So I told you I would try to update more often, so here is my attempt at an update more often. We had a non-program day a few days ago and it was lovely. We went to a tourist lodge to go swim, eat, and relax by the pool. And what a day of relaxing it was.  The lodges are such an oasis in Kenya, like an unrealistic slice of life completely non-reflective of the way most Kenyan’s would ever dream of living.  The lodges are beyond elegant (in fact, even nicer then what many Americans would ever dream of being able to have). Made up of marble floors, mosaic walls, lush plant life through the halls, huge glass windows, elaborately carved out pools, and a buffet that makes you forget you’re not home, the lodges are our time to pretend like we are not hard working students with homework waiting for us, but that we a just tourist relaxing and enjoying life.

It’s a strange thing to say that we enjoy feeling like tourists, so I suppose that is not the best way to phrase it. I mean, our most favorite thing to do while we are here is open up the roof hatches in our safari jeeps, go to Amboseli National Park to drive around and look at animals, then go to the lodges, eat like we were starving, and then go swimming. But when it comes to all that other tourist stuff, like being taken to big auditoriums to watch normal people dress up and dance, got to a set up of a Maasai cultural manyatta, and isolating yourself away from the rest of Kenya, not something that neither I nor this big group of students likes to do.  Perhaps the best way to phrase it would be to say that we do not appreciate the unauthentic aspects of Kenyan tourism, but the more college student oriented doing work for half a day then taking the rest of the day off, is something we appreciate much more.

So this was the second time we had been to a lodge since coming to Kenya. We went to two different lodges, one inside Amboseli, and the second right outside of the park. In my personal opinion the second lodge that we went to was much nicer, the pool was huge and elaborately shaped, with plenty of lung chairs sitting by the pool, and a fully stocked bar sitting in the shade of palm tree (not a native Kenyan species, just so you know). The sun was so intense, many of my classmates who normally have trouble getting brown back home were beat red by the end of the day (I was not, I was smart and wore sun screen. I know this pale Irish skin can only handle about ten minutes of sun). The water was so cool and refreshing, a perfect place to escape from the hot sun. Oh, but do you want to hear the best part, the part that makes me seem like a dumb ass? I forgot my bathing suit. No not back at the camp site, I forgot my bathing suit back home, in America.  So I got to sit by the pool in a tank top and a make shift skirt/wrap. Yep, I looked mighty foolish with no bathing suit, but hopefully I can have one sent to me (hint hint). But even though I was stuck by the side of the pool dreaming of how wonderful the water would feel on my whole body, it was well worth going. 

So a few days after we came home from the lodge we had quite the opposite experience from the fun-loving-tourist activities we had been participating in. We participated in a very real and legitimate Maasai goat slaughtering. Yes thats right, a goat slaughtering. We bought a goat, took it around to bushes behind our chumba, slit its throat, cooked it, and ate it.

 As horrifying as it may be to hear that we all watched as a goat lost its life, there is much more to the situation then what meets the eye. Like I have said in previous posts, being in Kenya I need to open my mind to new cultural experiences and put my ethnocentrism behind me. This was one such experience that was particularly difficult to let go of as I am sure you can imagine. I was too much of a whimp to actually watch as the goat had its throat slit, but oh boy I could here it. Slicing the throat of an animal is not nearly as quick as the movies make it seem. There is hacking, sawing, and shear force that needs to be put into the annihilation (I feel like this is a nicer term then murder) of a goat. Yes, the goat screams as it is laying on its back getting its throat slit until it is dead. And yes, I could here the goat screaming all the way from the chumba. If you are wondering what a goat sounds like when it is dying, it sounds just like a person yelling at someone to stop killing a goat. I was sitting in the chumba with my friends Collin and Molly when we heard it screaming (and yes we were the only three how had trouble watching the death of the goat, everyone else was much tougher and watched it get slaughtered).One of us (stupidly) asked if that was goat screaming, and we just nodded our heads. But once the goat was dead, we went to watch them take it apart and had a mini anatomy lesson. The men who were taking the goat apart were straight up bosses, I mean they were hacking away at that goat like it was no ones business. After it was taken apart, the meat was thrown on the fire (yes, the goat was roasted on a fire out side in the middle of the wilderness) to be cooked. 

I of course tried some of the meat, and it was my first time eating goat. I actually liked it a lot, it tastes like a mix between lamb and steak. It was overcooked, but while in Kenya that is the only way I would want to eat my meat. It was defiantly an experience, but not a bad one. I know that it may be hard to imagine the hole goat killing experience as being a good thing, but in the reality of the world, it was an extremely humane way for the goat to die. Rather than being locked in a pen for its whole life, and force feed corn, injected with hormones and antibiotics, and then served up in plastic wrap, this goat was aloud to stay with its mother as baby, it was able to graze and feed in open pastures, and was never shown a hormone or antibiotic in its life. Although its death sounds appalling, compared to what happens in America, it was quick and humane. There was little suffering on the goats end, and it lived a long and happy life. One day I may be able to actually watch a goat get slaughtered, but for now, hearing it scream was enough for me.

But on to bigger and better things, on Tuesday we head out for expedition to Tsavo national park! Yes, we will be roughin it even more then we are now for a whole week in Tsavo. We are expecting to see all kinds of wildlife, like lions, elephants, and hyenas. Oh boy I am excited. But camping for a whole week means that I will not have access to the internet. So consider this post the last one until we get back from Tsavo.

Kwa heri wazungu!   

*I do apologize for the lack of photos, it is difficult to upload them right now. 

Location: Kimana, Kenya

I realize that it has been around three weeks since I last updated my blog. My sincerest apologies! As I told you all before, the internet in Kenya is just horrific. We went a whole week with out internet then when we got it back I still could not update my blog. But it was well worth it, It has been a very eventful first four weeks. 

These past four weeks have been so fantastic, I’m not even sure where to begin. I really want to talk about everything, but today is sticking out in my mind most vividly. Today we had our home stay, which is when we are paired up and are dropped off at masai bomas. This is not the stereo-typical masai tourist home stay where you pay “masai” people to live in their house for a day. These were real pastoral masai homes that never see tourists, only students. The people live traditional lifestyles, making their homes out of mud and cow dung, herding cattle, cooking over open flames, and the list goes on.

Today my good friend Judith and I were paired up to go do our home stay. We walked about seven minutes outside of our camp bearing gifts for our future mama’s. We were dropped off in front of our mama’s house and quickly escorted in by our hosts (just incase you are wondering, the term “mama” is used in Kenya to describe any woman of child bearing age, so mama describes most of the women that we come into contact with in Kenya). The boma’s are tiny little huts made out of sticks, mud, and (here’s the kicker) cow dung. Yes they live in little houses made of cow shit. But really, it is not nearly as bad as you may be considering. From the out side, the boma’s look like tiny cramped one room mud huts, but they are anything but. The floors for the bomas are dug out so they are much deeper then they seem, and they are compartmentalized, anywhere from two to four rooms in a single boma (at least from what I have experienced). They have straw roofs, thick walls, and no windows. It is a good place to go when you need to escape from the raw African sun.

Boma’s do, like any other house, need repair from time to time. Although repairing a boma is much easier then any home maintenance that I have ever experienced. This is actually how Judith and I started our day with our mama. Their boma needed repair, but to repair it, you need water. I will never take water for granted again. The three of us (Judith, our mama, and myself), walked down to the little pond that was once a river, and collected two or three gallons of water each and carried it back on our heads (and if we were not there, our poor mama would have to do that more than three times a day). Once we got the water back to the boma, our mamas oldest daughter took us out to the cow ring to (yes I am 100% completely serious) collect fresh cow dung. Judith and I both had gloves on, but this little girl had no problem picking up the freshly laid turds, some of which were much bigger then her hands. I will not lie, I was a complete whimp and could barely pick up the turds, even with gloves on. My partner Judith on the other hand preformed like a champ and had no problem collecting cow dung. Once a sufficient amount was collected, we dumped it in front of the house and collected dirt to mix with the dung. Judith and I stood and stared as our twelve year old translator mix dung, water, and dirt to make the mud walls. Once it was mixed, all three of us took huge handfuls of the wet gloppy mixture and through it up against the wall. I’m not going to lie, it was really hard to take huge handfuls of cow dung and spread it all over a wall to fill in the little crevasses that are not covered. But I’m in Kenya to challenge my cultural norms, cow dung is the only way to go.

But to be honest I would take cow dung over the smoke any day. Cooking is done inside of the boma, over an open fire (like that of a camp fire). Boma’s are not ventilated and the fires started in those things are huge. You find your self one minute in a cozy little boma helping your mama make tea, the next thing you know you’re choking to death about to vomit and running for the exit. Both Judith and I had a lot of trouble with all of the smoke. I personally had a lot of trouble with it. I felt so sick that I could barely step foot inside the boma for the rest of the day. It was not fun. When our teacher came to check up on us, I almost threw up into his lap. He fortunately was able to translate to our mama that we were getting sick and that we could not go inside. We were only able to go in one more time to eat lunch, but fortunately there was much less smoke and we could handle what was there.

Lunch was a very special event. Even though Judith and I could not contribute to much to cooking lunch, we were able to serve lunch to all of the children and our mama. There was a cultural hic-up that occurred during lunch that neither Judith nor myself were comfortable with. It is custom for the guests to eat and finish their meal before anyone else can eat. This, to us, felt so rude in the sense that they should be eating with us. But in the reality of the world, that is just another cultural norm that we will have to change our perceptions about.

 So for the rest of the four hours that we were there, Judith and I sat outside taking pictures, or just kind of staring at each other. Quiet the uneventful afternoon. We sat and watched as our mama and her daughter made us bracelets. I was super disappointed that I did not get to bead with them, but the fact that they made the bracelets for us makes them that much more special. I don’t plan on taking it off (except of course if I am in the shower).

                During the time when Judith and I were sitting and staring at each other, we got to talking about how lucky we were, and what a surreal experience this was for us. I think it is fair to say that this is an unusual program in that if you were a typical college student who, on a whim, wants to go abroad for a semester, Kenya would not be the first pick. To come to a program like this, you have to have been dreaming about Africa, the people, and the wildlife your whole life. It is amazing for me to finally find thirty people who have been doing just that, just like me. To be able to sit in a real boma with a traditional masai family, something we have all been dreaming of our whole lives, was just… unworldly. I know that I am doing something amazing, something that I know will change my life forever, and change it in so many different ways.

This is Judith sipping tea with our host mama and her daughter Joyce. Perhaps the most shocking part of the day was how excited our mama was for us to take pictures. This photo was all posed by our mama. She had us posing for all sorts of pictures in all sorts of places. She then got a hold of Judiths camera and took a lot of self portraits (all of which she was posing in). Our mama and her daughter were so hospitable, it is an experience that we will never forget.   

                But of course I must update you on everything else! In the past four weeks we have been to Amboseli National Park, best known for their abundance of elephants, three times. And yes, we did the whole safari thing and I don’t think there is anything more fun than it. We all loaded up in the safari trucks, popped the roof hatches off, stood up on the seats, and counted all the animals we could. If you have ever heard of the term “off roading” when talking about safaris, it is when jeeps drive off the roads and into the rough terrain. In tourist world, this is a big no no, it damages the terrain and seriously disturbs the animals. The only people lucky enough to (legally) go off roading are students and scientists. Yes, we got closer to the animals then I ever dreamed possible. We were all so quiet when we approached the large herds of zebras and elephants that it was almost like they didn’t know we were there. 

Picture of a mother elephant and her two calf’s. The older one is about five or six years and the tiny one is about a year, the smallest elephant I ever saw. In this picture the baby is suckling from its mother. What a magical moment to share with a wild animal. 

I realize that I have been rambling on, but I feel like I have let you all down with the lack of blog updates. Hopefully the internet will not be so spotty and I can update you more. 

 Kwahari everyone! 

Location: Kimana, Kenya

My god, I’m finally in Kenya. It took two days of cramped flights, twelve hour layovers, and luggage scares, but finally, we are here.  Even though two eight hour flights separated by a twelve hour layover may seem ungodly, I had it easy. The group flight we took to get to London departed out of Newark. For the local Philly girl, this was not a big deal at all. It took about an hour to drive to the airport. Many of my classmates had it much worse than I.  In fact, very few people were as lucky as me. Let just put it in perspective for you, two or three people had to file from Portland to get to Newark. Others got to Newark hours before the first (or for them, second) flight even departed. So yes, much worse off than me. The twelve hour layover in London was not as horrifying as it sounds; in fact it gave many of us time to catch up on some much needed sleep. With the amount of problems that often occur with flying, our group got extremely lucky and did not have any of those problems.  No luggage was lost, and no flights were delayed. So all in all, it was actually pretty easy traveling.

We arrived in Nairobi at around nine in the morning and were greeted by two of the SFS staff at the gate. Let me tell you that I’ve never had an easier time getting my pass port stamped and gathering my luggage. The Nairobi air port is an easy airport to navigate (especially when you have a group of locals directing you where to go what to do and pulled your entire luggage off the belt so it was sitting in wait for you). But that was not the end of our travels. After we left the airport all thirty of us were escorted to our camp site in the stereo typical green safari trucks. The ride to the camp took about four hours, but it was well worth.

The moment I walked out of the airport and felt the warm sun on my back (even though it made me even more gross and sweaty after two days of the same clothes) and saw all of the acacia trees, I knew that all the stress of packing, flying, and meeting new people was all a thing of the past. At that moment, I knew that I was about to be doing something very special.

Once we were in the safari trucks we made our way on to Mombasa high way (which we learned had just been recently paved making for a much safer journey) on our way to our camp site which is four hours away from the airport. About two minutes into our journey we looked to our left and saw three of four giraffes foraging by the side of the road. At that moment, everybody knew that we were not in Kansas anymore. It took a lot of time to let the fact sink in that we actually were in Africa (which is so exciting it still doesn’t feel real).

 During the drive we saw a few more animals but unfortunately not a ton (although giraffes seemed to be the most common on the side of the road).  When we arrived at the camp site, my breath, along with everyone else, was taken away.  Huge pink flowers lined the entrance to the chumba (our classroom, dining room, and social hub), and after turning around, the most breath taking view of Kilimanjaro greeted all of the new students to Kenya. As we all spilled out of our cars, every staff member lined up along the flowers to welcome every one of us. Each staff member shook our hand and said “welcome home”. I have entered new communities before as a foreigner and normally I have to make my own way into the community, but never have I been welcomed so warmly and sincerely as I was by the staff at SFS.  They had made their home our home, the most welcoming and kind gesture that anyone can receive.

 We finished dinner around eight o’clock sleepy-eyed and suffering from jet lag. After we finished washing our dishes, the staff gave us our welcome dance. Every staff member sang and danced the jambo jambo song to us. The jambo jambo song is the welcome song of Kenya, by them singing and dancing like this for us, we were made official members of the community. In the song they are basically saying, welcome to Kenya, a place of no worries, and beautiful Animals, welcome to Kenya. What a way to start our first day in Kenya.

Orientation in Kenya is not the same as orientation in America. Instead of being told that we will be meeting certain days or are required to read fifty pages a night, we were told about all of the different diseases we could contract, ranging from parasites to simple infections. We learned what to do if we encounter an animal while walking around, which is just amazing to think that we may run into them at all (I guess coming from a densely populated city, it makes it more interesting). The biggest dose of reality came after Molly, our advisor, told us stories about our resident big male baboon fallowing her to our house. She let us take a break after that story, and who should be sitting outside in front of our banda’s but our huge, swarthy, male baboon. After all of the eager students hastily made their way to the back porch of the chumba to see the baboon, he clearly had too much pride to have a bunch of college kids stare and ogle at him. He swaggered off into the bushes disappearing from site. I always heard that baboons were big animals, but until I saw one in person I didn’t understand how big. He was probably the same size as a full grown adult, with canines about three inches long. The type of animal you want to give a wide birth (which, in case anyone is concerned, we did).

On Tuesday afternoon, the women put on their skirts and the men through on respectable pants, and we made our way to the once weekly local market in the town of Kimana. Kimana is a tiny town that explodes with visitors every Tuesday looking to barter and sell goods. We were warned that because we are white, we will stick out like a sore thumb in the crowd, which was really very true. We were constantly chased around by the Maasai mamas trying to sell us all of their jewelry. The mamas are very relentless and will do anything they can to get a mzugu (foreigner/white person) to buy their jewelry. The mamas ended up cornering me, so now, I have five of their bracelets.  Even though the constant harassment was a touch daunting, the market was the biggest indicator of the level of poverty in which most people live in Kenya. The only food that was available were tomatoes, potatoes, rice, papaya, and a few other green veggies. The clothing and shoes that were being sold were all badly used second hand donations. The desperation of the mamas also showed how impoverished Kenya is.

We started classes on Wednesday. Everyone sits in the chumba with their note books in hand while a professor stands at the board lecturing us about Swahili, wildlife conservation, environmental protection and so on. All of our professors are native Kenyans who are some of the leading scientists in their fields of wild life biology, conservation, etc. It is humbling, albeit slightly intimidating, to learn from them. They gave us a three hour lecture yesterday about what they expect from us academically (you know the usual).

Just so you all know, my internet connection here in the bush in Kenya is extremely week, so I will try my hardest to update as often as I can, but there will probably be very few pictures. Bumber.  (Except for this one. This would be the big male baboon that likes to knock over our trash cans and run through our camp. In this photo he is sitting in a tree right out side of our camp. In the background is Kilimanjaro). 

Kwahiri every one, I’ll update you all soon on this wild semester! 

Location: Kenya

So I am about one and a half days away from heading on my journey to Kenya and Tanzania and I’m a bit of a mess (and, perhaps, that is an understatement). If procrastination wasn’t already my middle name, I believe that this week I’ve earned the title with flying colors. Many (vital) tasks that I had shoved to the side for about two months have pushed their way front and center on my list of to-do’s of getting ready for this trip. Now tasks that are normally easy and non-threatening have turned into the monster hiding in my closet. I waited about two weeks before I got the urge to start collecting vital items for my trip and I will not be done until Friday (the day before I leave for the airport, procrastination at its finest!). Trying to find a water resistant watch that also has a built in alarm can send me into a panic, trying to fit everything into two suite cases haunts me in my sleep, and the threat of leaving America and realizing that I left a vital item back home that I will have no access to on a camp site in Kenya makes me dizzy. The threat of malaria is turning me into the most intense hypochondriac known to human kind.

Packing at a more controlled time in my living room. This photo was taken at a more, reasonable, moment in my epic packing duties. Now, my unorganized and chaotic mess has started to eat up my living room. 

Although all of this packing and preparation nonsense has been eating me alive, the weather that has plagued the Philadelphia area lately is rubbing me the wrong way.  I am NOT a fan of constant snow and below zero temperatures. Last night we got pummeled with another five inches of snow and my car is covered in about a foot and a half of snow. I have a difficult time enjoying the snow; in fact I can hardly stand it. So now, whenever  I am in the midst of an packing crisis and feel like I want to give up, I look outside at the white terrain and remind myself that  my destination does not have this problem (and when I say problem, I mean the snow)!  

What I awoke to on Wednesday morning, (and if you are wondering, yes it is snowing in this picture). How thrilled I am to be trading my normal cold and snowy Philadelphia winter for an equatorial fall in Kenya and Tanzania. For those of you poor souls who will still have to walk through the polluted street slush, my sympathies.  

So I have turned myself into one of the most epic messes of a human then I have ever been. I am nervous, full of anxiety, but most of all I am above and beyond excited for this upcoming semester. Hopefully tomorrow I can be completely finished packing and I can relax and enjoy my evening, but knowing me I will not be done packing until Saturday! 

 So on Saturday it is off to Newark airport to face a two day flight (including layovers in London) before I can even step foot in Africa.So I suppose that this is my official bon voyage to America! Wish me luck! 

Location: Havertown, Pa

Hello! My name is Averil Sweeney and I am junior majoring in anthropology, and minoring in environmental studies here at Penn State. Next semester (exactly seven weeks and three days) I am going to be traveling aboard to Kenya and Tanzania with SFS. The focus of this program is on wildlife ecology and conservation (along with some cultural mingling between the Masai and other locals). So basically for three months, I will be camping out in two national parks (one in Kenya, the other Tanzania) observing and researching the wildlife around me. I will be taking classes while I am there, some taught by local people, others by the staff. We have one personal day a week, and have to be up at the crack of dawn.

If found that when I talk to most people about my upcoming trip, many of them get excited and giddy when I tell them I am going abroad. When I add on the ever important details of where I’m going, there excited face’s tend to fade and twist and turn into a confused and uncomfortable knot. Then most people ask me, almost horrified, “why there?”.

Honestly, I don’t think I’ll ever fully be able to explain my desire to go, study, and live in Africa to most people. All I can say is that I’ve been dreaming about studying the wildlife, environment, culture, and atmosphere of Africa for my whole life. I don’t think I could possibly rationalize this desire to most people.

That being said, I hope that in this blog I can shed some light on the misunderstood continent that I am going to. I doubt that I will be changing everyone’s mind about Kenya and Tanzania, but hopefully through my experiences people will no longer see it as such an undesirable, foreign place, rather they will see it as I do; a fascinating cultural hot spot full of things to learn.

I’ll post again soon, closer to my trip. For now, focusing on finals. 

Location: State College, PA