Jumping Into the River

Two weeks today in this wild, dusty, beautiful place. It is shockingly difficult to put my thoughts into one coherent piece, to organize and collate fourteen of the longest, most magnificent, uncomfortable, life-changing days of my life. I’ve also written this in bits and spurts over the last two weeks, on public transportation or lying in bed as time allows, so apologies for the general clunkiness that follows. 

Everyone says that studying abroad changes your life, but I really didn’t expect to experience so immediate a shift, where everything I’ve known up until this point will be colored by, compared with, and influenced by what I’m doing now. Every day I’ve seen things that have challenged my ideas of privilege, race, conservation, and peace. Every day I’ve seen things I never imagined I’d ever see, from the inside of a Maasai boma to a face-to-face encounter with two cheetahs. 

It’s also difficult to write about much that hasn’t already been discussed and rediscussed by Americans and Europeans visiting this exceptionally different land for the first time, but I will try my hardest to paint the most vivid picture I can of my own time here. Studying here, rather than being here on vacation, has certainly changed my experience in a positive way, in a way not dissimilar to how I felt in Chile, living among raft guides rather than just visiting for a week-long trip. I have had the privilege of learning from former rangers, current safari guides, professors, village members, government officials and more. Frankly, I could go home tomorrow completely and utterly content with this experience. 

One last disclaimer, for this entire semester and maybe year, it will be next to impossible to do justice to the sights I’ve seen and experiences I’ve had into blog posts. Moments from these last days will play on repeat in my head forever, and I will probably never adequately represent every moment. On all fronts, I’ll do my best. 

The title of today’s blog post comes from our first Kiswahili lesson, in which Mama Beatriz, our head teacher, told us that “as long as you choose to swim in the river, you have to swim”. She was speaking about learning the language and having the immersive experiences that only come from choosing to jump in with both feet. When she said it, merely a week and a half ago, I thought I’d never possibly feel ready and comfortable swimming here, riding public transportation and bargaining for goods on my own. It’s amazing what a difference a few days can make, especially one as chock full as ours. 

For the first few days, I certainly felt that I was drowning in the river I’d come so far to see. We flew into Arusha and spent two full days doing orientation, spending sedentary time in the office or back at our hotel. I felt exhausted and discontent to an extent I’ve rarely experienced, adjusting to the new time zone and new food and new people with not as much grace as I’d hoped. 

Arusha is loud, hot, dusty, and deeply reminiscent of my time in Chilean towns. The city smells sweet and smoky, like diesel, early morning rain, and pink flowers. In encountering a new place, it is only natural to cling to what we think we know. For me, I’ve certainly clung to the things that remind me of Chile, being in a place where I don’t speak the language, where the roads are dust and gravel, where the roadsides are full of roasting meat and noise, where the traffic is zany and vaguely dangerous. Arusha is on a plateau surrounded by green hills, Mt. Meru on a clear day, with these wild, perfectly symmetrical humps on the other sides. These views, too, remind me of the modest orange homes flanked by stunning ridges and rising forests I saw in Chile. 

The office, where we will spend our typical class times, is across from a row of construction, so our lectures are punctuated with the sounds of building and movement, and the smells of trucks and fresh wood. (A note: the first song I heard in this country was “I Wanna Dance with Somebody”, minutes after stepping out of the airport. Epic). Otherwise, there is constant sound here, of dogs barking, trucks honking, people moving. The land feels like it’s breathing dust this time of year, at the end of the dry season, which is also the coolest it will be while we’re here. The sunshine feels unlike anything I’ve ever felt– straight on, immediately baking, immensely powerful. The UV index hit 11 our first day. But, MOM, I haven’t gotten a sunburn (yet) :). 

After those two days, we left for our safari, first in Randilen Wildlife Management Area (WMA), then in Tarangire National Park. Driving into Randilen, we were hounded at our rest stop to calls of “mzungu mzungu!”, meaning white person, or alternatively, rich white person, as women dangled colorful beaded jewelry into our safari jeeps. The campsite was large and well-stocked, with showers sun-warmed in the evening, flush toilets, and handwashing stations. We traveled with a full complement of chefs, who provided delicious breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a mid-morning and mid-afternoon tea break.

The food here is starchy, filling, and hearty. As we’re only allowed to eat fresh fruit and vegetables that can be boiled or peeled, and only cooked greens, I have put aside my general distaste for melons and pineapple in favor of fiber and color. The cooked greens are always a bitter spinach-onion combination, delicious when mixed with ugali (stiff corn porridge, a very common starch) or rice. I’ve been eating meat here, which is the native variety, tougher, leaner, and chewier than at home, and usually prepared in delicious rich sauces. My favorite food has been the fresh salads, usually avocado and red onion heavy, which are a welcome reprieve from the rich foods.  Eleanor, you’ll be thrilled to know that I am totally a black tea girly these days, drinking it every chance I get, strong and milky. I can’t wait to drink some local coffee. 

Our week on safari was characterized by long days and unbelievable sights. Each morning we’d wake up between six and seven for tea and coffee, eat a hearty breakfast at seven, then head out for the day’s ventures. In Randilen, we focused on social science data collection, spending three mornings with members of the Maasai communities surrounding the WMA (more on this later). In Tarangire, we gathered data about ruminants, non-ruminants, and birds, switching groups each day. After lunch in the early afternoon, we went for game drives, just looking around to see what we could see. In the evenings, we ate dinner, did homework (wild!!!!), played cards, read, and rested well for the next full day. 

Some wee complaints: Perhaps the thing I have liked the least is our lack of mobility, something the program prepared us for well. In Arusha, I felt neither prepared nor energized enough to run, and by the time we arrived in Randilen I found myself antsy and restless, and feeling like my muscles were degenerating every day. On the second morning, I woke up with an intense need to move, so found myself doing dusty, walking laps around the campsite with friends after each meal. It helped, but I also plan to treat myself to a gym membership on our return to Arusha, and invest in a foam pad so I can do yoga when we’re camping.

I am also unused to being somewhere where I cannot trust the water, where I have to brush my teeth with my Nalgene in hand every day (just like camping!!), and where all my drinking water has to come from large jugs from the back of the jeeps or small bottles. In town it’s even harder to remember, with sinks delivering water okay for washing but not for drinking. 

It’s also wild to be somewhere where I have to be so aware of germs. Every time I sit on a daladala (public minibusses, packed to the brim with people paying the equivalent of 5 cents per ride), I think about the scabies and fungi and other skin diseases surely crawling around the sweaty vinyl. I can safely say I’ve quit my fingernail chewing habit for deep fear of some incurable infectious disease. So there’s a positive!

Perhaps the most enduring, and constantly annoying obstacle for me right now is the dust. The dust is truly wretched. I’ve never been somewhere with lower humidity and simultaneously thin and loose soil, leading to my own personal nightmare of dust everywhere all the time. My electronics, my camping gear, my feet, my clothes, are all coated in a thin brown speckled layer. (What is particularly ironic is that, during my last camping trip in the States, I made a huge fuss about getting dust in our tent, which Tiger, Thomas, and Louise, found at turns funny, alarming, annoying, and confusing. Maybe I had a sense of what was coming…). The absolute worst, though, is my hair. My hair hasn't really “dried” since I got here. I shower or swim, and the next thing I know it’s standing straight up, my hands come away from my head gritty and coated, and the cycle repeats. I have on multiple occasions felt the necessity to cut it all off. We’ll see if I follow through. 

Okay, back to the good stuff. We arrived at Randilen on Sunday, and were immediately whisked away for a game drive, which I expected to be cool but not that cool. For the second time this month, I named an animal I’d love to see and was nearly immediately graced by its presence. The first time, it was river otters on the St. Croix, which feels like a million miles and years from where I type now. This time, mere minutes after we left camp, I said, “ya know, I’m not even sure elephants are real. You’re telling me we’re gonna see one this trip? No shot”. We turned a corner and stumbled upon a group of males grazing, shockingly camouflaged in the dry brown landscape. Minutes later, we spied a giraffe family through the trees, then a herd of zebras, wildebeests and antelope not far behind. I was gobsmacked. To believe that these beings walk the same earth as the white pines and moose of home is simply difficult to believe. 

After our many sightings, we sped back to camp under the setting sun sinking below the rift wall on the other side of Lake Manyara. (Awesome fun fact: the Connecticut River Valley used to look exactly like East Africa does now, with a huge wall alongside deep lakes. I went on a geology field trip this Spring where we identified geologic events based on the layers in a Connecticut River Valley rock wall on the side of the highway in CT. It was one of the weirder days of college, which Eleanor and I recount often, but has suddenly gained much more significance for me!). 

The sunset on our first night was perhaps the most spectacular I’ve ever seen. Every color melded spectacularly into the next, under lighting dark blue clouds, with a light lavender mixing visible only where the mountains hadn’t already blocked the sun, creating an outline of the range in the sky. Absolutely stunning. Surrounded by five new friends, it was the first moment I knew I would be okay–excellent, even. I’ve never been somewhere so flat and scrubby, where you can see for miles, but simultaneously, any number of animals might be hiding in each stand of tall grass. 

No sooner had I returned to camp in shock and awe, slept a fitful few hours in my tent, eaten breakfast, and sat through an hour of class, had they loaded us back into the jeeps and dropped us off, in groups of two or three, in the middle of a Maasai boma (household) to conduct interviews. My mind reeling, I couldn’t stop traveling back in time to think about where I’d been merely 6 days before, drying out on a warm rock on Hurricane Island, in disbelief I’d ever be anywhere else. I’ve perhaps never felt myself to more deeply be a minority, a foreigner, practically an alien in this land of five hour walks for water and soil-ash-dung homes. My time in a Maasai boma was unequivocally delightful. Along with two other students and an interpreter, we spent almost four hours sitting with different mamas (the Maasai are polygamous, so each household represents one man and multiple women), asking questions about their lifestyles, education, interactions with wildlife, and opinions on political issues. 

Meanwhile, the many kids of the bomas looked on wide-eyed as we played games, shared candy (jawbreakers were a confusing but welcome new treat), and drew on shared pieces of paper. I felt like every stereotype all at once– white woman wrapped in a local skirt sharing goods with small African children, feeling saintly. But rather, I just felt welcomed, happy to be in a new place, and so grateful that I not only got to experience this way of life but also attempt to do something positive with what we learned from them. The mamas were exceptionally generous with their time, and at the end we took a tour of the boma, seeing the different homes, animal pens, and communal areas. The animals were, of course, very cute, with many baby goats nibbling our clothes and lying in a dog pile. The family had several dogs who guard the boma mostly from hyenas. (Get this, chicken-and-dog owners. I was so amazed to see these tan, not-not-Hank-looking dogs very calmly nosing and co-existing with lots of chickens. I asked one of the mamas what they do to keep their dogs from eating the chickens. Her response: “We feed them, so why would they do that?”. So no help there). 

For our second and third mornings, we conducted focus group discussions and then interviews with different community members. These mornings were slightly less immersive, but equally fascinating and impactful. By the end of the three days, we had 30+ interviews on the topic of human-wildlife conflicts, which we analyzed this week. One thing I appreciate deeply is that SIT paid every person we interacted with, and presented a sizable donation to the village government office at the end of our time, paid for by our tuition dollars. I think this is one piece that makes studying here feel very different from being a tourist– not only are we learning so much, but we’re giving back to the places we learn from and equitably engaging in them. I was so grateful for the experience of learning from the Maasai, and just might be back later in the semester during our Independent Study Project period.

On our game drives, we continued to see the most amazing sights. Herds of elephants tromping across sun-splattered ridges, zebras numbering in the hundreds, buffalo tromping through rivers, wildebeests running, giraffes grazing specifically evolved trees that only flower at their own height, the brightest birds I’ve ever seen. Even though it’s the dry season, and thus far less lush than it will be when we leave, the colors here are so exceptionally brilliant. From the birds, with descriptive names like yellow-collared sunbirds and superb starlings to the unmatched patterns and brightness of the clothes to the magnificent sunsets, everything is clear and crisp. At the same time, the animals of the safari are camouflage magicians. You’d think it would be hard to lose an antelope, or even a zebra in the flat land, but everything here is so specifically adapted to the place that it’s nearly impossible to see an animal if it doesn’t want to be seen. 

Our last night in Randilen, after what had been a slightly panicked 24 hours from me, feeling sick and snotty and exhausted and homesick, our teachers surprised us with dinner on “Sundown Rock”, an incredible kopje (rock outcropping) rising several hundred feet above the savannah. There’s a cool geologic reason these exist having to do with the creation of this part of the world, but I don’t remember the details at the moment… Anyways, we watched the sunset from this incredible high point, watching elephants and wildebeests miles away fade into the forest. We were practically giddy as a group, prancing around to take group pictures, point at new sights, and gasp as the colors changed. For the first time, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was going to have an amazing semester, that I’d come to love the people I was surrounded by, that I’d see things I couldn’t even imagine. It was an incredible feeling. Eating dinner in the dark, we all craned our necks upwards towards hands-down the best stars I’ve ever seen. 

The first night we looked at stars, all the city kids gasped and pointed at the Milky Way as I, very cocky, sat in the pavilion and said “yeah, we can see the Milky Way at home”. Eventually, influenced by the joy and delight, I walked out and was absolutely floored. At home, you can see that the Milky Way exists, trace the general gash-shaped milky spot across the sky. Here, however, you can see every detail of its shape– almost like a river seen from above, with dark sky in the middle seeping its way outwards into little dark tributaries, between the parallel white scars, like hills. We can see multiple planets, constellations I’ve forgotten since Chile, and stars reaching practically to the skyline. It makes plenty of sense that there is essentially no light pollution to speak of here, but the outcome is absolutely wild. 

At the end of our long three days in Randilen, we took off for Tarangire National Park, geographically next door but a couple hours drive away. We have spent an inordinate amount of time in the car these two weeks. Every game drive on safari is just a drive, everything is so far away, and we are pretty constantly on the move. I’d say that, without exaggeration, at least 50% of my waking time in this country has been spent in a vehicle. The diversity of vehicles is pretty fun and funky– we’ve been in big SUVs, Safari jeeps, dalalas, provate mini-buses, big buses, and regular cars. Every vehicle is, seemingly, all-terrain, given that the roads are often not more than dirt tracks. There is something pretty peaceful about sitting in the car, and I do appreciate the several hours each day to be quiet and reflective, read a book, listen to music, look at the view, or nap, but I certainly would trade some of that time for outdoor movement too. My buddy Ryan said today that it would be hard to find a more outdoorsy program that is also somehow extremely sedentary. Quite true. And, it makes tons of sense to me that safaris are so appealing to folks with more limited mobility. 

On a similar note, everything takes so long here. I am remembering all of my emotions and frustrations about conceptions of time in Chile, and trying to also remember the calm I eventually formed about it all. It helps to be alongside lots of people, and with no actual rush to be anywhere or do anything (which was also the case in Chile) other than being right where we are. Which is, of course, the reason that this way of living is truly delightful. There is such an emphasis on the present–one of our teachers called it “event-oriented living” today rather than time-oriented, which I really appreciate. The program in general is exceptionally flexible, as are my peers, which certainly makes a huge difference. While it makes the days longer, it also makes them much more chill and well-paced. 

Tarangire was an equally breathtaking place to be. Unlike Randilen, Tarangire is a National Park, a higher level of conservation, but also much more populated by tourists. We all characterized the change as similar to moving from a wilderness area to Yellowstone, in that we saw incredible sights concentrated in a small area, but experienced a very different energy. On our first full day in Tarangire, we saw two cheetahs stalking zebras, two lions sleeping and following zebras, and three leopards sleeping. The cheetahs in particular took my breath away. They’re exceptionally graceful beings, with so much power barely hidden beneath their languid movements. We saw them cross a river, mark a tree, and follow a herd of zebras, singularly focused and intensely engaged the entire time. It reminded me of watching an incredible runner’s gait, seeing a body so perfectly in form. 

During our mornings of data collection, we saw just about everything you could hope for. Two elephants locking tusks by a river. A male and female lion so close we could have touched them. Two cheetahs eating a freshly-killed impala. A miles-long swamp, elephants snorting water onto their backs, looking like freshly dipped truffles in the brown water. Bright flashes of yellow, purple, green, orange in the trees and on our breakfast table. Lions slowly stalking, shifting their weight from haunch to haunch behind a pack of zebras. Mutant giraffes, bright white with inverted spots. Buffalo crossing a river, making big clouds of dust (and erosion!) as they wallowed down the bank. Maybe thousands of zebras and wildebeest mingled together grazing (because, as it turns out, zebras have an excellent sense of prey but wildebeest have a better sense of rain, and thus fresh grass for eating, so the two tend to hang out. They also eat different parts of grass plants!). Tiny dik diks, like little impalas, springing straight upwards in their characteristic bounce. A leopard, lying lazily above our car, and another in the crotch of a thousand-year-old baobab tree, zebra carcass draped artfully below. Snuffling warthogs (which really remind me of Otis). And the things I heard: a lion, making the sound a dog makes before it throws up, followed by the distinctive low huff-moan. Bird calls I couldn’t possibly replicate if I tried. Elephants trumpeting. An elephant matriarch’s stomach grumbling to direct her herd. The yip-yip of a zebra. And so, so much more. This part of the country, and trip, will always hold a special place in my heart for introducing me to these incredible animals I only imagined really existed until now.

On our last afternoon in Tarangire, our Academic Coordinator, Oscar, told us he had a surprise in store, and to bring our bathing suits. After another long-ish car ride, we arrived at the Tarangire Safari Lodge, a beautiful lodge nestled high on a cliff overlooking the river for which Tarangire is named. Oscar cut us loose with a one-drink ticket and a free afternoon ahead of us. 

I jumped right into the pool, so grateful to be submerged after the longest drought of the summer. After a few minutes of splashing, I heard a peculiar cracking sound, and looked up to see a herd of elephants no more than twenty feet away. We scrambled out of the pool to sit on a ledge, and watched as a group of mamas and babies suctioned up seed pods, shook trees to bring down more seeds, and snarfed around people’s chairs and tents. It was breathtaking. As this was happening, while I gazed out at certainly the most intimate view of the trip, a man brought me a beer!!! A quick aside, the beer here is delicious, and comes in hefty 550mL bottles. Our group favorite is Safari Lager, a delicious beer I’d characterize as a heftier PBR which is considered “strong” at, gasp, 5.5%! As I drank a cold beer and watched the elephants play and graze, I felt the first moment of true contentment on the trip. While I had experienced moments of true joy, I had yet to feel truly content and settled into where I am. Sitting by that pool, looking back on the week, I felt it. I can’t wait for the rest of it. 

By the end of our week-long trip, however spectacular, I was ready to be back in the frontcountry. The dust, the long days, the food which, however delicious, lacked much choice, and the endless sitting in cars had caught up to me, and I yearned for a bed. 

We left on Friday, after my group observed birds and then presented on the week’s readings. On the way back, between napping and reading, we began to plan our next immersive cultural experience–clubbing in Arusha. After some needed showers, dinner, and quiet lying down time, my triple hosted a pre-game of local beers and horrible local spirits. The night club was an unequivocally excellent night. Great music, a fun venue of a mix of locals and tourists, lots of letting loose after a long week in the woods. 

The next morning we woke up to do laundry (by hand, in the yard of the office) and headed to a hot spring which was, we’d been told, an hour and a half away. After a slow start (again with the time-doesn’t-matter-so-much point…), we stopped for takeout lunch, where I ate without a doubt the worst fries I’ve ever eaten (we spend a lot of time talking about the foods we all miss but didn’t realize we would, which is tough already… crispy french fries, Caesar salads, burgers, REAL BUTTER…). Finally on the road in a daladala, crammed 4 to a row, we were stopped an hour in to let the Vice President pass in a motorcade. After thirty hot and sweaty minutes on the side of the road we were back, turning onto a dirt road for another hour and a half ride through small villages. Finally, after what felt like days of jolting and shuddering to a soundtrack of loud Swahili music, bass bumping beneath our seats, we made it. The hot springs reminded me a lot of the Futa– stunning jungle surroundings, clear bright turquoise water. Unlike the glacier-fed Futa, the water hovered at around 80 degrees, a delightful temperature for long-term floating (although it did make me miss the Atlantic). We jumped off of rope swings and tree branches, watching the local attendants do wild tricks, skimming the water and landing on the shores dry. It felt so good to laugh at each other, be silly and move our bodies and float and giggle. We stayed for a few hours, sharing floating tubes and making crocodile jokes, until the sun was nearly set and we had to make our long trek back to the city. Forgoing dinner, I crawled into bed showered and happy at 9pm, happy for my un-restful rest day to be done. 

On Sunday we made our way to Mweka by way of a pack and repack session where we dumped our camping gear and added more clothes, picked up our laundry, and headed east. We had lunch in Moshi, at a delicious Indian restaurant where I enjoyed a questionable chocolate milkshake. We arrived in Mweka in the afternoon, to a stunning tropical hideaway tucked on the slopes of Kilimanjaro. From where I’m sitting now, I’m surrounded by dripping plantain trees, chittering birds, and bright purple and pink flowers, with a few other huts and villas tucked around me. The air here is cooler and wetter, and we’re almost a mile above sea level. The villa is a sweet collection of buildings and terraces, and each double room has its own sitting room, perfect for the incessant card-playing we’ve been partaking in. This place also reminds me of Futa, in how lush and green it is, the similarities with BioBio, and the feeling of the air, chilled and wet tinged with wood smoke.

Our first night we walked to the village, a stunning walk straight uphill through coffee plants and on a dirt roas, a rushing stream from Kilimanjaro bubbling beside us. We arrived at a field– hummocked, covered in cowshit, perfect for twisting an ankle–having acrued a group of local kids behind us bouncing a soccer ball. My new dear friend Neil and I took off for a run, heading up the hill and looping back down through the village, seeing the college that all of our professors attended. At one point, looking back, we saw her– Mt. Kilimanjaro in all her glory! The mountain is surprisingly squat and wide, with green slopes leading to a wide snowcapped, volcanic summit. The view was stunning. We stopped to stare and continued down the hill, meeting back up with our soccer-playing friends. Having not played soccer in firmly a decade, I hesitated only a little before jumping into the game. The local kids smoked us, their speed and agility no match for some sluggish college students. It was maybe the most fun I’ve had since arriving, laughing and running with my new friends and even newer ones, all of us united in the act of play. This is the kind of being present that places like this call for and even demand, the kind that allows relationships to blossom, people to laugh freely and loudly, and memories to be captured and remembered forever. 

At once point, looking up the field, Kili’s peak peered out through the clouds, reflecting the golden, pink, and orange of the sunset. It was one of the most beautiful views I’ve ever seen, and the entirety of the moment was enough to bring me to tears. I just kept thinking: “I’m so happy. I’m so grateful” over and over, losing my athletic prowess (lol) because I kept looking over my shoulder at the view. We practically skipped home in the fading light, arm in arm with the local kids, recounting epic moments and soaking in the mountain air. 

Yesterday was our first truly academic day, which was undoubtedly a snooze and made doubly-annoying by the fact that it was a) group work and b) without consistent wifi, which made everyone shockingly nutty. The day was bookended by two walks up the college and more soccer-playing, Kili this time backlit in purple light with the clean snow and rock outlined magnificently, which made it all worth it. On the college campus, we had the hilarious opportunity to get into a tunnel system made by the Chagga tribe in the 1800s, to escape tribal wars. After perhaps six steps I turned back, knowing small spaces are not my forte (and that one year, a group was lost for 40 minutes as they got in too deep, ended up at a far outlet, and were lost in one of the surrounding villages). As I and the other claustrophobes sat at the surface, we heard shouting and running back as our more fearless peers ran towards the stairs. They had encountered a bunch of bats in one of the caverns formerly used to hold cattle, to which our professor Jackson had uttered his classic “hamna shida, hamna shida”, meaning “no problem”. Sort of a “you had to be there” moment now that I write it down, but a hoot nonetheless. 

Today, we headed to a chaotic but fruitful secondhand market, heard lectures from professors at the college, and went on another deliriously stunning sunset walk. It’s amazing reading back over these past two weeks and realizing already how much more comfortable, content, and excited I am for the semester ahead. I’m sleeping well, moving my body, taking my space, and making friends. Certainly missing people and places, but feeling ready to tackle whatever comes next. 

Until next time!!!!