Serengeti

I am so far behind in what has been happening here in Tanzania. But instead of trying to make a blog post for every day in Serengeti National Park, I will just cover the highlights. (Which is still a lot because Serengeti was amazing)

We left for Serengeti early on the 5th and we got to visit Ngorongoro Crater again because going through was the fastest way.

Ngorongoro Crater

When we arrived at our campsite, we all helped unload the White Rhino (the lorry) and set up our tents. I was sharing a tent with Allison, Mallory, and Natalie and was really excited. At least one of my tent-mates was normal...

Not these two....

 Our group was the last to get our tent set up. And somehow we still ended up next to a fallen thorn tree and directly facing the side of another tent. But our tent definitely had the most fun every night. We read chapters form books we were reading out loud, told scary stories, were suffocated by Allison spraying bug spray directly in our faces, and stayed up for over an hour one night listening to a lion snoring right outside our tent!

Sunrise at camp

While we spent a lot of time relaxing and having fun, we also did a lot of work. Every morning we woke up early to do some data collection. We recorded the behavior budgets of zebra, impala and wildebeest, recorded every species of bird we could identify, and watched how long tourists spent watching each species of animal. 

Mara and Shannon birding

 And we also got to see some amazing animals. My personal favorite was a leopard we found taking a nap on a picnic table. When I was thinking about seeing big cats in Serengeti I mostly thought about lions and cheetahs. I didn't give much thought to leopards. But I can definitely say that seeing this cat was one of the highlights of the trip. It looked so cute and peaceful napping there on the table. It acted just like a domestic cat.

Sleepy kitty

 But once in a while, it would really wake up and turn extremely intense. It no longer looked like a cuddly kitten, but a fierce predator. I just have a lot of respect for these beautiful animals.

Then to make the end of that day even better, we got to see two wildebeest galloping through the savanna at sunset. These wildebeest are some of the first scouts of the great migration to reach Serengeti. 

On our last day in SNP, we finally got to see what we had been hoping for all week. A lion hunt. There were 11 lions and one cape buffalo. The buffalo was extremely large and healthy but very outnumbered. 

However, there was only one or two lionesses that were actually brave enough to attack the buffalo. The others were just keeping it cornered so it couldn't run away. 

It is obvious who was doing all the work...

Eventually, the two lionesses that were doing everything got worn out and gave up. Against all odds, the buffalo was able to make an escape. It got away with no fatal wounds....just a bloody back end and tail.

Everyone cheered as the buffalo ran off

Momma lion was not very happy with the rest of the pride

It was really inspiring that the buffalo did not give up even though its chances were so slim. And the lions were able to catch another, smaller buffalo so they did not go hungry.

Kwaheri Serengeti!

It was sad leaving the park after our week was through, but I think everyone was excited to get to sleep in our own beds and take a warm shower. 

We got our Directed research topics yesterday and are already into the full swing of research. I am very excited to start this next step of the program. 

Gotta have my zeeb picture

Home-stay with Mama Rita

The last few days have been absolutely insane here in Tanzania! After our non-program day we went to Ngorongoro Crater for a field lecture and an all day game drive. Then we had our second homestay with an Iraqw tribe family. Next was our last full day of classes where we spent all day traveling around Manyara, Mto wa Mbu, and Burunge. Yesterday was a study day and today we had our finals and final project for Wildlife Ecology was due. So I have had very little time for anything except being here in Tanzania and trying to enjoy all the cool things we do without being too stressed.

This post is going to be about my home stay. My partner this time for the home stay was Allison! I was very excited to get to spend the day with her. Neither us are particularly skilled at Swahili but she is crazy and a lot of fun.

Allison and I

When we first arrived at our "home" for the day, we got to meet our mama, baba, wadada, and wakaka (mom, dad, sisters, and brothers). They seemed like such a happy family. They smiled at us, laughed at our horrible attempts to communicate, and put us right to work. We were taken inside the boma and they started a fire. We were asked to help blow air on it, to get it to light. I guess we were doing something wrong because the whole family was laughing at our attempts. We did not really have much impact on the fire and as soon as Rita took over, the fire lit right away.

This is not hookah, but me trying to start a fire

We started to heat milk, tea leaves, and sugar in a pot for chai. Then we got to meet our best friend for that day, Reynaldo. He is a 10 year old student. When I asked him why he wasn't at school, he said "I want to watch the wazungu (white people)." So I felt a little bad that our presence was causing him to miss school, but he was a great person to spend the whole day with. He actually reminded me a lot of my cousin Patrick.

Cutting cabbage with my rafiki, Reynaldo 

I really love this kid

So they kept us busy all morning with cleaning, weeding, laundry, cooking lunch, sweeping the ground outside(still do not know why we did that), raking up corn stalks around the livestock pen and burning them, and playing with the kids.  

Doing laundry

After we eat our ugali, cooked cabbage, mystery meat, and rice that we cooked for lunch, they put us in the shade and told us to rest. I think SFS must have told them not to break us or something. Allison and I were full of energy and ready to keep working, but they wanted us to rest. So we played with the kids for about two hours. They taught us some songs and we taught them ring around the rosie. But the littlest kid in the family was a little too small for that game and would fall over as soon as we started moving.

The kids grabbed my hands and started skipping away until
Mama Rita yelled at them to "bring the white girl back" :)

They were very interested in our cameras so we handed them over to the kids and taught them how to use them. We didn't get them back for a very long time. After they got tired of taking pictures of us and their family, they decided to run off to take pictures of their neighbors. Looking through those pictures was hysterical! There were a lot of crooked and unfocused pictures of course. But there was also quite a few of people who looked less than enthusiastic about being photographed. There was one picture of a man asleep in his bed. There was another one of a woman in a towel who looked like she was yelling at him to leave.

Sorting the dirt clumps out of the beans 

After they thought the wazungu had enough rest, they pulled out the beans that our friends Rachel and Kris had collected. We sat down on a woven mat and they showed us how to take out the dirt clumps and bad beans. We did this for about an hour and Mama Rita had sorted twice the amount that Allison and I had sorted together.

Herding the cattle and shoats (sheep + goats)

Then we were told to help the boys graze the livestock. They had about 10 cattle and 15 shoats. We used weeds to herd them to the "pasture" and then kept them from running away. There was one sheep that had a very young lamb with her. The lamb was not keeping up with the group very well. It kept lying down in the shade and was not grazing with the rest of the group. I went over to it and pulled at its skin. The skin took at least 3 seconds to stretch back out like normal. Also, the lambs mucous membranes were pale and took a long time to regain color after touching them. These are all the classic signs of dehydration. So we decided it would be worth telling Reynaldo that the lamb needed some water. It apparently did not translate very well because he came back with a bucket of soapy water that we had used for laundry. He then tossed the lamb in and started scrubbing at it. So Allison and I ended up giving a bath to a lamb...

Washing a lamb due to misunderstanding