Matt Christensen

Today we traveled, most of us sore and tired from the expedition, from Lake Natron back to Arusha.  It took us nearly 8 hours to get to the Outpost Lodge there, during which time I read and listened to music mostly.  I started reading Pride and Prejudice for the first time and found myself to…

Last night we left our campsite near Lake Natron, in far northern Tanzania, at 11:30PM with the mission to climb the volcano Ol Doinyo Lengai aka ‘The Mountain of God’ in Kimaasai.  The volcano is active and its last eruption began in September 2007 and continued with intermittent activity for over 11 months.  It is…

In the morning we visited another world famous and historically important archaeological site in the NCA: Olduvai Gorge.  At the site I learned about the geological layers in the rock and how they indicate different recent epochs in the earth’s history and how the fossils found in those layers demonstrate our intimate and wondrous connection…

Today we once again entered the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (known as the NCA) and made way to our campsite there.  It was a beautiful site, green grass and mountainous landscape in the distance.  Our line of tents ran along the tail end of the dusty road, which had many ‘Danger! Do Not Go Past This…

This morning we broke camp!  It was bittersweet; bitter because we had to say goodbye to our translators Leboy, Samwell, Sarah, Sion and Peter and because we had spent so much time at the site; and sweet because I was ready to actually travel again. We dropped our bags off at the same hostel we…

Today was a pretty important day.  Around 25 Maasai men and women showed up to hear our presentations at camp.  Each of us gave a ~5 minute talk, which was translated for them, about what our research was and about some of our preliminary findings.  I didn’t feel nervous at all… I even got asked…