Emily Myron and I are working with African People & Wildlife Fund supporting a variety of projects. The road here has been interesting to say the least. We met with our host, Dr. Laly Lichtenfeld, back in October 2010, and began our project proposals in earnest the follow January. Then came funding our internships. As expected, this was our most difficult hurdle in preparing for the summer. Yet, in the end, the pieces managed to come together.

Lessons learned: start early, be persistent.

With things in motion, I arranged a detour to Ethiopia to visit family and get a feel for some of the conservation work happening there before Tanzania. However, things were not quite over in Durham; I spent the remainder of my days in town downloading GIS layers and Landsat images as we knew we would have very limited connectivity in the bush. Alas, that was the back-end work in the states. My next entry will detail my time in Ethiopia.

Cheers,

Sam