In the morning we traveled to a village where they have carnivore-human conflict. They've (the Ruaha Carnivore Project) implemented different programs to help keep lions out of their cattle to minimize killing of the lions by the tribes. The boda was surrounded by thick thorn bushes and they have seen improvements (think Survivor Africa!). Then we went to a farm with elephant-human conflict. One man started using chili pepper and engine oil-soaked rags around his crops. He doesn't have any problems with elephants eating his crops anymore. Everyone else in the area had given up and now he has a large area of land to plant on. It was very impressive. When we were leaving, he honored us by presenting us with his largest watermelon. I got to accept the tikiti maji on behalf of the ... read more

Discussions in the morning- uneventful. Wildlife tracking in the afternoon- walked through the bush and looked at poop and tracks...Imagine my excitement!. I can officially identify the latrine of a dik dik- which is at least fun to say. Giraffe poop's kinda cool too, you can tell the difference between male and female because the male's comes to a point because it must be squeezed through the pelvic girdle whereas the female's pelvic girdle has been widened from giving birth.... read more

We stopped first at a sustainable chicken farm. It was only moderately interesting considering what a PIA it was to get there up the mountain. There were super cute kids that just sat and watched us the whole time. SO CUTE :) After that, we went to the Veterinary Investigation Center of Iringa. Its the laboratory that serves 1/6 of Tanzania. Sub-optimal to say the least. It was so old. But they do good work with what they have. They have drawings on the walls to show what to look for the way we have posters. From there, we went to a place called Neema Crafts Cafe. Incredibly inspiring. They employ deaf and disabled Tanzanians and train them to make crafts. They started with making paper from elephant dung and its grown into a big business ... read more

Today was a long day of traveling. We left Dar es Salaam at around 8am, drove for about 3 hours to Morogoro and stopped there for lunch. We had a brief intro to session 3 from Dr. Kazwala, an Evet alum and now co-director of the Tanzania portion. The University of Sokoine is the only vet school in Tanzania. Walking to the restaurant, we saw over a hundred little kids playing soccer in a field. It was so cute! We ate lunch and hung out while Deana dealt with some administrative stuff. While here, I peed in my first hole in the ground! I used my she-pee and it took a while, but was overall pretty successful. It was gross and there was pee and poop all over the ground. When we were leaving there were ... read more