Reflection

I've been back in the States for about two weeks now, and I'm starting to process and decompress the four months I spent in Tanzania. I'm figuring out everything I learned in the classroom and in the field, what I learned about the culture and about myself. I'm discovering why I loved Tanzania only now, after returning home. I don't think I realized how much I loved that place until I left it.

Of course I'm enjoying the more tangible things, like dependable electricity, running water, and fast internet. I'm really loving the change to cold weather, it's so nice to curl up under covers to go to sleep rather than sprawling out under the mosquito net with the fan on high. I'm not really sure what to say about what I've taken from my semester abroad. What I do know is that it was a fantastic experience that I wouldn't ever take back, and that I feel like a more confident, independent, and interesting person because of it. The semester wasn't easy, I'll admit that, but I think because of the things I was forced to struggle with (both Tanzanian and from home), I've become a lot stronger as well.

I love Tanzania. I love the country, the people, the culture, everything about it. There's something about that place that can't be captured in words or pictures, and just has to be experienced. I truly hope that someday I can go back to that country that I love so deeply, that has truly touched my heart and soul, and that will live with me for the rest of my life whether or not I return. Tanzania has become part of who I am, and I am so proud of that.

So for now I leave this blog.
Nitaonana baadae, Tanzania. Nakupenda.

Dirt & Bones

After we completed our field research outside of Tarangire National Park, we had one more week of traveling on a field trip for our Human Evolution class before we returned to Dar. We packed up our campsite and left on the morning of November 15th, and drove all day through Ngorongoro Conservation Area until we reached the small village of Endulen located in the Conservation Area. We camped outside the area hospital, where in previous years most of the anthropology students on this program had stayed to do medical anthropology projects and projects with the Maasai, seeing as there are many bomas in the area. This year, due to budget cuts and the high number of students who contracted malaria at this site, we all stayed at the Tarangire site. It turned out well, though, as all of our projects were successful and even to this date nobody has gotten anything serious, only minor stomach bugs that usually came from food poisoning. Anyway, we stayed at Endulen for two nights, and visited two major archaeological sites.

First was Olduvai Gorge, which any Anthropologist knows is an incredibly important site for Human Evolution. I was exceptionally excited to visit Olduvai. Since high school Biology, I’ve always taken a particular interest in Human Evolution, and so I’d naturally read a lot about Olduvai in text books then and for my Human Evolution both last Fall at Grinnell and here in Tanzania. It was really awesome to finally get to visit this place that I’d read so much about and seen in pictures for so many years. The gorge itself is gorgeous, as well, so just seeing the natural beauty was spectacular as well. After a brief lecture on basic information about the area, we drove to Mary Leakey’s camp on the ridge of the gorge where Louis Leakey, Mary Leakey, and their son Robert ran their research. Then we drove down into the gorge to the Zinjanthropus site. Olduvai is particularly famous for Mary Leakey’s first big find in 1959, Australopithecus bosiei, or as she named it ‘Zinjanthropus’ which means East African man. They found a skull as well as post-cranial (non-skull) remains at this site, and a year later also found remains of another species, Homo habilis, very nearby in direct association with ancient stone tools from the Olduwan tool industry. After visiting the site, taking pictures with the plaque, and looking around at the huge excavation that took place exactly 50 years ago (the 50th anniversary of the discovery was this past August), we walked up the gorge further to the two other major sites where more Homo habilis remains and stone tools were found. At one point, our professor had us ‘practice archaeology’ and we were asked to walk around the excavation site and look for stone tools and any skeletal remains. I found a ton of faunal bones and a few crude stone tools, but my exciting find was a jaw fragment and two teeth from an ancient extinct giant pig!

After visiting the excavation sites, we drove to the other side of the gorge to visit the ‘shifting sands’. This place was really perplexing. It’s just a large sand dune made of black sand in the middle of the plains. Apparently it moves about 5 centimeters every day! It was really bizarre. We took our shoes off and played on the dune for a while before piling back into the safari vehicles to make the very bumpy drive back up to our camp at Endulen.

The next day we visited Laetoli, where Mary Leakey discovered a 30-foot track way of footprints made by Australopithecus afarensis (more famously known as ‘Lucy’) in cemented volcanic ash about 3.75 million years ago. It’s an important site because it’s the earliest undisputable evidence for habitual bipedalism in our ancestors. Unfortunately, due to lack of infrastructure in Tanzania, the track way has been preserved and covered in order to conserve it. So all we really got to see were pictures in the little museum and a long strip of a mound of lava cobbles covering the place were the footprints are. Plans are in place to build a museum over the footprints so people can come and view them, but electricity isn’t dependable enough and opening the track way would require a climate controlled museum. Additionally, the site is in an extremely remote location, and there isn’t a huge tourist draw, which makes constructing a museum not really practical. It was still pretty neat to visit the site, and try to picture what it looks like under all those protective layers.

In the afternoon after visiting Laetoli, we packed up our camp at Endulen and traveled to our next site near Lake Eyasi. This journey was epic, to say the least. Not 10 minutes into our drive, it started to rain a heavy African rain that comes down in sheets and floods everything. And of course, driving on dirt roads down the extremely steep escarpment wall of the rift valley plus this rain doesn’t make for easy traveling. The going was slow, but things were okay. The rain let up after a while, but the roads were littered with deep puddles and occasionally we’d come across a river of a flash flood racing across the road. Once we were really driving down the escarpment, the road was probably at a 45 degree angle going down and really sharp hairpin turns. At one point, the vehicle in front of us had its brakes go out, and it almost toppled over on the road and could have gone tumbling down the wall. Luckily, everything worked out fine, but it was terrifying to see the car in front of us with 5 of my friends in it almost tip over. I was actually really shocked that the car didn’t end up tipping, but thank goodness it did! After this point, things just got silly. The people in that car were forced to get out and start walking while the driver worked on some repairs, because functional brakes are just not an option on an extremely dangerous road like this. Eventually the car was fixed, and caught up, and all the vehicles were together again. Not long after reaching the lake basin, the supply truck behind us got stuck in a river bed. This led to a good hour of trying to get the car out. They tried towing it out forwards with a cable, towing it out backwards, pushing it forwards, pushing it backwards, gathering stones and placing them under the tires in the mud, shoveling out water and mud. It was ridiculous. I got so incredibly muddy from helping push. Finally the car was freed, and we were on our way again. After another few hours of driving, we finally reached our destination at Eyasi around 9pm and set up camp in the dark and ate dinner late.

The next day we drove out to Mumba rock shelter, which is a site from the Middle Stone Age under a large rock outcropping. Excavations were done here that yielded archaic Homo sapiens remains as well as tools and faunal remains. It’s also a particularly interesting site because of the paintings on the walls of the rock. We climbed to the top of the rocks and had a lecture in the wind at the top of all the rocks. The view from up there was so beautiful! After our lecture, we drove out to a site near the lake shore that has all sorts of artifacts. Pottery sherds, beads, faunal remains. We walked around the site and picked up artifacts. I found a handful of beautiful pottery that had designs etched in them, and my Professor let me take two with me (he did his Ph.D. on this site and others in the area).

On Thursday we had the opportunity to visit a local tribe known as the Hadzabe, who are one of the last if not the last remaining functioning hunter-gatherer groups in the world. We had the option of hunting with the men, and of course I decided to join! We spent probably two hours running through bushes and trees, and I ended up pretty scraped up and bruised afterwards. It was a really fun time, though, even though we didn’t catch anything (probably because of how many of us there were joining them). When we returned to their camp, they sang and danced for us, which was great. Their music was so different from the Maasai music that I had been studying for four weeks, so it was very cool to hear other indigenous music from Tanzania. It made me want to come back and study more African music! Good thing I’m taking the ‘African Music’ class at Grinnell next semester! In the afternoon, we visited another local tribe called the Datoga. They’re similar to the Maasai in their practices with cattle and trade of beads. The women wear gorgeous cow-hide dresses with ornate beading designs. We also visited a Datoga blacksmith and saw how they manufacture things. They make really neat bracelets and arrowheads, which they sell and trade with other tribes.

Friday was our free day, so we all decided to go back out to the rock outcroppings near the lake shore to go hiking and rock climbing. We all climbed to the top of the tallest hill, which was an adventure. Naturally there was no trail, so we were scrambling up boulders and crawling under thorny bushes. I was scratched up even more when we reached the top, but the view was incredible. You could see for miles, over the lake and the escarpment wall stretching as far as the eye can see. Then we climbed down and did some bouldering on the big boulders at the base of the hill. Some people decided to explore up another big boulder, and went climbing up. Apparently a hyena was on their tails, though, so that was a little scary! It was a really relaxing and fun last day on our field trip. In the evening, a dancing and singing group came in from another town and performed for us. It was a really fun performance, and at the end we all got up and danced for a while.

On Saturday we drove all the way back to Arusha, and were thrust back into the ‘big city’ life, if you can call it that. But after spending 6, almost 7, weeks living basically in the middle of nowhere, Arusha can definitely be considered a big city. We went out to lunch at the Maasai café and got delicious pizza and enjoyed some cold drinks and just hung out for a while, before returning to our hotel in the afternoon to enjoy having internet again. Very early on Sunday morning, we all piled onto a bus and made the 8-hour journey back to Dar. We were all returned to our homestays, which was so nice. Our host Mama was so excited to see us again, and it was a really nice homecoming.

Seeing as it’s now my last week in Tanzania, I’m incredibly busy. I’ve got to finish my final research paper on my research for Friday, as well as put together a poster and presentation which will happen on Wednesday. On top of that, I need to buy final souvenirs and gifts for people, as well as do all the things I want to do one last time before I leave (like eat at Addis in Dar one more time - the fantastic Ethiopian restaurant downtown). Hopefully I’ll get everything done, and the week won’t be too stressful so I can enjoy my last days here. So far things have been going pretty well. The Ecology and Evolution finals were the first week we were back, and went well. I was relatively stressed about everything because we hadn’t really had class since September, so I had to remember all of that material. Other than that I’ve just been enjoying being back in the city and on campus again and working on my paper. I’ve made good progress, but I’ve still got quite a bit to do. This past weekend we spent two days on the beach, which was great. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to return to the beach on Thursday or Friday one more time. Yesterday, also, I got my hair done, and now I have long braids. All the Tanzanians keep saying ‘umependeza’ to me, which basically means ‘you look nice’, so that’s been pretty cool. It’s a pretty drastic change from my previous light brown, curly, bob. I love it though, and hopefully it’ll last long enough for all of you to see!

Field Research!

From October 18th to November 15th, we stayed at Zion campsite 5 kilometers outside of Tarangire National Park near the village of Kibaoni. It really was a village, too. No internet café, no supermarket. Our campsite had no electricity, so we either had to charge things off our solar-charged car batteries, or walk into town and use the electricity at the mini ‘supermarket’ (if you could call it that). Walking into town usually meant purchasing something as well, the supermarket had incredibly cold sodas which would be really refreshing when the afternoons would reach into the mid-90s.

During our first full day at Tarangire, we drove into the park to meet with the park Ecologist. This was for the four students doing Ecology research projects in and around the park. It wasn’t totally useless for us Anthropology students, though, because he presented some interesting basic facts about the National Park for us. Later in the afternoon, all the non-Ecology students got to return to the park to do some safari. We saw much of the same things we had already seen in Lake Manyara and Serengeti, but it was still a lot of fun. Tarangire is famous for elephants and baobab trees, and for good reason! There are huge baobabs everywhere you look, and elephants roaming the plains everywhere as well. It was really exciting, seeing as elephants are my favorite animal! We also saw a rather large herd of wildebeest on our way out of the park, which was awesome. We didn’t get to see any wildebeest in the Serengeti because the herds were all up in the Maasai Steppe in Kenya at that time of the year.

For the next 3 ½ weeks, we all conducted our research for our projects. My project was about the traditional songs of Maasai women, and how they shape and maintain gender roles. If you didn’t already know, Maasai women are highly marginalized. Men are the dominant gender in all aspects, and domestic violence against both women and children is the common practice. So I wanted to see how the traditional songs that the women sing preserve the patriarchal structure. I conducted a total of 30 interviews at bomas and in the village with just Maasai women. I haven’t finished writing my paper, but I’m pretty sure at this point that my research supports my hypothesis, that the songs do indeed perpetuate the marginalizing place of women in Maasai culture. As one key example, the women often use singing to apologize to their husbands if they’ve done wrong or beg for forgiveness, and sometimes women sing to praise their husbands. I also found, however, that the songs do not necessarily only restrict the women. All of the women I interviewed talked about how happy singing makes them, and that’s why they sing so often. For Maasai women, I believe singing is a release. It brings them joy when their lives are often extremely difficult due to their place in society under men. I think my research turned out well, and now I’ve got a little over a week to complete my 20-30 page report on my research, and then give a short presentation with a poster at the National Museum in downtown Dar.

During the field research time I also helped other people with their projects. I helped Fergs (Amy, my roommate from the dorms) and Christine a lot, because their projects corresponded with mine, they were both interviewing Maasai women exclusively. Fergs was looking at how the manufacture and selling of crafts (beads and jewelry) for locals and tourists gives women a sense of independence. Christine researched how selling milk is a form of independence for the women, as well. Their projects were both really interesting, and it was always fun to sit in on their interviews. The person I helped the most, though, was David. David was the only person to do an archaeological project, and I was excited to help him because I took Archaeological Field Methods last Spring and wanted to put my knowledge into practice. In the area in and around our campsite, the ground is literally littered with stone tools from the Middle Stone Age industry (about 400,000 years ago). You basically can’t walk anywhere without stepping on one. David picked two sites, one right next to the campsite on a slight terrace, and one down the hill on flat ground. At the terrace site, he just established transects, which are just measured divisions of the plot. I would go out with him and help him take measurements, but primarily collect artifacts. At the second site, we established the plot and transects, and then collected artifacts. After that was completed, David started doing a test pit at the site to see if there were artifacts below the surface. I got to help him with that one day, which was really fun. Nothing like digging in the dirt under the hot African sun!

I also went into the park one day with two of the Ecology people, Tabriz (Aimee, my homestay roommate) and Julia. Tabriz did her project on baobab trees, and Julia did hers on guinea fowl and francolin birds. We were working on the trees first, and had taken measurements and data on one tree, and were working on the second when it started raining. When it rains in this country, it doesn’t just drizzle. The mantra ‘when it rains, it pours’ is completely true. So not soon after the rain started slowly, we were in a torrential downpour, with the wind ripping in making the rain fall sideways. We finished taking data quickly on that tree, and rushed back to the car completely soaking wet. The roads had already started flooding, and we had to figure out how we were going to get back to the gate without getting stuck. The way we had come in had taken us through the dried river bed, which would clearly not be possible anymore, so we had to take the long way back which was tricky. The rain was falling so fast and so much that the roads were like rivers and the plains had turned into lakes and swamps. We were all already so wet, that we decided we wanted to enjoy the downpour fully rather than sitting inside the car like wet dogs and the windows fogged up from our breathing. So we opened the windows and stuck our heads out as we drove through the flooded plains, and the rain showering us with more water. It was a really invigorating experience that I can’t really explain well. At one point we got stuck on a road that was flooded with water that was probably 2 feet deep, and we were really worried that we wouldn’t get out, but our skilled driver Babu (which means grandfather in Swahili) successfully freed us. After the rains stopped, we visited a baobab tree that had a huge hole in it in which you could stand, so we took some pictures before climbing back into the wet car and heading back to camp. This was definitely my favorite and most memorable day in the field!

Daily life in the field was pretty bland. There were 14 of us, and 8 doing Anthropology projects that necessitated one of our 3 translators, so there was lots of time sitting in camp with nothing to do. I read 11 books and listened to a lot of music. We tossed the frisbee around a lot, and invented silly games like ‘rock-tire’ which involved two tires placed about 15 feet apart and trying to throw rocks into the opposing team’s tire. Although we got bored and a little stir-crazy by the end, it was a fantastic time and we all got to know each other so well. By the end of our last field trip when we were returning to Dar, we were all very sad to be parting ways and not living with each other all the time anymore. I had a great field research experience!

Coming up next, the week of field trips to important archaeological sites in Northern Tanzania!

My Life is Actually "The Lion King"

Posting while the internet is working!

After climbing Kilimanjaro, everyone met up in Arusha for the next portion of our program. It started with a free day, that our director filled with a trip to visit a Maasai boma. This turned out to be a crazy experience. I expected to go see the boma, meet some people, and have it be a kind of uncomfortable tourist experience (we went with a tour guide), but it was a fantastic day! We did meet some people in the boma and walk around and see things, but we also got to do some very awesome things. In the afternoon, we all crammed into a mud/cow dung-walled hut with an old Maasai woman, and drank their tea. Then we got the incredible opportunity to take part in a ritual called Olpul. Usually, groups of Maasai warriors will go away to refuge-type places and take cows to eat and stay for a couple of months. It's a reflective time, and it's called Olpul. Naturally, we didn't do this, but we did get to participate in the part where they slaughter a goat. It was insane. I helped kill the goat and I skinned part of it, which was bizarre. Then when it was skinned, the men began butchering it. In the process, they were cooking certain parts of the animal. But some they eat raw. And of course, they offered them to us. For example, they eat the kidney straight out of the animal with no preparation whatsoever. As they came around offering it, I thought to myself, "No way, I am not going to eat a raw, bloody kidney" but then realized you only live once, and it won't kill me! It had a really strange, smooth texture, and it was pretty salty. Not as gross as I thought it would be, but certainly not something I would choose to eat again. Apparently it's a delicacy in Maasai culture. I also drank some of the blood with cooked intestines in it, which was also surprisingly tasty. The cooked goat itself was delicious, as well. It was a very intense afternoon, and I'm so glad I witnessed and got so active in participating. It was awesome

The next day we drove to Lake Manyara National Park, where we got our first glimpse of East African wildlife. It was like living in a nature documentary! That was only the very beginning, though. After that day, we drove to Serengeti National Park where we spent three days and four nights experiencing the ecology. Our campsite was smack dab in the middle of the park, no fences or anything. There was a sign that read something along the lines of "please do not leave campsite, animals will attack humans". We quickly found out that the sign was no joke. Every night after the sun went down, we'd start hearing the whooping laughter of hyenas around our campsite, and occasionally the growl of a lion in the distance. Every night we were camped there, the noises got louder and more frequent. By the last night, hyenas were walking through the campsite, and lions were laying next to our tents in the night. We woke up the last morning to find hyena pawprints inches from our tent! It was admittedly really scary at some times, because in reality a tent isn't much protection from a big cat, but it was a very cool thing to experience.

In the Serengeti we saw all sorts of incredible wildlife. A herd of up to 1000 cape buffalo on the first morning, and then a large herd of zebras. Elephants, giraffe, gazelle, hippos, babboons, topi, water buck, reed buck, hyena, lions. We even saw a cheetah sitting next to the road with a half-eaten gazelle. Not long after that, we came upon a leopard lounging in a tree, with its kill hanging in the branch above it. Leopards are a rare catch, so it was exciting to get to see one! On our last day in the Serengeti we got to see something incredibly cool. There was a pride of lions that had taken down a very large cape buffalo earlier in the afternoon. When we pulled up in our safari vehicles, the buffalo was lying dead probably two feet away from the road, and two lions had their heads completely inside the body cavity. It was so incredible to see these lions devouring their prey in person, although there were a lot of safari vehicles there to see it as well which kind of ruined the effect.

Safari week was great, and after it was over, we drove to a small village known as Kibaoni which is located about seven kilometers outside of Tarangire National Park. We spent the next four weeks there doing our field research. That will be in my next post!

Roof of Africa

10/3-10/9
This seems so long ago now, so I’ve had to refer to my journal entries to refresh my memory. After we finished our exams, myself along with five of my friends (Daudi, Max, Tim, Abe, and Jemie) hopped on a bus and rode eight hours from Dar to Moshi, which is the town located at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro. The bus ride there was a great start to October break, it was so beautiful! It was really nice to actually get out of the city for the first time, and seeing the more rural parts of Tanzania was really exciting, because that’s where we lived for the next six weeks! A few hours into the trip, we started driving next to the Usambara Mountains, which are stunning. The shoot up out of the ground out of nowhere, and have beautiful cliffs and drop offs of rock. We drove alongside the mountain range for the better part of the day, and it was a real treat.

When we arrived at the bus station in Moshi, there was a van from our tour company - Zara Tours - there to pick us up and take us to the Springlands Hotel. When we arrived, we were swiftly whisked away to a large table in the courtyard to catch the last half of the ‘briefing’ for all the climbers departing the next morning. After the meeting was over, we met our tour guide and also discovered we had a solo climber added to our group. Her name is Rebecca, and she was climbing by herself and then meeting up with her mom afterwards to travel around Tanzania. She’s from Canada, and was a really great addition to our group. She was a very cool person, and a lot of fun, it was really awesome to make a new friend in such an incredible experience. Our guide was named Theo, and he’s the head guide for the whole company. He’s a really big guy, and seemed very professional, so that was consoling. We devoured a delicious buffet meal that evening, and went to bed early to try and get one last night of good sleep before we started hiking.

The first day we hiked from the Machame gate to the first camp on the Machame route, Machame hut. The hike was really beautiful, we were hiking through rain forest for the better part of the day, until we climbed into a new ecosystem which was cooler in temperature and composed more of bushes and shrubs, and it was much dustier. When we arrived at camp, our tents were all set up and our bags had already arrived, so we moved our things inside and gathered in the ‘food tent’ for popcorn and hot drinks. Up until this point, we hadn’t really seen the mountain at all because of clouds every day thus far. Then, after dinner, the clouds parted and we got to see the full moon rising over the peak. It was gorgeous, and so exciting to finally see what we’d be climbing!

Day two was short in length, but very steep all day. We hiked about 10km and up 800m in elevation. It was a really tough day, and I really started to feel the elevation. I was having difficulty breathing and I had to walk much slower, and when we arrived at camp I had a terrible headache despite having drunk 4 liters of water! It was a little nerve-wracking, but I was trying to stay positive. We arrived at camp a little after 1pm, and rested for a while. We stayed at the Shira camp , which is around 14,000 ft above sea level. Later in the afternoon, a bit before dinner, we hiked up to a camp that’s just up at the top of the hill. It’s got a great view of the Shira plateau and peaks, and the clouds parted just in time for us to get another great view of our goal. After dinner, we watched a spectacular sunset over the Shira peaks, and got our first view of Mt. Meru peeking over the clouds in the distance.

Day three was a really tough one. When we started out, I was feeling pretty good, but not long after we started I started struggling. We hiked around 4 hours, and it was hard for me the entire way. I felt terrible at lunch with a headache, nausea, and fatigue despite the large quantities of water I had consumed. Soon after lunch, we reached the high point for the day at Lava Tower at 4,645m above sea level. When we reached Lava Tower, all my pains went away because I felt so accomplished and proud of myself for getting to that point. We were standing above 15,000 ft above sea level, higher than Mt. Meru, and a much higher elevation than I’d ever hiked to before. That adrenaline rush helped me push through the rest of the day. The rest of the day was downhill to our next site at Barranco camp which is at an elevation close to that of Shira camp. This day’s hike is the trick to the Machame route’s success rate. Hiking high and then camping low allows your body time to acclimate to the high altitude better. When we reached camp I was feeling much better, there seemed to be so much more oxygen, despite the fact that we were still quite high. Again, the view of the mountain was great in the evening, and this night we were so close to it. You could actually see the blue in the ice of the glaciers!

As if it could get harder, day four definitely was the hardest yet. The morning was really tough, but a lot of fun, especially at the very beginning. Barranco camp is located right next to a giant wall, known as the Barranco wall, which you climb up immediately after leaving camp. It took about an hour or so to get to the top, and it was a very fun and challenging climb. When we reached the top of the wall, we had an absolutely spectacular view of the peak and the glaciers, definitely the best yet! It was really exciting, because we were looking at what we would be climbing in less than 24 hours. The next few hours of hiking up until lunch were very difficult. It was all very extreme ups and downs. Up a wall, and down into a big valley, and then the same. Finally we reached the top of the last wall and enjoyed some lunch. After lunch things started going downhill for me, despite the remaining hike being 100% uphill. Not long after we started up again after lunch, I started really struggling to keep up with the rest of our group, which wasn’t a big deal because they’re all really in-shape athletes and I’m not really. It was kind of discouraging, though, because I couldn’t keep up and one of our assistant guides would have to fall back and hike with me alone. After three long hours of hiking, we finally cleared a hill and could see the plateau where Barafu base camp was located. We climbed up the wall and thought we were there, but when we reached the top of the wall where the tents were located, our tents were nowhere to be seen and our guides continued to hike us up, up, up! And of course we dutifully, but very winded and exhausted, followed. After another half hour of hiking, we finally reached the actual hut and we were able to sign in and register. We all crashed in our tents almost immediately after arriving, trying to relax and catch up on sleep that we wouldn’t get that night. Barafu camp is extremely high in elevation, higher than 15,000 ft. and Mt. Meru, so it’s difficult to function. I was feeling okay other than just being exhausted and a small headache, but some people weren’t feeling so hot. A few people threw up quite a few times between arriving at camp and when we began our summit hike. I went to bed immediately after eating dinner, which was around 6:30 pm and tried my hardest to get some sleep before the 11pm wake-up time for the midnight summit hike. I found it hard to sleep not only because of elevation and cold, but because I was so nervous as well. I also got woken up around 8 to Tim shoving his stuff in the tent because Max was being rushed down to a lower elevation at Mweka hut. His oxygen levels were below 30, which is extremely dangerous, and they needed to get him lower immediately. Luckily, everything turned out fine, but it was a scary thing to be woken up to, and I had trouble getting comfortable after that.

Somehow I got sleep, and woke up at 11 for hot drinks and a snack before we started off. I put on as much clothing as possible and shuffled out into the cold. The sky was clear and the stars were spectacular, the moon was really bright, and there was almost no need for a head lamp. I could tell right after we started that it would be a long and cold morning. It’s supposed to take about 6 hours to get to Stella Point, which is the first major summit landmark before heading to Uhuru Peak. Around 3 ½ hours into the hike, we reached the halfway point to Stella. We were all really cold and feeling the effects of the altitude. I was having a little more trouble than everyone else, but everyone was being really encouraging and that helped me so much to keep myself going. Eventually, I just couldn’t keep up with Theo’s pace, and I was given an assistant guide to go with me at my slower pace so I wasn’t pushing myself too hard. The altitude was really getting to me, my lungs were dying for more oxygen, and my muscles were aching a lot from the lack of air as well. On top of that, my fingers and toes were feeling frostbitten and it was incredibly painful. I somehow pushed through the pain, and made it to Stella Point, but didn’t have the strength to get all the way to Uhuru Peak. In retrospect, had I known it was only 45 more minutes to Uhuru, rather than the 2 hours our guide had told us the night before, I would have pushed through to the finish. I was really hurting, though, and I’m proud of myself for getting to Stella, because that itself is a huge accomplishment. Almost 19,000 ft. above sea level! Everyone else, besides myself and Max, made it all the way to Uhuru, which was very cool.
When everyone had descended from the summit, we all spent a couple hours sleeping a bit and recuperating from an extremely difficult morning. We ate lunch at Barafu, and then hiked down to Mweka hut for our last night on the mountain. It was a three hour hike in pure dust, and when we reached the site, we all had sore knees and feet and were covered in a layer of dust.

The last day was a quick morning of 3 more hours of hiking down to the Mweka gate. We arrived a little past 10 in the morning and signed the book at the bottom, so my climb was official. We spent the rest of the day at the hotel, hanging around the pool and relaxing, and it was a great end to an unbelievable week.
Ultimately, it was hands down the most physically and mentally challenging and at the same time rewarding experience I’ve ever had. And despite the fact that I didn’t reach the final goal of Uhuru Peak, I made it to Stella Point, and it was worth every cent.

I’ll try to keep posting about the next 6 weeks of traveling and doing field research as internet permits. Stay tuned for more updates!

I'm Alive!

I've been back in Dar for a week now, and the time is already flying by. We had our Evolution final yesterday morning, and it went incredibly well. In the afternoon, we all gathered at our director's home for Thanksgiving dinner. Everyone brought a dish to contribute, me and my roommate made a sweet potato dish that turned out surprisingly well despite not actually knowing what we were doing at all. Unfortunately the internet situation on campus is less than ideal. It no longer works in our home, and probably won't for the remainder of my time here, and the places where I can get internet are extremely slow. So I won't have the access or time to put up posts or pictures from the seven weeks of travel until I'm home in all likelihood. I do plan on posting about everything I did, so be prepared for many long posts! I'm excited for two more weeks in Tanzania, and leaving will be very bittersweet. I must say, I'm eager for a washing machine and snow.

Safari

Well, it's time!
I leave tomorrow, and I won't be back in Dar until November 22nd. This means I will probably not have access to internet until that return date. If I do, by chance, find an internet cafe, I will probably only check my g-mail account (mg.kathleen@gmail.com), so if you want to contact me during my time away, that's where you can reach me. I certainly make no guarantee of responding, though. Here's my schedule for the next seven weeks:

October 3: travel by bus to Moshi
October 4-9: climb Mt. Kilimanjaro! (October 8 is summit day, in case you're curious)
October 11-18: safari at Ngorongoro and Serengeti National Parks
October 18-November 13ish: field research outside of Tarangire National Park
November 13ish-November 22: safari at Olduvai Gorge and Laetoli, then return to Dar