Potentially Polygamous

(Arusha, Tanzania: June 9, 2007)

Soundtrack: Africa by Toto. Have you ever had the same song stuck in your head for 10 days?

I just spent the last 10 days on safari – what a terrific time. It turns out we (Jon and I) had a guide, Marc Baker, who has to be the best guide in Tanzania. He’s a biologist, originally from England, who was raised in Tanzania by research biologist parents. He seemingly knows everything there is to know about Tanzanian ecology. We spent 10 days in a Landrover with him traveling across Ngorongoro Crater and Conservation Area, Ndutu, Central Serengeti, Western Corridor, and Loliondo. Rather than bore you with a list of the animals we saw, you can refer to Appendix B. My favorite animals were spotted hyena, warthogs, giraffe, lions, secretary birds and ostrich.

Animal highlights:
Hippos stay in the water all day, and then graze at night. Nocturnal if you will. It is highly unusual to see one out of the water during the day. Well, we did! We even followed it and got in between it and the swamp at one point. Whoops. Have you ever seen a 2-ton animal running straight at the side of your vehicle with incredible speed? Marc never had either – first time for everything! It stopped no more than 3 feet away at which time I was already bracing myself for the massive impact. Marc’s first question: Did you get the shot? [side note: I did get a shot of it charging – somehow my finger pushed the button without my knowing]

I happen to be a bit squeamish, especially in regards to gore. We were really lucky to be able to watch a lioness feeding on a zebra. It’s not the easiest thing to watch, especially when the back half of the zebra is already gone and he’s been out in the African sun all day. Tough but well worth it, and the blood is really red!

Random Musings:
So in Tanzania the marriage license is only signed by the man, and has 3 boxes on it – Monogamous, Polygamous, and the good old catch-all: Potentially Polygamous. ?!?

Marc is very into conservation, he was just in the states last year giving a talk at UC Santa Cruz on the balance between tourism and conservation. What luck to be able to have such a great resource to talk to! Conservation is SUCH a difficult problem. Fifty percent of the GDP of Tanzania is aid money. While aid is certainly helpful in some situations, it also creates dependency, which can be really dangerous. With an employment (not unemployment) rate of 30%, how do you wean villages off of aid food and medical supplies when they have little to no means of ever making a living? Part of the problem with providing aid is that while a typical family would previously have 5-6 children, half of whom wouldn’t survive, the same family is now able to (barely) feed 5-6 children. Without serious family planning education, you wind up with a population that grew 2.3% last year and is set to double sooner than later. The resources of the country can’t even provide for the existing population, let alone a growing population. Aid will not just increase and continue forever. It’s a very, very difficult situation. The good news is that there is a program that is very successful educating women about family planning and providing birth control in Northern Tanzania.

Many of the projects that are done to “help” people are ill thought out, with the recipients not being part of the planning process. A water pipe was put in a village (which cost tons of aid money) so that the women wouldn’t need to walk 5K each way every day to get water. Within 2 weeks of its completion the women had torn it out of the ground and destroyed it. When they were asked why, they explained that for them walking to the water was how they enjoyed spending their days. They brought their children, all of the women got together to chat, they did laundry, the children played, they were away from their husbands for the day, and then they went home to cook at night. With the water in the village they never saw each other, the husbands just found other work for them to do, and they hated it. One lesson I have learned through the work I do is that if you are creating something and you don’t include the end user or a representative group of them in the planning, then you wind up with something they don’t want and won’t willingly use.

I’m off to southern Kenya tomorrow morning and then starting the Kilimanjaro climb in 5 days! I am completely scared – 19,000 feet is no joke, the altitude is not agreeable to the human body, so you get up and get down. I put on pounds of padding during the safari, which included eating 3 huge meals everyday and sitting in a car nearly the entire time. Yikes. Wish me luck!

Appendix A: Technical Failures
Sunglasses: Arm broke into two pieces.
Watch: “Water-proof” it isn’t. First it got water in it, then the water killed it.
Cell Phone: Left the charger behind in Zanzibar. It’s waiting for me in Kilimanjaro, where I will hopefully pick it up in a week.

Appendix B: Animals seen
(in order or approximate numbers viewed)
wildebeest
tsetse fly
flamingo
zebra
gazelle (Grant’s and Thompson’s)
buffalo
hippo
olive baboon
impala
guinea fowl
giraffe
ostrich
elephant
warthogs
lions
gorilla (Rwanda)
red colobus monkey (Zanzibar)
vultures
tawny eagle
crocodiles
spotted hyena
jackal (black backed and golden)
crowned crane
Kori bustard
secretary bird
dik-dik
hare
hyrax
2 leopard
2 saddle billed stork
1 rhino
1 vearaux’s eagle owl
1 puff adder