Manyara Ranch

Today the African Wildlife Team visited Manyara Ranch, located 80 km South of Arusha. The ranch was bought in April of 2001 as the first purchase under the Tanzanian Land Conservation Trust (TLCT). This trust is set-up to allow the community members (those living within the trust) to choose how they want to develop the land, but within a conservation framework. One of our projects will be to build a sustainable development plan for the area based on things like eco-tourism, beekeeping, and sustainable ranching.

The Manyara Ranch is in a uniquely important location. It is located between two National Parks: Tarangire & Lake Manyara. Several kinds of animals (zebras, wildebeests, elephants, etc) use the area as a migration corridor, essential to their survival during the dry season. By creating the trust, AWF helped to save this land from agriculture and excessive ranching, which would destroy the corridor and severely damage these animals’ migration routes. Now it’s time to figure out how to make this a sustainable enterprise so that people can enjoy it for generations to come.

AWF has already done some very good things. They have established a cap on the number of cattle that can graze the area to 6,000 and are teaching 63 traditional Masaai families how to fatten their cows and sell them after 5 years to get the peak price, instead of keeping their cows 12 years and selling for a very low price. They have also moved a boarding school, which had been in squalid conditions (4 children in one bed!) and was located in the middle of the migration corridor (putting the kids in danger from elephant attacks) to a better location, completely refurbishing the school.

Our trip out there was just to get to know the landscape and to help us see what might be improved. Little did we know we were in for an amazing treat! The last thing we did was talk to four Masaai women who are working on a tree planting project for local schools. See them below in their traditional garb:



Most exciting for me, just like an official National Park, we saw gobs of animals. Hundreds of zebra, a handful of giraffe, impalas, five ostriches, and herds of wildebeests! The game scouts, local Masaai trained to protect the park from poachers, met us in the middle of the park and gave us a ride in their open air truck. Standing there with the wind in your face, ducking from the scary spikes on every tree with wild animals that you’ve only seen on TV is probably going to be one of the most memorable adventures of my life. I can’t believe how lucky we are to be doing this as our jobs!!!

The Road Less Traveled

Over the past two days we've been traveling by "road" to Arusha from Dar Es Salaam. I have quotes around "road" because I never in my life imagined a longer and bumpier ride in the back of a Land Rover as we had for the last two days.

It started off great - paved road between Dar Es Salaam and Dodoma (the official capital where parliament sits). Along the way we saw many, many villages with what seemed like all of their citizens out and about - chatting on the street, selling their goods, or just outside the city hauling large bundles of sticks on their heads or bikes for the fires they would build tonight. We stopped for lunch in a town called Morogoro with a population of around 4 million. Then, we went to visit two farms that are using the Kickstart MoneyMaker Pump - one a farm about 6km from the main road and one was a prison, where they were using farming to teach criminals how to live without committing crimes. Both said the pumps were helping them immensely - the first farmer's crop had increased over 100%!!

A late start and a bunch of delays had us getting to Dodoma at around 9:30pm. After it got completely dark at around 7pm, you started to see each villiage had a couple of camp fires and people were still out on the streets. I have to admit our driver's driving was very scary. He usually came within a couple inches of the cars we were passing AND the people on the side of the road. Occasionally he would speed up when he saw someone, honking and seemingly trying to hit them as if it were a game. That part was not fun!

The second day was by far the worst road trip I've ever been on. The road was just about the worst dirt road I've ever been on and we were on it for about 8 hours. I happened to be sitting in the back of the Land Rover, just above the wheel wells, so I got the hardest bumps. We hit our heads and bounced all over the truck all day, stopping for lunch finally at 3pm. We had left late and unlike in the US, there really wasn't a closer place to stop - no McDonald's at every exit and village! In fact, I haven't seen any fast food restaurants at all in Tanzania yet!

Along the way we saw three baboons, two dik diks, my teammate saw some Vetter Monkeys, AND, you won't believe this, but we saw a black mamba. It was scared by the car, so stood up just like a cobra and watched us. Luckily, we were very far away at this point, so what does our driver do? He backs up, while we still had the windows down, so we could get a better look at the deadliest snake on the planet. Luckily it had slithered away by the time he got close.

I did make it to Arusha safe and sound, but that is one trip I will NOT be repeating ever again. If you have a chance to donate to some kind of African Road Project - do it!

Our team made its first video today - check it out:

Mbudyo Island

Today was our day off. Since Tanzanians don't work on Sundays (they usually have at least a half-day on Saturdays), it's hard to get a training set-up. We had a little trouble deciding as a group what we would do on our free day, until we found out that the owner of the hotel had a boat and that we could take to one of two islands just a little ways out into the ocean in front of the hotel. We decided to go to the farther of the two, Mbudyo, which is technically a Marine Reserve.

The place was gorgeous (sorry, no pictures still - I'm hoping the internet in Arusha is much faster). It's an uninhabited island, so there wasn't much of a crowd - just the people that come via their own boats or possibly a ferry, but we never saw one come in. There was one grill there which served only seafood with rice or "chips" (french fries to us Americans). We got hassled right off of the boat by a sketchy guy telling us to pay to get into the reserve. Since he didn't have any official documentation - just a printout he'd taken, he couldn't convince me that he wasn't just trying to steal our money, so I refused to pay. Nothing happened to me, so I think I made the right choice!!

We swam in the clear water, which was very warm and I had fish and chips for lunch. The fish came looking just like a fish and was actually really good. While we were sitting there eating, we saw a few fishermen come up to the grill and sell their fish, a lobster, and even an octopus to the bar owner! It was extremely fresh and local! (Legal? I'm not quite sure.) Anyway, it was a good time and we avoided being spilled into the ocean on the way home even though the sea had gotten really rough. I have to admit I was pretty nervous for a while.

For dinner we went to Cine Club, which had a live band (The B Band) and made us a Tanzanian buffet. All of the food was excellent - there was curried rice, bananas (which did indeed taste like potatoes when cooked), chipatis (a tortilla-like thing), and we got to try goat. (I prefer beef.)

It was a really nice day. I'm sad to leave my nice ocean-front room tomorrow, but we'll be in Arusha by Tuesday and I'm ready to settle down!

Africa - Day 1

Well, I was going to put this post on the IBM Website, but me trying to upload one picture from Africa apparently crashed the entire site. So, I'll post it here instead - you may see this again when the site is back up:

Miraculously, both me and my bags made it to Dar Es Salaam on time Friday night! Africa, I have to say, is incredible - I've learned so much in a matter of 24 hours that it's never going to fit into one blog.

Friday night was a blur of meeting my teammates finally and adjusting to the hotel. They both are great! I looked everywhere in my room for something that might make me uneasy - mosquito, spider, scorpion, etc and nothing - the room was incredibly clean, cute, and comfortable! We're lucky enough to be training at the Kickstart Headquarters off the bat, so they suggested we stay in a simple hotel right on the ocean. So, I really can't complain about the view from outside my door either. Internet is slow here, so I'll post images later!

We started the day with a trip to Kickstart to learn about what our work with them would entail. It boils down to "We need help making our sales", and we'll be helping them with sales training, a cell phone system, and a few other things to help get their "Super MoneyMaker Pump" and their new product, the "Hip Pump" to poor farmers who need it.

They, then, took us on a harrowing journey downtown to a market where three of their vendors sold their products. Ok, it wasn't the scariest car ride I've ever been in, but let's just suffice it to say that there are very few traffic signals, people drive aggressively, even the paved roads are bouncy, I can't count how many pedestrians and bicyclists we almost hit, and we already saw the aftermath of a Dala-Dala (small public mini-bus) accident. However, the drivers knew what they were doing - you have to be paying attention to get anywhere in Dar Es Salaam! Once there, the market was ok - crowded, but not to the point where you were bumping into people constantly and full of essential items - this was not a touristy place.

After we finished there, we went to a strip mall to a place called "Chicken Hut" (I kid you not) for chakula cha mchana (lunch). I had the Ugali Kuku (chicken ugali). Ugali is one of the staples of Tanzanian culinary life. It is a cornmeal mush that they usually eat with their hands, roll into a ball, and dip in various sauces. In this case, I had a red, curry sauce and some beans to dip mine in.

I actually really liked it (especially the red sauce). It's very, very filling, however. During lunch and dinner, I learned an important lesson - eating out in Tanzania is not a quick affair. It takes 2-3 hours. It's probably partly because Tanzanians like to use their mealtimes to converse, but in our case, it was because the food took forever to come out - both times. During lunch, the food came out to people, one at a time, over the course of an hour, with the hungriest person, Anil, who had suggested lunch over 2.5 hours before, getting his last.

All-in-all, I am very impressed with everything in Tanzania. You get used to putting on bug spray before leaving the house pretty quick, and although there are mosquitos out at night, I've avoided being bitten thus far. (The official kill/bite ratio is 2:0 - Amber, two kills, Mosquitos, zero bites). I look forward to having a free day today and to traveling to Arusha on Monday & Tuesday!

Less Than Two Days

Finally, it's here! I leave in less than two days for Tanzania. I'm packed, everything fits, and I'm ready to get started on this adventure.

Work, however, is not ready for me to get started. Instead of winding down in a gentle, sloping manner, it seems to be ramping up - headed for the cliff of despair when I finally cut the cord and leave on Thursday. Our poor team has lost four people in the last few months - two of them left unexpectedly two weeks ago. Almost no amount of planning can prepare you for that, so we've been scrambling. Do I think the team will be fine...eventually? Of course, but right now it's pretty hectic.

That small bump aside, I plan to blog often when I'm in Tanzania. Although, I may do a bit more blogging on the external IBM Site, since that's what IBM wants. So, keep an eye on this blog and IBM's: https://www.adtech.internet.ibm.com/corporateservicecorps/countries/tanzania

Both should be exciting!

Glacier - Take Six

As promised, I owe you a Glacier trip report. This was my sixth trip to Glacier National Park in four years and it was my favorite trip yet. A simple report on a place like Glacier just couldn't do it justice, so I'm going to let my pictures do most of the talking:

Day 1-2: I took the Empire Builder (24-hour train trip) out to East Glacier this time, met Nathan, and stopped at Johnson's for dinner. July 19th was a special day as it was our Pi Anniversary and we celebrated with some delicious Huckleberry Ice Cream Pie. The next day, I decided to start off easy with a 7-mile hike to Rockwell Falls in Two Medicine. About 5 minutes into my hike we saw a moose with two calves. My trip could have ended there and I would have been happy:




Day 3: Nathan had 3.5 days off starting today, which is not normal, but was great! We started off hiking the 10.5-mile Ptarmigan Tunnel trail near Many Glacier. It's been on my list for a while and didn't disappoint!





Day 4: Nathan, his friend Matt, and I went up to Waterton (Canada) to do the Carthew-Alderson trail. I'm not sure if I dare say it was the best trail I've done in both Glacier & Waterton so far, but I think it was my favorite. The first part is through a lush, green forest with beautiful views up to a mountain pass. Then you descend onto three lakes that look like they were stolen from the cliffs of Ireland.





Day 5: Nathan and I decided to venture into the North Fork region of the park, the seldomly-visited NW corner of the park. On the way we stopped at the delicious Polebridge Bakery and then relaxed on the beach of Bowman Lake all afternoon.



Day 6: Nathan had a half-day off, so we did his favorite trail, the Beaver Pond loop. I've never seen it so full of flowers and we found some of the earliest strawberries were ripe - they were so delicious that they actually made up for the huckleberries not being ready yet!





Day 7: Nathan happened to be leading a group on the Highline Trail, the nation's 10th best trail according to backpacker magazine in 2005. I'd never done the whole thing and I added on a grueling vertical climb up to Grinnell Overlook, which I'm really glad I did! I have to say, the whole thing really did live up to the hype.





It was a fantastic trip and I was especially sad to leave. The next time I'll see Nathan we'll both be in Tanzania!

African Wildlife Foundation

I haven't written in a while and that's because I just got back from visiting Nathan in Glacier National Park. More to come on that in a later post.

For now, I just have to say that I have LESS THAN THREE WEEKS left before I head out to Tanzania. I officially got word while I was away that I will be primarily assigned to work with the African Wildlife Foundation. Our project will consist of working with community leaders to do a comprehensive market assessment and help AWF develop plans for investment and land use. We will be concentrating on two pieces of land, the Manyara Ranch and the West Kilimanjaro Ranch. What I'm most excited about is that AWF is not just trying to conserve this land, they're also looking for ways to develop it in such a way that the local population will be able to make money and live in harmony with the conservation efforts made. A win-win-win situation (third win is for me and my team of three that get to concentrate on the project:). I absolutely cannot wait to get started!!

For more information on the AWF, check out their website: African Wildlife Foundation.