Tanzania and exams

Hello again!

The shore of Lake Tanganyika from Gombe National Park

When we last 'spoke,' the cohort was still in Angiri camp in Kenya. The day after my last post, we went to the Nairobi airport and shipped ourselves off to Tanzania. We had a layover in Dar Es Salaam, which I absolutely loved flying over. It was so beautiful! We boarded a sketchy little boat and had a three-hour ride to Gombe National Park, where Jane Goodall started her research on chimpanzees. Gombe was beyond gorgeous, and I loved being in the forest. My first lodging was seriously at least three-quarters of a mile from the beach where we arrived, which was not even a little ideal to walk at 10pm after a full day of travel. However, I woke up the next morning feeling much more at peace with my mildly rustic shack and all of the cutesy spider inhabitants who allowed me to stay in their spare room. I started my day with a swim in Lake Tanganyika, which has the clearest water I have ever seen. The depth was deceiving because of the clarity of the water: more than once I thought I could touch the bottom, just to reach down and realize that where I was wading was easily ten feet deep. 

The aforementioned Sketchy Little Boat™

Later that day, they told me that my stay in Spider Inn was a one night special, so I lugged my stuff back to the beach and then another quarter-mile beyond that to a cutesy little tent with some super adorable ants rotating a dead lizard they had found! It just spun and spun! Seriously though, I know I joke, but being in Gombe was most certainly one of the best experiences of my life and I don't have anything genuine to complain about. I woke up every morning and walked 3 feet from baboons, and I fell asleep at night to the waves of Lake Tanganyika.

The chimpanzee feeding station

In Gombe, we had a tour of the veterinarian's lab, the herbarium, and the osteology lab, many lectures, and two field exercises: one on chimpanzee vegetation, where we got to see Jane's Peak and ran back down the mountain as it down poured, and the other we were chimpanzee trekking! My group went chimp trekking after it has been storming all night and into the morning, so the path the other group took was flooded and we got to go through the bush rather than on the trail. We detoured again, going along the shore of the lake, and the waves were crashing up to us on the shore. I was not able to appreciate the beauty of wet boots in the moment, but I'm there now. A bit further into the hike, we climbed what our guide called the "baby hill" which was very deceiving. The baby hill consisted of the steepest incline and decline I've ever had the pleasure of hiking, and a muddy hillside where we inched side by side downhill with our hands uphill in front of us. We learned about how slave traders planted mango trees to mark their paths. Those same mango trees stand today. We followed four chimps: a baby, a mom, a grandma, and a male. At one point, the male came down his tree and walked right by me. I expected him to walk around me, but if I hadn't side-stepped at the last second, he would have brushed up against me. It was a really incredible experience. We took the boat back to the research center and visited Jane Goodall's house. 

Baby, mom, and grandma

Walking up to our vegetation study plot

Once leaving Gombe, we went to Kigoma, Tanzania, where there's the Kigoma branch of the Jane Goodall institute. We got to go canoeing on the lake on our free day, and the next day had lectures on TACARE, Jane's holistic approach to conservation and the betterment of local communities, and on the national forest. We got to swim in the lake one last time and went to the director of the TACARE program's house after dinner. The next day, we headed back to Kenya. 

Once we got back to KBC, we had a debrief, a day of rest, and then one day working on our final films for our human dimensions of the environment class. After presenting those films to each other and a few members of the community, we had two days of studying for our three finals, and then two days of actually doing the finals. Yesterday, we were introduced to our directed research options and had many hours of statistics class.

Mount Kilimanjaro! It's good to see her again.

Yesterday marked the crossing over of the halfway point in this program! It's a bittersweet moment: I've loved my time here and I've learned so much, I'm also excited to go back home to see my family and friends, and part of me never wants to have to leave Kimana. I'm sure that the final half of the program is going to speed by and be over before I know it, which makes me sad. On a happier note, I immensely enjoyed my time during expedition and am excited to properly start directed research. The project I'm in is on grey crowned cranes and the degradation of their habitat. 

My habitat study group and me in front of a waterfall in Gombe National Park

Kitwe Forest Conservation Area

Jane's Peak

Canoeing on Lake Tanganyika

Thanks for tuning in! Hopefully I'll be able to update the blog more consistently now that I'm back at KBC. Til next time, 

J