Tarangeri National Park

Just got back from a week long safari in Tarangeri and Mto Wa Mbu and it was incredible. In Tarangeri we had field study in the morning, usually some sort of presentation about our field work around 12 then we got to safari and be tourists all afternoon before another lecture of some sort, dinner and bed. Our campsite was in Tarangeri and we literally had elephants, baboons, dik diks, and even lions walking through and around our campsite. It was a scary experience to wake up in the middle of the night to a lion roaring and baboons screaming in what sounded like only a few Km away. I was in birds group so before dawn we would wake up eat a piece of white bread with peanut butter and head out by 6 to do 2 hours of data collection. Although I didn’t originally want to study birds it has become in my opioon the best field study group to be in because our experts are awesome and we see so much because we get up so early. On the 3^rd day or so after getting lost trying to come back to camp we encountered what I thought at first to be a sleeping zebra but as I looked closer I noticed a exhausted mama lion and her 3 baby cubs gnawing on a leg, it was one of the coolest things I have seen yet. This kill was not even an hour old and the mom was laying on the ground in complete exhaustion while her cubs hardly noticed us because they were chowing down. Overall Tarangerie was a great National Park to visit because of all the wildlife we got to see but I have started realizing that my original idea and visualization of the African National parks is nothing what I thought it was. I though the national parks were mostly a Tanzanian in studied thing to protect wildlife but I have come to think that they are there to please tourists and give them the image of “Africa” that everybody thinks of. There are man made watering holes next to the roads and driving along the roads during our “tourist” portion of the day I couldn’t help feeling like I was in some sort of Disney land ride. After reading lots of articles and discussing Tanzanain small national parks I have come to realize they hardly benefit the local population at all and in my opinion are really there not only to conserve wildlife but more satisfy rich westerners coming to experience “Africa”.

After Tarangeri we went to a small village about an hour away called Mto Wa Mbu which literally translates to mosquito river. And although I’m a little bitten up from late night swimming in the campsites pool it was not nearly as bad as I thought. Anyways the day we got there we set up camp and then got to go on a cultural walk of the town which I think is up there on the list of best things I have done here. We walked through their rice fields and then through the little village streets visiting local artists as well as traditional banana beer brewers along the way. We visited traditional carvers and painters and watching them do their craft was so cool! But I have to say my favorite part of the trip was all the kids we got to play with along the way. They LOVED getting their pictures taken and would pose, do flips, and do anything to get it taken. After you took their pictures they loved seeing them, one little boy would get so excited  he would shoot his arms up in the air and squeel with excitement, it was one of the most adorable things I have ever seen. The next day in Mto Wa Mbu we did birds field study at lake Minyara and then I got to go on a Ethno Botoney “tour” sort of thing. We first stopped at the village doctor which was literally a man sitting on the side of the road with lots of herbs that could fix a number of ailments. We ended up getting what he called a “cocktail” of herbs and drank them in our tea later that night. I can tell definitely tell you that they aren’t some fake ground up leaves. After the village medicine man we got to go to a masaii healer and some people tried to fix some of their problems but more interesting was the construct of their boma. The medicine man had 25 wives and 50 sons of warrior age and many more girls and younger boys. This boma was HUGE!!!

Well I have to go because I’m running out of time but the semester is going great and were off to the Mozumbia forest for the next week!