Jambo,
I am thrilled to be sharing yet another post about my experience so far. Over the last week or so, my team and I have been conducting interviews with the students at SEGA Girls’ Secondary School and have been furthering our knowledge on their understanding of oral healthcare. Although we still have over 100 girls to interview, we have already started working on developing our goals for our summer project and thinking of the most sustainable implementations we can make based on the responses we have received so far. Things are definitely looking hopeful for our project.
In other news, over the past weekend, we also had the opportunity to visit two of Tanzania’s most popular national parks, Ngorongoro Crater and Serengeti National Park. We spent the weekend camping and exploring these parks with a safari guide. As mentioned in my previous post, this is a summer dedicated to first’s so I think it is important to acknowledge that this was my first ever Safari as well as the first time I had ever seen certain animals such as a hippopotamus and rhinoceros, in real life. Having the opportunity to see so many different wild animals was one of the most breath-taking experiences. Moreover, the landscape of these parks left me awestruck.
Through this experience, I had the chance to learn that Tanzania’s tourism is a huge part of the economy. This became evident as I met people from all of the world during the safari. I met people from Australia, Ireland, Canada and the list goes on. It is understandable that people would travel from across the world to Tanzania to visit the national parks as they are like nothing I have ever seen before. The animals go about their day like no one is watching and it is so fascinating to observe all of the different animals in their natural habitat.
In the few days that we were there, we witnessed two male hippos fighting over a female hippo and two male elephants fighting over a female elephant. As if that was not exciting enough, we watched as a lioness chased away a hyena just about fifteen feet from our safari car. The experience was made complete as our safari guide also educated us on different animal behaviors and relationships. I learned that rhinoceroses hide during the day because they are paranoid about poachers returning to harm them, and that lions always perform a cost-benefit analysis before attacking potential prey.
If you are looking for activities to add to your bucket list, going on a safari in Tanzania is one I would recommend.
Until next time!