Submitted by Amanda Paul on the 2018 winter session program in Tanzania sponsored by the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology…
To kick off this week, we all went on a five hour hike in the Nou Highland Forest to the most beautiful waterfall you could imagine. The water was insanely freezing, but it was so much fun. Our time spent with the Iraqw People continued and we were all able to sit down with an Iraqw man around the campfire and learn more about their culture. He told us a lot about their environmental policies and how they conserve the forest and the water. It was a lot more organized and official than I expected since each village has environmental committees that work together in a co-managed system.
This week, we arrived at one of my favorite places, Yaeda Valley! Here we stayed with the Hadza Tribe and it exceeded all of my expectations. They are the last hunter-gatherer tribe and the only tribe that men and women are equal in. A huge part of this is because both men and women are able to independently feed themselves. A man cannot say “if you do not do this, I will not feed you” because a woman is capable of providing for herself and her children. They communicate through a unique click language and were so welcoming and kind. We got to dig for tubers with the women and make arrows with the men. One of my favorite days on the program thus far was when we went hunting with the Hadza. We split into groups of 2-3 and in a torrential downpour raced after a hunter, crawled through thorn thickets and scaled mountains following tracks. It was so ridiculous and we all had a blast.
The next stop on our journey is Karatu! I got to experience a farmers market (who knew they loved dried sardines so much here??) and then we visited a local orphanage. They have 75 kids in total and adoption is unheard of, though thankfully a lot of the kids are sponsored to get an education. They had cows, chickens and a garden to help provide food. They had a scrapbook with a lot of pictures of the kids and their stories which was really hard to read. One kid was there because his mentally ill mom tried to bury him alive. A lot of the kids were just abandoned. My experience in the orphanage opened my eyes to an entirely different area of concern in Tanzania. We’ve learned a lot about land and women’s rights issues, but this taught me about issues for the mentally ill. Children with mental illnesses are often left outside to die or hidden in homes. In a lot of areas of Tanzania, albino children are killed for their body parts or because they are viewed as demons. It was really difficult to hear and try to wrap my head around it all. Being here is definitely a reality check in so many different ways.
