High in the north of New York state, America’s largest temperate deciduous forest sets its leaves ablaze with color before they denude themselves for winter.  Against this backdrop, and led by TNC staff from the Adirondack chapter, I traveled with three TNC China colleagues around Adirondack Park (in whose boundaries live 130,000 residents) and ( Read more... )

Tonight is my last night in my own tent. I have to wake up early on Tuesday to catch the car down to Loibor siret, to catch the local car back to Arusha, so I’ll spend that night in Kelly’s room. The sun streams along its path today, and it seems I have barely woken up but it is dark again. I did some laundry today, while the guys did the rest of ( Read more... )

My mom calls me and the Chinese feels odd in my mouth, my tongue curling around the foreign shape of the these words, refusing to go where it must. Although I’ve now memorized over 400 Swahili words, my recall is still very slow. So slow that even though I can understand what people ask me, they’ll often walk away muttering “you don’t understand ( Read more... )

Work has proceeded pell-mell these past couple days, and projects are piling up. By the end of my day, I am too tired to write! It’s now Saturday morning, and many questions have been resolved, so I take a quick breather to compose this email ( Read more... )

This morning I woke well before dawn (5:15) to tag along on the morning tracking transect. Of all the tracking transects, this one is usually the best for wildlife because much of it runs along the Tarangire Park boundary. We weren’t disappointed. In between watching the Hadza and Maasai hurl sticks into a baobab to knock down the delicious seed ( Read more... )

I found myself famished yesterday evening; I believe this means I am fully recovered. The days are passing swiftly now, and I hardly have time to wake up before the sun has walked its path across the sky and I am back in darkness again ( Read more... )

I wake up unusually early for the day, 5 am, and since I am already awake I decide to tag along with Dennis, the Hadza, and Christy for their tracking activities. One of the ways that APW gets a sense of the predator populations is to drive transects (basically, along straight-line roads) and look for the footprints of predators in the dirt. The ( Read more... )

Today is another overcast day that clears as the hours pass. Ben finally arrives in Gabon today, and I am pleased to be on the same continent as him, not to mention just one time zone away. I cherish every day I have at Noloholo, while also counting down the days to our August reunion in Johannesburg. I still have my computer set to California time ( Read more... )

The morning begins cold, all of us with our wraps and fleeces, shivering in the program office. Really it isn’t so cold at all; but Tanzania makes you a lover of the sunshine and warmth. You become, in my dad’s words “wimpy ( Read more... )

A beautiful morning and a beautiful day, my body a bundle of nerves. We get dropped off in the village to attend two women’s meetings - we can’t find one until the other one is supposed to start. Fortunately the other meeting goes well. We go to grab lunch, but then realize we have no ride back to Noloholo. We kill three hours visiting the Mamas in ( Read more... )