Iringa Town (Saturday, July 25)

In the morning we drove into downtown Iringa and met Dr. Hamza Mwamhehe and Dr. Hilda Mrema, the government veterinarians at the Veterinary Investigation Center. They talked to us about the way that the government has the veterinary service set up, and took a tour of the lab. They have some rudimentary testing techniques, and use ELISA to test for some of the more common livestock diseases--AI, Rift Valley Fever, and Bovine TB. Most other things, including Brucellosis, they have to send to Dar to be analyzed, which obviously is a less than ideal method.

We then drove out to a village near the Kibebe farm, where the VIC vets were helping one of the farmers improve his husbandry for his chickens. The farmer talked to us--through one of the vets acting as a translator--about how he set up his chicken farm, and increased his livelihood from about fifty to over two hundred and fifty chickens. With this he was able to send his children to private secondary school, and hopes to make enough money to send them to university as well, and buy a car and bring solar power to his house. It was really interesting and cool to meet the "average Joe" Tanzanian farmer, rather than Europeans living in Tanzania, or the very highly educated (and I assume relatively wealthy) professors we have met so far. It was also really cool to hear his plans and hopes for his farm, and that he's been able to accomplish so much in a short time because of that motivation for his kids.

Chicken farmer with his wife

We bumped back over the dirt tracks and eroded stone roads back to downtown Iringa, and had lunch at Neema Cafe. We had the afternoon free to explore Iringa on foot. A large group of us headed toward the market and an internet cafe, and I attempted to send cards at the post office--unfortunately it was closed. I drifted through the market with different groups of people, mostly Stephen, Helen, and Vanessa, browsing the Maasai jewlery carts, Iringa fabric stands, and jumbles of African themed carvings and art for souvenirs. The Maasai men and women with their babies strapped to their backs were stringing beads in the moments between helping customers, and everything was very colorful and cramped.

Inside a Maasai jewelry stall

We walked through the food market, entering near stands heaping with whole dried fish--a little suspect since we're hundreds and hundreds of kilometers of uncertain road from the coast. But the fruits and vegetables all looked and smelled delicious--and we saw tons of the red onions that we saw growing in the baobab valleys on our way from Mikumi to Iringa.

Iringa market stall

It was nice to get a real feel for the town, and actually talk to some of the people in market, trying to figure out how to communicate and bargain with the very limited Swahili vocabulary I've mastered so far--mostly amounting to greetings, and names of animals. Around dusk, we headed back to Riverside campsite for dinner and a short presentation on bird population monitoring in Tanzania. The temperature here in Iringa in the dry season drops down into the 40s and 50s Fahrenheit, and tonight was particularly cold so I listened to lecture wrapped in my sleeping bag, with everyone else looking on enviously.

Iringa Town (Friday, July 24)

We spent the morning visiting with Andy Hart in the village he works in outside of Iringa, called Ismani. A British veterinarian by training, he's been here in Tanzania for seven years, working on development projects in and around Ismani. When he first got here, he started by vaccinating chickens for Newcastle disease in the village, and using that as a way to meet and talk to people and figure out what some of the things are that they're doing well, and what needs they have that are unmet.

Andy Hart

From talking with the people in Ismani, he learned that they had previously had a cattle dipping station set up, but that it needed renovation to continue working and generate revenue for the community. The villagers banded together to raise the money and supplies to fix up the dipping station, and put it into use. Dipping here in Tanzania is used to prevent tick-borne diseases, particularly East Coast Fever, which is endemic to Tanzania and can cause huge losses in the cattle herds. Now the dipping station is used by the surrounding seven villages for their cattle, and its run by a committee of farmers in Ismani who have used the profits to set up new projects in their village, including spring water development and the establishment of a veterinary drug store.

Goat herders in Ismani

Andy also told us about other projects he's worked on in the seven years he's been here in Tanzania, and some of their successes and failures. He had great stories, and even better ideas, and was really an inspiring person to talk to. At the same time, its almost intimidating to meet someone who is so smart and creative in his approaches to solving problems in these villages--I remember reading Mountains Beyond Mountains and thinking the same thing about Paul Farmer and his healthcare work in Haiti. But, like Val is so fond of saying, when you're confronted with an impossible array of problems that must be solved, you find ways to solve them.

We returned to downtown Iringa along the bumpiest road I've ever taken, and stopped at a shop called Neema Cafe for lunch and a tour. Neema Crafts, the shop with the cafe in it, is a business that Andy's wife started in response to the problem of Tanzanian people with disabilities. Many of these people were out begging on the streets because they couldn't work due to their disabilities--whether caused by polio, cerebral palsy, or traffic accidents, the three biggest causes of debilitating injuries, and Neema employs these disabled people, and well as deaf people, to make all kinds of crafts to sell in the store. They have their workshop in the back of the shop, and we saw where they made ceramics and glass beads from recycled wine bottles. We watched one man make decorative paper from maize and recycled paper, and from elephant dung. There were women with babies in slings on their backs stringing beaded necklaces, paraplegics making scarves on hand looms, and deaf boys sewing clothes and pillow covers from locally made fabrics. Everyone spoke in sign language. It was an amazing combination of working on a social problem, while also being environmentally friendly and appealing to a tourist trade to remain economically viable. Amazing.

Inside Neema Crafts, and one of the employees

After buying some souvenir elephant dung paper and jewelry, we headed out to Kibebe farm, a large dairy operation owned by a British family. They had tons and tons of land, and a herd of about 450 cattle--Ayrshire for milking and Sussex for milk, meat, and working oxen. It was a beautiful farm, and definitely felt like a different world from the village we were in this morning.

Cow pasture at Kibebe Farm

Meing'Ataki told me that while in many African countries there are still lots of Europeans holding land, this farm is unusual in Tanzania since the government repossessed all the land after they gained freedom in the 1960s. Most of the Europeans in Tanzania at that time were left landless, but the family that owned Kibebe farm was able to sign a 99 year lease on their land and remain there. The operation was very successful--there was no mastitis, all the cows were milked by hand, and they were the cleanest cows I've ever seen. Becaues foot-and-mouth disease is endemic in Tanzania, they can't really avoid it, and simply quarantine cattle that get it and wait for it to run its course. With all the fear of FMD in the states, I would have thought that it was much more dangerous, but none of the farmers--whether Kibebe or villager--cull infected cows. I suppose in an endemic area there wouldn't be much to gain from that practice.

The European style farmhouse at Kibebe

Around sunset, we drove back to Riverside for dinner. I was exhausted from all the traveling, and went straight to bed after our dinner and post-dinner lecture.

Mikumi to Iringa (Thursday, July 23)

Again this morning we went out in our safari trucks into Mikumi National Park, looking for giraffe to immobilize for Dr. Lyaruu's study (and so that group B could get some experience). We saw a few by the sides of the highway on the way in, and a few in the park near park headquarters where we were the previous day, but none that presented a good enough target. Being a cooler morning, Titus thought that the giraffes might have been lingering longer in the hills on the northeast side of the park before venturing into the main area where we were.

Me and Jenny in the Rover, looking for twiga

We drove up into these hills, the Vuma Hills area, and only saw a few animals. The terrain was much steeper, and covered in the miombo forest that is renowned for breeding infestations of tse-tse flies. True to its reputation, as we climbed further into the hills, the flies started to invade our van. Fortunately, the sleeping sickness that they carry is really rare, but we still tried to avoid getting bitten, and kill the flies we saw. The forest around the road looked like it was recently burned, and the trees that we saw close enough didn't seem to have any leaves for the giraffes to browse on. After almost an hour of driving up into the hills, we'd only seen one small group of giraffes, at the very beginning, so we turned around.

Desolation, not giraffes, in the Vuma Hills

The rest of our drive proved fruitless for group B, although Titus did attempt one darting at the end of the day, but misfired and hit the hoof. With a five hour drive ahead of us to Iringa after packing up our rooms at Tan-Swiss, we decided to call it a day around noon.

Acacia tree in the Vuma Hills

The drive to Iringa took us up and over the Udzungwa Mountains and the beautiful baobab valleys in their midst. The road was well traveled, and we saw two overturned eighteen wheelers with their drivers lounging in the shade of their cargo, waiting for some help to arrive.

Men hanging around playing pool in a village on the way to Iringa

The houses and villages were few and far between through the mountains, but as we descended the other side the villages picked up again, and we saw lots of onion and corn fields, and cows and goats being herded home for the night.

A candelabra euphorbium in the hills outside Iringa

We arrived at Riverside Campsite around dinner time and had time to drop our things in our rooms (and tents) before dinner. I am sharing a stone banda--a small two-room house with electricity and running water, with four other girls, so its definitely a tight squeeze. There were two open tents in the camping area, but they went to two groups of the boys since they couldn't pack them in so tightly to the two stone bandas. Hopefully tomorrow night more tents will open up so I can sleep under the stars in the field by the Little Ruaha River.

Mikumi National Park (Wed, July 22)

We got up bright and early and piled in our safari vehicles to head into the park for a day of giraffe immobilizations. The short drive into the park from Tan-Swiss was beautiful just after sunrise, and we spotted lots of the same animals as we saw on our drive in the previous day. We headed into the interior of the park, to the park headquarters where they have the staff lodging and a building with a conference room. We stopped on the way for a while to watch a Maasai giraffe, two cape buffalo, and a few impala grazing and browsing together outside the park headquarters.

Cape buffalo outside park headquarters

Once we parked and got out of the trucks, we loitered around for a long time, watching the vervet monkeys playing in the trees behind the building, a maribou stork wandering around by hanging laundry, and storm clouds slowly rolling in. Finally all the professors and field veterinarians arrived, the powerpoint was set up, and we went inside for an orientation to Mikumi, and a briefing on our plans for the immobilization. Despite having a nice modern and technologically sound powerpoint presentation, we still had to run outside to the squat toilets for our bathroom break. Dr. Vitalis Lyaruu, the Southern Zone veterinarian for Tanzania's national parks, and Dr. Donald Mpanduji, a lecturer at Sokoine University, explained to us that the giraffes in Mikumi have, in the past few years, been victim of a new ear disease that causes inflammation and subsequent necrosis of the pinna. They were trying to figure out the prevalence and etiology of this disease. So this morning and tomorrow morning, we'd be going out into the park to find giraffes that had not yet had their ears examined and sampled, and immobilize them to collect blood and ear tissue samples.

We were split up into two teams, planning for each team to go with one of the vets who would each dart a giraffe. I started on B team, but was switched to A team for one of the big guys who would do the roping for B team. We divyed up the jobs--the restraint and roping team going to the boys, and the sample collecting, measurements, and anesthesia monitoring to the girls. I was set to do measurements with Nike--measuring the head to base of tail, shoulder height, and chest girth. The roping teams practiced their technique a number of times on people acting as giraffes, and the sample collectors went over techniques with the vets.

The roping team practicing their technique on Vanessa, a "tall Chinese giraffe"

By the time we were finally ready to go, it was already 11:30, and we were supposed to be back for lunch by noon. With some signals crossed, some people got in trucks expecting to go back to Tan-Swiss, and some of us got in expecting that we might still find a giraffe that presented a good darting opportunity and go ahead with it. Lo and behold, about five minutes down the road, there was a large male giraffe browsing right by the side of the road, and Dr. Mpanduji quickly darted him.

Our giraffe and the darting Rover, just after darting

After about ten minutes of slow-speed giraffe pursuit, he was showing signs of going down, and we started assembling the roping team. Only then did we realize that Val was in one of the trucks that wasn't with us, and the roping team was short one person. Obviously, I jumped right in a volunteered. Without any warning, Alphonse (one of the Tanzanian Envirovet staff leaders) popped out of the lead truck and started running toward the giraffe with the rope. The rest of our roping team was in the last truck, and we sprinted out at top speed to catch up with Alphonse and the rope. We wrapped and pulled and ran and ducked, and in a flurry of legs and neck the giraffe toppled, like the big robot things in the Star Wars movie. I left my post restraining the hind legs with Fidy and Julius, and Nike and I gathered the measurements. This was no easy task, since the giraffe was still kicking and twitching, and one of its hooves was easily the size of my head.

Giraffe during anesthesia

Within just about ten minutes, Dr. Lyaruu was ready to reverse the giraffe, although Fidy and Julius were still unwrapping the rope from the hind legs, and there was still a needle in the jugular for the blood draw. We quickly finished, and a few seconds after Dr. Lyaruu reversed, the giraffe was up and running into the distance.

The A Team!

Team B caught up with us just after the giraffe had run off, a little upset that we'd had the good luck to find a perfect opportunity and they had missed out. After a little celebration and patting ourselves on the back, we took off in the trucks again to try to find a giraffe for Team B. Unfortunately, our luck didn't hold, and we headed back to Tan-Swiss after driving around the park for an hour or so.

After lunch we had an afternoon and evening full of lectures. A combination of jet lag, waking up at 6 am, and coming down from the adrenaline rush left me--and many others in the group--exhausted all afternoon. I think lots of people were nearing the end of their patience, especially since half the group was really frustrated by not having the chance to do the immobilization today, so there were some quick tempers in our discussions this evening, and in debriefing about the immobilization. I certainly was ready for some quiet, resting time, and by about 9 pm, I was absolutely ready for bed.

Travel to Mikumi (Tuesday, July 21)

We piled in cars this morning for the four hour drive through Morogoro and Mikumi National Park to Mikumi town, our first stop for this session. As we drove farther from Dar, the sprawling tin roofed houses built wall-to-wall thinned out, slowly but surely. The environment just outside Dar was dominated by palms, with tall trees and an almost jungle-forest feel, but as we drove west--and inland--the palms gave way to shorter brush and scrubland, peppered with baobabs and the occasional cashew tree. The people we saw along the roadside began to have chickens (koo koo), goats (mbuzi) and cows (ngombe) instead of carts laden with snacks, clothes, or palm leaf baskets. We drove west, looking out over the Uruguru Mountains, and the land transitioned to mainly farmland and empty scrub, with only small villages of mud houses with palm leaf thatch roofs scattered every so often.

Scenery on the outskirts of Dar

About three hours from Dar, we reached Morogoro and stopped at the market there for a stretch and bathroom break. As we got into the bathrooms, the group of girls I was with realized that while we figured out how to say bathroom in Swahili (vyoo or choo), we hadn't remembered to ask the words for women's and men's. The first Tanzanian man who came to use the bathroom after we got there was very confused to find a group of about eight white women standing and staring at the bathrooms, waiting to see which one he went into. As soon as the bus pulled up, men and boys pedalling everything from bananas (ndizi) to live turkeys surrounded us, asking if we wanted to buy. I mastered "hapana asante"--"no thank you"--very quickly at that point! Bose, one of the Nigerian women (and a non-Swahili speaker at that) was happy to haggle with one of the men over a belt, convincing him to punch a new hole in it for her before she bought. We loaded onto the buses again, and were off for the rest of our drive to Mikumi town.

The town of Mikumi lies on the western border of the national park by the same name, so we got to drive through the park on the main thoroughfare, the TANZAM highway that leads from Dar to Zambia, and the only paved road in the park.

The entrance to Mikumi

It was almost 30 minutes past the border of the park when I spotted the first wild animal of the drive--a single male impala. Then about 5 minutes later, Meing'Ataki, the Ruaha National Park head ecologist and our unofficial Tanzanian tour guide for the drive, spotted a whole herd of impala off the other side of the car. We saw a few giraffe off in the distance, a troop of yellow baboons running across the road, and a warthog running along past the bus. I spotted a cape buffalo resting under trees in a lowland, and we saw a whole herd of elephants--a matriarch leading a baby and a number of what looked like juveniles. The whole experience was very exciting, especially since this was just a taste of what we get to do and see for the rest of the trip.

Our first elephants!

We made it to the western edge of the park, and stopped at the Tan-Swiss Hotel, our lodgings for the next two nights. After unloading our bags we had a quick buffet lunch and got into our rooms: "bungalows," which were really nice, with big comfortable beds--and mosquito nets--and flush toilets and (really cold) showers. Deanna and Rudovick Kazwala talked to us about the organization of the course and some introductory things about Tanzania and its national parks, then we had dinner, hung out for a bit, and went to bed in preparation for an early morning tomorrow.

Our bungalows at Tan Swiss

Beautiful big mosquito nets inside our Tan Swiss bungalow

Travel Days (Sat 7/18 - Mon 7/20)

We left HBOI promptly at 2 am for our ride to Ft. Lauderdale airport, and I slept the whole 2 hour drive, and 3 hour flight to JFK. After a very short layover--really just the time it took to get from baggage claim to the international terminal, and go back through security, we boarded our 12 hour flight to Dubai. All things considered, it wasn't so bad. Emirates airline had really good food, for airplane food, and built in media panels to the back of every seat, with on demand movies, tv shows, and games. I slept, read my book--In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote--and watched Aliens vs. Monsters and some tv.

Sunrise in the airplane over Tehran

We had about 2 hours once we landed in Dubai before our next flight on Monday morning, and we wandered around the Duty Free shops. There really are Starbucks's everywhere. It was a shame that it was really smoggy/hazy on the way into Dubai because I would have liked to see the manmade and fun-shaped islands off the coast. But I got a glimpse of the city, and from the air it could have been any US city--skyscrapers and suburban houses.

Starbucks: They really are everywhere

Swine flu warning poster in the Dubai Airport

We landed in Dar es Salaam around 3 pm, and met up with the Tanzania coordinators, including Harrison, who had left a day early to set things up, and Liz and Deanna, grad students at UC Davis who were with us for a little while at White Oak.

We made it to Tanzania!

We drove to our hotel, only a few km away from the airport, but almost a 30 minute drive with all the crazy (opposite side of the road) traffic. On the way, we drove through the area Harrison described as "one of the most dangerous places" in Dar, and where the "squatters" live. There were shelters built from tin pieces and wood, and some makeshift shops and lots and lots of people along the roadside, and in the road itself, selling bits and pieces of clothing, materials, and food. One thing that struck me was the sheer number of people around. The streets and the area around them that served as sidewalks were packed with people, whether walking, selling or transporting goods, waiting for buses, or simply sitting on the ground. We eventually got to the hotel, the Landmark Hotel, which was really nice--hot water for a much needed shower, cell phone service, and a delicious Tanzanian buffet. What with the jet lag, I headed to bed right after dinner, especially since we have to be up and on the move at 7 am tomorrow.

The view from my window in the Landmark Hotel in Dar

I'm back!

I'm in Zanzibar now, at the end of my trip. We finally have reliable internet access, so I'll be posting from the rest of the trip starting today. So, the next post will start up where I left off, traveling from Florida to Dar Es, Salaam, Tanzania. And I don't have a fast enough connection to post pictures for now, but when I get back to the States and my super-fast ethernet, I'll add pictures too.