Getting Settled After Adventuring

As you can probably tell, I haven’t updated my blog very much since getting to Tanzania. This has been a function of my limited internet access and the fact that I have been traveling all over the country. Marlene covered the travels in pretty good detail on her blog, but I want to cover some of the details and then focus on where I am now.

After Marlene and I arrived, we spent several days in Dar doing some work to prepare for our time here such as getting SIM cards for our phones and a modem for internet. Traveling around Dar was quite hectic and quite an experience. It was a little bit crazier than in Cape Town mostly because I didn’t understand the language and pretty much the entire city (and country) operates on the barter system. In Cape Town we would usually get taxis that were metered, but here you have to barter based on where you are going. The prices for items are not listed in most stores and these items are up for barter as well. This would be fine if I knew more of the language, but it has made my time a little crazy. Fortunately, Marlene is very competent in these situations and can speak enough Swahili to get a decent price. I’m slowly learning Swahili – I think I know the numbers pretty well now – and I’m using the Rosetta Stone program as well as my experience to try to improve.

After our time in Dar, we took a 12 hour bus ride out to Arusha so that we could go on a safari for 3 days. It was definitely a fun adventure. I’ve actually been on 3 days of safari previously so I have seen many of the animals, but this trip was really fun to do with Marlene. Some of the animals and views were also much more spectacular than in Botswana. I had seen 4 of the Big 5 animals before (Elephant, Buffalo, Lion, and Leopard), but this time I had the awesome opportunity to see the Rhino in the wild. In Ngorongoro Crater where we were for the middle day there are 15 rhinos left and we got to see both a mother and baby. It was awesome to see, but also sad to realize that this majestic species may not survive much longer. We also got to see a cheetah here which was really cool. It actually stood up and went into this tall grass towards a herd of zebra and wildebeest. We were really excited because we thought it was about to hunt, but as we drove quickly over in hopes of seeing the hunt, our guide said that there probably weren’t enough small animals in the herd for it to hunt. We were approaching the end of our time in the park as well and were forced to rush away to get out of the park before it closed. The next day we had the opportunity to see the biggest herds of elephants I’ve ever witnessed. I saw probably more than 100 elephants in Tarangire National Park. We got charged by one of them which had gotten angry at us for no reason at all. Our guide actually panicked a little bit, but as soon as we started driving the elephant stopped charging. I have a great picture of the elephant as it is starting to charge which I will try to post soon. It gave us quite the scare and got our hearts pumping, but in retrospect it was a really cool experience. Later in the day, though, when we rounded a corner to see an enormous solitary male elephant walking towards us down the road, we decided that we would back up and let it pass. Rather not risk being charged again.

We were pretty exhausted after the safari and decided that we would spend an extra day in Arusha instead of taking the bus back right away the next day. It was a great decision and we just had a chance to get some energy back before our work starts. Our trip back to Dar by bus was long and uneventful again and we pretty much stayed in the hotel before taking the trip up to Bagamoyo yesterday.

So now I’m where we’ll be working for the duration of the summer in Bagamoyo. The past two days have been spent getting acclimated to the town. Our house is pretty large and will be housing a total of 8 people this summer. The town itself is relatively rural. Most of the roads are dirt here. There is actually some interesting history here – this town used to be the German capital of Tanzania. Old ruins of the German buildings litter the town. It feels old. One of the coolest things about this town though, is that it is right on the coast of the Indian Ocean. If you look out the window from the research office we’ll be working in, you can see the coastline. As a result, there is also a nice breeze which helps temper the heat.

I’ve settled into my room by now and I’m really ready to start working on the research for this summer. I can already tell that I’ll be very busy with everything, but I’m encouraged that there is definitely support from the larger project. Intensive planning began today and will continue up until the focus groups are completed. I’ll let you know more about everything as it approaches and my updates should be slightly more regular now that things have settled down a little bit.