Jambo jambo y’alll. I’m posting a little bit later tonight, just because I’ve been with Moses for about an hour in the Duka with some other girls talking about our issues haha. Moses is basically the “shopkeeper” of the Duka, which is this little shop next to the dining room where we buy postcards, sodas, soap, etc- except the Duka usually ends up as a hang out place half the time (even though it’s literally 4 feet wide). I also did my RAP today, which is actually just a reflection slash presentation, with announcements from the staff in the middle. I ended doing a game for my presentation, in which everyone wrote 3 rando facts about themselves and then I read them aloud and everyone tried to figure out who the person was. It actually turned out a lot better than I thought- especially since Daniel was wearing a head wrap the whole time and his new name became mama queen. Ok so anyways- just catching up on things I haven’t blogged about yet--- n Tuesday, We went around to the farms near our site in Rhotia on Tuesday and interviewed the local farmers about the conflicts they have with wildlife. I’m actually in the middle of a paper about it right now, which is due on Wednesday. I think I talked about the interviews in an earlier post, but just as a side note, it was incredible to hear what the farmers had to say- literally every farmer said that elephants and hyenas eat and destroy their crops almost every night. We also got information on their methods of prevention/ methods of dealing with the animals while their destroying the crops, etc. Then, on Wednesday, we carried out a field exercise in the Tarangire National Park- just a basic counting exercise except we used range finders to calculate the distance of each herd/ animal. We turned in a project yesterday, which revolved around this field exercise, just basically making graphs of our results and finding connections between animal density/ diversity within the park to conservation efforts. We also used the Simpson’s Diversity Index method to calculate the species’ diversity (following the field work). It’s a little difficult to explain so I’m just gonna post two small parts of my presentation that will shed a lil insight on the project –
Intro- Since 1980, researchers in the Tarangire National Park have noticed increasing land use changes outside the park (Nelson 2005). These activities are reason for concern, since wildlife migrate into dispersal areas (outside protected areas) during the wet season (Kissui 2008). Although, dispersal areas ensure the park’s non-isolation. In our study, we calculated how isolated the populations of each species are, to see if the increasing destructive human actions are taking a tole on the park, and assure that the Tarangire National Park isn’t close to becoming an isolated, ecological island.
Methods- The study was conducted on June 15, 2011 in the Tarangire National Park using a sample, road-count through open vegetation. We divided the group into observers, recorders, and counters, and used a range finder to calculate the width of each transect. With a 500 m. maximum width, and a 2 km length, our sampling unit areas were about 1 km2 each. For each habitat sampled, we started a new transect after 500 m. Using these methods we were able to find the number of species in a habitat, and per km2, in order to find each component of the Simpson’s Diversity Index (Ds)
So yeah, this basically just sums up the exercise- it was actually really enjoyable to do though haha-. But anyways, apart from the fieldwork, we spent 8 hours in the park it was amazing I can’t even describe it. Coming from Lake Manyara National Park, where we only saw about 3 elephants- this park was incredible- having one of the highest densities of elephants out of all the wildlife-protected areas in Tanzania. There were toonnss of zebras and wildebeests literally counting one herd took about 12 minutes. It was hard filling out our assignment and taking good pictures at the same time, but I ended up getting a lot of shweet pics anways. After lunch, one of the interns Jenna was birding with her binoculars and then she saw lions sleepin, so we drove on down there right away. After driving down there though, the lions were about 50 meters away and they were all sleeping in really tall grass, so we only could see the top of their lil heads. It was still awesome though seeing ma first wild simbas. On Fridaay, we ended up going to this Maasai Boma/ Manyatta, which is basically an actual Maasai village in which tourists can pay to visit the manyatta and get an inside view on their lifestyle. This was reaallly really interesting, except I wish I hadn’t left my camera on the night before because I wasn’t able to take pictures the whole day. It was actually awesome just being able to watch their presentation/ dance though. A lot of us were freakin out because the flies were literally being little devils- they swarmed all the little babies too which was awful to see- though we found out the flies aren’t seen as a nuisance since the more cows you have, the more flies you have-aka sign of wealth in the Maasai culture since they’re pastoralists. Theeennn on ma burrday it was actually a non-program day (since we have 6 day school weeks) which was awesome- so we first went to a Catholic church mass in Rhotia for about 2 hours, then went into Karatu to shop around, etc. It was hilarious we actually ended up dancing in the middle of the street since one of the interns wanted music- some people were judging majaa and definitely thinking like crazy mzungus (white people) over there, but a lot of people were actually joinin in and dancin along with us. OK so anyways, after Karatu, the guys ended up going to the Happy Days bar, and the girls ended up going to this art gallery slash restaurant which was the no joke one of the most beautiful places ive ever eaten at. I’m definitely gonna have to share some pictures later, but just in description, the restaurant is owned by South Africans and they’re mainly artists, who collect and sell art, though also run a restaurant inside too. It’s not very popular, as it’s hard to get to and pretty secluded, but the view is absolutely amazing- all of us were saying it felt like we were in the Italian countryside or something haha. The building was wooden with glass walls, and most of the sculpture art was made out of scrap metal- they also had a lot of recycled products/ bags made out of bottles, etc. It’s hard to put it into words but it was awesome hhaha and their cinnamon ice cream tasted like heaven. Ok quahiri yall we’re going to the Ngorongoro crater at 6 in the morning until really late at night- so excited ive been freakin all day. OOH also later that night they sang happy birthday and made a cake which was delish it was so cutie and yummo. OhH and today we went to this wildlife management area that was preeetty cool i guess since the area was full on protected and it was located in the dispersal area between the Tarangire and Manyara national parks- though we saw no animals after driving around for about 3 hours haha. It was actually really fun though since we had a really good truck group, one of our teachers Kioko was our driver, and we had the intern Jenna in our car who's hilarious and had iPod speakers- aka we blasted Shakira and American music mostly rap-esque stuff the entire time. Ok I ahve to sleep lala salama
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