My Last Week!

Hi everyone!! I know I've been slacking on my blog! I'm very sorry! Everything is still going very well in Tanzania. I spent the past two weeks on my directed research project. I finally finished the paper on Saturday. It ended up being only 22 pages, which was surprising because I thought it would be more, but I think it turned out well. It's definitely a relief to have it finished!

So tomorrow we have our community presentations. We've been told we could have as many as 100 people come to watch us. I'm a little nervous, but I think it will be cool to get the chance to present all of our findings to the people who really live here, and who are influened by the things we studied.

My individual project went well. I took park in the Wildlife Ecology project on baboons. My study focused on the interactions of adult male and infant olive baboons living in both Lake Manyara National park and in the surrounding villages. After spending eight full days observing the baboons I've definitely learned a lottt about them. It was a very interesting topic for my first real research opportunity, and I had a lot of fun.

We spent most days in Lake Manyara National Park and I have a good story from one of the days there....

This is my 'scary' story...One day we went to the hot springs in the park. The springs area is one place in the park that pepole can get out of their cars to look around and strech out. To see the small streams we had to get out of our car and walk down a bunch of rock stairs. Everyone was at the top of the hill reading about the hot springs, but I couldn't see the sign so I decided to just start walking down the steps. As I walked down the stairs I was focusing on the springs down below because there were bushes around us so I couldn't see much of what was beyond the small streams. When I reached the bottom I was looking down at the water wondering how hot it was and if I should try to touch it (my friend had touched it the day before and said it was really hot, but it didn't burn her). Then after a few seconds I looked up for the first time, and there was a giant, lone buffalo standing less than 50 yards from me just staring at me. Buffalo are the second dangerous animals in Africa (after the hippo) beacuse they are very territorial and get aggressive if anything/one encroaches on their space. So when I saw him I froze, because I know they are not extremely safe to be around. I was only down by myself for a little while and then all my friends came down the steps behind me. I told them to be quiet and nodded toward the buffalo. One of my friends decided to take a couple steps closer....and the buffalo did nottt like that. It lowered its head towards the ground and then threw himself up and forward and started running at us while grunting loudly. Apparently he only took about three steps, and then stopped, but I didn't see that because I had done a complete 180 and SPRINTED up the stairs. I was very scared, but maybeee overreacted a little bit. Everyone else was still standing at the bottom laughing at me because he never came close to us but just made a bluff charge.

I, of course, hear multiple jokes about buffalo daily. Everyone makes fun of me for my reaction, but I was very scared!! I could laugh about it later on but I never went back down the stairs. Needless to say, I do not like buffalo haha. Since then my friends found a tshirt with a giant mean buffalo face on it that says HAVE A NICE DAY!! under it. They made me buy it. Its very funny, and I wear it all the time. So thats my scary story. It really wasn't a big deal at all...so don't worry. Just made for a good story.

So anyway, I can't beleive I'm leaving in 5 days. I'm sad to leave, but also excited to see everyone at home. My mom and I will be in London and Paris from the 8th-14th, and then after than I'm going to Barcelona until the 23rd to stay with my two best guy friends from school Tommy and Brian. Tommy has been studying in Barcelona all semester, and Brian has been in London. I'm very excited to see some of Europe. Magz has been planning out our schedule and I think we will get to see a lot. I will write another post before I leave, and then probably one last one about Europe.

Hope all is well at home. SEE EVERYONE SOON : )

DR Pictures

This is a picture of the forests of Lake Manyara National Park. Some parts of the park are very dense and feel like a rainforest. This is where we observed the majority of baboon troops we saw for DR data collection. We never saw any predators here but it was one of my favorite parks because it was so pretty. There were a lot of sections that were very open and dry and African like, but the extra foresty parts were really cool.

This is Lake Manyara National Park's Serena hotel. Every park we have been to has had a Serena hotel. We've been to the Amboseli, Tsavo, Serengeti, and Lake Manyara Serenas. These are the lodges we go to for lunch buffets, drinks and swimming. This hotel was definitely the prettiest. In the background you can see Lake Manyara National Park. The dark green is the park forest and then the blue and light green is Lake Manyara. The edge of the pool is just at the top of the Manyara escarpment, so its a beautiful view looking out over the park. Inside the lodge is also gorgeous. Living in Africa for three months has made us all really, reallly appreciate the good food and elegant atmosphere the lodges provide. They are always a really nice break from the regular African food and tents!

One day during our DR data collection we were in the village looking for baboons troops. We were driving through a small part of the village, that was basically like a small neighborhood, and one man told us he knew where baboons like to hang out. He led us to his house and then we got out of our Land Cruiser and walked through some trees and bushes to get to his yard. Behind his house was a huge banana plantation/forest/farm. Every direction we looked was just banana trees. They were so pretty, and really cool! The trees looked very tropical. Above is a picture of a bunch of bananas. Each bunch had a large purple flower that would grow out from the fruit. The bananas in the picture aren't ripe yet, they are supposed to be yellow, buttt we do have green and red bananas here in Tanzania that we eat a lot. We only had the green ones in Kenya. They are small and less firm and a little sweeter than normal, and the red ones are huge and taste kinda different, but they are hard to explain. SO anyway, after trecking through the gorgeous banana trees we got to more woods and saw some baboons playing high in the trees. They were much more skittish than park baboons so they stayed too far away for us to record any observations, but it was a lot of fun to see them in the village woods.

Rows of Banana trees.

Chelsea and me in the Banana Forest.

This is our Land Cruiser one day during data collection for DR. It rains a lot at night, and we unfortunately got stuck pretty bad. For the first time we all had to get out of the car and help push...

We had just gotten out of the car, and were about to start figuring out how the vehicle should be pushed out.

A good view of what we were really stuck in.

I'm all the way to the left. I was lucky enough to be standing in front of the tire, so that when our driver tried to move the vehicle a bunch of mud was thrown all over me by the spinning wheel. At first it was gross, but after a little while it got pretty funny.

Here we are after successfully freeing the Land Cruiser.

This is my friend Alex with one of the kids at the orphange.

Me with two little ones at the orphanage.

Some of the kids at the orphanage that were watching us perform a song and dance for them after they sang a song for us!

I'm sorry I haven't had much to say lately! I know I'm behind on a post. Today we had a day off after eight days of data collection for Directed Research. I've basically been going out everyday/all day to watch baboons. It gets pretty tiring. The next few days we will be working on data analysis, and will start writing our papers. I can't believe I only have two and half weeks left. Time has been flying by. Enjoy the pictures, and I'll try to catch everyone up soon. Hope alls well at home!

xoxo

new pictures

Last week for our community service day we went to an orphanage about 15 minutes from our camp. We helped them paint a mural on this courtyard wall. While some of us painted, everyone else played with the kids for the day. It was a lot of fun, and the kids were really cute. I have a lot more pictures that I will hopefully upload soon.

Half way through the mural.

The finished wall!

A group of us with some of the kids in front of the finished mural at the orphanage.

I took this picture and the next three today while we were out collecting data for our directed research project. We have seen this baboon three of the four days we have gone out. He only walks on those two legs, and we think it is because there is something wrong with his wrists. We have never seen him straighten out his arms, and he walks very well, so he has probably been moving around like that for a long time. We call him bipede or hominid. Luckily the rest of his troop treats him normally, and he's not excluded or anything like that.

A mom with her baby. Our professor told us this infant is only a few days old.

Two infants wrestling.

An infant with mom and dad.

Elephant in Lake Manyara National Park.

A very small baby zebra. He was so young that he still had fur.

More pictures!

A lion and lioness in Ngorongoro Crater.

A hyena in Serengeti eating the remains of a wildebeest.

A giant spider we found in Kenya.

Everyone setting up camp in Serengeti.

A wall mural in the small museum and gift shop on the way to Ngorongoro.

A view from inside Ngorongoro Crater looking up. The hills in the distance are the outside edges of the crater. You can also see the faint pink color of the flamingos in the water.

A view looking into Ngorongoro Crater from the top.

Cheetah in Ngorongoro.

Chelsea, me and Olivia in our campsite at Serengeti. This sign was held up on a tree in our camp saying "CAUTION! Do not get out of the campsite. Animal may attack human being."

Serengeti National Park

Our second expedition to Serengeti National Park was even better than our trip to Tsavo. Sorry it has taken me so long for the update; the internet hasn't been very reliable lately. We returned back to camp from Serengeti on Sunday. Last week we camped out in the park for five nights. This trip was very different from our trip to Tsavo. It felt like we were in actual wilderness in Serengeti because we could hear hyenas around camp every night. We also heard the occasional lion. We had armed guards every night again so we were safe, but they had to chase hyenas out of the camp on three of the four nights!

On our drive to Serengeti we stopped at an overlook of Ngorongoro Crater for a quick view of the 250 sqare kilometer protected area. The crater was just an open grassland with a large lake, and is the home to lots of wildlife. We actually had a day trip back their today and we saw tons of animals...including: lions, cheetah, elephants, rhinos (which are highly endangered), hippos, gazelle, impala, hartebeest, wildebeest, flamingos, storks, zebra, giraffe, hyena and buffalo. The drive down into the crater was a little scary because it was pretty steep at some points, and always very bumpy. It was definitely worth it though; we had a great safari day.

So back to expedition...after our stop we continued on towards Serengeti, but first we made another stop at Oldupai Gorge. There is a picture below of the gorge and of the layers of rock that make up the area, along with a brief explanation of what we were looking at. It was one of the coolest things we have seen so far. Fossils of footprints from human ancestors were found in the area that date back to about 3 millions years ago. The gorge is a piece of the evolutionary puzzel. It was really cool to be there and to hear about how they know the small gorge used to be a lake because of all the fish and reptile bones they have uncovered in past years. The human ancestor footprints that were found were preserved in damp volcanic ash that was covered in mud. They have a replication of the prints, and the fossils show two human like creatures walking side by side, with a third, smaller individual following the first two and stepping in their footprints. I have some more pictures that I will hopefully put up soon.

So after our stop we made it to Serengeti. We set up our tents before dark and just relaxed until dinner, campfire and bed. Our four full days at Serengeti were spent mostly out on safari. The environment and habitats were very different, and were exactly how I had pictured the 'Serengeti Plains'. There were times when we were driving that all you could see was grass in every direction up to the horizon except for a few hills here and there. It was beautiful. We saw our first leopard and cheetah on the first day driving in to camp, and then saw a few more throughout our stay. We were very lucky because the group that was in Tanzania first never got to see any cheetahs, and we have seen about six since we've been here! We have had unusual luck.

During our safaris we collected animal counts and habitat data to complete class exercises on habitat preference and species diversity. The exercises didn't feel like work because we got to game drive all day which was a lot of fun. During one exercise my group saw a lion walking through high grass. She ignored us and just walked toward our car until she was less than 15 feet away, and then just walked along side us for at least a minute. Next she went out in front of our car and crossed the road to the grass on the other side, where she walked toward a tree and then jumped into it to get a nice vantage point over the plains. She was so close that we could see she was lactating, which meant she was probably out hunting for her cubs. It was the closest we have been to any predators, and she was so gorgeous up close. There is a picture of here below.

Another exciting event in Serengeti happened one day while we were all out on safari. A cheetah chased and killed an impala IN our campsite. Some of the school staff were at camp when it happened and saw the attack. There is a picture that one of them took below of the cheetah in the grass right on the edge of our camp. You can't see the impala carcass in the picture because the grass is covering it, but you can get an idea of how close the cheetah was to us. It was a little intimidating to know that a cheetah and other predators would be hanging out in camp that night fighting over the remains of the kill (but again, we had armed guards and were very safe).

On the last day we got to go to a lodge again. We all enjoyed the lunch buffet, and would have swam but it was raining. The trip was a lot of fun. We got back to our regular camp on Sunday and had the afternoon and night off.

On Monday we went into town for the first time and went to a place called Happy Days for lunch. We all had cheeseburgers and pizza that were deliciousss. The food was the most American food we have seen since we've been in Africa so we all really liked it. We hung out there for a few hours and then went into town to look around and shop. The town here is VERY different from the town we were in in Kenya. The area here has a lot of tourists because we are so close to Serengeti and Ngorongoro, so the town was much more developed and modern than in kenya. All of the shops are acutal buildings and not just huts made of dirt and metal. We even see the occasional white person around!

Tuesday we went to Lake Manyara National Park which is less than ten minutes down the road from our camp. We saw flamingos for the first time! There were a lot of baboons in the park, along with most of the other species we usually see during safari. This national park was different though because the vegetation was very jungle-like. I felt like I was in a rainforest in South America. There were lots of palm trees and trees with huge, flat, green leaves, and also a bunch of trees that grew straight up with no branches until they passed through the top canopy of leaves. It was really pretty. We also saw vervet monkeys and sykes monkeys because there were so many trees for them to live in. We get to go back a few more times before the semester is over so I'm looking forward to those trips.

Wednesday we had a day of classes, and then yesterday we went to Ngorongoro crater as I already mentioned. The crater was very cool, and I will hopefully post some pictures of it soon. We spent the whole day there and had one lecture when we stopped for a picnic near a small hippo pond. Today we just had classes. All of our exercised are due tomorrow and our final exam is Monday. Once thats over Directed Research begins. DR is going to be a lot of work. We asked the student affairs manager how long the final papers are and she told us they are usually between 50 and 80 pages. Sooo that will be interesting. There have been a few papers published in past years though, so it would be really cool for any of us to get published. I'm hoping I'll get to do the DR on baboons but I still don't know yet. Next week is for DR preparation, then the two weeks after that will be field work and data collection, and then the week after that will be for writing up our papers. Once they are done we will get to present our findings to the professors and to any locals who want to come watch our presentations. We've been warned the DR is rigorous and tiring but I'm happy to end classes and get started.

I should be posting more pictures soon. Sorry again for the delay! Hope all is well at home!
xoxo

Serengeti Pictures

A giraffe in Serengeti.

We saw a harem of Impala running through the grass one day in the park. They looked like they were running from a predator, but nothing was behind them.

This is one of the best pictures of the trip. It was taken by one of our school's employees during the last full day while we were out on safari. You can see the cheetah sitting in the grass...with our campsite right behind it!! The cheetah ran through our site during the day and chased down an impala. By the time we returned to camp the cheetah was under a tree eating what was left of the impala. It was a little scary, but pretty cool. That night we heard a lot of hyenas in camp fighting over what was left over.

This is Oldupai Gorge. This is the site where human-like footprints from millions of years ago were uncovered. You can see the different layers of rock and dirt in the section that is sticking out of the ground. We got to walk through the museum that had a replication of the fossilized footprints that were created around 3 million years ago by a human ancestor. It was one of my favorite places we have visited so far.

Mama baboon with two young.

A young zebra with a pretty cool mohawk.

This is a female lion who walked along our land cruiser as we drove down the road for about a minute.