dmax
David Cook Joined: June 20th 2006
Logged in: October 11th 2011
Logged in: October 11th 2011
What follows is a catalog of posts from different moments and places from the journey. Scroll down to pick a journal entry about my travels in India during fall/winter of 2006 or my time spent in 2007 volunteering with the Jane Goodall Institute in Tanzania and Uganda. If reading is not your fancy, have a look at some of the pictures I took from October 2006 to March 2007, labeled as albums "A" through "I" or see more recent photos here.
Karibu Sana
"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive".
Dr. Howard Thurman
Travel Blog Posts
David and Jess
Hi friends, I just wanted to give you a head's up that I am leaving on a six-month trip to India tomorrow (August 18) and will have a new blog to record the journey in writing and pictures. This is the address of the new blog: http://davidandjess.wordpress.com/ If you'd like to subscribe, click on the page that says "about the wanderers" and you'll see a place to sign up at the bottom. Hope you can join us! David and Jessica... read more
NOLS IC Students on Continental Divide
Greetings from the Rocky Mountains! Apparently I just can't quit this blog, but there are lots of friends and family I've been out of touch with the last few weeks, so I find myself back here once again. As you may or may not know, I've been traipsing around the Wyoming wilderness since early May, enrolled in an instructor course with the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS). The course was a prerequisite for working as an instructor with NOLS, which I'll be doing this summer and hopefully in future summers as well. Also, I'm posting lots and lots and lots of photos in this blog with no external links. I don't think they all show up on this page so make sure you click one of the images so you can scroll through all 60-something photos! ... read more
JGI Reunion in Seattle
Hello Dear readers, Don't get too excited, I'm not actually coming back into the world of the blog. Instead, I'm just wanting to touch base with a number of family and friends before departing on my next adventure! Starting May 1, I'm going to be leading wilderness expeditions with the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS). My first course is instructor training in the Wind River Wilderness area of Wyoming from May 1 - June 4. After that, who knows? Here in the USA the school leads trips in Wyoming, Washington and Alaska, and the rest of my summer and fall will be determined after my first expedition. So for now I'm signing off. Unlike my time in India and East Africa, there will be no phone access, no email access, no facebook scrabulous and no electricity. ... read more
Conserve Africa's Environment Painting
Home again, home again, jiggidy jig. Just like that. Hi everyone ... I'm back! I'm writing from my dad's place in Indianapolis, where I've been staying for the last month. My time in Uganda was cut short by a few weeks, which allowed me to come home and spend time with family during the holiday season. Now that I've made the rounds with friends and family for a few weeks, I'm finally sitting down to post my last blog entry(or at least the last one until the next overseas adventure). My Final Month in Uganda A lot has transpired since my last blog entry in mid-October, but much of it was work related so I wasn't posting it in real time. However, I've come home to a lot of friends asking ... so, um, what were ... read more
David and the Blackback
The Anniversary This blog posting finds me at a very interesting landmark: roughly one year since I left the United States! My last day in Seattle was the 18th of October, 2006, which in some ways feels like a lifetime ago, and in other ways feels like it was only yesterday. Since that time, I've begun speaking a new language (Kiswahili), visited five countries, held two volunteer positions in two different countries, learned about wildlife (especially primates) thanks to many books and a few safaris, made lots of friends from other countries, hosted a few friends from back home and have experienced all kinds of different cultural nuances - both positive and negative - in South Asia and East Africa. This year has far surpassed any expectations I may have set, and I continue learning and ... read more
Just Hanging Out
I was dreaming when I wrote this, forgive me if it goes astray ... Okay, I'm not exactly dreaming, but I had planned to sit down and write a blog tonight to fill you all in on my latest news. However, it's Sunday afternoon back in the states. The colts are playing. And now I'm chatting online with my cousins micah and jon who are filling me in on the game action as I watch the stats online. So I'm a bit distracted. When we last left off, I was living in the village of Kayanga at the Kalinzu forest education center. I've added more photos from that stint on my photo page, but this blog is mostly about my time in Entebbe. I've been here at the main JGI Uganda office (and our house) in ... read more
equatorial
Hey folks, just a quick update, mostly sending along some photos that pertain more to the last blog than this one. First thing's first, in my haste to tell you all about my camera getting swiped, the weeks of safari, and scanning all those mind maps, I forgot to tell give you perhaps the most important link pertaining to the safari. Thanks to the link, it's not such a tragedy that my camera was stolen after all. The family featured on that web page went on a very similar safari, including a visit with Jane Goodall (or at least her alter ego), as well as lots of pictures. The similarities are uncanny! Okay, hopefully you enjoyed that link. But in truth, this photo link is probably more relevant, as well as url="http://picasaweb.googl... read more
RECOVERED
Q: What happens when you stick a visual thinker with a language learner and stick them in a car for twelve days? A: This blog Instead of detailing every single thing we did on safari, Shelley inspired me to trade in the pen for the watercolor pencil and draw mind maps (an activity we do with kids at work) of our days on safari in Africa. Admittedly, it's much better than trying to cram in every last detail about 12 days of events and instead, coming up with a visual rendering of our journey, even if it does look like it was drawn by a fifth grader. My initial plan was to have very little text, almost none. Just a few bullet points for highlights with the official stats of the journey (they are now ... read more
hello from gombe
Just two weeks removed from my “last day” volunteering in Dar es Salaam and there’s so much to talk about! During this stretch I met up with Erica, a friend from the NOLS India trek (refer to “The Trek”) who joined me to visit the island of Zanzibar where we met up with two more friends - Carrie and Rob - who’ve recently finished graduate school at UW in Seattle. After a few days of relaxing beach time followed by cultural immersion in Stonetown, the four of us hopped on a plane to Kigoma for a visit to Gombe Stream National Park, the place made famous worldwide by Jane Goodall’s chimpanzee study (now in year 47). After a couple days of hiking, I tagged along with Jane as the unofficial photographer for her visits to ... read more
Rain Study:
I'm not sure where the time has all gone, but somehow I find myself at the end of my stint living in Dar es Salaam and working with the local Roots & Shoots groups. I spent a lot of the last blog entry reflecting on the trip in general, so I need to let you know what I've been up to these past few weeks. Many of the photos in this entry have been compiled over the last couple months (aka the long rains), but there are quite a bit more here, which is a new site as I'm leaving yahoo behind and switching to google. Tulifanya Kazi sana All of us at Roots & Shoots Dar es Salaam have been spending much of May preparing for World Environment Day (June 5) for which we ... read more
