Hello everyone,

My long trips to Tanzania are over, (I hope fingers crossed) at least for the duration of my PhD. Therefore, Brad and I have stared a new blog for the two of us at www.bradandjenschmitt.blogspot.com

So please come join us there and thanks for reading about my African adventures.

Cheers,

Jennifer :)

Yes, I am back in the States now, after a long plane ride with a head cold (yuck) and as you all know after four trips to Tanzania in just over a year (I am a little tired of the traveling). I'm not sure what the future will hold for my travels to Tanzania (and thus postings on this blog), but I'll let you know :)

In the meantime....I snapped a shot of the garage where I spent so much time with my lovely car (which was working better AFTER I returned it than it was when they gave it to me).

Yes, that is the garage. They work right there (the main road is right behind me), without the normal safety precautions like we have in the States (like goggles or even welding glasses/helmets). And here is good old APA, I'll miss her, but I am glad to be back driving my Echo, it is so much more relaxing.

Emmanuel, one of Savannas Forever's field team leaders, has a new baby boy. Bryan was born just over 3 weeks ago while Emmanuel was in the field with the SF team. On Thursday I went to Emmanuel's house to see little Bryan. Here is a picture of father and son.

Here is the mzungu na mtoto.

No, not snow flurries, but butterflies, hundreds of thousands of white butterflies. It was the most amazing thing. From the crater rim all the way to Arusha these butterflies were just flying across the road (for about 200 kilometers). It was really spectacular up on the crater rim because it appeared like they were just pouring out of the crater, up and over the rim and down the hillside. In some areas there were only a few and then I would get to some spots where they were highly concentrated and it was almost like it was snowing. One unlucky butterfly flew in my car and hit the inside windshield (many hit the outside), but it allowed me to take this picture.

So this spectacular event took place yesterday (Monday) and today. Yesterday I left Serengeti with a family who needed a ride (Dad, Mom, baby, and two young kids). It was nice to have some company and (like I mentioned in my previous blog) to have potential help if I got stuck or a flat. But no problems and after interviewing the antipoaching head of the Ngorongoro conservation area authority I dropped the family off in Karatu (to catch a bus somewhere else) and I went to Allen's guest house for a nice warm shower, electricity, and a soft bed. This morning I got up early and headed back to the crater rim to talk to someone in community development. Turns out the person I needed to talk to is in Arusha, but I spoke a little with someone else so it wasn't a total waste. I picked up 2 guys and 2 girls and headed to Arusha. Again, nice to have the company, and we made it back without a problem. However, the travel gods must have been watching because the moment I parked in my driveway and started unpacking my tire went flat. So, with the help of 3 guys from the field team I changed the tire, put on the spare and realized the spare had a slow leak. So rather than relax it was off to the tire place to get the tires fixed. I put a new tube in the flat tire and then they changed out the spare and patched the spare's tube. After about 1.5 hours I was finally able to return and relax after my long journey.

On Friday I went up to Grumeti (the high end lodge and management area of Tutor Jones, a multi-millionaire). The folks who work for their conservation and wildlife management company are fabulous and I had a good talk with them both for my work and in general. They housed me in one of their research “dorms” and paid for my meals. There was hot water (without having to boil it) and 24 hour electricity. Here is a picture from my porch.

A picture of my porch.

Here is the “dorm”.

Here is a picture from my bed when I woke up the next morning.

After a leisure morning of breakfast and e-mail (they have wireless) I headed back to Seronera, with a plan to stop at the photo safari camps in Robanda (3 of them). I picked up some folks about 30 minutes from Robanda. It is common practice here to give a lift to people, and while I would never do it in town, out in the rural villages, it is safe, almost safer than not because if I get stuck or get a flat I then have people to help me. SF actually has a policy to pick people up to maintain and improve good community relations. Anyway, I filled my car with people and we headed to Robanda. At Robanda I let everyone out and told those wanting to go to Seronera that I’d be back, in an hour or so. I popped in at one photo safari place and they were very nice and gracious, especially considering I just randomly stopped in wanting to interview them. The interview went so well I decided I really wanted to find the two other photo safari places so I went back through Robanda, asked where the other places were and headed to one. Along the way I said hi to this guy that had asked me for work when I dropped off everyone the first time and well he kind of invited himself to take me to the next camp. I let him get in the back seat and we continued onward. I quickly started to think that this wasn’t the best idea, esp because I could smell the beer on his breath, but we continued to chat away in Swahili (he is 19, is from Robanda, brother at the University in Dar es Salaam, etc), with me keeping an eye on him in the rearview mirror. After turning off the main road to head towards the camp the path quickly deteriorated and got very muddy. After about 5 minutes I was thoroughly stuck in the mud. The guy jumped out and started digging me out of the mud. We tried and tried, I got out, got all muddy, he then got into the drivers seat and tried to get the car unstuck. I then realize that I’m in the middle of the bush, a drunk (or at least tipsy) teenager is at the wheel and I’m standing outside my car in mud. I mentally prepare myself to run after the car if he breaks free of the mud and doesn’t stop (I know, over active, negative imagination, but what can I say). Well after a few more minutes he was able to free the car from the mud and stopped safely out of the mud. He wanted to continue driving, but I insisted no, and I got back behind the wheel and continued onward off the road in the 4 foot high grass. By this time I’m hot, sweating, muddy, and realize we are in a tse tse fly infested area and the tse tse files are continually swarming around me, trying to bite (somehow I escaped with only 5 bites, though again one got in my shirt, under my bra and bit me, why they seem to like to do that is beyond me!). After another 5-10 minutes we arrived at the campsite only to find it abandoned except for this one old man who tells us that due to the road (the one we couldn’t even drive on), the camp was closed until after the rains. Ugh, all that way for nothing. He tells us the name of a manager/driver who works for the company, speaks English and lives in Robanda so we head back. I decide that it was getting late and I just wanted to get back to Seronera before any afternoon rains came (about a 1-1.5 hour drive). But my drunk friend, who I paid for his help, but insisted he couldn’t buy beer with my money (yea right, but I tried) ran off and found the driver so I talked with him. However, the driver wasn’t knowledgeable enough about the company or English for it to be a worthwhile interview so I packed up everyone who wanted to go to Seronera and we headed off. On the way back we saw this lovely elephant which terrified one passenger and thrilled another. They couldn’t decide if they wanted to sit and watch or get the h#%$ out of there.

After my 7.5 hour drive yesterday to Seronera (by myself) I have finally named my car, Amani Peace Amani. The license is T 664 APA so people here in Serengeti refer to their cars by the letters, as I said, mine is APA which I decided in long form is Amani Peace Amani (Amani means peace in Swahili). I decided on this mostly because my ride went fairly smooth and without a hitch. There was twice I had to engage diff lock and go off road around two loris that had become stuck in the mud in the middle of the road. After doing this the first time my car started making clunking noises that got me worried, but I made it here and my car is now in the garage. I also lost a windshield wiper during the downpour (see picture), but considering what could have happened things went really well (hopefully I'm not jinxing myself for the rest of the trip). Here are some pictures:

Giraffe

Armageddon, as I was driving the last hour and a half I saw a storm in front of me and it was the most ominous thing I had ever seen. I saw only one other car as I was driving strait for what was obviously a torrential downpour.

Hello all,

Reporting here, all alone, from the Arusha house. I've been quite these past few days sorry. I've been busy getting my manager questionnaire finished and starting my interviews. I've talked to two and a half companies (don't ask about the half), one of which I didn't think I'd be able to talk to (they are very secretive). I have plans for two others and I plan on heading out to Serengeti on Tuesday to talk to 4 other area managers. Oh, I also spent a day in the garage getting the car fixed up after my trip to the NCA. Yes, almost a full day, but the car works better now. I'll go back to the garage tomorrow and just check on everything before my long drive to Serengeti.

Except in this picture, yet another one from my time in the crater last Wednesday. In this picture the lions were closer than they appear. One lion pride decided that our car offered great shade and 7 grown lions descended on our car. Ifura (another lion researcher) was able to touch the back of one of the lions and another lion’s tail hit the rear view mirror. With 3 females lying on my side of the car, trying to eek out an ounce of shade I rolled up my window. Good thing, because one of the males walked over and looked right in my window (nose basically touching the window and he was tall enough that he could look straight in the land rover!). I don’t have a picture though; I was too busy leaping into the lap of Dennis on the other side of the car. Somehow a windowpane is not thick enough for comfort when a male lion is staring right at you.

So the purpose of our crazy scary drive yesterday (see next blog) was spend a day in the Ngorongoro crater. I was with yet another Lion researcher and thus our day was mostly filled with searching for lions on and off road. We saw 42 lions (about half of the total crater population) and I’ve tried to spare you from more same old same old lion pictures ;) and just post the really cute ones.

This is the oldest lion alive in the crater (and older than any of the lions in the Serengeti research area). She is 18 years old and at first Dennis Ikanda (the lion researcher) though she was dying because she looks so thin. But, the entire pride was thin, they probably had not eaten in about 5 days and as long as they catch something soon she should be fine. Here are some other pictures from the crater: This is a picture from atop a large hill in the middle of the crater. To get there we put my car in diff lock, kept it in first gear, and drove basically straight up a 65% grade. Kind of freaky, but the view was worth it. This is a baby Thompson’s gazelle, probably born that day. They are hiders, meaning the young lay flat down like this and do not move when there is danger. We also saw a baby wildebeest with its umbilical cord still attached trying to learn how to walk, but no picture of that one. Here are three black rhinos, very exciting for me since I have not seen a rhino since my trip to the crater in 1999. They are rare and it was a treat to see them. Despite the fact we were off road we stayed a good distance from the rhinos (so we did not disturb them), hence their small size in the picture. However, this is better than with my 400x zoom lens picture from 1999 where the rhino is literally a dot on the horizon.

Here is a female ostrich. I realized I do not have that many (or maybe any) ostrich pictures because they are so common and usually run away so thought I better start working on my ostrich collection.

To get to the crater and back in a day required us leaving the house at 4 am. The drive there was not bad, Dennis Ikanda (a Tanzanian lion researcher) drove and I got to sleep most of the way. Dennis also drove us all around the crater all day so once we got to the NCA gate on our way home I took over driving. Now at first things were fine, but it started to get dark and I started to get pretty tired. If you were reading my blog last June you might remember another drive in the darkness story where I tried to explain how freaky it is here. During that drive though, I was within city limits and not exhausted. This time however we were out in the rural country. Imagine one-lane each way, no median, no shoulder, no street lights, no reflective guard rails, people and animals on the sides and middle of the road. I’m driving a land rover, which is not an easy car to drive. You can move your hands, while holding the wheel, from 2 to almost 4 o’clock and still not cause the car to swerve. The last 3.5 hours getting home were on roads with potholes large enough that you get a sufficient thump if you hit them (and I worry about the shocks and tires). The light on the dash board for the bright lights is so bright that it almost blinds you, definitely ruining your night vision. This was not a problem the entire time because my brights went out about halfway through the 5 hour trip (we had to take an hour and a half detour to take someone home). So, I’m driving on these lovely roads, I’m tired, my brights aren’t working, I can’t see well anyway because of the light on the dash board, I’m trying not to hit the potholes, there are people and animals to watch out for and there are loris (TZ semis) coming towards me with their brights on. Twice the lori did not switch to the low beams and I almost ran off the road. I was further frightened by Dennis tell us that the lori drivers are often drunk and/or sleeping (which frankly I believe after last night) and so I always would start flashing my lights at them from a safe distance to get them to respond with a flash back so I was sure they were awake, all the while slowing down and preparing myself to go down the embankment should they not give me enough room to pass (which many only barely do because they drive in the middle of the road). Dennis took over driving with about an hour left, which was nice other than he drives faster than me (I was only doing like 45 mph the entire time) and I was still worried that a lori was going to hit us. On top of it all, this car passed me, then slowed down and stopped, I was worried there was a reason (like someone in the road, a car in the road, etc, all possibilities). As I slowed down Dennis says “don’t slow down, don’t slow down, keep driving, there are bandits on this road, don’t stop”. Now yes, there have been bandits on the road, but not often, but it just added to my anxiety. I mean if I didn’t get run off the road by a lori I was worried I’d hit a pothole, pop a tire and have to change a tire all the while hoping someone didn’t run us over or stop and mug us. I can be so frank now because I’m fine, but I really was pretty scared for the first time in this country and I will not be driving outside city limits at night again!

This is our dog, mambo (which is a greeting in Swahili). We actually adopted him in December during my last trip, well rather he adopted us. Apparently while Dennis and I were in the field the dog started to hang around and Susan fed him. When she left Mambo was sort of kicked out, but did not go very far. When Dennis, Craig and I returned home from Serengeti he was lying outside our gate. Try as we might, we could not convince mambo that he was not wanted (Craig hates dogs, and Tanzanian dogs are often dirty and annoying). After determining that he did not belong to anyone around us we overruled Craig and adopted him. He is quite friendly and does not bark too much, except when Craig locks him outside our gate (which he does just to be ornery). I brought him some treats from the US and I am trying to teach him to sit and not to jump (kaa and chini are respectively the Swahili commands). He is listening to me, sort of, probably because I have taken it upon myself to feed him and I give him treats. He still needs his shots so we have sent requests to the dog vaccination team in Serengeti that works for Craig to get some vaccinations sent back to Arusha. I have no idea how old he is or much else about him, but for a Tanzanian dog he is quite clean and friendly.

Hello all,

As many of know, I am again back in Tanzania after a christmas break in the US. I flew back out yesterday and will be here for 5 weeks. The plan this time around it for me to talk with all the managers of the conservation areas and see what community projects they have done in the villages to cross reference with what the villages have reported they are receiving from these managers. Not as exciting as going into villages, crossing raging rivers, etc, but I'll keep you all updated nonetheless. :)

Here are some of the other things we saw yesterday....

A hyena (fisi in Swahili)A baby topi (the Topi's all just had their calves in the last month). It is wierd, their coloring is very different from an adults.

An owl, yes look closely there is one there in the grass. During the wet season there are lots of raptors here, I've seen more than I can count.

A tortoise

An a beautiful male lion

Yesterday I got to go with Anne with the Serengeti Cheetah Project to look for cheetahs. A truly spectacular experience, it was nice to just be in a car and with a person with the same objective as I always have. Yes we saw many other cool things, but the purpose was to find cheetah! J We did find two, a male and lactating female. Unfortunately cheetahs are more skittish than lions so I couldn’t get as close of pictures, but nonetheless I got pretty close. They can individually identify each cheetah by their spot pattern and the cheetah project has a computer program that take digital photographs of the animals, compares them to the database and identifies the individual. Tomorrow I head back to Arusha, in the problematic car, so here’s hoping that we make it back in less than 12 hours (or make it at all). ;)

On Tuesday I got the very unique experience of participating in a lion darting. One of the study lions needed a new radio/GPS collar (because someone, likely his brother) had chewed off the GPS. Ingela and Patrick went on a small plane ride to find the lion (a nomadic male) using the radio collar. Once found, we all drove out to the spot and sure enough, there was Va va voom (his name, don’t ask) and his brother Vishnu. Ernest sized up the lion and determined the right dosage of general anesthetic and muscle relaxant and with Va va voom just sitting there, easily darted him (the pink thing is the dart).

We waited for about 5 minutes, and Va va voom fell asleep. We had to scare off the brother with the cars (he only went a small distance away) and then Ingela put on the new radio/GPS collar, we took some measurements and blood samples (I got to measure the tail) :).

Once we were through Ernest gave the lion an antidote to the muscle relaxant and we climbed back in the cars to wait while Va va voom woke up (we have to stay around until the drugs have worn off to protect the lion from other lions, vultures, etc.). After about 45 minutes from the initial darting Va va voom started to wake up, but was hallucinating (one of the side effects) and kept trying to stand up and run, but only succeeded in turning himself in circles on his haunches.

We chased the brother back towards him, and that helped to calm him down and after another half hour he was much more lucid. Our car took off, while Ingela and Patrick stuck around a little longer to make sure everything was fine. On the way back I got and extra special treat when we encountered a cheetah J Quite the day, quite an experience.

Sunday: Took 12 hours to get from Arusha to Seronera. The car started overheating as we headed up the Ngorongoro crater so we used all our drinking water to try and cool down the engine. That worked for about 10 minutes, then it over heated again, but luckily there were puddles of rain along the road we could use to fill our water bottles and cool down the engine.

Due to our preventative measures of cooling down the engine (and frequent breaks up the hill) the car made it without completely dying to the highest point, though things just went downhill from there (he he he). But seriously, we encountered 3 rainstorms after getting down from the crater. One random car needed a tow across a river due to the high water level (what anyone was doing in a car on those roads I have no idea) and later on another car needed a tow to get jump started. While I was trying to drive and not get stuck in the mud, we found ourselves headed straight for a lori (a TZ semi). There was a foot of mud and one set of tracks that both directions of traffic were using. Dennis was driving the problem car and I was following in one of SF cars (a land cruiser that is a nice car, but not good for the wet season b/c it weighs more so gets stuck easier and it doesn’t have a very powerful engine for getting itself unstuck). Anyway, Dennis is going first, headed strait for the Lori. He gets over just in time and though I wanted to pull of in a dry area and just wait for 2 minutes, David (our driver) told me to just drive so I did and when I had to pull over as I got closer to the Lori (the right-away in TZ goes to the larger entity). I ended up getting the car stuck, though not too bad, David was able to take over and get it out. Well, turns out that Dennis didn’t get over, rather he ran himself into the side of the road b/c the breaks on the overheating slow car gave out. So now we were still struggling in the mud with a car w/o breaks (luckily no more hills were around). We thought we might actually make it when, with about 5 minutes to arrival, we find ourselves stopped with 5 other vehicles looking at what normally is nothing more that a crick, if water is even flowing.

Obviously there was much more water in it and we were unable to pass. We decided to wait a few hours to see if the water would go down and so drove to the little village where the workers in Seronera live. While waiting there we got a fundi (worker) to sort of fix the breaks on the one car. Meanwhile in the center of the village a huge tree just fell over. Luckily no one was hurt. We returned to the river after a few hours and the water level had risen! We had picked up some people at the village and they knew the long way around (about a 15-20 minute back-way) that we dared only because we didn’t really want to sleep in our cars. Well, the back-way was completely muddy and flooded, but not so much that we couldn’t pass (though there were at least half a dozen close calls of getting stuck and rolling over). But alas we made it and arrived at an empty house because the two lion research cars were stuck in the mud and Meggan and Ingela were being rescued by a third party. Monday-Tuesday: With all the rain we got lots of mixed reports, mostly saying “don’t even try” to go either to Bariadi through the western corridor or to Loliondo. Well, we had arranged to get a functioning land rover and decided to try out luck with Loliondo. We made it there in once piece (about a 5 hour drive), no problems and spent one night there to do district level introductions. Wednesday-Thursday: We decided that with two days of no rain the western corridor should be okay and so we (minus Dennis who didn’t need to come b/c we knew there was no way we were going to be able to get to Maswa and thus we completely scrapped that part of the trip) headed to Bariadi. Now, Bariadi is the whole reason I am back in TZ. It was that district councilman (DC) who made an issue of things that then required we get a letter from TAWIRI who then required I get back in the country. I think it was safe to say that Emmanuel and I were both nervous going into this meeting. We had a letter from TAWIRI and we had the district natural resources officer with us, yet from all the stories we expected to still get chewed up and spit out. The first few minutes of the meeting were tense and the DC was rude to Emmanuel and threw him some curve balls, but he recovered well and after explaining my project, and then me saying that I had nothing to add, the DC switched to English (something he refused to do in previous meetings) and spent the next 15 minutes telling me all about his 21 day trip to the US in 2004. It was more like a monologue rather than a conversation, but when it was over he said welcome to the district and that others are to help me (others down the chain of command like the natural resources officer with us). Frankly we were shocked, but glad to be heading back to Seronera so soon. Along the way home we stopped by Lake Victoria since I had never been there and bought some tilapia. I entertained myself by talking to the many children who were shocked that I knew Swahili.

The road to the Lake was iffy, and we definitely did some sliding, wheel spinning, and got really muddy, but didn’t get stuck. There was also more water on the road in the park, but nothing that posed a major threat. Friday-Sunday: I was glad to be back on Thursday because that meant I could go on the camping/hiking trip to Lake Natron (E of Serengeti) and Lengai. Around 9 on Friday morning and in a caravan of 5 cars (a total of 11 people, with 3 more meeting us at the campsite) we all headed East. I was riding with Anne, a cheetah researcher and we saw a cheetah on the way out so got to go in for a closer look J.

The trip took us until about 6 that evening. The drive was long and hot, but beautiful with all the greenness from the rain we’ve had. Near Lake Natron it looks a lot like the southwestern US. Martin and Felix stopped by the nearby village to find guides for our climb up Lengai (I believe it is about 12,000 feet though everyone says it is harder than Kilimanjaro because it is so steep and you just go strait up). The group decided they wanted to take a different route than usual, along the back side of the mountain so rather than leaving at midnight to drive to the mountain, we had to leave at 10 b/c we had a long drive to the backside of the mountain for our alternative path. We made some dinner, but I couldn’t eat it, I felt nauseous. We then went to bed (at about 8:15) and it was so hot I was just laying in my tent sweating. I didn’t get sleep and wasn’t particularly thrilled about the climb, but got in the car nonetheless. I ate a quick PB and J sandwich (since I didn’t eat dinner) and was trying to decide if I really wanted to climb as we headed towards the mountain. I decided I didn’t and was still not felling tip top, but then we went off road to get there, going through car high grass on a mountain side with deep crevices (from lava flows). We could only see like 3 feet in front of the car so my adrenaline shot up and once we stopped (when our cars couldn’t climb the mountainside anymore) I was feeling much better (gota love adrenaline). So I decided I really should give the climb a try. Well, there is no path, it is really steep, you basically head strait up and I was breathing hard right away. Anyway, within a half hour I threw up, I just felt awful. Afterwards I headed up a little more, then needed to rest and told the others to go ahead while one of the two guides stayed with me. I rested, and then threw up again and that is when I decided not to keep going up (I had no strength left and couldn’t eat or even drink water to gain it back). We headed back down (remember this is all in the middle of the night) and when we finally got to the cars I curled up on the back seat and went to sleep. I awoke at about 5:30am when Meggan and Felix, who had turned around after about halfway, returned. We took one car back to the campsite (which was nice b/c I still felt sick and needed to sleep, and it had cooled off enough I could actually bare laying in my tent). I slept until it was too hot to remain in my tent (about 9:30) and then just sat outside reading in a chair, drinking lots of water and eating a little. Everyone else (well three people didn’t go on the climb) got back at like noon or one. Turns out no one made it to the top, the guide who stayed with them was drunk and didn’t really know the way and they were encased in clouds at the top. They couldn’t tell how much more they had to go, everyone was exhausted and tired, they knew the guide didn’t really know how much further, so they turned back (a smart thing to do I think). They got back, went to bed and then at 3pm I, the three people who didn’t climb, and a few others we for a walk/hike along a river (about 45 minutes) until we came to a beautiful waterfall and we went swimming. I was feeling better, though still tired b/c I hadn’t eaten a lot, but the walk was good. We returned to camp relaxed and after dinner everyone was pretty pooped so we went to bed pretty early. On Sunday we left by 8 or 8:30am and took a slightly different way back. It was really beautiful, still really green and we went right through the migration, saw quite a few lions, and essentially had a grand old time (we didn’t get back until about 7). Overall, all our bad luck seemed to happen on the first day of our week and afterwards things worked out better. I was pretty exhausted after running all around the ecosystem (other than Saturday I spent at least 5 hours everyday in a car), but overall it was fun and a success.

Lengai

Lake Natron Area

The Waterfall...we stood underneith for a great shower and went further back to where there was a really strong flowing current that we could play in.

Along the way home....

Rest stop....

The migration....

These vultures were just waiting for this zebra to die. The zebra was fine other than its front leg was injured (so as soon as a lion or heyena showes up it will be dead), but for now it was just eating and these vultures just kept coming. It was very eerie.

Lion Cubs...

Well, I'm off to the field tomorrow and here is the plan:

Sunday: Travel to Seronera/Serengeti (in a car that maxes out at 60kph).

Monday: Travel from Seronera to Bariadi (though reports from the area suggest it is raining hard and rivers are flooding).

Tuesday: Meet with the district commissioner of Bariadi to get permission for our field team to work there (this is the guy whose fault it is that I'm here. He is the reason we are behind schedule. He is the devil).

Wednesday: Try to go to Maswa Game reserve headquarters (about a 5% chance given the reports of rain in the area, even in the dry season this place is difficult and long to get to).

Thursday: Travel to Loliondo (requires going from the more southwestern part of the Serengeti ecosystem to the northeastern part, in a car by the way with only two seat an four people).

Friday: Introductions to Loliondo district commissioner (we'll have to watch out for the bandits that apparently are in the area, thus all valuables will stay in Serengeti).

Saturday: Return to Seronera/Serengeti and/or try to climb Lengai (though with the rains the chances of climbing Lengai are low, but don't worry mom and dad, the boots you bought me will come in handy getting our car out of all the mud we are sure to get into).

Thereafter: To Be Determined, but likely in Seronera with internet access a little so I'll check back in with you all then.

Wish me luck ;)

Hi all,

Here is a picture of my little Christmas tree that I brought with me from the US for our house here in TZ. I figured if I was forced to miss most of the holiday season I'd just bring it along with me. I wasn't going to decorate the tree until Dec 1, but it turns out that I'll be leaving for the field Dec 2, and thus wouldn't have as much time to appreciate the tree unless I broke down and decorated early. So the other night, while listening to Christmas music on my computer I decorated the little tree. :)

Well, we got it. The letter from TAWIRI to the DC (political head) of Bariadi District. Dennis, Emmanual (one of our team leaders) and I went in at 9 am this morning and after a short lecture on how I should be in the country (though if I were to leave again I just to need to let our field team know, which of course they did, but alas, don't look for logic), they wrote the letter and we picked it up by 2 pm! Was it worth a plane ticket here and back? Well we didn't have much choice, se la vi.

Hello all,

Yes, surprise (or it was at least for me), I'm back in TZ. I found out a week and a half ago that I needed to return to TZ to talk with the head of TAWIRI (the research institution that grants research clearance). TAWIRI, or rather a particular individual is being difficult for no real reason other than to be difficult and insisted I had to be in the country while the SF field team was collecting my data. We know this isn't true, but he wouldn't budge so it was "how soon can you leave" and well now I'm here. In typical TZ fashion, I found out after arriving that just yesterday (as I was somewhere over the Atlantic) we found out this particular person is retiring today. The new person seems like he is on much less of a power trip, so while it is still probably good that I'm here, things should go relatively more smoothly (keep your fingers crossed).

I have to say it is very surreal being here, probably b/c it was such a quick decision. That and my parents were out for Thanksgiving so just four days ago I was cooking a 12 lb turkey for the first time (very exciting). Then, to make things even more surreal I got bumped to world business class from Amsterdam to Kilimanjaro (an 8 hr flight). I actually slept for 4 hours in a deep sleep (I think my first time ever on a flight). Nice reclining chairs, footrests, wide seats, etc. The food was good, the ice cream was great, and the dessert wine was fabulous! J We each got our own little TV, nice noise minimizing headphones, socks, even a toothbrush and tooth paste.

On a side note, yet just as surreal, on my little individual screen I watched “An Inconvenient Truth”. As I’m flying over Sudan, Al Gore is talking about how areas like Niger and Darfur are likely going to have even more drought problems as climate change continues to happen. The movie discusses problems of CO2 emissions with the US (as we all know) being the largest producer of greenhouse gasses and the increasing droughts, rains and other extreme weather events that result. All this as I’m heading to Tanzania where there are power cuts 7 days a week (and as you’ll remember they’ve been rationing power here since June) because the country relies on hydroelectric power and last years awful drought has left the reservoirs really low. Even in rural Tanzania people acknowledge climate change and here, in one of the poorest countries in the world I have seen advertisements on TV promoting solar power. Yet in the US, where we need to be changing our energy consumption we still predominantly use coal power. So if you have not seen “An Inconvenient Truth”, watch it, you have the electricity (and responsibility) to do.

So despite the power rationing, I’ll try to keep updating my blog. I’ll be here for 3.5 weeks and then return home for Christmas, only to return again in early January (most likely). So stay tuned for the newest installments of “Jen in Africa”. :)

Hi all,

Brad and I returned back to the US on Thursday. We had a great time in Norway (hiking, picking berries, fishing, and relaxing) and fun in Amsterdam (shopping and sight seeing). Thanks for staying tuned into my travels and thanks for all your comments. I'm not sure when I'll be going back, sometime October-January is my guess, I'll let you know when I know. Have a great fall!

That is Brad and I's new coordinates. We arrived safely and without drama. It is very odd going from Tanzania to Norway, definately a little culture shock. My brain is still in Swahili mode, but everyone is speaking Norweign so I can't understand or communicate, but we have our friend Eva (thank goodness). I saw a moose on the way to Eva's place, very exciting. Tomorrow we are heading to Trondheim via train (Brad is very excited) and then to Eva's parents house in some tiny rural town. We'll be back in touch when we return from the Norweign "bush". På gjensyn (see you later in Norweign).

PS Brad says to tell you all we are 3,887 miles from our home in MN.

Hi everyone,

Just a quick hello. Brad and I leave tomorrow night and head to Norway for 5 days :) We don't have power tomorrow so we just wanted to say kwa heri kwa sasa (goodbye for now) before heading to bed. Brad is doing great, he has finished his full course of medication and in between me working to get our SF field teams ready to go back into the field, Brad and I were able to sneak away to Tarangire National Park for a day. We went with three of Allen's kids (the ones I lived with last time I was here), a driver, and his kid. We were lucky enough to get a free room for the evening at Allen's new luxury tented camp :)

Jen and Brad here...with an update

We are back in Arusha, got back yesterday (two days early) because of a little (well not really that little) shida (problem). But let me preface the story with BRAD IS FINE NOW, so don't get too freaked out.....

Brad went out Tuesday morning with Ingela in the lion research car, which meant he got to go off road and get up close and personal with the wildlife.

When Brad got back he was dehydrated and hot (which wasn't that unusual for being off road for 8 hrs). In retrospect, this was likely the beginning of his fever. We went out for an afternoon game drive and Brad was exhausted. He ate a little dinner and went to bed. At about midnight that night I woke up and Brad was really warm so I used a head thermometer (this dinky little thing I got at some health fair that works like a mood ring and give you a rough idea of temperature). It showed around 101 or 102. I gave Brad two tylenol, which broke his fever (and he later told me he was then able to sleep soundly). Previous to the tylenol Brad was dreaming/hallucinating about stacking boxes and they wouldn't stack...after the tylenol they all stacked. The next morning we went on a 6:30 am game drive. I didn't know if Brad would be up for it after the fever that night, but he felt better and we went out. It was a great drive, but another long day.

When we got back at about 2 pm Brad went right to sleep. A little later I gave him some more tylenol because had a little fever, about 102, (we now had a real thermometer we got from a friend). He woke up and ate a little dinner, had some more tylenol because his temp was still over 101, and went to bed early again. Now here comes the scary stuff... At midnight I woke up and Brad was an oven! I took his temperature and it was 104.1!!! I promptly woke him up and gave him advil (we had run out of tylenol). He was breathing quickly and I tried to coach him to slow down his breathing and massaged his leg that had cramped up while shivering. I took his temp at 15 and then 30 minutes. When I was convinced it was going back down I set my alarm for each hour afterwards and took his temp. It got as low as 101, but then at about 4:30 he started freezing and by 5 am his temp was back at 104.6!!!!! It shot up too quickly for me to catch it on the way up. I gave him more drugs and again tried to calm his breathing down. Once he seemed to be slowing his breathing and his temp was again on the decline I got out of bed, called a called a friend at lion house (who has lived out in TZ for over 5 years) and I started bawling. Truthfully I was terrified and was ready to call flying doctors (a medical airplane service that will fly you to Nairobi for medical care - a service we had gotten Brad just before our trip). My friend told me flying doctors wouldn't come out for just a fever and we were leaving for what was to be a game drive at 6:30 am anyway with our driver. However, keep in mind we are in the middle of the Serengeti - a 6 hour drive back to Arusha. So I wasn't sure if I should call flying doctors anyway, wait and go strait to Arusha with our driver, buy a plane ticket on a commercial flight or what. My friend looked in her "Where there is no doctor book", which mentioned that fevers over 40C (104F) need to be brought down immediately. I made Brad strip down, took away all his blankets (he wasn't thrilled), got a cool cross breeze going in our room, and started packing to leave. When the driver came we packed up and headed back to Arusha (instead of going to the NCA, staying in Karatu for the night, then heading back to Arusha today (Friday), via Lake Manyara National Park). I had borrowed the real thermometer from my friend, which was critical b/c I was still hourly or more monitoring Brad's temperature and at 9 (four hours after his last dose of advil) his temp was back at 104.5!!! I of course gave him more drugs and wetted an extra shirt to put on his forehead. I would hold the wet shirt out the window, cool it with the wind (thank goodness it was cool outside) and make him hold it to his forehead until it warmed up again. I did this on and off for most of the ride, and preempted what I was worried would be his fourth 104 plus temp by giving him more drugs and using the cooling cloth when his temp got back to 103.5 about 3.5 hours later.

Keep in mind for the first half of this 6 hour trip we were on dusty, bumpy, awful roads, Brad couldn't wait until we reached pavement (at which point he was able to nap a little, I had napped for about 30 minutes on the bumpy road, I was just exhausted with worry and lightly sleeping for two nights while monitoring Brad). I was trying all along to be calm cool and collective around Brad, but I was only barely holding it together. If it would have been me I would have been fine, but Brad....well we could not get to Arusha fast enough. When we got to Arusha we went straight to the doctor and luckily (After a blood, stool and urine test) we had a diagnosis. A stomach bacterial infection and possible amoebas. We got drugs for both, more advil and got back to the Arusha house.

After forcing some oatmeal down Brad took his first dose of Cipro and amoeba medicine. After a shower, a nap, and a few hours Brad's fever was below 101 for the first time in almost 2 days. I don't think I've ever been so happy and relieved. I've monitored his temperature since and it hasn't gotten above 99.5! :) His energy is still a little low, and his stomach and intestines aren't perfect yet, but he is well on the way to recovery!

Brad here...I really am fine now :)