tickling them and they laughed so loud, I couldn’t help but laugh right along.  Jen made us this thing called Ugali, which is nicknamed African cake.  Its basically boiled flour and water that they let sit for a while until it becomes a little thicker and harder than mashed potatoes.  It’s a great way for these people to get a lot of carbs in their diets, but it’s hard to eat a lot of.  She also boiled us tomatoes, cabbage, and onions to add to our Ugali.  I had to cut the cabbage myself, and she just laughed at me.  I was so slow and cutting huge pieces, so very soon after I was done, she had to recut everything I had done!  When she made our plates for us, she literally gave Anna and me a quarter of the pot each! I am talking a slab of heavy flour cake stuff the size of two Nalgene water bottles!  And our teachers told us how rude it was to not finish things during our stay.  I decided this had to be the exception.  We ate and ate and ate, with our fingers only (you can imagine that mess) and literally did not make a dent.  I felt bad, but there was no way...

After lunch, we went out of the boma again and went to some of the acacia trees nearby to help her collect firewood for her stove.  She is this tiny thing, but she used a machete like no one I have ever seen.  She took full braches off of trees and we gathered huge stacks of firewood in less than an hour.  She let us try a couple times, but we were not fast enough for her and she quickly took the machete from us!  We once again loaded the firewood on our backs using the belts and walked back home.  The rest of the afternoon was just a hang out time, where Jen worked on some of her bead work, and Anna and I got to play with her kids for hours.  I loved these kids and wanted to steal them so bad.  The only problem was how dirty these poor kiddos were.  They literally had flies crawling all over them, were covered in dirt, and their clothes were filthy.  Such a different world than what we are used to at home.

At around 5, our student affairs manager came and picked us up.  We said goodbye to the whole family.  I literally loved every second of this experience, and we are lucky enough to get to do it again in Tanzania with a different tribe!  I learned so much and got to see the true lifestyle of these women.  I really value that chance.

I have so much more to share from our other trip to Amboseli and going to one of the tourist lodges nearby, but I have to go and have some dinner!

Thanks for reading all of this and I will update soon!

Love,

Mollie Ann

Valentine's Day Community Service and Helping at Local Schools

Hello Everyone!

I have been so crazy and busy this last week that I have not had a chance to write a blog lately!  This one is going to be a little long because we have done SO much in this last week!

Last week was full of a lot of classes.  We had class five days in a row from 8 am until 4 pm, alternating between the four classes that we are taking here.  But as long as that sounds, one of the best parts about lectures here is that we have the chance to do field lectures and travel around the area to see the subjects we are talking about in person.  Three of the days last week, we had a chance to go to different overlooks in the area to see specific land uses and human dimensions.  We all have our collapsible chairs and find a place on the hill without any thorns or cacti.  Then the professors hold a regular lecture, allowing time for us to ask questions about the things that we are seeing. The hills allow you to see so far into the distance since a lot of the land around here is pretty flat.  It’s a very steep hike to get to the top usually, but absolutely worth it when you get to spend hours up there learning about the area you are looking over.  It’s such an enjoyable way to have classes, and it breaks up the week a lot.

Another way that the week was broken up was the visits that we got to go on to local schools near our bush camp.  The first school that we got to visit was Kimana High School that shares some of our fence line to the north. The kids at this school are anywhere from 13 to 22 years old, so there is quite a mix of personalities and interests and everything else.  When we first arrived there, it was so awkward.  None of the students there knew what to say to us, and we weren’t even sure if they spoke English at all.  But as soon as one of us broke the ice, it was chaos!  There were probably over 300 students there, and it is a boarding school so they come from all over.  Some of the students told me that I was the first white person they had ever seen outside of pictures and television!  They love being close to you.  They grab your arms, wrap their arms around you, look at your watch, undo your hair and play with it.  It’s so funny to watch the things that are so amusing to them that in the United States, no one would think twice about.  The girls I starting talking to first were so funny!  They were a posse of about 6 thirteen year olds, and they swarmed me the second I was away from the SFS students.  They told me that I looked exactly like Hannah Montana and begged me to sing any of her songs that I knew.  Little did they know that they picked the expert haha.  They loved having all of us sing for them.  They would literally beg and beg until you sang some song for them.  At one point, I was able to get them to sing for me instead, and I loved hearing their songs in Swahili that they knew from home.  After those girls were bored with me, the next group to gather around was about 15 boys from ages 17-22 and they literally asked so many questions, I could barely keep them straight.  They want to know all about America and what it is like and if they could go to college there.  And the boys here love asking all of the American girls to be their wives.  All of the girls from my camp got multiple marriage proposals from the random guys that we were all interacting with.  I made a new friend, wearing a Dallas Cowboys shirt that loved using my camera.  Unlike the others, he was so gentle with it and really understood how to use it.  I talked to him for a really long time and we compared America to Kenya.  It was so fun to just hang out with kids our age from a completely different lifestyle than what we have at home!

The next day, we only had one morning class from 8-9, and then the rest of the day was designated a community service day.  After one of the students here was sick and was taken to a clinic nearby, we decided that donating blood to this clinic would be a great way to give back to the local community.  The clinic is called Mbirikani and it is about 30 minutes from our camp.  When we first arrived there, we were greeted by a HIV counselor and she explained the ideals of the clinic and that it is completely free to everyone that goes there.  We got a tour of the entire facility, which is sponsored by a woman in Chicago.  They had up to date technology, a huge lab, an in-patient ward, staff quarters, a pharmacy, and anything you could need at a local clinic.  It was amazing to see the amount of money this woman must have put into this clinic to take care of hundreds of people a day.

One of the most shocking things about the clinic was when they showed us the current supply of blood that they had available to give to patients.  There were 3 bags of blood, all of which were half full.  It was amazing to me what a difference our blood could make, as opposed to the United States where you are not sure where your blood is going when they take it from.  The person sitting across the hall from me was going to take some of our blood that day, which was going to save his life.  It literally was unreal to me how much this donation could really help.  The only problem with this donation is my biggest fear in the entire world is needles, especially needles in Africa!  Needles scare me more than anything, and I could barely handle the thought of getting blood drawn at this clinic without crying.  However, there was no part of me that could justify not giving blood when someone desperately needed it because of my fear.

 I was one of the first people to go, and I was so happy with all of the support that I was getting from our student affairs managers and other students in my group.  I had people holding both hands, telling me stories, and making me laugh the entire time.  I could never thank all of those people who supported me enough.  After they finished taking the blood, we were given soda and chips and brownies and other sugary things to help us recover fast!  As soon as I was feeling back to normal, I took over my regular position as mom and helped take care of everyone else donating blood.  I ran around from room to room, holding hands, delivering coke, and escorting people outside to get fresh air.  I just wanted to show them the same support that they had given to me.  I am so happy that I was able to face my fear and donate blood, and I am so proud of my entire group doing the same.  Is there any better way to share the love on Valentine’s Day?

The next day was a non-program day, so we once again we got to sleep in, hang around, work on all of our assignments, and bake cookies and other stuff if we wanted to.  In the afternoon, we all loaded up the cars and went to a primary school about 10 minutes from downtown Kimana to help teach some of the classes and play games with the kids.  We all split into 5 groups to teach each of the classes for 2 hours.  My class was the 8-9 year olds, and there were about 40 students in a classroom comparable to my freshman year dorm room.  They were the most amazing kids though.  They had so much respect for their teachers and were so attentive and loved learning the new things we were teaching.  We played Pictionary with them on the chalk board to practice their animals in English, and then we sang songs like the Hokey Pokey and Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes.  We were all laughing the entire time, and then they decided to teach us how to play their favorite game.  It was a game that one person in the middle yells out an animal, and if it is something you eat, you have to all jump at the same time.  The kid would yell cow, goat, chicken, LION and would look around to see if anyone moved.  It was so fun!

Then we all got to go play outside with the kids, things like soccer, red light green light, and duck duck goose, or twiga twiga simba as they call it here (giraffe, giraffe, lion).  At one point, I had little girls tell me to sit down in the middle of a field, and before I knew it, I had 8 little hands in my hair, putting random braids every which way off my head.  They just love our hair here, and it’s so fun to see what they do with it.  I had so much fun at the school and loved all the new rafikis that I met while I was there.  I hope we get to go back again while in Kenya because these kids are great and 

they make you so happy with everything they do.

I love everything that we are getting the opportunity to do while we are here.  I had no idea I would be interacting so much with the local community, and I am so happy that we have the chance to do so.

Thanks for reading!!!

Love,

Mollie Ann

Our First Safari!

Jambo Everyone! Habari!

There are seriously no words that can begin to describe the experiences that I have been a part of the past two days!!!  But I will do my best :)

Monday was the first chance that we had to finally experience one of the world renowned national parks that this region is so famous for.  After taking a Wildlife Ecology class on Monday morning, we got all packed up and ready to head to Amboseli National Park about 45 minutes from the Kilimanjaro Bush Camp.  We packed our lunches with peanut butter and plum jelly, fresh veggies, and local potato chips, loaded up on sunscreen, and put on our best safari outfits.  The drive there was insane in itself.  I seriously don’t know how these cars still work as well as they do.  The dirt roads to get to the parks and camps feel like I am on a wooden roller coaster from 1900 and the cars we are in feel like they will just fall apart at any moment. 

By the time we finally arrived at the gates to the park, the excitement was killing me.  I could only imagine what we were going to see as soon as we went through those gates.  But not even my imagination was close to what we had a chance to see.  I forgot to mention, the best part about our safari vehicles is that they have rooftop hatches that we get to take off in the national parks, stand on the seats, and have our heads out in the open during the entire safari!  Despite the inevitable sunburn that comes from sticking my head out like that, feeling the breeze in my hair as I see hundreds of wild animals is a feeling that I could never explain.

From the second we pulled in the park, the things I was seeing felt as though I was once again in a movie. The huge Acacia trees scattered across the landscape, with Kilimanjaro in the background, and huge herds of animals covering the ground was the most picturesque moment.  The first animals that we saw were 3 ostriches, a male and two females, right off of the road that we were on.  But that was only the beginning.  As we coasted through the park to our lunch destination, we saw everything, from giraffes, tons of zebras, crowned cranes, jackals, hyenas, warthogs, secretary birds.  You couldn’t go half a kilometer without seeing some sort of wildlife.  But the most amazing part was the elephants!!!  They were everywhere you looked.  As soon as we got near the wetland area, there was such a high density of elephants that I didn’t even know where to look.  Suddenly, as we were approaching the lunch stop, there was a huge herd of elephants right off of the road that we were on!  Huge bulls, mamas, and little baby elephants were within 10 feet of our vehicles.  We were so close that I could see the expressions on their faces, the wrinkles all over their skin, and their huge flapping ears.  They were deep in the mud and wetlands and their legs seemed to disappear under the ground.  We were with one of my favorite instructors and he let us sit by the elephants for half an hour before we had to go and eat lunch finally.

We stopped at this beautiful overlook of the entire Amboseli National Park to have our lunch.  You could see everything from Kili, to the lakebed that was all dried up, to the palm forest.  It was so beautiful and relaxing up there.  And was a great break from the hot equator sunshine that was slowly turning every single one of us a nice pink color :)

After filling up our water bottles again and loading in the cars, we took off back down the road, and to my surprise, the elephants were still there and we once again got to see them up close. There were also zebras mixed right in, and a warthog family with three tiny babies right in the midst of everything.  It amazes me how all of these animals can mix and live together without ever bothering one another.

As we continued to drive and be quizzed over the radio by our professor, we suddenly saw a huge ruckus taking place across the open grassland from where we were.  There were around 10 other safari vehicles flying down the road so we knew something was going on.  We flung our car around and started taking off back toward the action.  It turns out there were 6 female lions making their way to the water hole!  They were so majestic and peaceful, walking right past gazelle and other prey to get water in the heat.  They were kind of far from where we were so I didn’t get a great look, but it was still amazing to see them in their natural habitat.  I can’t wait to see them more closely.

By the end of the day, we had seen everything I could imagine, and learned about all of the habitat types in the park and what can be found in each.  We also encountered some lovely American Tourists, sticking their heads out of the roof and yelling “yooooo hooooo” to try and get the hyenas to look at them for a picture.  The new joke around our camp is definitely saying yoo hoo instead of hello when greeting someone :)  I had such a great group of people to experience this first safari with.  I could not be more thankful for the entire experience.

Yesterday was a non-program day.  We finally got to sleep in past 6:30 and have the opportunity to lounge around with no agenda.  In the afternoon, we returned to Kimana to the huge marketplace that they have every Tuesday.  They take over a huge portion of land right in town and everyone sets up shops with clothes and fruits and veggies and shoes and everything else you could imagine.  The mammas were there again and I was laughing so hard.  They chase all of the students up and down the aisles trying to sell us anything they can.  At one point I had 17 mammas around me and I was backed into a corner.  I finally bought a necklace and took off running hoping to shake them off of me.  I bought some really great stuff, including lots of skirts and bandanas, but my favorite buy of the day were tire shoes.  They are sandal shoes with beading on the straps that are made from old tires.  They are so comfortable and have great tread.  They are my new obsession.

After being in the midst of the crazy market, we got a chance to go to a local bar called Club Kimana, or Club K for short.  They have a special agreement with our camp and let us sit in huge gazebos out back so no one tries to sell us more stuff.  We all got to try the African beer called Tusker.  It was great to be sitting with my new amazing group of friends, trying a new kind of beer, and talking about our experiences in the market.  It was a relaxing time that we all needed after our first successful week in Kenya.

Thanks so much for reading all of this!  I know it gets a little lengthy, but I just have so much to share.  I hope everyone is having a great week!

Love,

Mollie Ann

The Maasai Mamas!

Habari!!!

Another few days have passed here in Kenya, and once again, the experiences that I have had in the short amount of time since I have written have been life changing and so incredible.  I am STILL having a hard time realizing that all of this is real and I am not just in the Lion King!  We have really taken a dive into our classes, with around 5 hours of class per day.  The classes are so interesting and everything we are learning is so applicable to everything that I want to do in my future career.  Especially Wildlife Ecology in East Africa.  I absolutely love it!

Yesterday was the most intensive cultural experience I have ever been a part of.  We had the opportunity to go to a local Maasai Village with all of the women that live there.  The women all live in the village together, look out for one another, and help one another with their daily tasks, while their husbands are out hunting or taking care of the livestock.  The women are called the Maasai Mamas and they wear the most beautiful clothes and jewelry that I have ever laid eyes on.  They all wear bright reds and oranges, long skirts, and beaded necklaces that could put any jeweler in the United States to shame.  When we first arrived at their Boma, they were all there, in a huge line waiting to greet us and welcome us to their village.  Then, we had the privilege of watching and listening to one of their traditional songs and dances.  It was so amazing because they don’t use any sort of instruments, yet their voices flood the air like surround sound.  Every one of the mamas were singing different words and different parts, yet they all meshed together to create this music that gave me chills when I heard it.  One of the mamas would start the song with her strong voice, and the other women would join in immediately, knowing exactly what to do and say.

One of the best parts of watching them sing and dance was the expressions and seeing them as real people just like ourselves.  Some of the girls would get so embarrassed when they would dance in front of us, and others would start laughing when they messed up part of the song.  It was so real to me.  No matter how far apart we live from one another, we still feel the same and get embarrassed and make fun of one another with our friends.  It was great to see all of the same expressions on their faces.

The dances that they were doing were simple jumping along with the beat of the song they were singing.  The stomping was ground shaking and they jumped using their entire bodies and throwing them into the ground.  They would jump in front of the group with a few of the other mamas and would come grab our hands and have us jump along with them.  And their smiles :) They could knock you off your feet with the pure happiness on their faces.

We even got to perform our own song and dance for the women as well.  We of course chose Waka Waka by Shakira and when the music first started, they started singing along to our surprise!  They all knew the song from the World Cup.  We performed our dance, incorporating them into whatever we could, and it was the best way to break language barriers. 

Afterwards, they offered all of their unique crafts to us as a way for The School for Field Studies to support the local community.  They had the most amazing bracelets and necklaces and skirts and of course, in a group of 25 girls, we couldn’t resist buying at least something small.  I love having bracelets from these amazing women, and I will always treasure this experience and the memories that the bracelets represent.

Tomorrow is our first day to finally go to a National Park.  We will be at Amboseli National Park from 11am until 6pm tomorrow doing wildlife behavior and identification exercises.  The anticipation is killing me to finally see all of the animals that I have traveled all the way to Africa to see.

Tonight, a group of my friends have decided to wake up at 2:30 am to watch the Super Bowl.  Let’s go Giants!!! Enjoy watching, everyone :)

Kwaharini!!! (Goodbye everyone!)

Mollie Ann

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

Arriving in the Kilimanjaro Bush Camp!

So after countless hours of traveling and exploring along the way, I have finally arrived in Kilimanjaro Bush Camp in Kenya!  And what a trip it has been already.

I had an awesome travel experience, ranging from sitting next to an upcoming rapper from Connecticut, to a new friend from the School for Field Studies program that I am completing, to meeting individuals from 

Zimbabwe and Comoros that gave me the run down on what to expect and get out of this experience.

I even had the chance to spend some time in the lovely city of London with a few other adventurous girls that I had traveled from New York with!  We had the opportunity to see Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, and so much more in the few short hours that we were there.  I felt so grown up figuring out the subway system in a whole new country and diving right into it with a group of girls I had not even known for 24 hours.  What better way to get to know people you will be spending the entire spring with!

When we finally arrived in the Nairobi airport, there was an SFS individual waiting right at the gate to meet us.  After spending tons of time filling out VISAs, currency exchanges, and other documentation, we made it through customs and everyone on the trip got all of their baggage! I was in disbelief considering that doesn’t happen to me in the United States a majority of the time :)

After getting all of our things, we walked outside into the beating down sun to see the most picturesque safari vehicles that you could ever imagine.  They are dark green Toyota Land Cruisers with open tops and huge windows, covered in dirt with 2 spare tires on the back because of all the flats that you get around here.  We loaded up our bags and then 9 students to each of these cars!  As we began driving away from the airport, the rest of the drivers were crazy, not to mention we were on the other side of the road.  But we made a quick stop at a local grocery store to get some snacks to take on the long trip with us.  They had a variety of items, with a few familiar things like pringles :) After that, it was time to start our journey to Kilimanjaro Bush Camp. It’s about a 3 hour drive to get there from the city, with descent roads the entire way.  We even stopped at a local market to look at the jewelry and other handmade crafts that the people make here for a living.  The people are sure pushy and want you to buy something from them, but it’s really fun to bargain with them for the things you want.  After our little pit stop, we continued on to the camp.  When we turned off the main road by a km marker sign, it finally hit me that we were finally there and had made it all the way from the United States!  It literally brought tears to my eyes.

And the camp could not be more amazing!  It is a huge fenced in area, with Mount Kilimanjaro as the backdrop to everything!  There are giraffes, elephants, buffalo, and other wild animals roaming around right outside the gate.  There are baboons in the camp sitting next to me as I type this.  It feels like I am in a movie.

When we first arrived, the entire staff was waiting for us and wanting to shake our hands.  Everyone here is so friendly and they love talking to you and hearing your stories.  We had our first meal as soon as we arrived and I love the food.  Everything is made complete fresh and from scratch, including all of the locally grown fruit and vegetables and the meat that is slaughtered right outside.  We had a brief introduction and learned everyone’s names that are here with us and then had some free time to go and unpack in our Bandas (or houses)  Our houses are kind of like a dorm room, and I share mine with 3 other girls.  The bathrooms and showers are outdoors, with freezing water that gives you goose bumps EVERYWHERE!  But the living area overall is great.  I feel like I am constantly at summer camp.  With all of us being extremely tired, we had dinner, I was on cleanup crew and we all hit the sack pretty early, all wrapped up in our mosquito nets!

Today was amazing.  The second I walked out of my banda, Kilimanjaro was towering over me, glowing the in sunlight.  It was one of those moments that takes your breath away and no one could ever understand how amazing that moment was.  We had an early breakfast, around 7 am and a longer orientation today.  But then we got to go into the closest city to our camp.

Kimana is an amazing place that is full of so many surprises and happiness.  When you first arrive at these towns, they seem so small and poor and kind of run down at first impression.  But boy was I wrong.  We went into a small café where we had a cold coca cola and chipati, which is this amazing tortilla like bread that is common here.  When we finished up eating, we began to wander down the street through town, right as all the kids were getting out of school.

These kids are life changing.  They are all so genuinely happy all of the time.  They wave and smile at you any time you pass, come and shake your hand, want to take pictures with you and hold your hands.  If I could have the same carefree happiness that they do, I would be set for life.  The kids we were hanging out with were around 5-8, walking home from school by themselves.  We would take pictures with them and they would swarm us to see the pictures, and when they did, you should have heard the laughter!  There is no way that you could ever be sad looking at the joy on these kids’ faces.  They walked around town with us, and I started this game with them.  If I stopped and stuck my tongue out and made a funny face, they would all stop and turn around and do the same back to me.  They would get so giddy and keep trying to slightly turn around to see when I was going to do it next.  And when we would stop, we would laugh and laugh at the faces we were making.  I have never felt so much joy brought on by these amazing children that I could not even communicate with through words.  It’s amazing what a smile and a game can do to break language barriers, no matter where in the world you are.

When our time at the village was done, we went back to camp and it was time for some soccer!!!  They have a small field out behind the bandas that we play with small goals.  Some of the staff comes and plays with us.  It was one of those moments that you had imagined, but now that it was happening, it was so unreal.  Dust was flying up around us, Kilimanjaro majestically as the background, the staff yelling and cheering for us in Swahili, all while letting go and having a blast playing one of my favorite things.

We had dinner and heard our first student presentation.  There is a student leader every night that presents something that they like about the day and organizes a game for all of us to play.  It was so fun and everyone was laughing.  Then a group of us stayed and played cards and were getting so tired and loopy that we were laughing at everything.

 Now it is time for bed before another adventurous day.  I know this is super long and in the future, blogs will be much shorter.  There is just too much to cover today!!!!

I miss everyone back home and hope everyone is doing great!

La La Salamna (Goodnight) XOXO,

Mollie Ann