African Bushmeat Expedition

Tarangire Public Camp

With our new “HTH African Bushmeat Expedition” logo in place on the door of our LandRover we were ready to get under way on our exploration of Northern Tanzania. What a great way to start our journey. When we started the day at the Outpost hotel, we were able to send the supplies for our workshop to Mweka college and soon were six bags lighter and all the more excited to get into the bush. We began our journeys of the day with a trek through the city of Arusha to exchange dollars for shilingi and search out our internet satellite card. The city was unusually crowded for this time of the year and Killerai, our guide, mentioned how economic times were forcing more people into the city. After a half a day in the city, we were ready to get out into the wilderness of the bush.

Satellite card in hand, we started on our way to our first stop of the trip, Tarangeri National Park. We made a stop for a delicious lunch on the outskirts of Arusha. We were soon joined by a group of Maasai herd boys who intently watched our every move. It was a very beautiful, yet also a somewhat sad area, seeing a once-was beautiful watering hole which is now dried up due to a serious drought in Tanzania. The Maasai women and children would walk far distances in the watering hole looking for supplies and water. We fear the unusually dry season will make game drives not as fruitful as they were last year. Soon after lunch, we began the rest of our journey to Tarangeri National Park.

When we arrived, the contrast to the city was absolute. The sun had begun to set and we rushed to camp so that we could have our first game drive free of baggage.

We were all alone in the public camp which was a pleasant surprise. Heading out of camp, the first animal we saw was a lone wildebeest, watching from the shade beneath the tree. We drove and made many stops, looking at the amazing and beautiful animals, ranging from a Zebra, Ostrich, Giraffe, Impala, Warthog, Lilac-Breasted Roller, Dik Dik and Vervet Monkeys. Then after snapping our first couple hundred photos, we returned back to camp to a delicious dinner.

Upon returning to camp we were greeted by Lazarus Saruni, the anti-poaching commander we met last year. It was great to share stories of our film, that he stars in, and to hear some of his latest adventures apprehending poachers.

As we were eating dinner, we started to hear some rustling in the bush. Soon after, Killerai told us it was a big animal, perhaps even an elephant. When we went to investigate, just 10 meters away from our furthest tent was a family of elephants feeding on the grass. The matriarch also let us know they were there with a very loud rumbling from their stomachs. We were even able to see the elephants with Bryndan’s night vision scope, giving them a green glow. After the matriarch announced it’s leaving, the rest left and we all decided it was best for us to retreat to our own beds as well. Now, as we blog around the campfire, reminiscing on old trips and anticipating the days to come, we wait to hear the sounds of the night. Out early tomorrow to explore Tarangire River.

What a wonderful encounter we had in the Amsterdam airport just prior to boarding our plane. The patch on his shirt “Coral Reef Genomics” indicated that he was someone we needed to meet. As we spoke to him we learned his name was Nsajigwa Mbije of Sokoine University in Tanzania where he teaches vertebrate zoology, which was coincidental as we had met several students from Sokoine University last year in Tarangire National Park and even corresponded over the year. Mbije is from the Department of Wildlife Management and was very interested in hearing about our Bushmeat Identification Workshop and our expedition. Throughout the conversation it became increasingly clear that a collaboration between Mbije and ourselves would be necessary. One of the larger objectives of this current expedition is to determine how best to coordinate efforts with collective partners within Tanzania, around Africa and abroad. Mbije was just returning from a conference in Shephardstown West Virginia – coincidentally, where we hope to show “Students of Consequence” in the American Conservation Film Festival. Mbije talked of familiar colleagues in the small world of marine biology. This encounter reaffirmed the importance of face to face encounters in Africa. So much of the transfer of information is via oral communication. Over this last year, of planning our return we have faced the struggles of trying to communicate with email with our partners here, but a simple airport conversation yielded great results.

Arriving in Kilimanjaro brought familiar smells of the vegetation mixed with burning wood and other unique smells of the land. Our first African mammals were the dark brown bats working the lights around the airport. On the plane we had been making our guesses of what we would see first “Ostrich, no giraffe.” “Maybe zebra.”

Finding all of our bags at the baggage carousel brought a huge sense of relief. “Yes, we have a thermocycler!” Not many travelers bring such equipment on safari and realizing that all of the materials we had spent months preparing were here and ready was truly a weight off our shoulders. Another strange coincidence to date was meeting a friend, Essy Levy of BioRad, biotech education supplier, on our plane leaving San Diego. Dr. Vavra had been talking to her in New Orleans in March, about having a BioRad thermocycler shipped from South Africa for the workshop.

Then upon our arrival in Tanzania we were able to greet our old friend Killerai Killerai of Dorobo Safaris. Many know Killerai from his great baboon story in “Students of Consequence.” We were ecstatic to find out recently that he was going to be able to guide us on this new expedition. He had recently encountered Lazarus Saruni, the anti-poaching commander with TANAPA, who told Killerai of the upcoming workshop we would hold at Mweka College.

On our drive through the night to the Outpost Lodge, Killerai told us stories of familiar friends from last year. The old Maasai leader Lorit, who had a goat slaughtered for us at Loborserit, had recently passed away. He was a large man with Brando-like speech and had dozens of offspring. He had told us many stories of his clan and of the changing wildlife populations he had seen over the years in the region east of Tarangire. Killerai also discussed with us the scant rains of this spring. With the sparse grass around Ngorongoro and the eastern Serengeti, much of the wildbeest had moved to the western Serengeti.

But now we must prepare for the next leg of the expedition. So we are off to prepare our materials for the upcoming workshop and well deserved rest.

We haven’t seen any zebras yet, but we’ve made it through the first leg, and as far as we know, so has our equipment. A two hour walk-through in the San Diego airport to make sure our bags passed the X-rays with TSA and we were off. The important things were the thermocycler (Thank you Ligand) for amplifying DNA and the molecular biology kits from Life Technologies.  Most travelers heading for safari just think about binoculars and cameras.

First to Minneapolis, then to Amsterdam, which is where we blog from now! The flights were longggg, but good and we’re gearing up for the final eight hour leg to Kilimanjaro. But during this time we’ve begun our malaria medication and are anxiously preparing for the plasmodium to enter our bloodstreams. This year brought many challenges optimizing protocols for our upcoming workshop. In the lab, each of the expedition members compared checklist upon checklist to ensure all of the equipment and reagents we would need were in place. And though we were packing for days till the last moment, and switching around bag contents at the airport check-in, each bag weighed a perfect fifty pounds and passed without problem. The planning and attention to detail was well worth it and now we sit in airports and airplanes, planning the final touches for our upcoming adventures and workshops. We’ve packed along a set of all the equipment we will need for the workshop and are anticipating a shipment of additional supplies from Life Technologies to arrive come the beginning of our time at Mweka College of African Wildlife Management. Now, in the last moments in Amsterdam, we ask that you all pass along the word to share our stories as we blog live from the bush. We are anticipating our next flight, our last connection, and soon, we will finally be in Tanzania. Twende, twende! (Let’s go!)

Hello readers,

If you are reading this then you have found the African Bushmeat Expedition 2009 Blog. This is officially the last change to the Blog prior to the trip. Please feel free to look around the rest of the blog or check out the parent site www.africanbushmeat.org

Thanks for following,

African Bushmeat Expedition 2009 Team