My first safari of many more to come

Today I realized exactly why I wanted to come to Africa in the first place, and even though there is a huge beetle walking past me as I write this I couldn’t be more giddy. This morning we had Wildlife Ecology for an hour and a half and we talked about baboons the entire time. So obviously it was a wonderful class. After lunch we took our first trip to the nation park Lake Manyara, and it was incredible. For about 5 hours we drove in our jeeps standing with our heads out the roof. A lot of the time was spent frantically scribbling down notes about all the animals and counting them but we did have time to get some awesome pictures. There were elephants that were about 10 meters away from our car and the baboons were running all around it. We also saw giraffes, warthogs, dikdiks, impallas, zebras, wildebeests, cape buffalo and probably a bunch of other animals that I can’t think of right now.

It was quite the workout standing up in the car and trying not to fall since there were a lot of bumps and ditches but it was totally worth it. I probably did too much picture taking and not enough writing, its sometimes hard to remember that I’m here for school and not just to see animals. It was also a great time to bond with some people in the group because you were in close proximity with 6 other people in the car.

When we returned back to camp around seven we were all dirty (I was asked if i was really tan, turns out just dirt) and hungry. To our surprise there was pizza waiting for us for dinner, everyone was pretty happy about this. Between class and being out in the field I have been learning the most incredible things about animals, which makes me love them all even more. One thing that was sad is in Lake Manyara there are poachers that go after zebras, so in one area they ran frantically from the cars because they are terrified of people. We did get to get really close to some of them and we even saw a baby nursing from a mare. I then ended the day with a HOT shower because the guys figured out how to turn on the water heater. So no more cold showers here.

Yesterday some of us went into town, which is always an adventure. The locals love to ask the girls to marry them, (don’t worry Mike I haven’t been asked yet) and two girls were asked yesterday while we were in town which is always entertaining. As we were walking back there was a stampede of children coming out us since they had just gotten out of school. One of the little girls asked me what my name was and I told her Jessica and when I asked her what her name was she got a big grin on her face and said her name was Jessica also. But all of the other little girls started giggling when she said this. Then they all started screaming my name, so I’m pretty positive they were pulling my leg. Clever ones they are. I’m loving it more and more everyday. I’ll try to upload some pictures but tonight I’m just too tired and I have a lot of work to do, we have 3 papers due in like 5 days. Joy.