Out Standing in our Field

Hamjambo!

I've realized that I've covered a whole bunch of cultural things in Zanzibar and Tanzania, but completely neglected to even mention the whole reason why I'm here: STUDY.  Being with the School for International Training (SIT), our whole program revolves around field research and conducting research in coastal ecology and natural resource management.  Our group of 16 American students has been traveling all around Unguja and Pemba (the two islands that make up Zanzibar) learning about different topics in these areas.

We went to Matemwe to learn about the different species of seagrass and their importance to the ocean.  There was also a sea turtle conservatory there with baby turtles!

Matemwe is gorgeous! There's a lot of fishing there too, so we were able to see fish being cleaned.  That actually turned rather depressing since there were a lot of fish that shouldn't be caught like sharks and very large stingrays.

We headed to Jozani-Chwaka Bay National Forest Reserve for a few nights to conduct a mangrove survey and do behavioral analysis on the Red Colobus Monkeys the park is famous for, a species that's endemic to Zanzibar, so they're found nowhere else in the world.

SO. MANY. MONKEYS.

Two days were spent at Pange Sandbank and Reef to conduct an intertidal survey and coral reef survey.

Found Nemo!

A lot was done in Pemba Island (the North island of Zanzibar), but we were able to see how traditional homes are built, how charcoal is made, and we learned about the Pemba Flying Fox, a huge bat endemic to Pemba Island.

Traditional mud-and-stick homes in Pemba

Misali Island, a tiny dot North of Pemba, was visited to learn about Marine Protected Areas.

Can you find the octopus?

Prison Island, a popular tourist destination since it's easy to get to from Stone Town, was visited to learn about tourism impacts and the conservation efforts of their giant tortoises.

Some of these turtles were almost 200 years old!

We went on safari just to go on safari.

I'll let you know how my pictures do in the NatGeo photo contest I entered

And I'm currently working on a month-long Independent Research Project on the groupers that inhabit the Marine Protected Area on Chumbe Island, a little dot of an island Southeast of Stone Town, Zanzibar.  I consider myself pretty lucky!

Chumbe is so pristine, there are a bunch of turtles on the reef (see above), and I was a few feet away from a Blacktip Reef Shark today!  

Asante sana kwa kusoma!
Kim

The Only One Like Me

Hamjambo!

My last few weeks have been crazy!  From traveling to Pemba Island, back to Zanzibar for a few days, then to Dar es Salaam on the mainland, then to Mikumi National Park for safari, back to Zanzibar for a few days, and I'm now on Chumbe Island starting my month-long research on the groupers that inhabit the offshore coral reef.  So this is basically the first time I've sat down in three weeks!  Keeping busy isn't a bad thing, though, and we've been able to fit a lot into a very small period of time that I definitely wouldn't have been able to do by myself.  But my experiences both in Pemba and in Dar es Salaam really made it obvious that I am an outsider here and there's no hiding it.

Sixteen elephants wandered to the watering hole at sunset while we were at Mikumi for safari, it was absolutely magical!  And yes, I know I look like a tourist, we all went to this awesome second-hand clothes market in Dar es Salaam and bought the most tourist-y safari shirts we could find!

If it's not obvious, I'm a very white person (although I am getting pretty tan from the hot African sun) who has spent most of her life in New Hampshire, so I've never been one to stand out due to the way I look - unless I had my pants unzipped or a big stain or my shirt or something of that nature.  But in Pemba, some locals have never seen a white person before, so our group of sixteen was gawked at every time we left our homestays, which was somewhat disconcerning.  While in Pemba, I learned to dislike the term "mzungu", which for those of you who do not know, means "white person" in Kiswahili slang.  It was cute for a bit, but when it started to replace my name was when I became upset.  My host mom even referred to me as her mzungu instead of using my name.  I walked by a father holding his daughter who both looked at me, and I heard the father whisper in his daughter's ear "mzungu", which she then repeated.  And I had a Massai yell "MZUNGU" to me until I finally gave in and turned around, to which he child-like replied "hi" then laughed and ran away (this is like a 30 year old man doing this).  I had never felt more disrespected after those incidents.  It was only later that I learned from my homestay aunt that most people don't mean "mzungu" in a derogatory way, it's just cultural to refer to white people like that.  Doesn't mean I like it now.

We did try to fit in though!  We all were dressed up for our Pemba homestay farewell party, so we decided to take a picture like the Zanzibaris, hence the lack of smiling.

For the past two weeks, I've been staying at the University of Dar es Salaam on mainland Tanzania, and it would be putting it lightly to say that Dar is very different than Stone Town, Zanzibar.  We weren't off the ferry for five minutes before I had young children running up to me, not to say hi (or bye, so many children say "buh-bye" and I think it's becuase it's the only word in English they know for some reason) but to yell "Give me money!" with a hand outstretched.

I'm not a walking ATM people!  Just because I'm white doesn't mean that I have money.  I constantly bargain at markets with "Mimi ni mwanafunzi", I'm a student, since I don't have a whole lot of money and I don't want to get the exorbitant mzungu prices at the market.

The view from my dorm room at the University of Dar es Salaam.

Our group of 16 wanafunzi made up probably half of the white student population at the University, meaning that everyone knew who we were, where we were, what we were doing, everything.  The only people who waved at us or said hello were the other white students - ones we've never seen before.  Very different from Zanzibar.  I've never been in a minority racial group before and it was a very different experience than I thought it would be.  I had this idea in my head that it would be liberating, and people would want to know all about you because you were different.  At least in this situation, it was very different.  We were barely approached by the other wanafunzi, and people seemed generally very short with us, even when we tried to practice our Kiswahili.  I really don't know what the problem was, and I may never find out, but let's just say I was very happy to get off the ferry from Dar and see the Karibu Zanzibar sign.

But safari was really cool too!  For the record, Mufasa and Sarabi named their son Simba, which means "lion" in Kiswahili.  They named their son "lion".  Good job Disney.

Asante sana kwa kusoma!
Kim