I Bless the Rains Down in Africa

Many of you already know that I studied abroad in Kenya and Tanzania during my junior year at Cornell. Studying wildlife management in East Africa was crucial to my decision to become a zookeeper and the genesis of my obsession with elephants.

I spent nearly four months living and working in East Africa; the first half of the semester was spent in Tanzania and the second half in Kenya. In other words, four months braving sub-Saharan heat, gigantic bugs, malaria, snakes, primitive plumbing, and hungry carnivores. We actually had to watch a power-point presentation the minute we arrived in camp about all the ways we could die and how we should protect ourselves. Talk about a wake-up call after 30 hours of flying! In spite of all of these dangers (or maybe because of them), that semester was some of the best four months of my life.

I studied abroad through the School for Field Studies. Just under 30 people were in my program and we spent the entire semester together. We lived in tents in the same camp, cooked together, cleaned together, took all the same classes, traveled together, and researched together. These 30 people became my family for the semester. The courses we took were actually quite rigorous: wildlife management, wildlife ecology, environmental policy, and Swahili. We had class every day, and our professors lived and worked alongside us.

In addition to classes, the SFS program volunteered for a couple days at a local orphanage and elementary school. We read to the children, played soccer with them, and sat in on some of their classes. In East Africa, secondary school (our high school) is an expensive undertaking and children must be sponsored in order to attend. The sponsor pays for uniforms, books, meals, and sometimes transportation. The Watoto Orphanage in Tanzania helps sponsor children whose parents suffer from HIV/AIDS and would not otherwise be able to attend secondary school. Even though these children have all had hard lives, their friendliness, excitement, and gratitude were overwhelming. We built the Watoto Orphanage children a make-shift swing-set, and the looks on their faces made me realize how lucky and privileged I am.

All of the SFS students also did a one-day home-stay with a Maasai family in Kenya. The Maasai are a nomadic people who live in south-western Kenya and north-eastern Tanzania, and have a total population of about 1 million. Maasai hold land communally and value cattle as the predominant form of wealth and social status. Living with a Maasai woman for a day was an eye-opening experience. She is only in her mid-twenties and she already has three children. Additionally, she is not her husband's only wife. Every day, she cares for her children, cooks the meals, chops firewood, herds the goats and cattle, repairs the acacia thorn livestock fences, cleans her house (made of mud, sticks, and cow dung), and makes clothes and jewelry for the family.

Women are the labor force of the Maasai culture, even though men are superior in social standing. What a difference to my Western sense of feminism! My Maasai Momma never complained and thought she was very lucky. Although the Maasai live in abject poverty by American standards, they do not see themselves in this same light. Everyone I met firmly stood by their nomadic way of life and the Maasai were some of the friendliest, most optimistic people I have ever met.

Not only was I lucky to meet amazing people in Kenya and Tanzania, I was lucky to travel throughout both countries. Our group traveled throughout many national parks, such as Ngorongoro Crater, Serengeti, Amboseli, and Tsavo. We actually camped for a week in Serengeti and Tsavo national parks! There is nothing like camping in a national park in Africa and falling asleep to the roaring of a nearby pride of lions, or waking up to see hyena tracks through the middle of the campsite. We had both Maasai guards and park rangers protecting us, so we were never in any danger. Previous years of study abroad students were not always so lucky. One night, one of our Maasai professors (Daniel) told us a story about a previous year camping in Serengeti with the SFS program. Three girls got up from the campfire and went to use the bathroom about 50 yards away. As they were walking, Daniel went to get supplies out of the jeep and turned the headlights on. The headlights illuminated three female lions lying in wait for the three students. Luckily, Daniel turned on the lights when he did! Needless to say, we started taking guards when we went to the bathroom.

Camping in the national parks was one of the best experiences of my life. We went on daily game drives that lasted from early in the morning until evening. Some days we would conduct field work: population studies of of wildebeest herds, diversity samples, warthog behavior logs...But sometimes we drove just to see what was around the next bend or watch the wildebeest migration. I saw every big mammal a tourist could hope to see in East Africa, and added so many birds to my life-list. One of my favorite stories happened during a game drive. My favorite driver, Charles, was the best at spotting animals. We would be a mile away (literally) in the jeep, and he would say, "See that speck in the distance? That's a pride of lions." He was always right. Ours was the first jeep at every major sighting: lions, leopards, elephants. But Charles was never excited about the animals we saw. He found them for us, but he didn't really care about seeing them. One day, we were driving along, and he swerved the car into a ditch and shouted, "Look!" By the excitement in his voice, wee thought it was going to be something absolutely amazing: maybe a lion pride taking down an elephant. It was a small fish swimming in a ditch. Charles is from Lake Victoria in Kenya and missed his home, so fish are his favorite animals. That was probably my favorite wildlife-spot of the trip!

The last, best, and worst part of my program was the directed research project. Every student picked one of three research projects and spent a month gathering data. My project was sampling wildlife biodiversity in six community-run wildlife sanctuaries adjacent to national parks. This meant slogging 20km each day in the blazing sun through grass taller than me with two other students, a park ranger, a translator, and a compass. We carried all of our gear on our backs and spent all day hiking through African bush. We hiked right up next to elephants, zebra, and buffalo. It was absolutely exhausting, but so worth it! When I got back to the States, I turned this directed research into an honors thesis for Cornell.

Living and working in Kenya and Tanzania was incredible. I loved every minute of it, and I can't wait to go back! This trip gave me the travel bug: now my "bucket list" is 27 countries long...better get started!