I feel like I could hardly have encompassed the semester in the 20 posts I put up, but I still hope that you managed to enjoy some of it. Maybe someday there will be a pen-sized video camera that you can just stick in your head, so that you can record everything for everyone to see and evaluate for themselves. And then maybe you could add recorded mental notes or thoughts to each experience. Unfortunately (or, thankfully…), that did not exist for us on this trip, and I will just have my memories, journal entries, and pictures, and you will have the impressions you got from my limited blog posts.

Oh, speaking of pictures, I am uploading pics to the computer right now. I hope to find time here in Kiev to upload some of my photos to this site, and to a Flickr.com profile that the students on our trip opened up. I’ll figure out how that works…

It sounds like my mom and her good friend and I are about to head out for the day, so, happy holidays!

We’ve been wandering around the downtown area since our late start from “The Backpacker’s Hostel,” which is a cool, isolated hostel with a cafe, bar, pool table, and green gardens. The 12 bed dorm room we stayed in last night was nearly full of people from Holland, UK, Canada, and so on. We talked to a young guy who was taking a vacation for himself after working with the Arusha International Crime Tribunal for Rwanda. It feels like Zach and I were there just yesterday, when it was actually months ago.

Kampala is busy as heck. We wandered in the haze of people bustling all over the markets near the ‘taxi park’ where our matatu (they’re called dora-doras here, still the same 15 person toyota van) dropped us off for about an hour before figuring out where we were. Later, we ended up treating ourselves to Chinese food at “Fang Fang’s,” an overly luxurious place that happened to be in the Lonely Planet book. A little excessive for us, considering it exceeded the price of our dorm bed, but it was very tasty and we have a doggy bag for dinner….

We plan to hang out in Kampala tonight, and go out to a forest reserve tomorrow near Jinja, possibly to rent bikes for a while. Zach is booking spots for us to raft from Jinja for a day trip on Monday with Nile River Explorers, which includes a free night at their campsite/dorms in Jinja, which is supposed to be nice and green.

Otherwise, the ‘itinerary’ is loose and we may find ourselves in and out of the city, staying at different hostels. It’s very nice to be able to relax and have a loose schedule now, but I can see how different of an experience one would have if they just flew into Africa and tried to hoof it around. I am very glad and thankful that we had the opportunity to experience E. Africa through a structured program that gave us homestays, language classes, history classes, and perspectives that we would not otherwise have seen.

Well, my internet time’s up! I’ll get back soon. We leave for Nairobi on the 17th. Take care,
Anton

All 8 of us ate out last night, tasty vegetable curries with rice and chapati and fish dishes, and headed to the “Bottoms up Octopus” club for some sweaty dancing to Western and local hip hop and rap. A little “Dancing Queen,” even… Pretty crazy.
Best Wishes!
Anton

Kisumu has been very relaxing. As the third largest city in Kenya, and what we expected to be an important port city on Lake Victoria, Kisumu has been surprising in its lack of a city feeling compared to Nairobi. After the dissolution of the East African Community (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, I believe, are the main countries), trade on the lake has been lacking and so the main economy seems to come from petroleum processing that is done near here with crude materials coming from the coast. Agriculture all around us too, as the huge expanses of tea plantations we saw on our matatu ride from Nairobi showed us.

Most of our time here has felt pretty lazy, since we’re still sort of recovering from the end of the program, and the craziness of presentations and finishing up. Traveling, too, since we stayed in Arusha after the program ended, for a night at the Arusha Backpacker’s lodge, so we could make sure Betto’s stomach improved before we took off, and since we have no hurry. The lodge had a wonderful open air but covered balcony on the fifth floor, with tables and couches and a restaurant and bar. Really nice for looking down on the street below and listening to the highest quality bad American hip hop., which is so popular with the youth here (most matatus choose to deck their vans out with subwoofers, rims, and hip hop propoganda and ads/pictures, or with religious phrases, such as “jesus power” or “god is great”).

Since then, we’ve had two “5 and a half hour” bus rides: one expensive and supposedly more reliable ride from Arusha to Nairobi on a line directed at tourists (the program paid for it), which took 8 hours instead of 5.5 on a series of dirt roads that ran alongside one that will be paved soon.

In Nairobi, Zach, and our good friends Betto and Claire set up at the New Kenya Lodge (hostel) downtown, which conveniently was close to an area dense with bus companies. The dark, somewhat decrepit hostel was not super aesthetically pleasing, but our four person dorm overlooked River Rd. and the action outside, and the staff were nice, and it was on par with college budgets, which is the most important part! It was pretty groovy, too. we informally caught a 10 person matatu van (many cram 15) to Kisumu with a more local company called ‘Safari Prestige.’ This ride was also scheduled at 5.5 hours, and after our matatu filled up (about ten minutes, since close to twenty matatus a day go to and from Kisumu for this one company, which is one of many that you can find downtown) we headed out. We soon realized that being on time might not always be as great as you think, since our little death box rattled away at a good 100 miles per hour for a lot of our ride (at least the downhill portions). I can’t give an exact number, since the speedometer stopped at the supposed legal limit of 80 KM/H and the little van kept speeding up…. We got flagged to pull over around three times, which is typical around here for “kitu kidogo,” or a ‘little something’ for the typically heavier-in-weight policemen and women. But, it was the ride of a life time, and cost a third of the ‘wazungu shuttle,’ and had much better service. And we had seat belts! Hopefully we’ll take a bigger bus to Kampala

Despite the increase in blood pressure, the drive to Kisumu was among the most beautiful we’ve had here: green hills of forest and tea fields and other agriculture lined the two lane road as we rose from 4000ft Nairobi all the way up to around 8000 feet, making up for time lost going up on our way down.

Kisumu is pretty warm, and ever since the end of the program any time spent relaxing has felt like time spent idly since during our program we were always on our toes, moving about and experiencing to the utmost. That was great, but it really has been nice to people watch, which we did not get much opportunity to do with the program (both time, and the lack of surreptitiousness of a much larger group of white people, were factors). It’s been a very cheap, enjoyable way to soak in the surroundings of the town, and is also the cheapest way to be a ‘tourist.’

Well, we have to go meet up with Claire and Betto so that we can meet up with four other girls from our trip who are staying here until they leave. Zach and I plan to head to Kampala tomorrow or the next day, where we’ll stay for the next, say, 8 days, at least int he area. I will keep up as much as possible, and hope you all are doing just skipper!
Sincerely, Anton

Our week at the coast was amazing, and Zach and mine study on butterflyfish pair bond distance in relation to the same for the hornbill birds was a lot of fun. I still can’t believe the program is over.

It turns out that our plan for getting to Lake Tanganyika would take 4 days of sketchy dirt road travel, and going to Mwanza near Lake Victoria would take a long time too. So after some planning for the next two weeks of free time here in E. Africa, Zach and I and Betto and Claire decided that we are heading off to Nairobi tomorrow morning if we can get bus tickets on short notice. We’ll stay somewhere and head northwest to the northern shore of Lake Victoria (Kisumu) and eventually make our way to Kampala and Jinja in Uganda to check out another large East African city and to raft the huge rapids near the what is essentially the source of the Nile around Jinja. I’ll keep in touch as much as possible in the near future! Probably, I’ll write from Kisumu in a few days. Talk to you later!
Anton

Anyway, the program is officially over tomorrow, but half the group took off to Nairobi this morning because their flights head out then. The gen. culture and biology independent study project presentations took place yesterday over around an 8 hour period. Everything’s turned in and it feels like it’s over. I slept 4 hours last night because of hanging out with the group in our absurdly posh and shiny (yet still as empty as any hotel room without people in it) suites. 3 hours the night before, with Zach and I finishing up our prep for the presentation for the next day, and so on for the past week. But when we tried to get some sleep after saying our farewells to some of the pseudo-family that has formed between all of us students, neither of us could. I was surprised, and I guess I grew more attached to all the different characters on our trip than I realized. Maybe it’s harder because I won’t be seeing them again at campus in a few weeks like everyone else. But it’s amazing how much you grow attached to people when you share experiences with them like we have here on this incredible program. I guess we’ve connected in the same way you would get to know a group of people at a job, but more intimately, since we’ve lived together and exchanged stories about, say, ideas on women’s roles in Maasai life after having similar experiences at homestays watching our ‘moms’ cooking all day and carrying more than we can.

THere is a person in line for the computer, so I’m going to continue this later today. I hope everyone’s well and I’ll write ya in a bit.

In the past 8 days, the biology kids have been back at Oldonyo Sambu, the dry savannah that we first started safari with back when we were with the general culture group and coming from the coast. It’s a good 5 hour drive southwest of Arusha on bumpy dirt roads in (or rather, on) our suped up safari land rovers, and we just got into town here from that drive, which was basically the last savannah of that sort that we’ll see for the rest of the program. The rest of our time will be spent at the coast at Pembe Abwe again for 9 days, where we’ll work on or projects and come back to Arusha via a mountain range environment (where we’ll stay for two nights) and be at the over-luxorious but welcome East African Hotel here in Arusha, which Zach and I checked out the last time we were here. We’ll present at the hotel on Dec. 4th to everyone else in our bio and general culture groups, and the program will be over. It’s flown by!

Being at Oldonyo Sambu again was wonderful, and the study that Zach and I eventually chose proved to be perfect for soaking in the savannah around us. Our camp this time was much closer to the mountain, and the camp itself was elevated above the surrounding plains and interspersed Acacia and Commiphora trees of Maasailand in a picturesque rock outcropping that made for great scrambles up the rock for sunset beauty. At first, we had ourselves convinced that we’d be studying the hierarchy of baboons up on the mountain, which we saw the last time we were here. Well, we spent a full evening and morning heading out to the ~1000ft mountain nearby with one of our fun, crazy driving young Arusha guides, Killerai, and Ole Maria, one of the 6 Maasai men who were on camp crew for the eight days. We ascended the side of the mountain in the evening with both Killerai and Ole Maria after parking the truck and looking around a good bit for signs of the baboon’s return after daily foraging in the area due to rain that afternoon. Nothing. So we headed up the mountain a ways to get a better look, accompanied by rifle and Ole Maria’s 5 foot Maasai spear (and Zach and my essential tourist survival kits: comparitively miniscule pocket knives, binocs, water, cameras, and of course, sunscreen for the late afternoon sun). Still, nothing.

So the next morning we headed out before breakfast to the other side of the mountain, a good half hour drive, and haphazardly contrived a plan: Zach, Ole Maria, and I, would head up the mountain in pursuit of one of the two troops we saw up high, and Killerai would watch us and wait for our signal for him to drive around to the other side of the mountain and pick us up. Just imagine the contrast between Zach and I, in our safari garb and backpacks, trailing closely behind the well-built, charming, swahili speaking, 30 some year old Ole Maria in his red, plaid-ish Maasai clothing with the Dorobo rifle hung over his shoulder. As we approached the mountain’s incline, a herd of maybe 15 elephants walked by, visible to us through the trees and brush only 150m away with their shining tusks in the morning light. Zach and I looked at eachother in mutual expressions of astonishment and excitement. What a rush. We headed for the troop on the left side of the mountain, since that was the best way to the other side of the mountain anyhow. The baboons were still sitting there, basking in the sun and cleaning themselves before their daily descent into the brush for foraging. So we ascended the sweat inducing, steep slope in pursit of the baboons until, not much later, we were discovered. A chase ensued, up and over the mountain, and we got absolutely smoked by the 50-60 baboons. When we got to the top, our view of the land below us was blocked by the cloud that surrounded the peak, and there was no sign of the baboons. As we descended we decided we’d go to plan 2, which we decided would be studying pair bond distances of the copious Von der Decken and Red Billed Hornbills in the area. From that point on, we spent about 6 hours a day going out on walks from camp , mostly twice a day with our 40 some year old Maasai guide Parasoi (who has two wives and three kids, just a tidbit fact….). Every time we ran into the toucan-like birds, we looked at how they interacted with others, especially how often they stay solitary, in pairs, or in groups, and how far they are from eachother in 10 minute data collections. It was perfect, because the birds were plentiful as heck and unlike most other groups we got to walk th whole time and run into other stuff, like zebras, hartebeest, bushbucks, other birds, and cattle grazing freely, unfenced, under the watchful eyes of their Maasai owners. We also were lucky because it rained off and on before we came and during our stay at oldonyo sambu, so the entire area was continuously greener and thus more full of animals and activity while we were there. Plus, the hornbills were all displaying and fighting over females constantly, providing hours of entertainment and frustration as we tried to figure out the social scenarios going on. I’m sure patient Parasoi had a fun time observing Zach and I, apart from the birds (which he spotted for us more than half of the time in his good, but not quite as impressive as the Hadza, bush skills). Every morning and afternoon when we picked him up from the Maasai and cook hang out spot near the meal tent-cover, he was the brunt of many jokes from his comrades concerning all the work he had to do, leading us around and walking or even running frantically after the fighting hornbills and working very hard to keep us from going in directions where ‘simba’ (lions) and buffalo were supposed to be. Yesterday we ran around a mile from a veritable wall of rain that approached us as we examined a nest (hornbills enclose females in tree holes with mud, leaving little slits that they feed the female through while she lays eggs and molts) at the end of our last session. Adventures!
He got a nice fleece jacket at the end though for his troubles, and many thanks from us… Well, my time is going to run out in a minute here in the cafe and zach and i have agreed to take off, so i hope you enjoyed this little snippet of my experience and I hope to write again when we get back toArusha on dec. 3rd after our studies of pair bonds in butterflyfish at the coast. Take care! Anton

        I hope you are all doing well and enjoying November!  I’m writing from Arusha, Tanzania, in the same cafe I wrote to you last  time.  It’s been almost a month!  Our safari and biology portion of the trip was amazing and I wish I could convey it to you through a conversation!  We have just one full day here in Arusha to get our dose of internet and perhaps a visit to club AQ for some dancing before the biology students head out again with Dorobo Safaris to do our independent study projects for 20 days.  More about that later.

   So, what have we been doing for the last month?  Well, essentially, we’ve been moving from site to site in and around Tarangire National Parkand Serengeti National Park under the care of Dorobo Safaris and Daudi Peterson, the third of the three brothers who grew up in Tanzania with Swedish and Minnesotan missionary parents and started Dorobo Safaris and the Dorobo Trust Fund, which is a non profit pursuing community based conservation around these popular safari areas. For the past two decades, they’ve been working with local people to try to establish ecotourism as a way for people to profit off of ecotourism in a healthy way that promotes conservation of resources and healthy community development.

So this part of the trip was cool because we were technically focusing on biology, learning in our 2 gargantuan, absurdly tough ex-military Mercedes trucks (when we were in national parks, where you can’t get out except at designated sites) or, more often, doing walks and having lectures around the campfire in the evening. At the same time, there was so much going on with development of local people like the fairly agro pastoral Iraqw, the hunter gatherer Hadza, and the pastoral Maasai.

We started off camping near a Maasai village called Emboreet a ways from Tarangire National Park in a Dorobo site called Oldonyo (Maa for “mountain,” which is nearby) Sambu. Like many of the Dorobo sites, the camp was set up with cooperation from the village elders of the nearby village, and each time Dorobo visits, agreed-upon nightly fees per visitor are paid to a special education/development bank account in the village’s relative control. Around 5-10 people were chosen from the community to come work at the camp while we were there and they got extra perks, like personal money and gifts from our group, such as oregon t-shirts. Oh, and they get to observe wazungu in all our wierdness, in action.

Other people regularly involved in our month were the drivers of our huge trucks, Simon and Habibu, young, big guys from around Arusha who tended to hang out with the locals and the Dorobo camp crew, who did cooking and setup and drove in the supply land rover. That crew would switch out every week when a fresh supply truck would replace the used truck. Then we had Daudi, who was always in one vehicle, which tended to be general culture students only, and Ken in the biology students’ vehicle. Then, each vehicle would have either Douglas or Killerai, both young (late 20s or early 30s) guys from Arusha (wildlife/tourism operator students at the school in arusha) with amazing knowledge of east african birds, mammals, and biology. The whole crew was fun to be with and generally cheerful, and us students were always helping out in camp a little, with setup and all that. On travelling days, which there were plenty of, considering the distance on bad bad dirt roads from various camps to other camps or areas, we would stop somewhere and cut veggies and meat and cheese for lunch. It was a bummer to have the gen. culture and biology students split up so early for travelling, considering that none of us expected to be split until after this free day in Arusha, when the gen. culture students will stay near the nearby village of Olasiti to work on development projects and interviews with local NGO’s and villagers. We’ve gotten to know eachother pretty darn well in these past two months, as anyone would with a group of 24 people who sleep in tents next to you, eat with you, poop in the same portable outhouse, fight over the shower line, etc, etc….

So, back to Oldonyo Sambu. We started off by doing walking lectures around the area, which was flattish and dominated by thorny acacia trees and brush, along with lots of burned grasses, which the Maasai regularly do before the rainy season (we are in the short rainy season, the long one comes around March) in order to boost fertility and kill disease carrying ticks. We started learning to identify around fifty mammals that we began to run into at this point of the trip, and tons of birds as we ran around with Daudi and Ken, stopping to inspect and discuss all sorts of animal feces, tracks, and occasionally running into a deer-like (but much smaller) dik-dik monogomous pair running off and hiding from us behind bushes. The following day, we climbed the nearby mountain, which was around a thousand feet higher than the surrounding area, which was about a mile in elevation. This involved climbing through a sketchy crack and culminated in cookies and banana chips at the top. As with any point during this safari portion of the trip, we stopped countless times to look at, say, a troop of olive baboons running through the trees way below us, or a Greater Kudu, or a Tawny Eagle flying overhead. SO much biodiversity. Then some of us went off with Daudi and descended the mountain to walk the 10KM back to camp, as opposed to taking the vehicles back. So great. Daudi, our fearless 50 some year old leader, walked in front with the Maasai men in his worn, homemade blue skirt with white suns and moons, held up by a leather belt that holds his knife and other gear. No shirt. What an eccentric, but incredibly smart guy, with plenty of campfire stories about adventures in the bush, both before and after the Dorobo company started. Having the safari component be bolstered by the presence of the three Peterson brothers (Mike and Thad at the coast) was an unprecedented perk to an already incredible experience in the Tanzanian bush. They are so full of knowledge related to biology, in addition to wisdom on development and land/cultural issues.

After our three days in Oldonyo Sambu, we had a full day’s bumpy drive to Tarangire NP, which we camped outside of. The following day, we had one of the most amazing game drives of the trip, where we started and stopped over and over again to ooh and aah at all the animals you could dream of in this landscape, despite the fact that the night’s rain allowed some animals to head back to their home areas away from the water center that is Tarangire. Zebras, lions, giraffes, wildebeest, impala, eagles, vultures, birds, birds, and more birds. My favorite and most hoped for: at the end of the afternoon, we stopped abruptly to check out a silver backed jackal, a coyote like jackal with an impressive shine of a coat nextto the road, before realizing that the jackal was yipping at a leopard that was lying on a branch in the tree above the jackal. We watched the calm, cold cat for half an hour before moving on. I was in ecstasy, and had just told Zach the day before that what I wanted to see most was a leopard.

It was great to have seen the “soft edge” that Dorobo created next to the east side of Tarangire National Park through community based conservation, as opposed to the complete lack of protection to the land immediately surrounding the rest of the park, which was impacted much more by the people living there.

We camped just outside the park on the other side of Tarangire that night, before embarking on a full day drive to the Nau Forest at around 7,000ft. This drive was crazy, with sloppy dirt switchbacks sketchily rising higher and higher along highland agricultural and pastoral Iraqw homesteads and villages nestled into the green grassed or forested slopes of the Nau Forest. We sat on the rails of our open air trucks or stood up on them as we rose above the surrounding views of the plains underneath us. When evening started to descend upon us, we were approaching Dorobo’s camp in the Nau as we drove on extremely narrow singletrack, getting slapped and cut by the acacia branches and thorns that mauled our trucks. Somuch fun.

In the Nau Forest we spent a lot of time going on walks in the area, watching presentations by the general culture students on select animals. Zach and I woke up at 5am one morning,after playing cards in someone’s tent the night before, in order to walk around camp in the dark with headlamps in a childish (and still super frightening!) search for leopard eyes. Mike (who I worked with at college outdoors back at LC), Hillary (with her video camera), and Heather came with us on our walk into the woods on little paths that resulted in a few specific jumps of fright after encountering yellow bush buck eyes nearby, or other unknown (but not catlike) eyes reflecting in various colors from the dark shadows of the forest. Zach and I had seen some smaller cat tracks in the mud on a little trek we did the day before on our own, but this time we ran into no signs of leopards or other cats. This was the most jungle-like environment that we spent time in, and proved to be the most intimidating area for wandering off, considering that Zach and I nearly got lost on the innumerable winding local paths through the brush, despite intersection markings. Fun stuff. The last day in the Nau, we all went on a waterfalls hike, descending some 500-1000 feet to a tall (hundreds of feet) but thin waterfall that danced over vertical and near vertical cliff faces to the pool below, where we all stripped down to our swimsuits or ‘skivves’ and jumped into the COLD water. Not quite as cold as glacier fed mountain streams in montana or colorado, but much colder than Barton Springs in Austin… We basked in the beautiful water for about half an hour before engorging on the typical hard cookie snack and charging up the trail to warm up.

And that was the Nau Forest. Next comes the Yaeda Valley, and our four days spent with the hunter gatherer Hadza tribe, which has around 1000 people, just as many as the self sustaining/ self regulating, egalitarian hunter gatherer society had thousands of years ago. This was my most looked forward to, and most cherished part of the safari trip, considering that I have a sort of boyish infatuation with hunter gatherer lifestyles that has never disappeared and was only strengthened by our rare and increasingly rarer glimpse into one of the last of such societies in the world. I khave found it so hard to convey even this much to you concerning the orgasmic month of safari that just culminated, because so much went on that I could not even suitably capture in my ‘academic’ journal (and will still be working on later today). Zach and I are tired from writing and are going to head out for a long-awaited hamburger at McMoody’s (a fancy fast food joint here, with the best hamburgers in East Africa….mmmm), accompanied by a very welcome milkshake. Oh, America, how we love your healthiest foods! Then we’ll walk around Arusha a bit, maybe pick up some drinks for later this evening and for the bush work ahead of us….. (don’t worry mom and dad, we’re legal here!). So, I will finish part two of this blog post later on today after our much needed ‘study break.’ See you in a bit!
Anton

Anyway, that is not a good picture of what we have actually been doing for the majority of our time here.  In fact, it is not even close to a good representation….   The last city I wrote you from was Zanzibartown.  On our last night there, we stayed at a beach resort on the very north tip of the Island of Zanzibar, where all the beach resorts seem to stick together in an absurdly beautiful, postcard-esque stretch of some of the most pristine beaches in the world.  We had a beach day that resembled our relaxing days here in Arusha, and swimming there in the relatively warm, light blue water was just a sample of what would come in the next 8 days.  After a night in our beachside bungalows, we woke up at 6am to take what our professor Ken had dubbed a “motorboat ride” to Pembe-Abwe, where we would have our coastal biology portion of the trip (we, the biology group, will return for another 8 days at the end of the program as part of our independent research projects, in connection to 8 days of study in the bush).  When we has breakfast in the large hut on the beach, we were surprised to see two wooden boats that, like many of the local fishing boats, look as though they were thrown together in a rush with any and all available qualities of wood.   They both had sails, but we used the 10-15 horsepower outboards instead.   Despite the hesitancy with which we threw our gear piles and ourselves onto these dubious craft, the boats performed fine during the 4 hour 24 mile crossing back to the mainland as long as the men working on the 15 person boats bailed water the entire time. 

We ended up using these boats for the duration of our coastal portion, and each day for around 7 days after our arrival day, we would wake up at 6am, eat breakfast at 7am, and head out to Maziwi Reef (protected) nearby, a half hour boat ride away.   By this point, we came under the amazing care of Dorobo Safaris, a well-known company run by the three Peterson brothers.  These brothers, Mike, Thad, and David (Daudi), are middle aged brothers born in Tanzania from Minnesotan/Swedish backgrounds, all having kids going to school in Tanzania or in the states (Idaho).  Our 4 person bandas were stilted huts facing east out toward the Zanzibar Channel.  The wind blew through the huts at all times and we slept on the floor, using outdoor showers and bathrooms.  We ate under the main hut, which was a significant walk down the beach and centered around a huge baobab tree, with a small fort.  The nights were all cool, and we were there during or just after the full moon, so we had surreal, bright nights with views of the palm tree profiles and the entire stretch of beach along the Dorobo property and beyond.  The guards, cooks, and ‘boat experts,’ along with the fishermen who brought our dinner each day, were all locals from villages nearby.  The coolest part was that this property is in a non-tourism impacted area, and Dorobo does everything it can to maintain as tiny an impact as possible on local culture, and the reefs. 

Now, the reef:  Amazing!  Much like the only other reefs I have experienced in the Red Sea off the coast of Egypt, Maziwi Reef blew my mind.  Luckily, our first few days were practice days, and so our becoming acquainted with equipment like transect lines (underwater tape measures), quadrats (square meter 2d devices, sand-filled so that they sink), underwater writing tablets, and fish/coral/invertebrate/etc. books was a good excuse for us to get used to being in one of the most biologically diverse environments in the world.  I wish I could convey all the colors, all the wonders that we had the opportunity to witness, such as following cleaner fish around or skipping our lunch break in order to pursue and watch two hump-backed whales breaching from a short distance.    Each day included two hours of solid time in the water, and a lot of extra time was taken up getting out there, taking breaks, and swimming.  The second part of each day included lectures and time to go over data, memorize fish, etc.  Rachel Young, Zach, and I lucked out in the lottery, and were able to get into the butterflyfish group.   Back when I lived in Montana, I ran into a butterflyfish picture somewhere and remembered it when I saw it in the Red Sea in Egypt.  This time around, it turns out that the butterflyfish (one of 8 ‘measuring projects’ that we did in separate groups) are good indicator species of coral reef health since they are not in demand for use by humans, and since some of them are obligate to some types of coral and some are generalists.  We also had one of the harder groups, since measuring fish is in imprecise matter with three people swimming down a 50m transect line set up in a random place at different times, seeing different numbers of different species of butterflyfish within our meter-on-each-side limit.  We also had to memorize some 20 species of butterflyfish that we knew to expect in the area, and we were lucky enough to see at least 14 of them while we were here.  Some of the more common ones were the redfin butterflyfish, the chevroned, the racoon, the threadfin, among others.  Look them up, they’re beautiful! 

I used Zach’s underwater camera case with my camera as a test run, and he used his for a while.  While we were not entirely successful with the general use case, Ken and others had more underwater specific cameras, and hopefully he will have posted some of those pictures on the group site, whose link is off to the right on this page.  Altogether, it was quite an experience.  At the end of our measuring stint, people atarted to feel colder in the 80 degree water, and what was dubbed the ‘Siberian flu’ started spreading around.  Unfortunately, I was hit by it on the night before the second to last day, almost immediately after a wonderful episode of streaking along the beach at night.  I swam the second to last day and gathered data, but a nice, sauna-reminiscent fever pounded me that night and I didn’t go out the last day.  I was bummed, but the knowledge that I’ll be back for another 8 days consoled me, knowing that for half of the students it truly was the last day.  I recovered quickly, as, thankfully, most of us had each time we got sick, even as many others got hit by the flu at different times.  I’m sure it will happen again… Between the new foods and bacteria and the fact that our group of 24 students is pretty tight-knit for germ swapping, it can only be expected that we’ll get sick at least a f ew times.  Oh well. 

The following day, we had time to prepare for our individual group presentations after the bio students had a quiz on vertebrates and fish based off of the lectures we have had so far (and the dissecting of a grouper and a parrotfish).  The presentations went on for 2 and a half hours, and were pretty cool considering our having been introduced to the subjects days before.  Some of us were dissappointed by the seeming lack of solid data that a group of three can obtain in a few days of solid measuring on a highly variable topic, but we were able to document everything we ran into and come up with at least a few conclusions (the most specializeed fish for our group in our area, redfin and chevroned, were the ones we saw the most often, interestingly).  This was the pilot project for what we did, and Ken and Dorobo plan to continue this portion with similar experiments every year that the trip comes, in addition to documenting that might be done by locals during the rest of the year.   Also, on the last day, when I was sick, the groups went to Funguzinga Reef (unprotected), where they were able to see the differences created by lots of use by local fishermen.  I hope to see that in future, but everyone testified to a lot of dead coral, much more algae and seaweed, and other unfortunate impacts.  Pretty cool to be able to see such differencess on a protected reef only a mile from an unprotected reef.  We had a lecture done by a grad student doing work looking at fish populations and movements along the reef, and Ken’s lectures at this point, whether general or specific, were amazing and truly highlighted the importance and threatened state of coral reefs everywhere in the next 100 years with a guaranteed sea level rise of 2m wrecking havoc on coral that cannot evolve to temperature differences (or acidification due to industrial/agricultural waste) fast enough to keep up.   Pretty intense thoughts here. 

We’ll be staying at the Dorobo camp outside Arusha again tonight in our tents (camping in a luxurious form, with beefed up landrovers and military vehicles that will apparently be our transportation in some of the bush), and tomorrow we will visit the village Olasita, where the general culture students will do their three week projects at the end of the program.   Then one more night in the camp, and departure for the bush!   We will not have access to internet for three weeks, maybe 3.5, so I apologize for the lack of e-mails that will be written for a while.  I hope all is well for my family and friends! 

Sincerely,

Anton