Week One

I have been at the Moyo Hill center for a week now and I have already done so much! We started classes and already have a few assignments, but they involve going on safaris and observing animals so I can’t complain at all.

Monday- Friday consisted of classes and getting to know the area, center and other students.  We are already learning a lot of Swahili and can talk to the local people a little bit.

We have been able to walk around Rhotia a lot and see many locals. When the children saw us, they ran over and asked to get their pictures taken. They even liked to take pictures of each other and look at those. They are all so sweet!

Saturday and Sunday we went to Lake Manyara National Park and that was amazing! The first day we drove around and I was working on two assignments: A list of 10 mammals for my Wildlife Management class and gathering research for 2 research papers for my Wildlife Ecology class. We drove through a cool woodland area with pretty streams and incredible trees that seemed a little like a rain forest. Through the woodland, we saw a few elephants, lots of baboons, blue monkeys, vervet monkeys and some cool birds. And I even got to see my favorite bird, the Kingfisher. Then we stopped at a hippo pool, but we didn’t see any hippos on Saturday. Finally we drove closer to the lake, which is a salt lake and is covered by thousands of flamingos. That is when we saw zebras, cape buffalo, wildebeests, and giraffes.

On Sunday we drove through the same woodland, but our assignment was to watch baboons for 2 hours and record what they were doing every 5 minutes. It is really interesting to watch how social they are. And the baby baboons are soo cute! Then we went to the hippo pool again and saw the hippos relaxing in the sun next to the water, they are so big!

Then today, we went on a hike to Elephant Cave and saw where the elephants dig caves into a hill with their tusks so that they can eat the soil that is packed with nutrients including Iron and Potassium. After the hike we went to a market in Karatu and got to bargain for some souvenirs.