Everyday A New Adventure

Woah. 9 days of baboon study and the research period is officially over! I was enlisted to write the ‘news from the field’, which I managed to accomplish in a half hour before it was published on the website:

Jambo! With only 2 weeks spent in a traditional academic setting, classes here in Tanzania ended as quickly as they had begun. Many of us were a little astounded to find ourselves at the threshold of ‘directed research’, something which seemed so unbelievably official and scientific. For the first time I really appreciated that I had in front of me the opportunity to practice authentic research in an exceptional setting under incredibly qualified instructors. With 3 different thesis options, everyone effortlessly found their niche and within days of selecting and officially enrolling we were in the field!
I found myself pulled towards the ecology option, which was invested in baboon behavioral studies. Four days into data collection my small team of 6 has spent at least 20 hours searching out and observing the Olive baboon within Lake Manyara National Park and the surrounding village. The complete synopsis of research can be described as this: we spend X-amount of time driving until we spot baboons, we all fall silent and jump out of the hatches, clipboards ready and eyes open, we record data, pointing out injuries, male-infant interactions, mating behavior, and vocalizations to each other as is relevant to our personal projects, and fervently scribble all over our data sheets until the very last baboon strolls from view (hoping that we can read the chicken scratch come the time of analyzing the written information). It may sound dry, but to us it’s unbelievably captivating. We are beginning to recognize certain social groups which we see daily, and have a special fascination with our bi-pedal primate which we call the ‘hominid’. (Why he chooses to walk on 2 and not 4 limbs is currently being debated among us). We secretly scold particularly rough juveniles as they play with younger siblings, and adore watching the newborns learn to climb even the smallest little tree. Watching a particularly large and powerful male walk close by has yet to lose its hair-raising intensity. Yesterday, we had the ultimate ‘acclimation’ experience when several baboon ‘children’ climbed onto the hood of our land cruiser to play with our antenna and rub their sensitive little fingers over the hood of the car, producing a long squuueeeeeekkkk.
We still have 4 days left of data collection, and then we pursue the write up, and maybe even publishing!
- Chelsea Parise

Above pretty thoroughly explains the process of looking for baboons and then rapidly recording the relevant information. I no longer only have 20 hours of observation logged; now it’s much closer to a total of 60 hours. Looking back, every single day was unbelievably interesting, with at least one random surprise and unanticipated experience occurring every single day. Here’s a short recap (in random order):

One of the research days our entire morning and afternoon was uneventful. We should have been suspicious and suspected something, but we still thought all the weird occurrences were sporadic and not going to occur consistently. We leave the park at exactly 6:15 pm, only 15 minutes late of closing. We were glad to have avoided the charge that coincides with a late exit. On the road out we ran into Clinton and Jiyong, who were on the other environmental management research group, we weren’t going to just leave them and offered them a ride. Everyone was in the crowded car, happy and tired, very glad that the long day was over. We made it out of the driveway, under the park arches, and about 4 meters up the beginning of the hill heading home before the car stalls. Then we turn the engine over, stall, engine starts, stall, and over and over over over over over. We finally realized we weren’t going anywhere. 2 hours later, we were still sitting in the dark vehicle, getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. The problem was a lack of petrol, which was awesome because it was a problem that was easily repaired. One of the guides and drivers told me later that it would have been extremely dangerous to run out of gas inside of the park, as the dark is obviously not a good situation when there are wild animals everywhere, but also because the park staff would not have allowed any of our SFS people to enter the park and rescue us. We escaped from that day relatively unharmed (except for the millions of mosquito bites which covered 90% of my body).

On another day we travelled deep into the national park (which is the beginning of every famous adventure story) in order to visit the famous hot springs. It took us over 2 hours one way to get there, with plenty of stops for baboon observation on the way. Finally we fell out of the land cruiser, our muscles hardly functional after sitting for so long. We all ran down the crude stone steps to see the steaming rivers with their yellow sulfur deposit banks and extremophiles. The six of us nearly tumbled into the stream as we slammed into the person in front of us who had apparently stopped suddenly for no reason at all. But there had been a very important reason for stopping. No more that 100 meters away was a lone male buffalo. You see, Cape buffalo are the #2 deadliest animal in Africa just behind the hippopotamus. They are very dangerous at all times, but notoriously dangerous when they are alone. The buffalo are very skiddish and can’t see, but have an excellent sense of hearing and smell. They’re sensitive, jumpy, and completely blind but accurate enough to do serious damage to anything in their path. These characteristics make them extremely unpredictable and something to be taken very seriously. The locals here, who have seen everything and fear nothing, get very nervous around buffalo. We looked at the buffalo, which was looking at us, and didn’t move, deciding that was the best option. We were all only 1 step away from being able to touch the hot springs. Slowly we all slid down to the next step, bent down…. And then we all saw the buffalo (with unbelievable speed) turn its massive bulk towards us, take 4 very purposeful steps in our direction, and let out a low snort followed by a violent head toss. Most scurried 5 steps upward and turned around, but some continued to run until they locked themselves in the safety of the land cruiser. We spent the next 45 minutes watching the buffalo graze, trying to decide if it could get up the steps and kill us, or if we were safe. We never did get to touch those springs, but being close to such a treacherous African animal was way more exciting. (and if you haven’t been able to guess the cape buffalo is my favorite animal here).

Some days were full of tiny oddities. One day while observing baboons, a pair of brothers carrying firewood stumbled onto our path. Not a huge deal, most people in Africa get their cooking wood directly from unprotected forest land. However, one of the boys had an obvious arm deformity and was severely malnourished. We stopped observations to figure out how to help him get the wood down the hill, since he was having trouble balancing it. Eventually we threw the wood onto our cruiser roof and drove it down for the poor kid, where a motorcycle had offered to drive the wood the rest of the way. Another day we did observations just under a tree where fruit fell onto us from ridiculous heights. The fruit from the sky gathered quite a bit of velocity and was extremely painful if you were unfortunate enough to be in one of their downward paths. Also, we narrowly dodged fecal contact which also occasionally found its way down towards our position.
Sometimes we had a very hard time finding baboons, and had to follow little roads deep into farmland. Here we talked to locals, asking them how many, how often, and what time of day they had seen the animals. The locals were always happy to point us in the right direction and the ‘right direction’ often led us to very interesting places. Once we went out on foot following a tiny path which led us in the direction of a small lake. We walked through the woods, constantly moving out of the way when boys on bicycles passed us, with water filled buckets on the back of the bikes teetering with the weight of fresh fish. At one point on this particular walk our instructor walked right off the path out into the middle of the grassy field. We were all alarmed because there are ticks, snakes, and who really knows what but she was following a ‘baboon path’ and we understood that we would sacrifice our very lives for this research (note the sarcasim). Also, she’s the boss and very difficult to reason with, so we just let her go. Without our instructor we continued down the hardly visible path until we broke out onto a clearing. For miles and miles all you could see was flat yellow grass. It was so beautiful, and if you stared hard enough you could see the blue water of the lake where the fishermen were getting their fish. We were tempted to walk the entire way to the lake, but it was quite a distance and there were obviously no baboons in this location so there was no excuse to continue. We all hiked back to the car, and didn’t have to wait long for our professor to show up. We were all a bit confused when she demanded the black plastic trash bag and “quickly!”. She had apparently found a hippopotamus skeleton on her way, and used the bag to snatch a few vertebrae. We were very glad for the industrial strength of the bag as there was still plenty of flesh and bugs on the bone, and it needed to be buried when we returned in order to complete the decomposition process. Another day we followed a local farmer, who said that he frequently saw baboons on his property. We followed him through is banana fields. The banana trees are beautiful with their huge green leaves filtering the sun, making everything feel slightly unreal. Their flowers are strange; huge purple buds which are extremely dense. Every time a petal falls it exposes a row of flowers which grow a row of bananas. We continued out of the grove, crossing over streams and climbing over rocks. The rivers got bigger, and their roar echoed off of the trees in the forest, which we suddenly found ourselves in. Some of the water was travelling down the mountain outside of streams. Loose water was rushing past the stones we were walking on, only a few centimeters deep, which was very odd. We reached the very top of the mountain, and found no baboons, just plenty of water and mosquitoes. It’s difficult to describe, but the forest was unbelievable. On our way down one of the dogs barked several times (and was then kicked HARD because no one in Africa thinks pets exist), and we heard a baboon call. We quietly walked towards the sound and emerged into a clearing. In the middle of the clearing was a HUGE tree with baboons jumping from branch to branch. We were able to collect data and enjoy the forest for a little bit longer.

On a particularly slow day, when we were cursing the lack of baboon troops in the area and complaining about the overall boring atmosphere, we really tempted our unmistakably interesting fate. We came the back way towards a road that we had avoided every time we came to Lake Manyara National Park. We didn’t recognize the flooded road from the new angle and had committed to conquering the water soaked way before we finally realized what we had gotten ourselves into. The trick with driving land cruisers through muddy conditions is to go fast enough that the weight of the car does not rest on the mud and therefore does not sink into a self-made hole which is impossible to get out of, but not so fast that you skid out of control and fall into another pre-made rut. Our driver, Festo, left the road favoring ‘dryer’ ground and rejecting the pond in front of us which used to be official national park roadway. I’m sure it seemed like a great idea for a moment, but we only made it 4 meters into the clearing before we sank into incredibly dense mud. There wasn’t any doubt about it, everyone was going to have to get out and help push the car out of the mud. And everyone was going to have to do it quickly, as it was 5:10 pm and the park would be closing in less than an hour. Myself and another student both had open cuts on our feet and were not allowed to step out of the car to help due to bacteria/microbes/mostly worms that inhibit standing water here. It meant I had the pleasure of videotaping the ongoing lets-get-the-car-out-of-the-park-alive effort. We attempted to use the cable and gear, tying the cable to a tree and expecting the gear to wrench the car out of the mud with minimal effort on our part. The land cruiser was an original 1990 or older and shuddered, smoked, and stalled without moving a single inch out of the mud. That plan had failed. Everyone stood in front and behind the car several times each, trying to see which direction was more partial and realistic for pushing the car out of the mud. There were at least 2 manpower fails and everyone was getting a little nervous. Not only was the park closing and it was getting dark, but we were no more than a mile away from the hippo pool, which obviously contains hippos. We were stuck around dusk, a time when the hippopotamus leaves the safety of his pool to forage on dry land. It meant that we had a high probability of being very close to Africa’s most dangerous animal. However, rocks were gathered, jammed behind the wheels and the car was finally pushed with the correct direction with an effective amount of effort and restored the car to a workable path. The irony of this situation is that we ended up using the path which was completely flooded, the same one we had avoided, and it was a piece of cake to drive through.

By far our most exciting DR story is our repeated consistent encounters with the same herd of elephants. I will never forget the very first time that I saw them. Within the park it’s extremely necessary to be careful with your speed of driving, because you never really know what’s going to be around the corner. Many times, we rounded a corner to find ourselves driving dangerous close to a herd of elephants. This day we were driving at a reasonably fast speed and stopped closer than I would have liked. I mostly felt bad, at being invasive to their personal space and expected them to walk away quickly. However, they did not, instead slowly walking past our car until we were in the middle of a herd about 10 individuals strong. This was all very exciting. We noticed a female walking towards us from the bushes. We all kept an eye on her since she was showing no signs of deviating of her course, which seemed to be projected right through our vehicle. That’s when we first noticed the very very very young elephant behind her. Every single person in the entire car stopped breathing, put their cameras down, and gripped their canvas seats. Not many things, including hippopotamus and cape buffalo, are as dangerous as a mother elephant. Mother elephants, especially new mothers or high ranking females, are very ‘freaked’ about their young and will go to extreme measures to ensure it’s safe. If that means charging everything in sight, then so be it. We watched her as she walked up to our car and stopped just short of our front bumper to graze. Her baby walked past her, closer to us, to play with a piece of grass no less than 1 meter from my window. Another elephant, probably this same mothers last calf and little baby’s older sibling, walked past both and came so close to us that I almost shifted over in my seat away from the window. If I had felt like it, I could have reached my hand out of the window with no effort whatsoever and stroked the face of this ginormous creature. We and the elephants stayed like this for a very long time before they moved away on their own. Every single day for the rest of DR (about 4) we saw the same herd with the same baby.

Right now we’re stuck at camp working on analysis and rough drafts. Not very exciting. Only 13 days left. I can’t believe it.

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