{"id":364,"date":"2011-06-22T12:19:46","date_gmt":"2011-06-22T16:19:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/internships\/?p=364"},"modified":"2013-05-10T11:11:13","modified_gmt":"2013-05-10T15:11:13","slug":"kambi-ya-mazingira","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/internshipblogs\/kambi-ya-mazingira\/","title":{"rendered":"Kambi ya Mazingira"},"content":{"rendered":"

Week one of summer camp at Noloholo is off to a great start!<\/p>\n

\"They<\/a>
They love musical chairs in Tanzania too!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This is the second summer that TPW has hosted an environmental camp for local primary school children.\u00a0 The top 20 boys and top 20 girls from the two primary schools (5th, 6th, and 7th graders) in Loibor Siret will each spend a week here, learning about the environment.\u00a0 In Tanzania, the school system is very much like the British school system \u2013 in general, teachers teach straight out of the textbook and then the children memorize the material and are tested on it each year.\u00a0 One of the goals of the camp (and of the teacher training programs held here) is to show the children that you can learn while having fun.\u00a0 Neo really engages the children, encourages them to think critically, and makes sure they are having fun.\u00a0 Much like V8 claims to be so good you don\u2019t know it\u2019s healthy, Neo makes the camp so fun the kids don\u2019t know they are learning.<\/p>\n

We started the week with a few games and ice breakers \u2013 cheesy, I know, but a camp classic.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the children were sooo shy that it sort of crashed and burned, which made us pretty nervous because our next game was animal charades.\u00a0 Amazingly, this one, they loved – and they were GOOD.<\/p>\n

\"One<\/a>
One of the students birdwatching (notice the hornbill in the background?)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Each day, Neo gives short lessons to the kids about their environment, local animals, and living with wildlife.\u00a0 The day is then filled with games and activities, such as predator prey, drawing exercises, and birding.\u00a0 In the afternoon, there is some sort of field trip or\u00a0interactive activity.\u00a0\u00a0 For example, yesterday, some of the elders\u00a0tried to harvest honey to show the children; needless to say it was a bit of a disaster.\u00a0 The poor men were completely swarmed and stung really badly.\u00a0 To get the bees out of the hive, one must smoke them out, but these bees\u00a0weren’t\u00a0having any part of it.\u00a0 I am not sure how they ultimately got into the hive (we had to run away to avoid getting stung), but later last night they brought up all the honeycombs.\u00a0 It was REALLY cool \u2013 I had never had honey in the comb before.\u00a0 You just put in into your mouth and chew it \u2013 the honey just pours into your mouth – then, when you\u2019re done, you spit out the wax.\u00a0 The honey was incredibly flavorful, and I could taste the difference between honey from old honeycombs and new honeycombs.\u00a0 Additionally, the honey was far more watery than I had expected (apparently if you harvest at the end of the dry season, the honey is not as liquid).<\/p>\n

\"Trying<\/a>
Trying to smoke out the bees while not getting stung<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Today, we went on a game drive with the kids and the village game scouts.\u00a0 It is incredible how far and clearly they all can see in this landscape.\u00a0 No one wears glasses, and they can tell that a little speck in the distance is an ostrich (for example)! Additionally, we have been setting camera traps in and around camp to see what is sneaking around at night.\u00a0 We have captured pictures of dik-dik, rabbit, civit, and mice.\u00a0 Last night, though, was a great haul \u2013 we got TONS of pictures of elephants! Ill try to send you one if the internet allows \u2013 it\u2019s a mother and her baby!<\/p>\n

\"Elephant<\/a>
Elephant mom and baby<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We spend each afternoon playing sports.\u00a0 Monday afternoon, all the boys started out playing soccer and all the girls volleyball.\u00a0 Then, I pulled out a Frisbee and they got super into it.\u00a0 Who knew Maasai were amazing Frisbee players? Even the little tiny girls, the teachers, and some workers (my favorite is this one Maasai man who wears a foot long machete-like blade off his waist while playing)!! I am thinking a Maasai Ultimate Frisbee team is in order.\u00a0 After playing, I was sitting with a few girls who kept touching my hair.\u00a0 Here, both boys and girls have shaved heads, so I think my hair (despite being short) was quite novel.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The successful honey harvesters!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Despite the language barrier, I think I am learning almost as much as the kids at this camp.\u00a0 While they definitely make fun of me when I try, in broken Swahili, to explain things (like how to use binoculars), they have taught me how to say many new words and phrases.\u00a0 Also, while birding and looking at wildlife, I am learning more and more about this extraordinary ecosystem.\u00a0 I feel truly honored to be spending my summer with an organization that is so committed to the people and the wildlife in this area.\u00a0 They know that there is no way to conserve wildlife without working with the local people, and I think their approach is working wonderfully. More updates to come, but I am sure the rest of the week will be as fun for us, and the kids, as the first half has been!<\/p>\n

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Week one of summer camp at Noloholo is off to a great start! This is the second summer that TPW has hosted an environmental camp for local primary school children.\u00a0 The top 20 boys andContinue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[71,68,44,72,43,42],"tags":[],"coauthors":[62],"class_list":["post-364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservation","category-environmental-policy","category-tanzania","category-internships","category-students","category-travel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2reSA-5S","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/internshipblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/internshipblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/internshipblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/internshipblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/internshipblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/internshipblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1430,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/internshipblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364\/revisions\/1430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/internshipblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/internshipblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/internshipblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/internshipblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}