News and Notes from Tanzania - OR - It's about freaking time that guy posted another blog!??!?!?!?

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East Usambara Mountains
David Cook Hi everybody! Sorry for the extremely long delay in between posts. Rather than provide excuses, I’ll just tell you what I’ve been up to for the last month or so. I guess that is the overall point of this thing anyway, right? So come join me on a quick recap of life in Dar es Salaam since mid-February through the end of March.

As usual, most of my pictures are here and not in the blog. These days I pay for internet by the megabyte as opposed to time spent online, so I’m not double-posting as many photos as I did in the past. But I do have some extras this time, from Jennifer and Gary who came from NY to visit my roommates Eric and Angel. They posted their own photos here and told me I could share them with you.


Roots & Shoots Week
I believe that my last post mentioned that I was busy working on the “upcoming Roots & Shoots Week,” and that’s precisely what I was focusing on in mid-February. So what was this Roots & Shoots Week I keep discussing? It’s the anniversary of the Roots & Shoots Program getting started, commemorating the date back in 1991 when 16 high school students approached Dr. Jane Goodall and asked, “what can WE do to take care of our environment?” From those humble beginnings on the back porch of Jane’s house (where I can often be found holding meetings or hand-washing my clothes, practicing yoga, playing with Jane’s grandkids and avoiding stepping in chicken poo) began the international program for which I’m not volunteering. Want to know more about the program … check here.

So for this 16th annual Roots & Shoots Week, our local planning committee of teenagers and twenty-somethings helped to plan a big birthday party! Throughout the (school) week of February 19-23, the kids did all kinds of projects from planting trees at school to writing plays and songs about the environment, to delivering clothes and food to a local orphanage. Then on Saturday the 24th we held a march in town to promote the use of environmentally-friendly reusable cloth bags, as opposed to plastic bags which create litter and pollute the environment like crazy (lots of litter here in Tanzania). We carried banners, sang songs, cheered and distributed cloth bags to members of the public along the parade route.

After the march, all of us gathered at a local high school for a big celebration featuring guest speakers (some of the founding members of R&S) and student performances as well as a few local musicians. We extended our events into the following week for a public talk at the University of Dar es Salaam highlighting the importance of young people getting involved in the management of natural resources early on, to help conserve Tanzania’s abundant natural resources.

That’s the quick overview. My week was super-busy (along with my colleagues and other active student volunteers) by preparing press releases for local media, visiting schools throughout the week to participate in their activities at school, then decorating the venue for our big celebration, picking up cloth bags and t-shirts emblazoned with our theme for the week: Feed Your Mind with Positivity; Heal the World with Creativity!! (Prior to the week we had written a proposal and received support from Celtel, local mobile phone company to sponsor the week), then running the actual event. And afterwards, news stories appeared in four local media outlets. All in all, it was an absolute blast and I had a great time getting to work with, and have fun with, hundreds of Roots & Shoots members here in Dar. Without a doubt, it will be one of my top highlights from my experience in Dar es Salaam, and likely the largest project I’ll participate in during my four-month stint as a volunteer in Tanzania.

Time to Relax!
Though I’ve glossed over Roots & Shoots Week in a measly four paragraphs, the project itself involved over a month of work from a number of people. So when the week was finished, I was excited for a much-needed breather. For the rest of February, I continued working on a few smaller projects for a few days, played basketball, watched some movies, celebrated Abbey’s 13th birthday (reminder: Abbey is/was one of my roommates here in Jane’s house), hosted a diplomatic visitor on a U.S. Embassy sponsored trip, went running a lot and kept studying Kiswahili. Then on March 8th, I was off for my first outing to a natural area, The East Usambara Mountains with friend and host Jackie, along with fellow R&S volunteers Allessandra and Genevieve.

These mountains are actually at the northern tip of the larger Eastern Arc Mountain range which extends from south-central Tanzania and extends paralelling the countries coastline nearly to the Kenyan border. These Eastern Arc Mountains have acted like a terrestrial archipelago providing islands of biodiversity, with rainforests isolated at higher elevations from the plains below. In fact, the mountain range was recently written up in the March 6, 2007 NY Times as an global hotspot for ecological significance and biodiversity (unfortunately you may have to pay to access that article now that it's archived).

Actually I found a better page about the East Usambara Mountains here, which includes some photos of the rare species found in the forest. Of course, this web site argues that prior to the 1990’s the area was under pressure from human activities. What it doesn’t mention, is that throughout most of East Africa’s long history, the only pressure on this area was renewable logging, which helped keep large tracts of forest intact. It’s only since the turn of the 20th century that German colonizers came and started clearing large areas for tea and spice plantations that disrupt the environment more permanently (at least when continually cultivated for cash crops). Meanwhile, most of the Usambara’s plant biodiversity is actually found in the shrub layer of the forest, as opposed to the tall trees, which is also the area providing home to much of the animal biodiversity, butterflies and land snails, living down below the canopy.

Okay, enough with the lesson … what can I say, we’re a group of environmental educators and conservation-minded individuals out for a camping trip? Not to mention Jackie has been studying this forest for years while working towards her PhD in Geography from the University of Fla (yes, those gators, the one’s who are national champions in just about everything right now; don’t remind me). I spent a week (the others had more time to spare) going on hikes in the rainforest, checking out hidden waterfalls and swimming holes, going birding, watching monkeys, and learning about various conservation projects aimed at protecting the rainforest’s unique and rare biodiversity. I finished off the week with a camping trip followed by an early-morning birding hike with a local guide. Unfortunately you won’t see many photos of birds. Because of the forest’s dense vegetation, we spent most of our time identifying calls rather than looking through my binoculars.

Back in the swing of things …. I’ve been back visiting schools, helping the local guys to develop a Roots & Shoots newsletter for Dar es Salaam, working on a new grant project, and playing host to the Roots & Shoots coordinator from Madagascar. But I’m headed towards a large transition in Jane’s house as many of my roommates (Eric & Angel, Julie & Abbey, Tyrel, and recently Francessca and Cosomo) have recently left town. At the moment the house is just myself and Allesandra, while Sara is in Moshi for a few days. But in mid-April we’re welcoming a new batch of volunteers from Canada, Holland and Australia. Should be fun. I’ve also got plans for my first African Safari next weekend to Saadani National Park, where Eric and Angel are now on staff! So hopefully we’ll see some hungry hippos in the next blog.

In other news from back home, I completely missed the entire NCAA march madness action. The only thing I know is that we - meaning the Hoosiers - lost in round 2, but fear not, Indiana is set to win it all next year. Also since my last post, my amazing Grandma Amy celebrated her 90th birthday, only to follow up that remarkable event by sitting at the kids table a few weeks later at my family's passover seder. Needless to day, I wish I could've been there!

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