Sweatin' in Dar

Sweat. That pretty much sums up this past week in Dar, and will probably continue to sum up the next two as well. I distinctly remember the occasions during which my body briefly stopped sweating, and they do not include the nighttime or bucket showers. Once when I was in an air-conditioned car, and once at the mall…that’s it. The wet season is approaching, so Dar is muggy and incredibly humid. I’ve been told it gets a lot worse, so in some ways I am glad to be leaving so soon.

After about 6 am it starts to really warm up, so it has been a bit difficult motivating myself to move. However, I have gone on a few excursions to various places around Dar, and sweated my ass off the whole time. We had a really interesting dala-dala experience going to the downtown area, called Posta. The bus was so jam-packed that my feet were partially lifted off of the ground for most of the 50-minute ride. This was because I was sandwiched between one woman’s particularly large behind and a man who looked less-than-enthused that I was basically on top of him. It was a good day. Other outings have included Mwenge (the giant market close to the university), Mlimani (the mall), campus to use the internet, our Director’s house, Oyster Bay (the wugunzu part of town), and most recently to the beach (the ocean water was so dirty we only got into the pool). The majority of my time, however, has been spent sitting in my bed working on my research project…and of course sweating.

For Thanksgiving each home-stay pair volunteered to prepare a particular “American” dish, which would be supplemented by catered food at our director’s house. My roommate and I decided that we would make salad, which turned out to be an all-day affair. Our baba went with us in the morning to his preferred vegetable stand, and helped us get a good deal on a bunch of veggies. We then went to the mall with the goal of buying lettuce, but it turns out that Tanzanians don’t eat a lot of lettuce. Instead we bought a head of cabbage. Looking back that was a poor choice (no one ate it). In the afternoon we went over to our directors house with all of the food and then chopped vegetables for about two hours. It turns out we bought a lot of vegetables. The dinner was really really delicious – everyone’s dishes turned out much better than expected. People brought platters ranging from sweet potato and apple pies to pumpkin pancakes. I was impressed. We all ate a ton in the spirit of Thanksgiving, and unlike in the field there was more than enough food for everyone.

Thanksgiving was actually my roommate’s, Laura’s, 21^st birthday, so we had a belated dinner celebration for her on Friday. We all went out to this wonderful Indian restaurant in Oyster Bay, and it was a very pleasant experience. Usually when we eat out as a big group, the food takes forever and there are many complications, but everything went seamlessly. Afterwards most of us went out to a nearby bar called “George and Dragon”, but we left after a few hours when the power went out.

Our host family has been in-and-out, mostly because their actual home is in Mongorogoro, where they have a farm and livestock. Our mama is constantly traveling back and forth, and baba is on vacation right now so he has been taking the opportunity to go home when he can. Their son got married the day we returned to Dar, so they were gone for the first few days we were back. It is nice to have them around, but Laura and I are also completely fine on our own. Filomena the house girl is always here, so we still have breakfast and lunch at home. Filomena doesn’t speak any English, so we have been attempting some very broken conversations with her in Swahili. I much prefer living in a home-stay to the dorms. However there are still some awkward moments with our host dad, and I am still adjusting to eating dinner around 9 or 10 pm. Other than that we are very comfortable.

I think that pretty much covers this past week, maybe next time I will have slightly more interesting things to talk about. 

Archaeology Safari (Week 6)

        After departing Tarangire, we began the Archaeology portion of our safari. We picked up our Human Evolution professor, and he accompanied us for the last leg of our journey. We went to major archaeological sites such as Laetoli and Olduvai, and we also went to Ngorogoro crater for a few days. Ngorogoro was really cold, and it felt nice to wear a fleece and hat at night. Our campsite also was visited by a herd of zebras, which was fun. During our game drive in Ngorogoro we saw two black rhinos, and that was the safari highlight. We also went to an organic farm called Gibbs farm in Keratu, and we had probably the best meal of our lives. 

          Our last stop was Lake Natron, also the site of Oldonyo Lengai, which is a big-ass active volcano. We off-handedly decided that it would be fun to hike said volcano, but because it is so hot during the day it would have to be a night hike. Once we reached our campsite, we had dinner, took a short nap, and then departed around 11 pm to the trailhead. We didn’t begin our hike until 12:40 am, and our guides warned us that it is a difficult hike so we should have water, lights, and proper clothes. Some of us didn’t have these things, but we laughed it off and were like “yeah, whatever. We will be fine”. We weren’t. After about two hours of hiking in the dark, the terrain started to become really ashy and slippery, and it started to get steep. Some of our group members decided they were done, and turned around to go back to the cars. As we kept ascending, the ground kept getting sketchier and steeper. After the halfway point our guide told us “now we begin the climb”, so even more people dropped off. It was too dark and dangerous to go down, however, so they had to sit and wait in the dark until the sun rose. The remaining 11 of us decided to push on, even though I was getting kind of scared and it was difficult to hold the flashlight because I needed to use both hands at all times. Once the sun rose I almost had a panic attack because I realized we had gone really high, and we still had a ways to go. I kept slipping down a few inches with every step and I had all four limbs touching the side of the mountain to keep from falling down. It took us six and a half hours to reach the summit, and at the top I primarily felt cold and miserable. All I could think about is that we had to somehow get back down vertical scree and dust. It didn’t help that I hadn’t slept or eaten in a very long time. The decent was…interesting. We were all getting a little bit delirious, and I couldn’t stand so I slid down on my butt most of the way. Loose rocks would come tumbling down every so often, so we would scream “ROCK ROCK ROCK” and the people in front would cover their heads and duck. There were a few close calls but no one got hurt. It took us five hours to get down, and in the end our hike was a 12-hour experience. I was so glad when it was over, and I have a sore body and bruises and cuts to show for it (there is a big one on my butt from all of the sliding on the ash and rocks). Retrospectively I guess it was sort of fun. That was the grand finale of our six-week adventures. The next day we drove back to Arusha, and yesterday we had a 12-hour bus ride back to Dar filled with lots of horrible movies and music videos.

            We will be in Dar Es Salaam for the last three weeks, and I am going to do my best to make peace with this city. We don’t have any classes, so our only responsibilities will be to study for our Ecology and Human Evolution finals, and to type up our research reports. I think I have thoroughly bored my audience, so I will cut it off here. I’m sure I will post later about my last few weeks in Dar. It actually feels good to be back, and now I have internet, so please send me updates on life at home! Baadaye. 

Tarangire/Olasiti (Weeks 2-5)

               The field portion was amazing, and gave me a more realistic idea of what it is like to conduct Anthropological research. We stayed in a campsite about three miles away from the gates of Tarangire National Park, and about a mile away from a tiny town called Olasiti. There were six students doing Biology projects, four doing Archaeology projects, and the remaining ten of us did Cultural Anthropology projects. Every day the Biology and Archaeology folks would take the cars to the game park or the Archaeology site, and they would usually go twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening. It was way too hot between the hours of 11-4 pm to do anything, so during that time we would usually attempt to sleep, play cards, read or just sit there and sweat. There were five translators living with us, all of who are Maasai and speak Maa, Swahili and English to help the cultural students with our projects. Only a few of the translators wore their traditional Maasai clothes, and most of them have moved away from their home villages, but they were important cultural brokers in our interactions with the Maasai community. All of us got really close with the translators, drivers and kitchen staff, and some of my favorite times at the campsite were hanging out with the translators, doing dishes or helping prepare dinner in the kitchen. Even though most of the staff spoke English, it was a good opportunity to practice some Swahili (although I am still not fluent by any means).

            My research project was on comparing traditional Maasai education to the formal education at the local government schools in and around Olasiti. I conducted several participant observation sessions at the local primary school, spoke with teachers at both the local primary and secondary school, and did interviews with Maasai elders and parents in Olasiti and another village called Oltuki. I really enjoyed going to the schools and it was very interesting for me to see how the classrooms work and what teacher-student interactions look like. The teaching style is heavily based on call-response and repetition, and I never saw any students asking questions. I watched Swahili, English, and math classes, and once a friend and I got to teach one of the English classes (which meant writing things on the board and then checking the answers in the students’ notebooks). The educational system is still a bit confusing to me, but I definitely learned a lot during the short time I visited the schools. The interviewing process was a bit of a wild goose chase. There was limited access to the translators and we never created any kind of schedule, so I just leaped at any interviewing opportunity that came my way. I was able to conduct about 18 interviews, including my interviews with teachers. Sometimes interviews could be stressful and frustrating. Often participants wouldn’t show up at the time you had scheduled an interview, and people were often busy, especially the men. We compensated our participants with a box of tea and a kilo of sugar, but sometimes they would get angry and ask us for money. Most of the community members in Olasiti were welcoming, but we would frequently be asked tough questions like “why are you here? How will your research help us?”. It was difficult to answer questions like that because the reality is that our research won’t really help them, despite our best intentions. I really enjoyed wandering around from boma to boma with the translators looking for participants, and I got to see a lot of cute babies and goats in the process. I audio-recorded the interviews, and in my downtime at the campsite I transcribed them by hand to try to see if I could find any trends in my data. Transcribing was tedious. Sometimes it was difficult to understand the translator, and the background noise of goats, cows and children drowned out our voices. However I think the transcriptions will be valuable during my analysis, and it was a good way to stay focused on my topic. A lot of us encountered the same obstacles during our research, and it was helpful having each other and our director to find different ways to approach various issues. I could keep going on the research aspect, but I think I have covered the main ideas. I learned a lot, mostly about the research process than my actual topic. The last day we gave a presentation to the community members, and in the true Tanzanian fashion we started two hours late, and the presentation was about five hours long.

            When we weren’t out at the park, arch site, or doing interviews, we had a lot of time to hang out at the campsite. The cultural anthro people had interviews to transcribe, but that would only keep us occupied for so long. Strangely enough I never got bored, although some days I would accomplish absolutely nothing. Even when we wouldn’t leave the campsite, herds of goats would raid our tents, and Maasai children would stick their heads over the walls and yell “HELLO HELLO HELLO! Give me pen! Give me chocolate! What is your name? HELLO!” several times a day, every single day. I would go for runs in the mornings before breakfast or in the evenings, and almost every time I would get mobbed by groups of children who would grab my hands and run with me until they were tired. At first I sort of dreaded the child-attack, but after a while I grew quite fond of them. Also in the evenings we would do a Jillian Michaels (she is on the Biggest Loser for those of you who are not familiar) workout video, and we always had an audience of several children and an old babu who would watch us over the wall. It was pretty hilarious. We decided that they probably thought that we were doing a choreographed dance, because that is way less absurd than what we were actually doing. Other past-times were walking into town for a soda or snack, making friendship bracelets, and we gave each other haircuts using child craft scissors. The last few days we found and adopted four adorable and probably diseased puppies, so that kept us entertained as well. In the evenings after dinner each of us had the opportunity to tell his or her life story for about 1-2 hours, while the rest of us sat under the stars and listened. It was interesting hearing the experiences of people with whom I lived in such close contact.  It was also a good exercise telling my own life story and thinking about what parts are important and worth sharing. Other than that we didn’t do too much. We rose and fell with the sun, and did our best not to annoy each other. 

There were two special events that occurred during our time in the field. The first was Halloween. There was a bit of drama over the proposition of buying and slaughtering a goat at the campsite in order to include the Tanzanian staff in our celebration. Another girl and I felt uncomfortable with the goat situation, and when we raised our concern our group had a very long discussion deciding whether or not we should buy the goat. More than half of our group is vegetarian, incidentally, but only three of us (against 18) had an emotional response to the idea of killing a goat at our campsite. In the end we decided not to buy the goat, and I think the conversation we had about it was important for all of us. Instead we created makeshift costumes out of the resources we had, and ate a lot of candy. I was a dust devil (they are everywhere), and I was very impressed with the costumes that people threw together. The other major event was the election. That was probably the highlight of my time at Tarangire. The morning after the election we found out that Obama had won, and we took the day off to celebrate. Actually, we couldn’t do any research because the cars had no gas, so we used that as our excuse. We went into town for some celebratory sodas, got to watch some CNN at one of the bars, and then after lunch we had a piñata. The piñata was a paper mache giraffe that we had made for Halloween, and the staff got to demolish it using a cow femur we found. It was so much fun and I took several videos of people taking turns trying to take down the piñata. That night we all went out to dinner at a restaurant in town, in order to celebrate Obama’s victory, and to show our gratitude to the staff. We made thank you cards for all of them, and had a blast eating and dancing together. It was really sad to say goodbye to the translators when we left Tarangire, but we made sure to friend them on Facebook.

Ecology Safari (Week 1)

Wow. Well I have a lot to catch up on, considering I haven’t posted on here in six weeks, and a lot has happened between then and now. I will do my best, though. In order to make it more manageable I will divide up the three major portions of the past six weeks. I will be impressed if any of you make it through all of them.  

      From Arusha we drove to Engerkarat, which is a Maasai village pretty much in the middle of nowhere. The ground was black volcanic ash, and it was extremely hot and dry. Water is scarce so the only plants growing were various species of Acacias, which have vicious thorns. We stayed in Engerkarat for a few days, and got a crash course on Maasai culture and traditions. We went on an herbal medicine tour, beaded with some Maasai mamas, witnessed an orpul (goat sacrifice), collected firewood, and participated in one of the night dances (which involved a lot of jumping and chanting in the dark). It felt a little strange and touristy at times, but never the less it was a really fun and interesting experience. The last night in the village there was a question and answer session around the fire, where we got to ask the Maasai some questions, and they asked us questions as well. They asked things like “how many children do Americans have?”, and it was difficult to answer for an entire diverse nation. It gave us a little taste of the types of questions we would be asked during our interviews to come. After leaving Engerkarat, we picked up our Ecology professor at the Arusha airport and began the Ecology portion of our safari. 

We drove all through Lake Manyara and the Serengeti, spending the majority of our time in the Serengeti. I got to spend my 21^st birthday on safari in Lake Manyara, which was incredible. Instead of getting drunk at a bar I got to see some wild elephants, so I think it was a fair trade. We would drive around in our safari caravan and every so often we would get out of the cars to talk about Ecological concepts we were witnessing. Each student had a designated topic, but our knowledge was limited at best. Our cars had a sticker on the back saying “special permit do not follow”, and sometimes we would drive for hours to the middle of no where so that the other tourists wouldn’t see us getting out of the vehicles. The off-roading was bumpy, to put it mildly. We saw so many amazing animals, including lions, elephants, giraffes, zebras, wildebeest, cheetahs, leopards, hippos, etc. etc. For me the most thrilling animals to see were the cheetahs and leopards. It rained every day in the Serengeti, marking the beginning of the short rainy season. After about a week of traveling, we drove to Tarangire National Park, where we would spend the next month doing research.