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!