A Tour of Camp

Our lovely tents

Colleen and my tent

Siri's much-used hammock

The inside of our tent

The pavillion where we ate

So I thought that I would finally give you all a tour of our camp since it’s been about 2 weeks since we’ve gotten here (we are at the halfway point, how crazy!).  Our camp is about a 10 minute walk from the town of Olasiti.  Olasiti is not much of a town, it’s got a few shops and bars, but that’s about it.  The road to camp is gravel and if you take it all the way, it leads to Tarangire National Park.  Our camp is off of this road, and is a public campsite enclosed in a nice little stone wall.  There are two permanent pavilions here; one is ours and the other is for the other campers who come.  We get new campers just about every day here.  Typically, safari companies take their visitors to one camp for a night, they go on a safari, and then they move to another campsite and park the next day.  It’s very unusual for a group to stay as long as we are staying.  Our tents are the nice canvas ones, and we sleep three to a tent.  The bathroom facilities are probably some of the best we have had during our travels here.  We have hot water (sometimes) and there is even a sink!  Of course, we still don’t have flush toilets but that’s quite alright.  I am happy to say that I am both dirtier and cleaner than I have been in a while.  The dirt here is the fine, black, silty stuff that gets everywhere, so when I go into the field or into town, my legs get super dirty.  But, I have taken a shower pretty much every day since I have been here.  What else…well, the other pavilion sells soda, so that is kind of refreshing on a hot day.  Mostly, the landscape here is a dusty desert.  There are some trees, but it’s pretty flat and you can see for miles on all sides of camp.  Sometimes, when it’s clear enough you can even see Kilimanjaro in the distance. 

Today we had the unfortunate event of being caught in a dust storm.  Lis, Hani, Abby, and I started walking to the market when we heard a ton of thunder.  We looked to our right and saw a huge mass of dark clouds and a ton of dust being picked up from the ground.  At first I thought it was rain that was causing the dust to fly up from the ground, but we soon realized that it must be a huge dust storm.  We ducked in a mud hut where they sold souvenirs just in time-the wind picked up and dust started flying everywhere.  It was so windy that the whole hut shook!  I felt like we were in a tornado and it was actually a little scary.  But, after the rain, dust, and thunder, the storm passed and we continued on our way to the market.  At the market we bought beads, bananas, and oranges.  I was so excited that they had bananas!  For some reason, I have been craving bananas here.  We don’t get a ton of them served to us by the cooks. 

When we got back, I read for a while in the hammock and then colored.  We have adopted a new pet at camp (our last pet, the turtle, was let go in the park so he could be free again).  They found a tiny little puppy who was pretty mangy looking and had fleas.  So Zoe and Dave groomed him, picked the fleas off of him, and fed him crackers and peanut butter.  He was much happier once he wasn’t scared.  Later, his mom showed up and we decided to let him go back with her.    

Dinner tonight was ugali, plantain stew, and ground beef.  We are kind of getting sick of ugali, but they did serve us bananas!  Tomorrow we are planning on going to the secondary school to try to volunteer there.  Apparently the primary school has exams all this week and then we are on break, so volunteering at the primary school is no longer an option.  For lack of better things to do, I have begun to write up my research report.  And if I still need things to occupy my time, I can always help out with other people’s projects.  This morning I helped Carla collect ants for her experiment.  She is looking at aggression behavior in ants and wants to fight ants that are on different trees. 

Well, today has been a pretty lazy day.  Everyone is a little tired from last night.  It was an awesome party and we had tons of music and candy.  The costumes were great too!  I was a wizard, due to the fact that my nickname has become “the wizard” here in the field.  Chelsea was a daladala and Shaye was Jen’s research project title: vigilance behavior while zebras drinking.  It was super cute!  Overall, we had an awesome time and we are considering hosting another party next weekend.