SFS Olympics and Arusha!

After one last bittersweet day in Ayalaliyo conducting the last of our interviews, we’ve spent this past week sitting in camp analyzing all of the data we’ve collected. Yes, it’s a bit tedious, but something else that is super awesome has been going on as well. We’re holding the SFS Olympics!! Each DR group competes against the other groups, and each day there are several different competitions. My DR group is Tanzania, as our advisor is Tanzanian, the Wildlife Ecology group is Kenya since their advisor is Kenyan, and the Wildlife Management group is Germany since their advisor is German. So far we’ve competed in Speed Art, Volleyball, Soccer, Arm Wrestling, Slack-Lining, Javelin, and Shot Put. Whenever we have the events, everyone around camp shows up to watch or play. It’s been a super great stress reliever and community experience, especially since we’ve all been split up into groups for the past few weeks. We’ve also been teaching the staff some new games and they’ve been teaching us some new skills, like spear/javelin throwing. Tomorrow is capture the flag!

Another fun thing that I’ve been doing is getting neno la lao (a word of the day) from Michael and Aziz. I reeeaaaallllyyyyy want to be able to converse in Swahili (I can kind of get by, but only kind of. Actually, I can understand some things, but I usually can’t reply), and during DR field work, Michael and Aziz thought it was entertaining to give me Swahili words of the day to learn. I thought it was entertaining, too, so now I bug them each day to give me a new word. The entertaining part is that the words have been things like entrepreneur, empowerment, implementation, cohesion, infrastructure—definitely not your basic Swahili conversation words, but if I ever need to have a political debate or something with someone in Swahili I’ll be set.

And now, for probably the coolest thing that’s happened this week: we were given the opportunity to explore Arusha, one of the largest cities in Tanzania, for our non-program day! It was a great experience, but I am so glad SFS is based in a rural village. We started out the day pretty early, as Arusha is about 2 hours away from Rhotia. We also stopped at a Snake Part just outside of Arusha. This ended up being a lot cooler than we expected. They had most of the snakes found in Tanzania, so it was interesting to see them and learn about them. They also had a small animal sanctuary with a few birds, crocodiles, and this poor Yellow Baboon who was all alone. That was heartbreaking; baboons are extremely social creatures, and I have no idea why they were keeping her alone. She kept reaching out of her cage to hold our hands or groom our arms. Apparently she was rescued from poachers, but I think it would have been much nicer to send her to another place that had other yellow baboons. I guess maybe this would be really hard since baboons are very wary of outsiders… but still, it was so sad to see her alone. They also had camels, which was very random. We also got to ride the camels, which was even more random. There was one baby camel though, who was super lovable. He’d come up to you and try to snuggle and give you kisses. He was best friends with this one Maasai guy, and they would chase each other around the area where the camels were being kept.

After spending more time than we expected at the Snake Park, we headed into the heart of Arusha. 

We were dropped off in what our intern, Becky, likes to call Mzungu Land. This is basically an oasis of relative peace from people staring at you and yelling wazungu and trying to shove paintings in your face to get you to buy them. There are also western-esque shops. There’s a super market/department store that’s comparable to a smaller grocery store back home (but HUGE for here), a coffee shop, a Mexican restaurant, a bookstore, a gelato place, and more. I really wanted to go to an Indian restaurant that had been recommended by our student affairs manager, Mike, so I left Mzungu Land and ventured out into Arusha with a group of friends. With the help of Mike and Becky, we made it to the restaurant and proceeded to have an amazing meal! I had a paneer butter masala, but tried a little bit of everyone’s dish as well. Afterwards, we explored a fruit market, but left pretty quickly because it looked like the fruit markets we were used to in Mto wa Mbu and Karatu, and people were ruder in this one. 

Anyways, after successfully navigating our way back to Mzungu Land on our own, I looked around the super market for a bit, then got gelato (it was amazing), and then coffee! It was nice to have mzungu food, but it probably would have been nicer if the trip had been in the middle of the semester instead of towards the end. At this point, I can pretty much see the days when I can eat cheese on a regular basis again, so I didn’t feel the need to buy some from the store.  

A day in Arusha was the perfect amount of time for me. Driving through Mto wa Mbu on the way back was a huge relief, just because it was so much more calm than Arusha. That was kind of ironic since Mto wa Mbu used to be super overwhelming to navigate at the beginning of the semester. It was also interesting to drive from Arusha to Rhotia now and compare it with the first day we were in Tanzania and did the same drive. The sights have so much more meaning and beauty now that I’m familiar with them. I know I am going to miss the drive from Mto wa Mbu to Rhotia so much. Traveling up the escarpment and being able to look down over the Great Rift Valley at the green island of Lake Manyara National Part, the sky-reflecting Lake Manyara, and cloud shadow-strewn plains is always incredible. It’s a sight I want to remember for the rest of my life.

After this wonderful day of exploring new places, it’s back to data analysis and writing the drafts of our papers. I am a little disappointed that the end of our program ends with us sitting in camp on our computers for most of the day, but the experiences I’ve had up to this point are much more incredible than I ever imagined before coming to Tanzania. We also have the SFS Olympics to help us celebrate our last few weeks here! 

DR: WMA Interviews in Mswakini

I spent three days last week and part of this week collecting data for another Environmental Policy DR. This one is about Wildlife Management Areas. Unfortunately, SFS wasn’t able to a get a permit for interviewing in the area we originally were meant to interview in (elections are this year, so we were a low priority on the Manyara District’s list). This meant that we had to interview in the area that all of the other DR groups were interviewing in, Mswakini (which means toothbrush in Swahili!).

Before I continue, I’ll give a little bit of background on what a Wildlife Management Area or WMA is. Theoretically, it is a way to get local people involved in conservation. There is a fairly lengthy application process in which a group of villages requests the government to give them the rights to a certain portion of land near them. (Land ownership in Tanzania confuses me, so I’m not even going to try and explain it. It’s something like the government technically owns all of the land, so the village doesn’t own the land their on, they just get to use it… something like that). Then, the villages make a plan as to how to manage this land. They can set some of it aside for conservation, some aside for tourist lodges or hunting areas, and other areas for managed resource use. Villagers vote for the people who are responsible for running the WMA. We’ve gone to one WMA, the Burunge WMA, which seemed fairly successful. The ten villages that shared Burunge did make a fair amount of money, which was used to build schools and other community buildings. Burunge was actually where we were supposed to do interviews, and it would have been interesting to see how people viewed that WMA. The WMA in Mswakini, called the Randile WMA, is much newer than Burunge. It just started making money this year.

The first day of interviews was in the village of Mswakini Chini. It was fairly overcast, so the temperatures didn’t get overwhelming awful (it gets ridiculously hot in that area), and people were pretty nice and cooperative. It was a bit of a struggle remembering to greet and thank people in Maa instead of Iraqw. We met one women who spoke very good English, and she told us in her own words all about the problems they were facing. She actually asked us why were there and not inside Tarangire. I feel awful every time I visit that area because I am one of the wazungu who gets to enjoy Tarangire National Park while the Maasai’s livelihoods get destroyed by the wildlife. And I’m not really in a position to do anything about it, despite asking them questions all of the time. I feel like Americans and Europeans and all people who visit Africa or want to visit Africa to see the wildlife also need to be made aware of the problems the wildlife cause. Before I didn’t really realize this, but now it seems really selfish to me to think solely of creatures you can see on safari and be completely oblivious to the fact that these animals are actually super destructive. And we Americans can’t talk because we’ve devastated populations of animals that get in the way of our livelihoods, especially carnivores like wolves. Ugh, these things just make me so frustrated and disheartened!

The other village, Mswakini Ju, was also pretty nice. It has a lot more trees and vegetation than Mswakini Chini. Also, whereas MC has mostly only traditional round Maasai bomas and the people wear Maasai robes, MJ had some more "typical" (at least what a Westerner might consider more typical) houses and people wore more western clothing. We had some pretty interesting moments in MJ, though. At one boma, Maria wanted to take a picture of a group of very cute baby goats, so she asked our guide to ask the family if that would be all right. The mama responded that Maria would have to pay her, so we left without the picture. Our guide was then like, yeah, these people need their goats to make money. Apparently he told them Maria wanted to take the goat, not take a picture!

There was also an instance that didn’t really make sense until after the group discussion in MJ. There was a group of women at one boma who had told our guide that if Maria and I hadn’t been with him they would have chased us away because they thought we were coming to steal their land. At the time, this seemed a little ridiculous, but then we found out during the group discussion that when the WMA was first established, villagers held a peaceful protest against it. Their viewpoint was that the WMA officers were simply stealing their land, which was kind of true. These people don’t get direct benefits from the land they lost to WMA, and if they do, the WMA didn’t bother to educate them about it so they don’t realize if they are getting benefits. Apparently, during this protest, village leaders called the police, and the police ended up using tear gas on the villagers. This would have been useful information to know before we started walking around these villages asking all of these questions about the WMA! We knew it was disliked, but we didn’t know it had such a dark history in the village. A lot of people’s responses to, “Do you think the WMA should continue to operate?” was, “The WMA should die.”

MJ also has its fair share of wildlife issues, actually more than its fair share. It borders Tarangire, so they get all of the animals. One woman showed us the destruction elephants had done to her farm the night before. They had crushed a lot of the maize and then knocked over trees. We also met one mama who was very nice and talked a little to Maria and I in Swahili. We later learned that an elephant had killed her eldest son the year before. People always ask us, what are you going to do to help? It’s a daunting question, and one I may like to think we have solutions to (bring more awareness, bring more education to the area, give village leaders ideas to help local people), but that I have to admit are idealized.

DR: Ayalaliyo and Kambi ya Faru

One of the incredible views in Ayalaliyo

After spending a week walking around the villages Ayalaliyo and Kambi ya Faru, I am convinced that they are the most beautiful places I have ever seen. Everyday I looked forward to walking on the red and gold ground, looking at the ordered cropland and patches of wild forest spread over the valleys and hills. The scenery wasn’t the only wonderful part; the people were wonderful as well. Most people would welcome us into their homes, or at least a seat in the shade, and they would patiently answer our questions. People in Tanzania are much more open about certain things than Americans. We could walk up to a house, call Hodi, and usually a mama or baba would walk out and welcome us into their home. We asked questions Americans would be horrified at, things like age, education level, and even income. People here don’t get embarrassed or uncomfortable answering these kinds of questions. They’re also willing to take half an hour or more out of their day to talk to us.

One of my favorite memories was walking on a small path in this valley and seeing this old man a little ways away. When he saw us, he smiled and started walking over. Despite the fact that we couldn’t say much more than the typical Iraqw and Swahili greetings, his happiness was infectious. I saw him several times after that interview, and it was always made my day even brighter than it already was. It is hard to describe the vibe that many of the people, especially in Kambi ya Faru, give off, but one of the things I seemed to notice a lot was that many people had eyes that seemed to smile.

It would be very easy to write these people’s lives off as idyllic, but I cannot let myself jump to that conclusion. I am just so curious to know how these people perceive their own lives. How do they feel about the landscape around them—does it invoke the warm, comforting feelings of home, do they value the aesthetic of the landscape around them, do the struggles of living in rural Tanzania overwhelm all of this? Do they yearn for other lives somewhere else? Is there peace in the motions of daily life, boredom, frustration? It makes me a little uncomfortable, being so in love with this place and the people, but knowing very little about what it’s like actually living there.

I mentioned in previous posts that I disliked our previous interview exercises in the Maasai Steppe, but these DR interviews have been wonderful. Part of that is because these people in the two villages don’t get interviewed very often, but I also think that the topic of our interview, beekeeping, is much happier than, you know, animals always coming to kill your wildlife or destroy your crops. Also, I feel like we can do a little bit about the problems beekeepers face in the Endabash region. In fact, our professor is talking to officials from the beekeeping organization in Karatu about bringing in people to train villagers about modern beekeeping techniques.

A traditional beehive

Local people are really pushing for more education on modern beekeeping, because they believe it will help them increase honey productivity, allow women to participate more easily, and possibly introduce the production of new bee products that they could potentially sell. With their current hives, which are basically hollowed out logs hung in tall trees, they only harvest about 5L of honey per harvest, which is about 3 or 4 times a year depending on environmental conditions.

My favorite part of this experience was the focus group discussion we had. This was where we invited beekeepers and non-beekeepers to have a large group discussion. In these meetings, we got to delve deeper into some of the question that might take more explaining than a questionnaire question. One of my favorites was trying to get a monetary value of indirect benefits like pollination and biodiversity from people. I think it was confusing to them (I was trying to explain a situation where all of the bees in the area disappeared and they had to pay people to bring in more bees so their crops could be pollinated), but it was fun to try. One of the girls in our group actually does bring bees in for her family farm, so that was a real world example we could use. Focus groups were also a fun time to meet more people and watch community members interact together. We also got lots of questions about American beekeeping from them, which I wish we could have answered in more detail.

For the past two days we’ve been interviewing about Wildlife Management Areas in two Maasai villages for another group’s EP project, but we might possibly return to Ayalaliyo for one last day of interviews. We’re a bit low on data from there because our second day of interviews was cut short. The Endabash River that we have to cross to get to Ayalaliyo played a large part in shaping our interview schedules. Our professor warned us that there might be a day or two where we couldn’t get to Ayalaliyo because the river sometimes flooded when it rained a lot. On Saturday morning, we were able to get across just fine, but then it started raining while we were conducting interviews. My interview group kept pounding out interviews (and getting soaked in the process), but early in the afternoon our professor made the decision to leave so we didn’t get trapped if the river flooded. It’s a good thing we left when we did because the river did flood only a little while later. It also flooded the morning of our last interviews, so we only did interviews in Kambi ya Faru.

The flooded Endabash River. It was moving a lot quicker than it looks in the picture! People could cross on foot, and we saw a couple drive through on motorbikes. They all made it across, but there was one guy on a motorbike who had a pretty close call!

On a different note, we found out some really cool news. We get to go to Arusha next week for our non-program day! Arusha is the closest big city (two hours away) and we’ve been in rural areas the whole time, so it will be super exciting to see a new part of Tanzania.

I also feel like I’ve reached the point where my Swahili learning has taken off. I can understand big pictures in some Swahili conversations, especially when it comes to anything with beekeeping. One day, our translator in Kambi ya Faru conducted all of the interviews in Swahili instead of Iraqw, and I picked up about 10 new words and felt pretty happy with how much I could understand. I still can’t carry much of a conversation, though. I can ask some interview questions in Swahili for our WMA interviews, which is sometimes necessary when our guide/translator zones out (he has a bit of a short attention span), but more about our WMA interviews later!

Walking around Ayalaliyo

Day One of DR: The Pilot Study

We’ve officially finished the first part of the program and are now headed full tilt into Directed Research! I mentioned this in my first post, but the School for Field studies has Five Year Plans at each of their sites. The Five Year Plan is a large, on going research project that, well, lasts for five years! Each DR project is a small component of the Five Year Plan. The overarching question for the East Africa Five Year plan is:

            How can changes in land use and resource availability in the Maasai steppe of Kenya       and Tanzania be managed in such a way as to foster the well-being of local communities whilst safeguarding and promoting biodiversity conservation?

My DR is studying the contribution of beekeeping to household income and poverty alleviation in two villages, Ayalaliyo and Kambi ya Faru. There are six other students studying other various aspects of beekeeping as well. We all work as a team interview local people and then we will write separate papers.

            Today was our “Pilot Study” where we tested out the questionnaires and data sheets that we created. Ours was a little stressful because we only started making the questionnaires this morning, so it felt like very little time to put together a nice, cohesive group of questions. It all ended up OK though, since the pilot study is all about seeing how the questionnaires worked and giving us opportunities to change the questionnaires.

            In the early afternoon, we headed out to Ayalaliyo, which is about an hour and a half away from Rhotia. I had heard from several people that the Enderbash region, where Ayalaliyo and Kambia ya Faru were located, was stunningly beautiful with farmland and rolling hills. My expectations, however, were completely blown away. These villages are way up in the Karatu highlands, and the valleys, forests, rich farmland, and distant vista views made it the most beautiful place I’ve visited in Tanzania. Even the red soil was beautiful to look at—it was flecked with gold mica and vaguely glittered in the light. It sounds like I’m making that up, but it’s really true!

            We had three guides and were split up into three groups. We walked around the hilly countryside, looking for households to interview. When we do interviews, we basically just walk into someone’s yard and call Hodi, which doesn’t really have a translation, but it’s kind of announcing that you’re there and asking to come in. After our guide/translator explains why we’re there, people usually invite us into their houses and under a shady tree. Most people are quite open and friendly. The interviews are translated from English to Swahili or the local language. A lot of people weren’t home, but we did meet one woman (who was the wife of one of the askari- guards- here at camp) who kept bees. It was really hard to get some of the questions across (especially mine about specific costs and then the ones trying to get at non-use values were pretty much impossible), but hopefully we will be able to work out the kinks. We only had to do two interviews per group, but that was still pretty exhausting.

            DR is going to be something quite new for all of us. We’re all split up into different groups and we spend the whole day outside of camp. But what we’re doing is very exciting, and at the end, we get to present it all to the community. Apparently, presentation day is a day of festivities, with presentations and then lunch for the whole community.

            I was quite pleased to find out that a lot of these projects were created after officials from different organizations asked our professors to look into certain issues. For example, one group is researching wild dogs in Tarangire and the surrounding area because officials from Tarangire National Park asked our wildlife management professor to look into the wild dogs there. My group is doing beekeeping because officials from Karatu asked our policy professor to investigate beekeeping and its benefits in a region where that was not well studied.

            So now we have nine more days of intense fieldwork and then we’ll be less than a month away from our departure date. :( It is coming up way too fast!!

Oh, and highlight of the day:

Mwamhanga, our policy professor, giving us a lecture that went from following your passions instead of expecting that a degree was going to make you happy to how to get over your boyfriend or girlfriend cheating on you. It was great.