Mwanza, Class #1

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Since I'm in the class entitled "Ecology of the Great Lakes and African Savannah," I'm required to go on walks every morning at 7am...an hour and a half before class begins. Dino leads the walks. This morning, we did our first walk to the Kopje (pronounced Co-pee). Although an Afrikaans word, Kopje has been adapted in all of Africa. Anyway, the hike to the top was a lot of fun and offered spectacular views. At the top are a few boulders and only Marion and I managed to get on top of them. It was difficult, requiring us to make footholds in the rock where no footholds were. Dino nearly had a heart attack. In the end, it was a lot of upper body strength and some jumping. I can't wait to climb the next landforms!

Little did I know that my next nature walk would come later in the day. We decided to go down to the lake towards the end of our class to see if we could catch dragonflies and damselflies. We succeeded, but the people we saw along the way intrigued me more. At one point, we saw a young girl of maybe 10 bathing her little brother, probably aged 4, while another brother, aged 3, looked on. well, looked at us mostly. Lake Victoria is significantly polluted yet it is the only source of water for millions of people. We then continued a little farther to a fish drop-off/market where we looked around a little as the women, all very friendly, swatted away the birds, dried the fish, and offered their daughters to American men. Just a little awkward.

So I need to find a topic for my 7-10 page ecology paper. I'm thinking about analyzing the different positions towards conservation and restoration that the various countries in the Lake Victoria watershed are taking. These nations are: Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda. What do you all who read this think? Does it sound interesting???

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Comments

[Tory]

ecology
it sounds good enough to me. but i do not think i am an authority on anything close to the subject lol