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