National Park week!

Heres a little more detailed recap about 2 weeks ago since I only had 15 minutes to write my last post. Our drive to Tarangire National park was so bumpy tgat one of the cars side mirrors literally just fell off! When we got there we chose our field study groups for animals to research while in the national parks and I got put in the elephant group. We spent each morning at Tarangire and Manyara National parks watching and deciphering elephant behaviors and recording data and I learned a lot! Fun fact, an elephant knocks over an average of 4.2 trees per day. But Tarangire is beautiful! It is known for its big animals and big trees because it has tons of baobab trees and over 3,000 elephants. The animals are everywhere and I saw cheetahs, lions, and a leopard all in the same day! Sleeping in tents in the national parks is definitely an experience because you can laydown and listen to the animals all night long. The elephants especially loved our campsite and they frequently hung out less than 50 yards from our tents.

Tarangire was great but I was glad to leave behind the hundreds of tsetse flies and bees when we headed for Mto wa Mbo. Sadly, the mosquitos took the tsetse flies place and at my count, I have well over 50 bites. Our campsite was right inside of the village so we went on daily walks and met people from 7 tribes, although the village is made up of 120 different tribes all together.  We were able to walk through rice fields (thankfully I didn’t fall in the water) and banana plantations. We tasted banana wine and beer. On Friday we had the opportunity to go meet a Maasai healer and he gave me local herbs that I can put in my tea to cure me of any sicknesses that I may get. And from the stories that I have heard, these healers and their magic is extremely effective. This particular Maasai is so popular that he has 25 wives, and over 80 children. That night we went to the local disco and got to dance to Tanzanian music and hang out with the locals. Saturday we got back to Arusha and although we had less than a half hour at the SIT office, we had most of the day free to do whatever in the city. Most of us decided to split up because the experience is much less touristy when you are alone. Being alone in arusha was one of my favorite experiences so far. I learned so much Swahili, got to have long conversations with people, and got to just walk around. The food market is amazing, with one square block of ripe fresh fruits and veggies, fish, and meats. Its always fun to see how excited to locals get when I speak Swahili. Most tourists don’t bother to learn any so they are amazed and very patient with me.