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

Tanzania Homestay and Amazing Lectures!!!

Hi again!

Time is winding down here in Africa and we are all wrapping up the final projects and everything we want to get done before heading back home.  I have fallen in love with Africa, but I am also looking forward to be home with my incredible family and some homemade food from my momma!!!

On a different note, after our return from Serengeti National Park, we have had quite a lot of excitement between our off days to go exploring and FINALLY starting our directed research projects that we have been waiting for the entire semester!!!  The first day back was an off day, which was definitely needed!  We had the option for an activity in the morning, but around 90% of us decided to sleep in and have a relaxing morning instead of being up at the crack of dawn again.  Instead, we left camp around 11 am to head to Karatu once again to go shopping.  Unfortunately, my tsetse fly bites and swollen feet had gotten really bad, so we decided that the clinic was a better choice for me to see what was going on!  The clinic was the same one that we had taken the tour at a few weeks before, and I had the most amazing and nice doctor there taking care of me.  They ran a bunch of tests, but unfortunately couldn’t find anything that was causing the swelling and therefore didn’t know how to help.  They did give me some lotion to help with the bites and how itchy and terrible they were, and I was very thankful for that.  I am just praying that my feet go back to a normal size as soon as I get home, because the elephant feet are not a good look on me! Hahaha

After me and a few other girls finished everything up at the clinic and got whatever meds were necessary, we journeyed back to Karatu and I chose to walk around for the remaining 15 minutes that we had before leaving town.  I wandered into a few shops and ran into some friends, but didn’t have time to really buy anything.  Our next stop completely made up for it though.  I have often talked about the market in Kimana back in Kenya and how crazy it was every Tuesday.  Karatu has another market like this one, accept, it is easily 10 times the size of Kimana’s!!!!

The market is on this giant open hill made of dirt and nothing else, and everyone in the area comes and sets up their little shops all over the area!! It was so huge and really intimidating when we first got there, but of course, we dove right in and started exploring anything we could find.  I found some really great fabric that I had been looking for, as well as beautiful jewelry and more shukas of course.  There was fish being fried everywhere and nyama choma (roasted meat) everywhere you turned. Anything that anyone could ever need could be found at this market, including livestock, and I felt like I had barely made a dent in it when it started pouring and we had to make a run back to the cars! By the time we actually got there, my shoes had at least 6 more layers of mud on them and I was slipping and sliding all over the ground.  I made an awesome deal with a guy outside the car selling the necklaces that if he cleaned my shoes off, I would buy a necklace, and it worked out great for the both of us! Haha  After loading back in the cars and showing everyone everything we had bought that day, we drove to Happy Days to have some “American” food and a few drinks.

We all sat together around a picnic table and just had random conversations about the day and looking forward to DR and everything that we were still going to get to experience in Africa.  We came back to camp a few hours later, and our Camp Director’s daughter was visiting during her Easter break.  I was one of the few people that talked to her a lot, so I invited her to play cards with us after dinner was over.  I sat with her and played go fish for a while, but as time went on I got exhausted and freezing, and decided to say goodnight, curl up in my bed and watch a movie.  I watched the movie “Hard Day’s Night” with the Beatles and completely fell in love with it.  It was a great note to end the day on!!!

The next day was our Tanzanian homestay!!!  We got our pairs, and I was lucky enough to be paired up with my best guy friend here, Patrick!  We left nice and early, and with the rain pouring down around us, the entire area around camp was so foggy!  I couldn’t even tell where we were going as soon as we pulled out of camp.  This home stay, we were stay with a different tribe than the Maasai called the Iraqw.  Our Mama’s name was Mama Beni and she lived in the same town that our camp is in so it was a quick drive.  When we arrived, Mama Beni, her daughter, and her son met us at the car and gladly took the gifts that we had brought for them!  The day of our home stay was actually Easter, so we made sure to bring some more food to help with the Easter feast that they usually have.  We had no idea what we would be doing that day since it was a holiday, so we were wearing clothes nice enough for church, but not nice enough in case we were working in the field.  After arriving, our Mama started making us chai like always, and we sat in the house with her son, Christopher.  Their house was one of the nicer ones in the area.  It had concrete walls and floors with a metal roof, three rooms with beds and a couch and coffee table.  Outside, they had a large barn for their cattle, shoats, and dogs and because they were farmers, they had things growing everywhere.  We sat for a long time as the chai cooked, and when we finally got it, it tasted so strange to us.  It tasted like they had stirred it with a stick from this one tree that is very known for being strong tasting and smelling, and both Patrick and I had to force the tea down to be polite!  After we finished the chai, it was still pouring outside, so we continued to sit with Christopher inside and talk about their farms and about America and what the weather was like for us at home.  We got to know Christopher even better than we got to know our Mama, which I had hoped would be the opposite.

After the rain finally slowed, we got to have a tour of the house, the barns, and shown all of the farm land that their family owns.  They own acre after acre that goes on farther than we could even see!  The grew a lot of corn, but also had fruit trees and a vegetable garden too!  The whole farm was owned by their entire family, so they always had enough people working on it to take good care of it and harvest things on time!  My favorite part of the tour was definitely the barns!  There was a newborn baby goat running around under our feet looking for its mom.  It was so small and had the cutest noises that came out of its mouth when it was scared or excited for its mom.  They also had a baby kitten and cow that were nearby, so I was surrounded by baby animals. 

Soon after the tour, we had to start cooking lunch for the entire family.  It was Patrick, me, Christopher, and another Mama in the kitchen building outside the house.  The first thing we had to do was cut meat for the rice mix that we were making.  My partner, a devout vegetarian, was asked to hold the plate, and before he knew it, a huge piece of raw cow was plopped down on the plate on his lap.  I wish I could have captured his face at that moment.  He looked so disgusted and attempted to lean as far back away from the meat as he could while Christopher cut it.  It took a good 20 minutes to cut, and his facial expression never changed.  I was laughing the entire time at our luck that day.  When the meat was all done, it was thrown in a pot over the fire.  We then started to cook rice and cabbage and tomatoes and got to help cut and prepare all of them before they were thrown in the pot.  We had tons of rice, and it was a good thing, because out of nowhere, as we were cutting onions and cabbage, a chicken snuck into the kitchen, flew up in the air, and came down right on top of one of the rice pots.  The boiling rice flew everywhere, and chicken was grabbed by the wing and thrown out, and we were back to square one.  Luckily, in our bags, we had brought double rice, which worked out nicely this day.  We sat for a long time while the other momma added a lot of spices to the meat and one of the pots of rice.  It smelled so good, and after waiting 2 hours for the cooking to be done, Patrick and I were starving.  Patrick got so lucky because they happened to keep some rice separate from the meat and rice mix, so he had a nice feast for himself of cabbage and tomatoes and the plain rice.  They even brought us home grown oranges in from their garden, which was an amazing touch to the meal!  We ate and ate, trying to not be rude and leave leftovers, but like always, they gave us far too much food and we had to stop eventually.  As soon as lunch was over, we decided that we would go for a walk around the area and meet the neighbors!

The houses near us all belonged to relatives of the family we were staying at!  The people in this area don’t really know how cousins and aunts and uncles works, so I couldn’t tell you who we met or how they were related, but every house we stopped at had family photos with our family in them too.  We even ran into a few of our fellow students that were in houses nearby.  After we had visited and made our stops, we walked down a huge hill down to a water hole that the cattle use.  That area was absolutely gorgeous!  It overlooked Lake Manyara far into the distance, with rolling hills and super green agriculture and trees in between.  It’s so pretty and natural looking and Patrick and I really enjoyed the view from where we were.  We didn’t enjoy, however, the hike back up the hill hahaha.  It was literally straight up and our guide made it look like nothing.  Meanwhile, we were both struggling, trying to still talk to Christopher, but gasping for breath.  It’s so pathetic how much a difference the elevation makes from Kenya, that was already 4,000 feet above sea level, to Moyo hill that is closer to 5,000 or 6,000.  We felt pretty pathetic!

For the rest of the day, we just hung around the house.  We had really hoped to help the family more with their daily chores and farming tasks, but the combination of Easter Sunday and us being guests did not work in our favor.  In the time we sat there, Patrick and I actually had a really great time.  With some of the miscommunications over the language barrier and other random things that happened, we could not stop laughing.  The first was this random yarn ball craft thing that our family was using as a decoration.  It was hung on a single string straight above my head, and was the only thing in the house that was a decoration.  Then we misunderstood when they introduced us to a worker from the farm.  Apparently, he was from another tribe that we had never heard of.  When they said the name of the tribe though, it sounded exactly like Barbarian, so we thought they were calling this man barbaric!  He was not wearing shoes and he scarfed his food down quickly, and whenever these things happened, the family just sighed and said “Barbaric.”  We didn’t realize it was a tribe until the second we left!  Other funny things were the youngest daughter, named Foster, who was the Cinderella of the family and was called loudly no matter where she was and a little baby chewing on a piece of the meat that we had cooked.  Normally, roasted meat is nyama choma, but a tiny baby with no teeth gnawing at it, we couldn’t help but call it nyama choke-a.  We were exhausted, so everything was hilarious by the end of the day.  I loved spending this time with Patrick and will never forget that day with all the other inside jokes that happened!  We finally had to leave, so we took pictures with our family and headed back to camp. At camp, they made us a huge Easter feast with tons of amazing food, including chapati of course and we all talked about our homestay!

The next day was the decision day for Directed Research to choose our final projects and the partner we would be working on them with.  All 9 of us that were chosen for WM met Christian in the gazebo at camp and divided up projects based on interests.  I was extremely lucky and got my first choice with my really good friend Jen!  We got the project looking at indicator species.  An indicator species is one whose presence can indicate a healthy environment and richness in other species.  Our professor is trying to publish an article for this area based on our information, so after choosing a topic, he told us that we would be published in the near future!  I was so excited and knew right then that I had chosen the right project!

As soon as topics were established, we began working on our proposals that were due a few days down the road.  We had to talk about a background of the study, what other research had been done, how we were going to collect data, and so on.  It was a really relaxing day as we all just lounged around, wrote bits and pieces of our papers at a time, and walked into town for a soda and to head to the tailor of course!  This time though, as we walked back from town, the entire sky opened up and we got trapped in the rain.  To make things worse, our gate at camp was locked and the guards were sitting inside where they couldn’t hear us, so we had to wait in the rain before we got in!  It was definitely necessary to change my drenched clothes as soon as we got back!  The rain of course put us all in a weird mood, so we curled up in pajamas and watched the movie Madagascar!  It was such a relaxing day!

The next day, we were scheduled to have a field lecture, but none of us were very excited.  After all, why would we have a lecture when exams were over and Directed Research was the main focus of the rest of the program?  We had no idea where we were going, but when we got to the first stop, we all realized what a great lecture it was going to be.  The focus of the lecture was on conservation and environmentally smart programs going on in this area.  The first stop was a school that was built by a company in the United States.  It was a normal school, but in addition, they had an entire conservation learning area where they could learn about trees and plants and water and how they could conserve them.  The students even had chances to plant their own trees.  The school also had a chicken farm that they farmed all of the chicken that the kids would eat during the school day.  The school was gorgeous and surrounded by fruit trees for the kids to eat from!  It was so great to see how small parts of the community are trying to make the changes and how much of a difference it can make!  When we thought we were done with our tour, they surprised us and told us that we were going to plant trees for the school!  I was so excited that we got to do something hands on and would actually make a difference to this school.  We all picked a baby papaya tree and a hole they had dug for us and started moving the soil around and making our little trees stand up tall.  We even named our trees and were acting like complete hippies in our long skirts, planting trees, and singing songs about loving nature!  We were all so happy leaving our trees as we climbed back in the car for the next stop!

The next stop was at a Mama’s house who utilized natural gas from her cattle’s manure.  They have this really great system that the manure sits and ferments, and the family collects the natural gas that comes from this manure and uses it to cook all of their meals and heat up their chai and boil their water to make it clean.  The entire system is so easy to use, and all of us were amazed that we had never seen this process before!  It was so simple and people around the world could easily use it to heat their house instead of using the high amounts of natural gas that we all do!  It was fascinating to see another way to do things that was so different than what we were used to, but worked just as well!  Very eye opening!

The next stop was at this brick building that had this really large and loud machine working hard outside the door.  We quickly realized that this machine was making bricks, such as the one the building was made out of.  The bricks were made from mostly dirt and sand from the local area with a small amount of cement and highly compacted in the machine to make building materials!  It was really neat because it used natural materials instead of tons of cement like other bricks do.  They showed us how the machine worked, and then, once again to our surprise, allowed us to help run the machine and gather the bricks from the machine after they were compacted.  It was such a neat way to save resources and use things that are more plentiful and we were all excited that we could help for a few short minutes!

The final stop during the lecture was nothing special compared to the others.  The tour guides from the entire day showed us stoves that lodges and certain families use that use alternative sources of energy than burning tons of fire wood or using gas from the city of Karatu.  It was informative, but we were in a weird alley in the middle of Karatu, so it did not leave as much of an impact as the stops before!

After the traveling lecture, we were all so happy with everything that we had seen and the positive impacts that it is having on the surrounding community.  I think that I especially liked it because it was the first successful project that the founding company stuck with and it was really making a difference.  In the past, we hear about conservation efforts, but so many become failures due to policies and weak institutions.  This was such a positive and hopeful day and made us all think that we could make a difference in the careers we are pursuing.

Back at camp, we had another lecture that afternoon with a lion specialist that worked in Tarangire National Park and used to work at Serengeti.  He talked about all of the management her did in the park and the common problems they face when conserving lions.  He was a really cool lecturer because he had been to the United States to study as well, so he just had so much knowledge about the world.  I really liked learning about the lions and their struggles and the social structure, especially since we had seen so many in the crater and in Serengeti!  We thanked the lecturer, hung out the rest of the night, and prepared for another day full of classes!

The next day was an all morning statistics lab with all of our professors.  We were stuck in the classroom listening to all of the data analysis that might be done during research and how to do it and what it means and what program you would use to do so.  It was a really long morning, especially since each one of us would only need one of those analysis techniques, but had to listen to all of the information.  It was informative, but really long.  We also still had to work on our proposals, so that was the main thing on our minds that morning.  We had a well-deserved lunch after that lecture, a quick safety debrief on DR with Whitney, and continued writing for the rest of the night.  I stayed up super later trying to get it all done, and it was a great feeling when I finished the whole paper!!!

Thanks again for reading!  I know things are quite as exciting as the cheetahs in Serengeti, but I appreciate you still keeping up!  Hope everyone is having a wonderful day!!!

Love,

Mollie Ann

Expedition to Serengeti Days 3, 4, and 5!!!

Mambo I say (Tanzanians speak all fluent Swahili, but always add ‘I say’ to the end of their sentences),

The third day in Serengeti was the most amazing of all the days!!!  After the day, I was so thrilled with everything we had seen, I could not even believe that it was real!

The day, however, started on a terrible note.  That day, we had a different kind of birding exercise to do, and of course, birds are the best in the early morning.  We woke up at 5:30 am, only to find that it had POURED the entire night and for some reason, we did not have water proof tents!!!  Everything, and I mean everything was soaked all the way through, including my pillow, sleeping pad, textbooks, blanket, sweatshirt, and every article of clothing that I brought with me to Serengeti.  The only dry thing in the tent was me, thanks to my lovely sleeping bag that I owe a lot to now!  You can imagine how freezing it was with the moisture in the air and no warm clothes that were dry.  I climbed in the cars at 6 am in my pajamas and an apple because we were going to have breakfast when we returned from the exercise.

You can only imagine that I was not in the best mood as we flew to our transect in the grasslands.  We had to count and identify every bird that we saw in the grasslands for a total of two hours, but it was quite tough since all the birds could hide easily in the long ocean of grass!  The one plus was the gorgeous blue skies and blowing grassland that accompanied the transect.  As we were driving, the roads were so muddy from all of the rain the night before!  The cars were bumping around more than usual and we would have to speed through puddles to make sure that we wouldn’t get stuck.  Unfortunately (and kind of fortunately), we did get stuck in this huge muddy area and we had to reverse and go forward over and over to keep our tires from sinking in any farther.  We started moving in a forward direction with the wheels spinning 10 times faster than we were moving, when we suddenly lost control and started fishtailing.  I was sitting in the back corner of the car, four rows back from the driver, and suddenly, I was going straight down the road as if I was the driver!!!  We all went from cheering that we were finally moving forward to screaming in both fear and excitement as the car moved through the mud completely sideways!  When we finally slid to a stop, the entire car exhaled in unison, and then burst out laughing.  It was so hilarious and we could not believe that the car did not flip at the speed we were going!  When we were all finished, my friend offered me her shuka and I curled up in the back corner of the car and tried to fall asleep.  Just as my eyes were about to shut, I saw something far in the distance!  I couldn’t tell for sure what it was, but I had an idea. 

I stood up abruptly and started pulling on Jenna, saying “Jenna what is that, Jenna I think it’s a cheetah, Jenna ahhhh!!!”  She felt so bad because she was convinced that it was a stick and I was getting excited over nothing.  But the closer and closer we got, we could tell that I was right!!! I was the first person to spot a cheetah in the Serengeti!!!!  I was shaking so bad that I could barely focus on the cheetah sitting proudly on top of a termite mound, just like all of the pictures you see!  As we got closer, I was sad to see it leap off the mound and start walking away from us, but at the last second, it climbed slowly on to another mound only a few meters away.  The cheetah was only 100 meters away from our car and no one else was around to see it.  We all were panicking with excitement, taking as many pictures as possible and admiring how beautiful it was!  A gorgeous cheetah, sitting among the endless grasslands with a shining blue sky and hills in the background.  I was literally speechless and still am when I try to explain the emotions that were going through all of us at that moment.

Eventually, the cheetah ran off into the grass, and we kept moving back toward camp for breakfast.  Just as I was settling back into the car, we noticed a giant group of cars ahead of us, all pointing and taking pictures!  Quickly, we realized that it was another cheetah literally 5 meters from the side of the road!  It was so close that I could see its beady eyes and the pattern of its spots completely.  It was so sad because over 50 cars were following it and trying to get their pictures.  The cheetah wanted to cross the road, but the cars were keeping it from doing that, and eventually we left so that we would no longer be a part of the problem.  It was amazing to see the cheetah that close, but we were happy to leave and get out of the way so that the cheetah could continue with its day without us getting in the way.

When we got back to camp around 10 am (yes all of this excitement happened before 10 o’clock), we had a relaxing breakfast and got to hang out around camp for a few hours.  We all hung out in our tents, hung up sopping wet clothes, and listened to music.  We had lunch only a few hours later and then prepared to head back out into the field for the rest of the day!

Our next stop was the main visitor’s center of the park where we would get to explore all of the education materials they had and then have a lecture with the warden of the park.  When we pulled in, we noticed that the entire visitor’s area was covered in Rock hyraxes and dwarf mongooses!!!  They were like squirrels on a college campus, begging the tourists for foods, climbing picnic tables, and running under your feet when you least expected it.  We had about an hour before our lecture, so we got some snacks and sat down at a picnic table.  The mongooses and hyraxes were all over and we all tried to get awesome pictures with them since they were clearly not afraid of us at all.  When no one was looking, I even petted one.  I couldn’t help it.  It was a foot away and soooo fuzzy!  And it didn’t even respond when I touched it. After the hyrax excitement, we wandered around the information that they had all over and discovered some cool facts about the park and how it all got started!  The lecture started before we knew it, and we all gathered in a lecture hall and met the warden of the park.  The warden talked to us about the challenges that the park faces and how it is managed.  I really enjoy these lectures at the park because we are able to compare Amboseli National Park, Ngorongoro Crater, Lake Nakuru National Park, and now Serengeti to see how they differ and how the challenges change depending on where we are!

After the lecture was over, we had another game drive for the rest of the day, and I was hoping that our luck from the morning would continue for the rest of the afternoon!  The first thing we saw was a leopard, although it was barely visible in the distance.  It was propped in an acacia tree above the grassland and its long straight tail was easy to see, even from where we were!  That was two big cats in one day already!!!  We didn’t stick around long and when we were driving, we suddenly saw ANOTHER cheetah!!! This one was once again propped up on a termite mound with a huge log accompanying the mound.  The cheetah stood up tall on the mound and almost blended in with the log that was right beside it!  I was happy because one girl in our car had not seen a cheetah yet and she was the one to spot it!  The cheetah ran from us before we got too close, but I couldn’t ask for much more than three cheetahs in one day!

As we continued our drive, we suddenly saw some sort of ruckus in the road ahead of us!  As we moved closer, we realized it was a Serval cat, and not only that.  It was a Serval Cat being chased by a white tailed mongoose!  I couldn’t even keep my laughter in when I saw this ridiculous sight, and they ran quickly through the grass out of sight before any of us could really process what was happening.  We all burst out in to laughter, and couldn’t wait to explain to our wildlife management professor what we had seen!  That was three cats already and it was not even close to when we had to be back to camp!  We kept driving around, and had to do more giraffe behavior exercises every time we saw a giraffe, so to my dismay, the time that we had left was running out!

We finally turned our car back toward camp and I was so content with everything we had seen.  Up ahead, nearing camp, however, were three or four cars stopped and taking pictures of something else.  IT WAS CAT #4!!!  There was a huge mamma lion and two little cubs sitting in a clearing near a watering hole.  The cubs were hiding from one another behind tree stumps and then leaping out to tackle one another.  One even came over to nuzzle its mom and curl up with her.  She wasn’t a big fan of this motion and quickly got up and crossed the road right in front of the car in front of us!  She snuck into the grass and plopped down, like the trip had exhausted her.  Her cubs were still on the other side of the road playing and exploring, and to my surprise, they started coming straight toward our car.  We all fell silent as these two little lion cubs walked around the car I was in, only 7 feet from where I was sitting!!!  The little lions stared right into my eyes and I was just taken back at their beauty and gracefulness, even as clumsy little kitties.  They walked past us, playing with each other as they went, and eventually made it to their mom of the other side and they all curled up together!  I was so happy that we were in the right place at the right time, and as soon as they laid down, it was time for us to head back to camp!

What a day that was.  I could not have asked to see anything better and was so thankful by the end of the day with everything I had seen!  I knew that no other day could compare to this one, but I was looking forward to the last few days we had in the Serengeti to see what other surprises awaited us!

The last full day that we had in the park was filled with game drives and lodge visits.  I had cook crew in the pitch black in the morning cooking over hot coals placed in a basin.  I had never cooked like that at all!  We left early again at 7:30, meaning cook crew started at 5:30!  When we left, we were still aiming to get more giraffe and elephant exercises done, but in all reality, we knew it was just another game drive!  I was exhausted that morning, so I took a lovely nap in the back seat and picked a great day to do so because until around 11 am, we didn’t see anything besides a few birds here and there!

When I did finally wake up, that same mama lion and her two cubs (we could tell because of her radio collar from the Serengeti Lion Project) we sprawled across a log near the road!  They didn’t respond to the car at all, but instead just hung there limp, relaxing in the hot sunshine!  We stopped and watched them, but quickly realized they were not going anywhere anytime soon and decided to head to our next stop!

The next place we were stopping was another hippo pool at another part of the park that we had not been to yet!  I could tell we were getting close because of the terrible smell that always accompanies the hippos.  And of course, the wind was not in our favor that day.  When we got out of the car, I was absolutely amazed at the number of hippos there were!!! The water was completely solid with the massive bodies that are half under the water.  There was a constant sound of splashing, swimming, fighting, diving, and other disgusting things going on.  Hippos are quite possibly the most disgusting animals in the area.  They lay around all day in the same place that they poop, and when they do poop, they stand up and fling it everywhere by wagging their tails as quickly as possible.  It’s so gross and I was thankful to be as far away as we were.  As we were watching the hippos, I suddenly saw a croc slide sneakily into the water behind them and move down the shore, trying to avoid being squished by the massive hippos surrounding it.  The hippos were very entertaining to watch, but in the middle of the day with no shade around, we quickly were ready to move on. 

Just as I was about to step into the car, I heard another tour guide yelled “duma,” which is the word for cheetah in Swahili!  We walked back to the hippo pool and to our surprise, a cheetah was standing proudly behind the pool looking over the water and the hippos.  Something was scaring the cheetah though, and it timidly looked back into the woodland that it had come from.  Once, it even tried to go back into the woods, and came running back out in fear.  Jenna and I were so taken back by the cheetah and the fact that we were standing on the same ground for once instead of in the car like always.  We just stood in amazement to see what the next move of the cheetah was.  It finally took off running back into the woodland and was gone for good, just in time for us to leave for our next stop!

Finally, we got to head to one of the lodges in the park to enjoy the pool, some good food, and just relax.  When we arrived, it turned out some other cars had been there for almost an hour, so we all quickly threw on swimsuits, ordered a sandwich, and dove in the pool.  The pool felt amazing on my blistered feet from the silly tsetse fly bites and I never wanted to get out of the water.  I had a Panini with ham and cheese on it with French fries and a coke, and it was much needed after sleeping in tents and eating a lot of packed lunches! I even tried this drink called Amarula, which is definitely my new favorite thing. I sat with my friends Erin and Karianne and we all just talked about internships and summer plans and what was next after Africa.  I really enjoyed their company and the entire lodge experience was a great one!

After we wrapped up at the lodge, we had about an hour and a half to finish off with a game drive and hopefully see something that would make up for the anticlimactic morning!  We drove and in almost the same place that we saw our first cheetah, my friend Patrick suddenly saw a cat tail pop up above the grassland for a few seconds.  I have no idea how he spotted it in that short amount of time, but we slammed on the brakes and waited to see the tail again.  It showed up a few meters from where it was before, and we were able to tell that it was a leopard!!! Once again, we were the first car to spot it and waited for it to move onto a mound where it was visible.  And lucky for us, that is exactly what it did.  It hopped up on a mound right under an acacia tree and sat there looking around!  This was by the far the closest that I had been to a leopard and I was so excited to see it.  By far, the leopard has the most beautiful of any animal’s coat.  Its spots line its spine perfectly and are so defined against the lighter color of the fur.  It was shocking stunning and when it leaped into the grass, we got a better view of its spots down its entire tail.  The leopard walked closer and closer to the other cars that had gathered and finally crossed the road only two cars away from us, noticeably stalking something on the other side!  It crept up a termite mound and we finally saw that it had its eyes on a baboon in the distance.

The leopard crept closer and closer, but suddenly, having noticed the leopard, three male baboons leaped out of the tree and started chasing the leopard back to where it had come from.  The baboons were screaming and as the leopard disappeared into the distance, the baboons climbed up on branches and mounds above the grass to keep watch for the leopard!  It was quite a chase scene and we were all shocked at what had happened!  Apparently, baboons and leopards have an on-going battle and one will kill the others babies if it has the chance.  One of the baboons had a huge scratch on its face, and I think it was safe to assume it was from that same leopard!  I was just thankful to have seen a leopard that close and even though we had to go back to camp, I was content with the day and felt very relaxed and satisfied with everything about the Serengeti.

Our final day was for packing and heading out of the park. We all woke the earliest of all the days and started packing up all of our things and rolling up the gigantic tents to throw in the white rhino truck with Sipaya!  We ate a quick breakfast and grabbed some snacks for the road and apparently beat the record for any group leaving the Serengeti!  We had another three hours until we reached the gate, so for the last time in the Serengeti, we popped the hatches for a game drive!  I stood for around an hour and a half, but was so tired from such an early morning that I quickly sat down and fell asleep for a little bit.  I woke up again when three cheetahs were spotted, but they were so far from the road that none of us could even see them well in binoculars.  That was the last group of animals that we saw in the Serengeti, which was fitting.  We arrived back at the gate and grabbed a few snacks and drinks again for the rest of the drive back.

After the gate, we wouldn’t be stopping again until the gate of the crater, which was around a two or three hour drive.  We were cruising the entire way, eating random parts of our packed lunches during the day and sleeping all the times in between.  I was listening to my music, thankful that my iPod had lasted that long through the trip since we had no power.  I finally fell into a deep sleep when suddenly the car jolted and the brakes were slammed.  Immediately, I assumed that we had popped a tire because the impact was only from the front right of the car, but as I opened my eyes, I realized that we had been involved in ANOTHER car accident on the side of the crater!  The road is unbelievably narrow, and our car had been going a little too fast to stay on the inside of the turn and had clipped another car making the climb up.  Our car had very little damage, but once again, the police were called and we were stuck sitting in the car until that point.  The area where we were was such a scary point, though.  We were right on the curve with no guardrails and other cars coming from every which way.  I was so nervous to get hit again in the position we were in.  Suddenly, another one of our cars came to get all of us and take us back to camp so we would not have to be involved when the cops did finally arrive.  I felt so bad for the staff that had to be involved and deal with it, but I was happy to not have to have the corruption like we had in Kenya the month before.

We made it safely back to camp, helped unpack the rhino, and all lounged around camp.  We finally checked our e-mails, and I finally got an offer to a summer internship in Florida that I was running around camp extremely happy about! Between that, watching movies the rest of the day, and an unbelievable trip to Serengeti, life could not be better!!!

Thanks again for following along with my trip to Africa.

Love,

Mollie Ann