Today for class we went to a wildlife management area (WMA). WMAs are areas for wildlife that area set up and cared for by local communities. They are a relatively new practice but their aim is to show locals the benefits of supporting wildlife conservation. Through setting up WMAs the community makes a profit (around $13,000 a month). Half of the money made goes to further improvement of the WMA and half of it is divided up between the villages that participate in the WMA. When the villages get the money they can then decide how to use it. Most of them have plans in place to help determine what is the top priority project and how much it will cost. Most commonly the money is used to build community building like schools. This is a huge help because without the added income from the WMA, each person has to pay an individual fee out of pocket to fund community buildings. It was very interesting because each village who wants to participate in the WMA elects members to serve on the WMA crew. These people don't get paid except maybe travel allowances. They said that they generally make enough money for their town that they don't mind not getting paid. They are also proud that they are helping to save the wildlife. They do censuses every 6 months to check the wildlife populations and WMAs have caused an increase in wildlife in their area through decreased poaching and increased natural habitat regeneration.
Speaking of poaching, we learned today that the newest method of poaching in this area is poison. There is a poison that causes the body to decompose withing 2-10 hours so the valuable parts can be removed very quickly. Also, poison is very a quiet way to kill so it is a lot hard to catch the poachers. The most common animal that is killed this way are elephants. Elephants love watermelon and pumpkins so the poachers will inject poison into these, leave them out where elephants can find them, and then come remove the tusks from the elephants after a few hours. It is horrible because it is very easy to kill many animals this way (6 were killed in one week recently), it is hard to catch poachers who do this, and other animals may eat the remaining carcass and be poisoned themselves.
On the way back from the WMA visit we stopped at the restaurant called Pizza Place. Our teacher was in our car but apparently no one told him we were stopping so he got mad and wouldn't stop. It took a few blocks of whining, questioning, and asking him to call someone before he would turn around. I didn't actually want pizza so another girl and I walk down the street and shopped. I got some bracelets and a couple of paintings. I was proud because I got good prices for everything. When I got back to camp I ran and showed Molly, our student affairs manager. She is awesome. She's becoming my Tanzania mom. Haha.
After dinner we played a game called vegetable vegetable. You have to cover your lips with your teeth and say your fruit/vegetable name twice followed by "calling" and another person's vegetable twice. If you show your teeth you're out. It sounds really dumb but it was actually really funny. Most of us lost because we were laughing so hard we couldn't keep our lips over our teeth.
Just before sitting down to write this I was talking to Burrah, one of the ascaris (camp guards). He is hilarious. He barely speaks english but he loves to talk to us so he just repeats a lot of songs and the few words we know. He mostly says everything is good (mzuri), hakuna matata (no worries), asks your name and where you're from, and claims to be from random places in the US (ex: "Burrah Connecticut"). He is quite the character. Tonight he said "Obama mzuri" (obama is good) with two thumbs up followed by "George Bush" a frowny face, thumbs down and that farty noise of disapproval. That made me laugh really hard and then he started laughing at me so we just stood there laughing for a while. He also told me that he was going to come to Serengeti with us and if a hyena came to camp he would come over and it would run away. All of this was acted out with his impressions of hyenas and himself. It was awesome. Then I said "but Burrah one of the other students told me she was running from a drunk person and asked for your help and you just said 'run faster!'" He just laughed at that. I don't know what actually happened. Haha. I was doing laundry on my front porch and between talking to him and everyone else it took me an hour and a half to finish my laundry :]
No comments:
Post a Comment