Ruaha National Park (Friday, July 31)

Today we went out to survey giraffe skin disease in Ruaha. The group split in thirds to cover more area, and we each went to a separate part of the park. My group made a large loop north of park headquarters, doubling back through higher altitude miombo forest down to riverine terrain, although there was little water to be found in the riverbanks. We saw lots of different groups of giraffes, mostly at or near the water sources. Using binoculars, we assessed the prevalence and severity of skin lesions on the giraffes we could see. Most of the lesions were on the caudal aspect of the forelimb carpus joint, so hard to see in high grass or bushes, or if the giraffes were standing facing us. This definitely limited the numbers we could asses--we were only able to asses about half the giraffes we saw. Out of these, though, over 80% were affected in some way with the skin lesions. I'm sure this number is artificially high, though, since it was much easier to pick out lesions than to definitively say that a giraffe was free of the disease. So the actual prevalence in the population would likely be much lower.

Meing'Ataki surveying off the roof of the Land Rover

While surveying, we saw lots of other wildlife, although nothing that we hadn't seen before. We had a lot of really cool close encounters with elephants along the road, and got to see one large male eating from a super tall tree, and a few mock charges at the car as mothers protected their young. The weather was beautiful--not a cloud in the sky, and warmed up to probably over 80º F in the afternoon.

Elephant eating by the side of the road

Greater Kudu

Ruaha Red-Billed Hornbill

Impala

We had some down time to shower and relax--and wait for one of the Land Rovers to go rescue the people from another one that broke down mid-journey--before meeting up again to discuss the results of our various groups' surveys. In my opinion, the data were not very rigorous, judging by how subjective our assessments were, and how prone to error especially since none of us as any experience. I think it's unrealistic to use the data we collected as anything more than anecdotal or incidental, or as background to inform a more objective study of the prevalence of this disease and its effects on the giraffe population. With such a high prevalence level, and specially because the disease progresses during the rainy season to become much worse, this seems to have potential to wreak havoc on the giraffes here in Ruaha.

Our nighttime lecture was moved to tomorrow morning, so tonight we have some time in the evening to sit around the campfire and talk about what we're going to do when we hear the lions coming through again tonight like we did last night.

Into Ruaha National Park (Thursday, July 30)

Today was Deanna's birthday, so after our morning discussion we performed our dance routine for her. It was a huge hit, and entertained the whole camp for a few minutes. Then we packed up and left Chogela campsite for our next stop, inside Ruaha National Park.

The drive to Ruaha was fairly short and uneventful. We arrived without any mishaps in time for lunch and brief welcome from Meing'Ataki, who was so excited to finally show us Ruaha, his baby. The main event for the afternoon was a game drive that took us around the park for almost four hours. Anton, the driver of our awesome van, had promised me that you couldn't spend two days in Ruaha without seeing simba, so I was ready for some lion spotting.

A watering hole on the Great Ruaha River near the park entrance

Our drive started out on an impressive note, as we saw a whole group of banded mongoose, and two jackals, just as we pulled out of the park headquarters. Like Mikumi, there were giraffes, impala, zebra, and elephants scattered all over. We also saw a dik-dik pair, in the daylight finally. After about an hour of speeding through dry bush and grassland, we emerged near the Great Ruaha River, and Anton's simba promise came true. At first we saw a big male and female pair lying in the middle of the dry riverbed, some distance away. But as the van pulled forward, all of a sudden we noticed a young male lying just a few meters from the van.

Young male lion

It was amazing to see a lion so close, and he didn't even seem to notice our presence. He looked over at us a few times, but mostly just lay there panting in the heat. We continued on slowly down the embankment of the river bed, and found another two lions lying in a clearing, again only a few meters from the van.

Sleepy female lion

Then we saw a huge female, hiding in the shade of the trees and bush nearer to the riverbank, guarding a mostly-eaten buffalo carcass. No wonder the rest of the lions took such little notice of us--food coma! The river wasn't flowing, but in places there was water in pools and the vegetation in this area was a lot more green. There was a group of elephants, tons of yellow baboons and impala, and two groups of tandala (kudu) browsing along the embankment. Again, I had a hard time internalizing that this was the real wild, and not animals in captivity or at a zoo. Amazing.

Just as we were pulling away from the lions area, we saw a couple hyrax running among the rocks, and they were adorable. They definitely don't look like their closest relative is the manatee. We drove around for a while longer, but nothing beat the lions at that point. We got a bit lost on the way back, and ended up back at the headquarters far after dark--but got to see the beautiful sunset from the vans in the process.

Our game drive group at sunset (Alissa, Fidy, Vanessa, Stephen, Me, Helen, Jenny, Vale, and Mike taking the picture)

Sunset in Ruaha

After dinner, Dr. Alex, the Ruaha veterinarian, briefed us on his role in the park, and specifically his research on giraffe skin disease. We'll be going out tomorrow to survey giraffe in different parts of the park for the disease, so we got a basic introduction to the problem and what we'd be doing the next day. Meing'Ataki also passed out lots of TANAPA souvenirs, which was really nice of him--and solved my problem of not knowing what to get for my dad!

Ruaha Wildlife Management Area (Wednesday, July 29)

We took a drive down the road to see a farm demonstration site for humane elephant control this morning. The demonstration showed the villages how to cover pieces of fabric in used motor oil and chili power, and string them up around their fields to prevent elephants from entering and eating all their crops.

Elephant repellent sheets at the demonstration site

After the demonstration, we ventured nearer the park, to a more remote farm that had had huge problems with elephant damage to the crops. Interestingly, women were in control of the local village government for the area this farm was in, and they welcomed us and introduced us to a farmer who had adopted some of the elephant control measures successfully. He was really proud of how he was able to keep the elephants off his land, and his farm was much more prosperous than it had been before he set up these controls. We got a little sidetracked at the farm talking with Khun Bala talking about how villagers managed water in Myanmar, but it was good to see him participating and excited about this part of the course.

Mzee Msago, from the WCS Ruaha Landscape Program, and the women who were the village leaders, talking about elephant crop damage

When we got back to camp, Alphonse led a small group of us to the campsite down the road that had a "snake park." The owner of the campsite and snake park showed us around his collection of snakes, turtles, and two vervet monkeys. He had about ten snakes, all local species in the area, and all nice and dangerous.

Baby vervet monkey at the snake park

Kids we met in the road on the walk back from the snake park

To celebrate our last night at Chogela, they threw a party for us and invited the Tungamalenga WaHehe (Wa, meaning "people," Hehe, pronounced hay-hay, being the name of the tribe) traditional dance troupe. A Maasai man cooked all the parts of the goat on the campfire as we sat around the fire in the growing darkness. The Hehe dancers came out, faces painted white, and drummed and sang while dancing around the fire. We were invited to join in, and by the end everyone in the group was up, circling the fire in an approximation of the walk-dance step of the Hehe dance. It was pretty funny to see some of the group dancing--normally shy and quiet Denis breaking it down with a huge grin on his face, and our fearless leader Val wiggling along in time to the drums.

Maasai man barbecuing goat for our last Chogela dinner

After the WaHehe left, we were inspired to start doing other dances that the Americans knew, and teaching them to some of the international students. Seeing Julius, Fidy, and Alphonse learn the electric slide and the macarena was pretty priceless. We discovered that it was Deanna's birthday the next day, and with a stroke of genius--motivated mostly by Jonna Mazet's daughters--decided we'd put on a dance performance for her the next day. We came up with an elaborate routine consisting of square dance, electric slide, macarena, and the chicken dance, with the boys in the back row singing and dancing along to the YMCA song. It was impressive, to say the least.

Ruaha Wildlife Management Area (Tuesday, July 28)

On the docket for today were more field exercises in the WMA and the HALI project areas. We first went with Harrison to visit a Maasai village and do some bovine TB testing in their cattle. They use the same method as we're used to in human medicine in cattle--a subdermal comparative PPD test. They inject both avian and bovine TB, and compare the two responses after 72 hours. So this morning we did the initial injections, and someone else from the project would be back to measure the results in three days. The young Maasai man--an age group in which the men are collectively known as Moran--roped the first few cattle for us, using just a rope and a stick. He caught one hind leg with the rope wrapped around the stick, pulled the stick out, and cinched the rope around the leg. He pulled the rope until the cow couldn't walk, and sometimes this took two or three--or seven or eight, for one of the big bulls--other guys pulling the rope to stop the cow from running forward. Then he could wrap the rope around the other leg and with some help essentially knock the cow over onto its side. Boris and Dharmaveer also got a chance to catch the cows, and they didn't make it look nearly as easy as the Maasai guy did.

Boris roping a bull for TB testing

We caught a number of cows, and each person in our group got to try each job--shaving, measuring the initial skin fold area, injecting the PPD, and taking blood. The Maasai Mzee was there helping, and held off the jugular for us by jabbing his stick into the cows thoracic inlet in exactly the right place. The Maasai certainly know their cows.

After finishing testing, we sat down with the Mzee--Mzee Pastor Joshua--who was also the pastor of the christian church for the Maasai village. We had chai and talked to him about traditional Maasai culture, the changes he was experiencing in his household. He described the traditional male coming-of-age ceremony and ritual circumcision, which they continue to practice, and the tradition of the Moran--the strong, brave young men, from around age 14 to 35--going out to kill a lion on special occasions, which his household only rarely has been known to do but others still do more frequently. He explained how his younger kids--the ones attending compulsory primary school in the community, with a mixture of different tribes and cultures--no longer want to stretch their ears or drink fresh cow blood in ceremonies. He also told us about how the Tanzania Maasai met and agreed to stop practicing female circumcision, and about how there is no concept of rape in Maasai culture, because any man--married or no--is allowed to have sex with any woman he sees whenever he wants, and she can't say anything about it to anyone for risk of losing her ability to be married, and therefore her value in the society.

Group with the Maasai

We finally left the village, and headed to our next exercise: walking a transect to look for signs and tracks of animals. We learned what the tracks and kinyesi (feces) looked like for lots of the common animals--dik-dik, duiker, jackel, baboon, tandala (kudu), fisi (hyena), mbwa mwitu (wild dog), twiga, civet cat, ngombe, mbuzi, nyati (buffalo), and kanga (guinea fowl).

Jackal poo!

"Steps" up a baobab tree so the villagers could climb up and collect the baobab fruit

Later that night, we plugged huge spotlights into the vans and Rovers, and went out for a night game drive. As the lead car, we were definitely able to see the most animals, since we spotted them before they ran off. We saw lots of dik-dik and bushbabies--which Boris made the mistake of calling "babybush," and the name seems to have stuck in our group. We also saw a few mongoose and genet cats, which were easier to spot because of their long black and white striped tails. We saw one twiga for a brief moment, and a few bushbuck. We also spotted a clearly domesticated housecat out far from any human settlements, and an angry muzungu (the word the locals use to mean any white --or even just not black--person, no matter their true ethnicity or nationality) man, who argued with us over what roads we were allowed to drive on and whether we could shine our spotlights around when he had guests in his camp for the night. We were out for nearly four hours, and by the end I was falling asleep between animal sightings.

An owl on the night game drive. It was really hard to spot anything at all with the little spotlight we had mounted in the Rover.

Ruaha Wildlife Management Area (Monday, July 27)

The morning was full of lectures and talks about Ruaha and the widlife and conservation issues in this area. We had a discussion, led by Dr. Mutekanga from the WCS Ruaha Landscape Program, about conservation and the Maasai way of life, and how we think they should move forward. Deanna talked to us about the HALI (Health for Animals and Livelihood Improvement) Project that she, Jonna, and Harrison work on. HALI works with communities in two areas around the Ruaha WMA to address livestock and wild animal health issues. They are specifically looking into bovine TB rates in the Maasai cattle in these areas, in the Idodi and Pawaga Divisions, and also bovine TB rates in wildlife surrounding these areas. They are also collaborating to asses the human health in the area, and the prevalence of bovine TB.

Group discussion time at Chogela Campsite

For the afternoon, we split into groups for field exercises in the Wildlife Management Area of Ruaha. My group had an exercise identifying plants on a drive through the WMA. We went with Mzee Mhoro, the former Herbarium Technician at the University of Dar es Salaam, Mzee Moses, the village chairman of Idodi, and Mzee Mbano, the director of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Ruaha Landscape Program, and they pointed out different plants and their uses. They seemed to know a traditional medicinal use for every plant we came across, and I'm starting to understand how lots of our medicines are derived from plant sources.

Scenery in the Ruaha WMA

There was a big fire in the forest as we made one of our last stops, and although it was far away when we arrived at that stop, by the time we were preparing to leave we could see the flames licking at the trees and dry grass just a short ways away. Rather than continue on and have to drive back through a raging fire, we turned around a bit early and headed back to camp.

Our group for the plant walk in the Ruaha WMA

The fire coming towards us

Travel to Tungamalenga (Sunday, July 26)

We left Riverside this morning, and drove to the Isimila Stone Age site. Lots of stone tools have been found in this riverbed area from stone age societies about sixty thousand years ago. The Isimila River, which runs in the rainy season, has carved out a canyon with natural sandstone pillars.

Isimila Stone Age Site

We hiked down through the canyon, and the scenery was almost reminiscent of the American southwest. We spotted a rock hyrax, the closest relative of elephants and manatees, high in a cave in one of the cliffs. The weather was beautiful--breezy and warm, and it was wonderful to get outside.

Group at Isimila Stone Age Site

After our hike, we set off for Malinzanga village to visit two Maasai households, traveling down bumpy one-lane dirt tracks. I fell asleep in the van, and was awoken abruptly by Mike, telling us to get up, there'd been an accident. Everyone else in the van woke up, looking around groggily, and we saw an overturned pickup truck in the ditch on the opposite side of the road, with fifteen or twenty villagers clustered around it. Another of our vans was stopped just ahead of us, but we couldn't tell what had happened. All of the students in the van involved in the accident were unhurt, but the driver, Saidi, had hit his head when the two cars collided, and was sitting woozily on the side of the road. The pickup truck carrying the villagers had at least four people sitting in the bed, and they were thrown from the truck when they hit our van. We quickly emptied two of our smaller trucks, and loaded Saidi, and the injured villagers in to go to the hospital. Meing'Ataki went with them to make sure everything was taken care of as well as possible. Fortunately, Saidi was not seriously hurt, but we still don't know what happened to any of the villagers that were in the car. We found out later that the driver was probably drunk, and was driving on the wrong side of the road. He lost control and wasn't able to swerve back into his lane or stop in time. Saidi was able to pull into the ditch on his side, and the truck's bed smashed in the front diver's side of our van. It was really scary when we didn't know what was going on, or if everyone was safe. By the time we left, there were at least a hundred villagers surrounding the vans and the site of the accident, and lots more people running down the road to see what was going on. We were all a bit shaken up, but had to get moving so that we could move our vans out before the roads were totally swamped with people. The vans made a few trips, and we met back up a few kilometersdown the road to regroup and continue to Malinzenga.

Scene of the car accident

The first stop in Malinzenga was a household that had updated their boma (homestead) to institute some changes for security and reducing disease transmission. They had a ring of acacia branches around the outside, with the thorny sides facing out, and two entrances that could be covered with acacia branches at night. The houses made a ring just inside the outer "wall," and the livestock "pens" were in the very middle, again ringed with thorny acacia branches. The thorny walls provide security for the livestock--and people--from lions and hyenas, who predate on them, and the separating of the livestock from the people's living spaces limits disease transmission. The head of the household welcomed us to look around, and the women brought out beaded jewelry that they had made for us to buy. We took lots of pictures of the women and kids, decked out in their colorful kangas (wrapped skirt/dress combos) and beads.

The second household we visited was headed by Mzee Silendu (I'm not sure I'm spelling that right, but that's how it sounds), and they put on a traditional welcoming performance for us. The men came in, circled up, chanting and taking turns jumping up and down. Then the women moved in, shuffling slowly and singing, and formed a circle, singing and dancing around the circle. Meing'Ataki joined in the men's circle, and encouraged the Envirovet men to join in as well, dancing and jumping together. Once the welcome was over, we sat down--men on one side of the circle, women on the other--and Mzee Silendu gave a short speech welcoming us to his homestead. We traded welcome and thank-you speeches for a short while, and then had chai (black tea) and "something to bite," as Dr. Mutekanga said. The "something to bite" was goat cooked over a fire, and as it would have been impolite to refuse--and I didn't know how to begin to explain why I didn't want to eat the goat in Swahili--I took a piece. When they said bite, they meant it--my jaws aren't accustomed to free-ranging Maasai goat meat, although lots of our group thought it was delicious. The chai was much more my cup of tea (terrible pun intended!), hot and full of sugar.

Maasai woman with her kids

After we shared tea, the girls group moved off with the women to tour Mama Sara's house. She is the Mzee's first wife, and had six children--four grown, and two young kids still living in the homestead. Her house had three rooms, one room for her for sleeping and cooking, one for Mzee to sleep, and a room in the middle for everything else--sitting, entertaining, relaxing, hosting visitors. We got to ask Mama Sara about her life and Maasai customs, and then look around the rest of the village. We saw the goats returning to the boma in the evening, and the women again brought out their handmade traditional beaded jewelry and crafts for us to buy.

Muzungu and Maasai: Me, Joanna and Helen with the Maasai

The experience visiting the Maasai was really interesting, and almost surreal. I kept thinking I was at a museum, or performance of people showing us what their lives used to be like, not how they really live every day now. It was hard to believe and still hard to internalize people living their whole lives this way. There were fewer unexpected intrusions of modernity or technology than I've noticed elsewhere here, but the Mzee did have a cell phone. The Maasai women are considered adults at age 14, and are married off at that age, so even though some of them may have access to primary school education, few of them continue to secondary school or university. The Maasai tradition of having everything separated by gender--the women and men have different responsibilities, eat separately, and really live entirely separately--seems very unfair to me, but maybe that's because of the American failure of the idea of "separate but equal." I guess what is important is whether life for the women and men is equally happy and pleasant, or difficult and challenging.

We finally arrived a Chogela campsite on the border of the Ruaha wildlife management area after dark, and had to thank Deanna and the staff for setting up our tents for us so we could eat dinner and relax around the campfire.

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.