| the old pond / frog jumps in / plop! – Matsuo |
In the spring of 2012 I spent a life changing semester in Tanzania, studying ecology and human origins. We explored mountains, walked the paths of the cradle of humanity in the Great Rift Valley, and ate all kinds of good shit.
My girlfriend at the time gave me the perfect gift: a journal! I never had one before and kind of went crazy with it. I used it to chronicle almost every day of my life in Tanzania. That hemorrhagic spewing led to a 65 story blog, all of which is now consolidated here
Some of my best writing from this youthful time:
The Footprints of History, The Mountain of God, Cooking Maasai Food with Maasai People, Animals in a Boma, Giraffe Hunt and Goat Slaughter, Maasai Greetings and Stories, Goat Races and Bob, ‘Kilimanjaro’ and the Fish Market.
Below is the journey in reverse chronological order. Enjoy!
Today I did another 3 interviews, putting my current total up to 13! Tomorrow marks the halfway point of our data collection, I think. I also think that my project is sitting pretty, I feel good and confident that the information I have received is quality. Today for one of my interviews I travelled once…
I am really surprised that I haven’t gotten Malaria yet. Like today I feel great and I know that I’ve probably been bit by countless mosquitoes, so I must just be lucky or something. Nobody has gotten it in the field so far, which is great. So pretty soon I think that I will be…
This morning I went out with a few people to shadow their interviews. It went well, but I decided to leave and walk back to camp early. We were in town so I bought a stack of packaged, crème-filled cookies from the mini-supermarket for 1000/=. My walk back was totally chill, eating the whole bag…
Today I was pretty upset because I tried to put a free PDF onto my Kindle, but it only froze. So now I can’t access it, can’t use it to read in my free time. It’s pretty frustrating. After a while I got over it, I played some cards and talked to some of my…
I interviewed one Maasai person today. I got similar data, so I think that it will be really easy to quantify my data by the end of it all. I am content with my project and happy with the direction it is going! Again, this process for getting, doing and transcribing interviews is very slow;…
I interviewed two more people today and I think it went well. I got similar data as last time, which I am happy about. I am about to transcribe those two interviews now, which should take some time. I am more than happy to do it, though! The whole idea of collecting and analyzing data…