"It reminds me of the time I spent... in Idaho"

Homestay family! From L-R clockwise: Me, Happi (as in Happiness, and yes she is normally smiling and very happy!), Mama Happi (her real name is Susana, but introduced herself and her husband as Mama and Baba Happi), Megan (another SFS student, we went to our homestays in pairs), Johnson, and Kelvin.

Iraqw paintings. Absolutely beautiful. I took so many pictures of the different styles of paintings, let me know if you want to see them!

Local artist Adam showing us the different types of paintings they do here. One of the styles of painting is called 'kisu" meaning knife, which is what they use instead of a paint brush.

One of the artists "kisu" painting. We have the opportunity to go and pay for a lesson and materials to paint out own painting today. I think I'm going to pass but definitely have my eye on some of these beautiful and colorful paintings!

Me, Megan, Happi, and Mama Happi washing the dishes after lunch. I got lucky and only had to rinse the dishes the two times we did them. I'll post more about the homestay next time I write a blog post.

When we went on the tour of Mto wa Mbu one of the stops was the town's rice fields. It's kind of a cool system, each family in the town can have a plot of the field if they want. I just think it's cool how GREEN it is here versus every where else we have been. The mountain line in the background is actually the Rift Valley Escarpment that we climbed up.

View from the top of the Rift Valley Escarpment. The houses and road you can see is Mto wa Mbu (see you can even see the rice fields from this far away!) and to the far right you can see the edge of Lake Manyara.

Iraqw wood carver. As you can see by the few figurines in front of this man, they make so many beautiful intricate carvings. The wood they use is usually ebony or mahogany and the carvings range from animal figurines to salad tongs to masks. 

Banana plant! So cool, isn't it? Looks like it's from Dr Seuss. And I'm trying the new motto of "Banana a day (or two or three), keeps the doctor away" because the bananas are so good here! There are also red bananas which are very tasty as well, a little more crisp... kind of like how you can compare a red and green apple to one another.

durrr

Yea, so normally when someone says "go to this site" it helps to give the link to the actual site... but really you should check out the SFS  "News from the Field" website!

" All I think about is food and animals!"

Hey everyone!

   I have a bit of spare time in between class right now and I just got caught up on some homework so I figured I would get you all caught up!

   Let’s see… For our Environmental Policy class we got to go on a guided tour of Mto wa Mbu (‘River of Mosquitoes’ I think is the translation there)… We got to see some rice fields, Iraqw wood carvers and painters, banana farms (we all tried banana beer! Pretty mealy, but I still enjoyed the sip I had) and to top it off our guide showed us his scorpions!  It was a really fun day, I enjoyed being able to be in town without feeling pressured by local vendors to buy something every ten seconds.

   We’ve also been playing a lot of soccer around town; it’s awesome but is also showing me how out of shape and how rusty I am… I mean I haven’t played a game since senior year of high school! We went to the town field and played with a bunch of kids, it was a lot of fun to see the game grow bigger and bigger as the town kids realized there was a game going on. They are all so good too! For a while I was the only girl playing (there was one other girl from SFS who played for a bit, no local girls though)… it was funny to see how they reacted to me. I think my shot impressed them as they would frequently comment “good thing you didn’t kill anyone that time” after I shot (and missed, haha). We also went and played at the local Primary School, which is about a two minute walk from our camp. Though I’m not the best of players, I have forgotten how good playing this game makes me feel. I love it!

   On Thursday (our day off) we went on a hike and climbed the Great Rift Valley Escarpment near Mto wa Mbu, about 20 minutes down the road from us. It took an hour to hike up and then another hour and a half to hike back to the road to get picked up. Of course the one day we decided to go hiking, the sun was out all day so we were nice and toasty. Actually the weather the past few days has been warming up, the sun has been out longer and that is really the determining factor if it’s hot or not. For example, yesterday there was a group of us sitting outside the bandas and those who were in the shade were wearing sweatshirts, long pants, and hats and those of us sitting 3 feet away in the sun were stripped down to shorts and rolled up t-shirt sleeves. Needless to say I’ve been wearing my sunblock now. There’s still no real need to wear bugspray though as I’ve seen maybe a total of 3 mosquitoes since I’ve been here.

   But there are plenty of jiggers! What’s a jigger you ask? It’s this nice little creature that lives in the sand here and burrows into your feet to lay it’s eggs. Absolutely disgusting. About half of us have gotten them and it’s now a common occurrence to gather around someone’s foot to watch them dig out their jigger/s. YUCK. Fortunately I haven’t gotten one yet, (don’t worry I’m knocking on wood) but it’s too hot to wear close-toed shoes all the time so I’m just very careful to not tromp around really sandy and dirty patches.

   This week looks like it will be shaping up to be a really fun one. Tomorrow (Monday) we are doing a day long homestay at one of the local houses. We will pair up and head to different houses all over town and pretend that we are one the members of that household for the day to experience and learn about the culture and daily lifestyles of the Iraqw people here. We had a guest speaker yesterday come and talk to us about the gender differences in the Iraqw culture and it looks like us girls will be very busy tomorrow preparing food, cleaning the house, gathering firewood and water, as well as caring for the younger children. It’s interesting to see the gender dynamic here, of course we were prepared and aware that there is not as much equality here as there is back home but it’s still an eye-opener to actually observe and be a part of it. There are movements for more balanced gender roles here but it’s still very skewed in the favor of men. The big thing is that the men have control of all of the finances in the house. Even if a woman owns a chicken (she isn’t allowed to own any large, “valuable” livestock) if she wants to sell it or any product of it, the money goes to her husband. Pretty much the only thing that a women operates AND owns is the stove. So very different from back home, but it is now more common for women to be educated and hold office, which is obviously a big step.

   But back to our exciting week… on Tuesday we have a traveling lecture for our classes (don’t know where yet, we usually don’t find out these things until the night of) and Wednesday we have a day off. Tuesday is one of the girl’s birthday so we are going to Happy Days Pub (in Karatu, we’ve been here twice already… it’s the one bar that we are allowed to drink at and they also sell American food aka CHEESE!) to celebrate. I plan on having a grilled CHEESE! AND splitting mac and CHEESE! with someone and am very excited for CHEESE! Thursday is a normal day, but on Friday we go on expedition again to Ngorongoro Crater National Park. Not sure what our specific assignment will be here but we are all excited to go and see more African wildlife. I want to see lions this time… fingers crossed! I’m also MOD on Friday… which is making me nervous already because I want to get my presentation out of the way but have NO IDEA what to present to everyone. Some teacher I am, huh?! Saturday we have another traveling lecture (also happy birthday Dad!) and then Sunday is another non-scheduled program day! WOOT!

   Here’s a link to the SFS’s website. “News from the Field” is just an easy way for you all to see what we are learning about and read thoughts and interviews from staff and students. There is also a photo gallery (make sure you actually click on the photo gallery icon if you want to view it) of all the people in my program, just in case you want to start matching faces with the names I’ll be talking about the next 2 ½ months. And remember my group is Tanzania-Kenya not to be confused with the Kenya-Tanzania group.

   Hmm… well I think that’s about it. I’ll post some photos below of the hike and other miscellaneous things at a later date and I hope they are better quality then the last photos… not sure why those are so blurry/grainy… maybe the internet was slow when they were uploading? And of course I will let you know how this week turns out soon too!

xoxo Z



PS. I've heard from people that they are enjoying my fellow classmates blogs as well... Here is another...
Catherine's: bowdointoeastafrica.blogspot 
and I've also heard that Hannah's blog link didn't work so here's the (correct?) link for hers:
http://hmcane12.me.holycross.edu

Different POVs

So I personally have been following my fellow classmate's blogs because:
1. I like to steal their pictures...
2. It's interesting to see this experience through their eyes and maybe you will feel the same...

Leila's : http://leilaq.wordpress.com/

Katie’s : http://hakunamatatatoyou.blogspot.com/

Carie’s : http://www.carriekern.blogspot.com/

Seth's : www.adventurevoice.blogspot.com

Devin's: www.devinsabroad.blogspot.com

Hannah's: www.hmcane12.me.holycross.com

ENJOOOOOOOY!

Wednesday 9/22 Photographs

At Tarangire National park we went to a travel lodge that tourists can stay at. We were able to order beer and food (I had another cheeseburger) and if you were willing to pay 5,000 shillings you could swim as well. This is the view from the table we were all sitting at. It's not the best quality, but you can see some elephants near the right middle. You can also see the Tarangire River, this river never dries up so during the dry season there are a butt load of animals in this park.

So there was this herd of about 100 zebra right around the road we were driving on... I got some good pictures because they were so close. This safari was more of a class than the last one, we were practicing a counting method and had to stop each time we saw a mammal larger than a DikDik and record GPS coordinates, distance from our vehicle, how many, and of course what species for 3 hours from 9:00-12:00. Though we had to do work this time, this was still better than any class I've taken back in Vermont!

More zebra...

We saw some cheetahs! Isn't amazing how well they blended in? This is pretty zoomed in on my camera, they were about 50 meters (yes, I'm a part of the normal world and use the metric system now...) This was after 12:00 so we didn't have to record them for our class, but it was awesome to finally see a large predator. About 10 minutes after this we saw a single lioness, she was far away and behind some rocks so the pictures I got aren't worth posting... Hopefully next park we go to I'll get some good lion ones!

Sometime last week, maybe Friday (I can't remember the days run together here...) we went to a local orphanage called Watoto Care (Children Care). It was for community service but honestly it was such a great feeling to be helping these kids it didn't feel like work at all. As soon as we got there one of the little girls climbed into my arms and I spent the rest of the time there making faces and counting to ten in Swahili (because that's about all I can do, haha!). They were all fascinated with our sunglasses and would put them on. They also loved taking pictures with our cameras, so excuse any of the smudge marks on the following photos!

For the actual community service part we built them a clubhouse (as you can see) and a see-saw. One of the SFS groups before us had made them a swing so we wanted to make them a bigger playground. We also helped some of the mwalimu (teachers) mix and pour cement into one of the rooms. After we were done helping and building we continued to be personal jungle gyms for the kids and played some futbol!

We brought sodas with us to give them towards the end of our stay. They got so excited! It was truly heartwarming when they wanted to share with us too; such a great lesson in generosity and sharing.

Here's one of the older boys on the see-saw we built. (Notice the black paint... I DID THAT!) It was great, two days after we visited the orphanage we drove by again and there were like 8 kids on the see-saw... SO CUTE! Such a great experience, I think we all want to go back again before we leave Tanzania.

Tuesday 9/21

Hola! (I actually responded with that the other day after a local boy said 'Jambo!' to me... people here have yet to let me live that one down...)

Currently I'm sitting in my hammock watching people finish up lunch and utilize their free time before class (internet pooped out as I was typing this so it is now after dinner...) reflecting on the last few days. I've had some great experiences since I last posted: on Saturday we did community service at a local orphanage and yesterday (Monday) we had class in Tarangire National Park. I'll post some pictures in the near future, as I have a million words and seeing how a picture is worth a thousand words that will cut down on some typing.
I thought that this would be a good time to address some questions you all have been asking me and feel free to keep them coming. It's actually really hard to just blog about my time here as it's so full of awesome-ness, your questions give me a good starting point.
What medications have you been taking?
I'm not taking any other medications besides mefloquine once a week for malaria (actually tonight is my night to take it this week...) I do have regular medicine and pills like midol, advil, pepto bismol, cough drops, dayquil for smaller ailments, but nothing that was prescribed. Actually, that's a lie, I do have anti-diarrhea medication from my doctor but I haven't had to use that yet and hopefully won't have to, knock on wood!
Drinking water - bottled or filtered?
The water here at camp goes through an intense filtration system so we are able to drink it out of the tap but anywhere else we only drink bottled water or water that we brought from camp with us. No ice chewing in Africa for me, maybe I'll be able to break that habit, eh?
What's the weather/temperature like?
It's actually quite cold here in the morning and at night... I'm not sure of the exact temperature (maybe 50?) but I have to sleep in sweats and wear pants for most of the day until the sun breaks through the clouds around 1:00pm and then it's VERY hot (maybe 90?) but as soon as the sun disappears the temp goes back down and on go the sweatshirts again! East Africa doesn't have seasons like we do in New England, instead they have a short rain season, a long rain season, and the dry season. Right now it's on the tail end of the dry season, and we will be here for the beginning of the short rain season which gets under way in October and will remain until we leave. It's sprinkled a few times since being here, but not enough to need a rain jacket or anything.
What kind of program are you in and how will it relate to your future career as a teacher?
I'm here with a program called the School for Field Studies (accredited through Boston University) and the Kenya/Tanzania program that I am in concentrates on wildlife management and conservation. As many of you know this is my last semester before I student teach and then graduate. I only needed one 200-level science course this semester to graduate so instead taking a bunch of courses that would have only been electives I decided to study abroad. Both WM and WE (courses that I described last post) satisfy my science requirement so this program is not only wicked cool but actually is going towards my major and helping graduate. Also this is a great experience that I will be able to share with my future students, as it is related to science (which is what I will be teaching...).

Are the other students in undergraduate or graduate programs?
Every student here are all undergrads from universities all over the United States either in their junior or senior year with a major that wildlife management somehow pertains to. Most have majors such as environmental science/studies or biology. I'm one of the few whose major doesn't tie directly in with our courses, but because I basically have a minor in Biology I've been well prepared for the courses here. I'm also one of the older ones here too, as most the students here are studying abroad during their junior year. So far I really like it here... it's a truly great program that is very catered to my personal interests and it's great because that's the case with everyone else here too. Even though we all come from different places and have different backgrounds we are all similar in the sense that we all chose this program and are very passionate about what we are learning about; it creates a great atmosphere for learning and sharing.
Are your professors on sabbatical or grants?
I'm unsure of the specifics for each professor but here's what I do know... they are all Tanzanian or Kenyan. Our WM professor has a PhD and has actually went to university in Minnesota. He specializes in lions and yesterday while at Tarangire he showed us his research camp and equipment and was able to explain some of his research to us. Both our WE and EP professors have been to many universities and are very educated in their respected areas. Our Swahili professor is the youngest and even he has been to a local university for Swahili/English. Our social culture professor has little educational background but is actually a member of the Maasai so we are obviously learning what we need to from him and his personal experiences and culture.  
Are you homesick?
As much as I love it here, I do have to admit that I'm a little homesick. I miss being able to just throw my laundry in the washer and then be able to dry it... all within 2 hours! I did my first laundry load yesterday, or should I say one of the local mamas did - we have a system where we pay them around $3.50 to do a big bucket of laundry and they get it much cleaner than any of us could! - and it's STILL drying and probably still will be tomorrow and possibly the day after too. I miss cheese! Never again will I take a block of Cabot Cheddar for granted! I miss Red Sox games (even though they sucked this year, I still miss them!) I miss being able to pig out on a half a bag of M&Ms and only feeling guilty for eating too much... now I also get to deal with the guilt of eating half of my candy stash for the next three months! I miss texting! I miss being able to call my family and friends... almost as much as I miss all of them!
Being here is quite an adaptation... but I pretty much squelch all of my complaining with the reminder that I'M IN AFRICA and remember how great it is to be here and that I'm living an amazing once in a lifetime experience and I get over it.

So yea... I hope those answers help you all understand my life here more than you had previously. As I said earlier, keep the questions coming!  I'll post some pictures later on (I saw cheetahs and a lion!) so you'll be able to see more of what I've been doing here.

xoxo Z

Wednesday 9/15

Mambo!
 

So you can scroll down to see more pictures of my life here in AFRICA!! (sorry, it still makes me really happy to say that!) The past few days (and the upcoming days) aren’t too exciting as we have a lot of regular class time scheduled. Yesterday was pretty neat though, for our Swahili and Environmental Policy classes we went to a local “boma” (village) to observe one of the local tribes in the area called the Maasai. Our instructions for this class were to determine if the heavy flow of tourism to this road-side attraction has been causing these Maasai people to lose their culture. It was interesting to critically analyze something that I might have not thought twice about. The children there were sooooo cute and they knew exactly how to shmooze up to us tourists; I took about a million pictures of them.

Other classes have been fun too, in case I haven’t previously explained them to any of you before I will do so now. We are taking four different classes; Wildlife Management (WM), Wildlife Ecology (WE), Environmental Policy (EP), and Swahili and Social Culture (SSC). We have two different professors for SSC, one for the Swahili Language and the other for the Social Culture. My favorite as of now is Wildlife Management, basically because it’s so cool and very different from any course I’ve ever taken, but very catered to my interests. This is also the class we go to National Parks for, so duh, it’s awesome! We get about 40 pages of assigned reading for each course every day we have it, but usually only have three courses per day (each for about 2 hours). We do have a few homework assignments, for example a 3 page essay on our visit to the Maasai boma yesterday is due next Monday, but overall we just have a lot of reading to do.

So those are our classes, and in case I haven’t explained to you our average day (sorry, I’m such a bad blogger!) I will do that now too. I wake up around 7:00 usually and mosey around until breakfast which is at 7:30. Sometimes you have to wake up earlier like if you want to go on a professor-lead nature walk or if you are breakfast crew (breakfast crew just means you help the cooks make toast, pancakes, fruit salad, eggs, potatoes, and oatmeal and then clean pots and pans after dinner that night). First class starts at 8:00 and goes to 10:00 and then we have a little break until our next class from 10:30-11:30/12:00. Lunch is around 12:30 and is usually soup, veggies like green beans and carrots, rice, rolls, fruit salad, and some sort of pasta. We then have free time which can be used to do some reading or work or to play some sort of sport like soccer or volleyball (which is usually what I do) until our next class at 2:00. This class goes until 4:00 and we sometimes have another after that from 4:30-5:30, but some days we are done for the day at 4:00. We then have free time until dinner which is around 7:30 and then we have a thing called RAP. RAP is lead by the MOD (mwanafunzi [student] of the day) and we all take turns being MOD. It’s alphabetical, so I will be MOD towards the end of the rotation. Usually the MOD reflects about something that they found interesting or reads a quote or poem that they were reminded of and then organizes a group game to play. After that, it’s usually around 8:30/9:00 and we have the rest of the night to socialize or do readings until bedtime. Because we’ve been getting up early, I’ve been trying to go to bed early (like around 10:30/11:00) but some nights tend to be later. For example last night I learnt how to make our shower water HOT and had a great time taking my SECOND shower of the semester, I even shaved my legs so it was a completely productive event.

As you can see it’s pretty busy even during weeks that we don’t have many out-of-camp events scheduled. I was happy to have some free time today; but unfortunately it came at the cost of skipping out on an optional field trip. About half of our group went to an Iraqwi (I’m unsure about the spelling… but it’s not the same as Iraq) boma to learn about the dominant culture in this part of Tanzania. But I was fine to stay back at camp with the rest of the group and catch up on some reading and social networking (of course I’m saying that like a complete nerd in my head).

On a side note, I have very little phone credit left and am being cheap and don’t feel like buying anymore so if you’ve been wondering why I haven’t called that’s why. But I think Mom found out that it’s only 26 cents a minute to call me through Skype so feel free to give me a call!

But yeaaaa, I think that’s about it. Sorry if I actually end up posting this tomorrow, because the internet is being shoddy and it’s not letting me upload pictures, so next time it lets me do that I will post it. Also don’t get mad at me if I don’t respond immediately or finish a conversation on facebook… again due to the same sketchy internet situation. The End.

Xoxoxo Z

Wednesday 9/15 Photographs

A picture of the landscape I took one morning on a nature walk.

This is our "chumba" or dining hall. We eat meals, hangout, and have the occasional study sesh... Note the volleyball net to the back right side, some very serious games go down right there!

This is my banda "Kifaru" which means rhinoceros, I just found out. My room is on the left side and I share it with my roomies Kat and Hannah. (Actually right now, I'm sitting on the front porch of the right side of the banda with my friend Rachel!) 

Inside our banda... My bunk is the bottom left. The most important thing in this picture is the mosquito net around my bed, no bed bugs (or spiders or snakes) for me!

Sunset from the front gate of camp.

Maasai women at the boma. They typically dress like this on a daily basis, minus the white necklaces (which are actually pretty heavy!) which they now wear for the benefit of us tourists.

Maasai house. The women build them out of sticks, mud, cowhide and cow dung. Inside is a single room with a central fire pit and beds and shelves around the edge.

How can you resist that face?!

Sunday 9/12

Hey-loo,

WOWOW. I have seen so much the past two days there is no way that I am going to be able to fit it all in this post because I would be typing for hours and I have a lot of homework to do, but let me just say that it has been awesome! I'm going to upload some photographs this time too, (sorry this is the first time I've done that) so enjoy!!

As I said previously, we went to Manyara National Park which is a park that is about a 20 minute car ride from our base camp and is 1000 square kilometers. We took four different land cruisers with about 6-7 of us in each one. Even before we got in the park there were Blue Monkey's and Yellow-Billed Storks around the gate. As we drove around the rest of the day we saw so many animals!! There were impalas, giraffes, ground hornbills, Vervet monkeys, hippos, zebras, wildebeasts, water buffalo, gazelle, warthogs, olive baboons, pelicans, elephants, ostriches, flamingos, dik dik, and crested guinea fowl (which apparently are rare). There were so many mini-habitats in the park too - ranging from open savanna to cliffs to the salt water lake to ground water spring forests. The plant life was just as fascinating as the animal life - the trees were especially cool. Here is a picture of the general landscape... I took it at the far end of the park near some hot springs, it's looking back towards the entrance gate.

My favorite part was seeing each animal for the first time. It was funny because we would all make a huge commotion each time we saw the first giraffe or zebra but by the end of the day we would just drive by and be like... "oh, there's another baboon..." Kinda crazy to think that by the end of my stay here I will more than likely be immune to all the native animals here, almost like seeing a turkey or a deer back home. Another thing that I observed was how similar this park experience was to a "safari" back in Disney or something. I think it's because we don't see any typical African animals in or around our camp and so far our only observations of them were in this park. This will apparently change when we go to Kenya, as we will be plopped right into a National Park... but as of now, we are kind of isolated from the wildlife here in Tanzania.

One thing that we aren't isolated from here is the Swahili and local African culture. Today was our day off and we went into Karatu, the biggest local town. Whenever we go into town we have to wear long dresses and baggy-ish shirts as that is the custom for women here. The guys in our group just have to wear long pants. Today when we got to town we were immediately bombarded by local town boys who after trying to sell us little necklaces, bracelets, and other trinkets were our tour guides around the market and main street. Some handy things to know how to say when perusing the streets of any East African village are:

• "Sena pesa" or "hakuna pesa" which both mean "no money"
• "Mimi mwanafunzi" which means "I am a student" (which justifies to 'I have no money'.... see, the fact that college kids are poor is acknowledged worldwide!)
• "Toca America/Vermont" which means "I'm from America/Vermont

So for the whole day in town I enjoyed meeting new people, talking to our tour guides about things like welfare in America and the upcoming election here in Tanzania, seeing the market, and warding off a million trinket-sellers with the promise that I would come back with money our next day off. A heartfelt moment I had was giving a little boy who had followed us around all day the packet of peanuts we got on the airplane and making him pinkie promise to share them with his friends (first I had to teach him what a pinkie promise was, cute!). Afterwards we all met up and went to a tourist lodge/restaurant called 'Happy Days Pub' where we all got to order beer with some American food items like pizza, macaroni and cheese, grilled cheese, and banana bread. I personally split a beer and a cheeseburger with another girl and have to say my stomach STILL feels nasty from this not healthy food! Oh dear, looks like I won't be able to scarf down cheesy bread like it's my job when I get back home, haha!


Okay for the part you've all been waiting for; here are some more pictures of the animals from Manyara... 

Maasai Giraffe with the shore of Lake Manyara in the background.

Common Zebra grazing. (The park here was actually severely overgrazed, making our professors concerned about the future of grazers such as zebras and wildebeast here.)

Olive Baboon walking in the middle of the road.

In Africa we have "hippo-piles" instead of "pig-piles". True fact.

Momma elephant with her baaaaaby.

So yea, those were just a few of my favorites. And I will post some pictures of camp life so you can see what my home for the next 6 weeks looks like next time. 
Later gators!


xoxoxo Z

Friday 9/10

Jambo Rafikis! (Hello friends!)

I GOT A PHONE! (and it works!) My number is 0763-08-9897. I’m sure you need to dial something to call out of the United States but I’ll leave that up to you to figure out. Also, make sure you know how much it is costing you to call – of course only call if you want to (I still want some letters too!) – like I said previously I’ve heard that Skype is the cheapest way to call per minute, but some of the girls here said their parents have an international phone plan and it’s basically free, but again I’ll leave that up to you to call me. I’m sharing my phone with one of my roommates so if you do want to call me or you want me to call you we need to set up a “phone date”… so get in touch with me via another way.

It’s pretty late here so this is going to be a quick post, but tomorrow is really exciting because we are going to Manyara National Park. Besides the ride here we really haven’t seen any wildlife, mainly because we spend most of our time in our camp or on the road to and from the local town and the only animals around are “kuku” (chickens) and “ngombe” (cows). SO tomorrow is super exciting. I’ll take a bunch of pictures too and hopefully be able to post, but though we have access to internet, there are very few opportunities where there is enough “juice” to upload and download things.

‘Til next time!
Lala Salama (Goodnight!)

Xoxoxo Z

First Days

Jambo! (Hello!)
I’m here at Moyo Hills in Karatu Tanzania and am awed and blown away more and more by the second. We arrived in the Nairobi airport as expected on Monday at 7:50am (for future reference I will be using East Africa time… for East Coast time just subtract 7 hours…) but surprise, surprise we got to sit in the airport for another day to wait for our flight to Tanzania. We ended up landing in Arusha around 8:00pm and drove an hour to a hotel; we didn’t go straight to Moyo Hills because only 7 out of our 50 bags came in with our flight (I was one of the lucky ones because one of the seven was one of my bags!) We left the following morning in the Safari Jeeps while the big truck went back to get our bags from the airport. After driving about 3 hours and seeing great scenery and quick glimpses of Tanzanian town life, PLUS three giraffe (!!), some zebra (!!), and some baboons with their babies on their back (!!) we arrived at base camp in Moyo Hills!
It is so beautiful here! It’s not flat like I had imagined, but there are beautiful MOUNTAINS and green vegetation with colorful flowers all over. We are the first group to stay at the SFS camp in Moyo Hills; the camp was actually built within the last month and a half! There are 5 Bandas (basically cabins) each with two rooms and two bathrooms and that can accommodate up to 8 people. There are only 6 girls in my Banda (which is named Kifaru… not quite sure what that means yet) and I am rooming with two other girls in my room. The Chumba is in the center of the camp and that is where the kitchen is and where we eat meals and hang out during free time. We have a separate building for the actual SCHOOL part (the part I kinda forgot about in all my excitement of actually getting here!) where there is a computer room, a library (which is just a room with chairs and a stack of books, haha) and our main classroom. We met with our Professors today; there are 5 of them and I’m very impressed with how educated they all are! They have been to years and years of school and are still learning through their studies. They are extremely inspirational and I look forward to learning from them over the next 6 weeks we are here. Besides our Professors, there are about 25 other Tanzanian (or other African) staff members that work and reside here. I was lucky enough to be on breakfast crew this morning and got clean dishes, twice (my favorite, I know!) but liked seeing the difference from kitchen life in America to kitchen life here at camp. It’s a challenge learning all of the staff’s names… but I think they are struggling to learn ours as well, so it is easy to laugh at our attempts to pronounce everything correctly.
We actually learned some Swahili greetings today and got to go to town (Karatu) to practice them. It’s such an amazing experience to go and meet complete strangers, try to communicate with them, and realize how different our lives are from theirs. I have two highlights from this visit to town today; first was watching my friend Caitlin, who is tall, blonde, and blue eyed, beat a local man in arm wrestling THREE times (it was a riot to say the least)! Second was walking back to camp with local boys that had just got out of school and getting really excited at the opportunity we have to be able to be language buddies; they want to learn English more than we want to learn Swahili (actually they kept asking WHY we would want to learn Swahili if no one spoke back in our “country of origin”, haha!). I talked to a boy named John who is 21 like me (we bonded over that because everyone was younger than us) and was astounded to hear that he still has 4 more years until he graduates secondary school. And I already want to take back some children with me, there are the CUTEST two little boys in town, I have dubbed them “the Sams” (Samuel and Samson).
I really like the group of people in my program. There are 29 of us from ALL over the country (but I’m the only one from VT, I repped the B&Js shirt today, woot woot!) with all sorts of different backgrounds but it is easy to see that we are all very similar in that we all have personalities and interests that lead us to this program, it’s comforting. There are plenty of things that we can do as a group, the staff put up a volleyball net yesterday and we spent a good deal of time playing that before dinner today, which reminds me of how GOOD the food is here! For example, we had soft tacos tonight, they were absolutely amazing. I haven’t had a meal yet that I didn’t liked and am beginning to worry about gaining weight if I don’t start exercising, so much for the “Africa diet”! There a quite a few vegetarians (even two vegans) so there are plenty of veggies and fruits which are great. We have our own water at camp that goes through an intense filtration process, so we can drink right from the tap. We even have flushing toilets and warm showers (if we wait long enough for the water to get warm) so it’s a lot more luxurious then what I had thought. But as we are in East Africa there is a shortage of water so we just had a sustainability committee meeting to discuss ways we can limit our water use as well as our electricity use and wastes.
The only thing that I don’t like here is how paranoid my malaria medication is making me! For orientation our SAM (Student Affairs Manager, basically our advisor), Erica has been going over possible dangers we could encounter and ever since the discussion about snakes and scorpions I have been on edge! Last night I woke up twice to poke the netting around my bed to make sure there were no creepy crawlies crawlin’ all over. One of the girls has been in Africa for the past few years and when I told her this she laughed and asked what medicine I was taking and said that it was common for this happen. Just hearing that makes me feel better, and I think my paranoia will only be bad on the days that I actual take the pill because I’ve been fine today, we’ll see if I wake up to do some net poking tonight.
Speaking of tonight… it’s 12:15am over here now and when you have to wake up for breakfast at 7:00 to go to a day full of class that’s pretty late. Plus I’m still tired from jetlag and times changes and what not. And my computer battery just started flashing at me (thanks Zeth, this battery is mucho better than my old one… which is bad for you haha). So I will call it a night and say Kewhari (which I think means goodbye, but don’t quote me!) until next time (which will probably be every four days as that is how we have allotted the wireless internet between all of us.)OH, btw [by the way - for you old folk!] I'm going to get a phone... I'll let you know my number and can tell you right now that the best time you can call me is from 2:30-4:30 East Coast time... I guess texting is possible too? It's fairly cheap for me to call you all, but if you want to call me the cheapest way is to call me via Skype (I've heard it's about $2.00 a minute...).
I love and miss you all and please do me a favor and send all your love and positive thought my very dear friend, Mac Pratt’s way. Love you girl!
xoxoxo Z

Pre-Departure

Heyyo!

So I've decided to keep a Blog about my trip to Africa this semester. (And by "I've", I really mean my mother has decided I should keep a Blog this semester...) I'm hoping to keep this updated as frequently as I can; it sounds like I'll have access to internet every couple of days. 

When it comes to keeping in touch, as I have just said due to my accessibility to internet, the easiest way is either through email (zsavoie@uvm.edu) or Facebook (duhhh). I know some of you have been asking me about sending mail so I'll post the addresses I'll be at, but remember NO packages (Bee...) and letters bigger than 7"x5"... anything bigger or more valuable than that means I probably won't receive it. So here they are:

Tanzania Address: (First 1/2 of the Semester - I'll let you know when I switch...)

Zarah Savoie

SFS Center for Wildlife Management Studies, Tanzania,

P.O. Box 304,

KARATU, TANZANIA

Kenya Address: (Second 1/2 of the Semester)

Zarah Savoie
Center for Wildlife Management Studies
P.O. Box 27743 (Nyayo Stadium)
00506 – NAIROBI, KENYA
East Africa

So go crazy, and if I get a letter from you I will most definitely try to send one back! (And if there are any emergencies get in touch with Mom or Dad who have the emergency phone numbers to get in touch with me [fingers crossed that I won't be hearing from anyone that way though!].)

Well the countdown is finally winding down... I'll be airborne out of BTV at 1:10pm on Saturday; flying to Newark NJ (meeting up with some fellow SFS peers) where we take off to London, then on to Nairobi and then a puddle jumper to Tanzania (not quite sure the name of the airport or town we'll be landing in...) where we drive the rest of the way to Moyo Hills Field Station in Karatu, Tanzania! 

AHHHH, next time I post, I'll be half way around the world! I will miss you all and look forward to seeing you again in December!

xoxo Z