Moyo Hill Camp – Day 16 – 2/20/11

            Not a whole lot going on today.  Breakfast followed by an hour or Swahili during which we learned prepositions and conjunctions.  The rest of the morning we had a guest speaker come in and talk about Iraq (the tribe in our immediate vicinity) culture so that on our 1 day home stay we will be culturally prepared.  Much of their culture is similar to the Maasai (yeah that’s the actual way you are suppose to spell it-oops).  Men hold all property and are head of the family, women cook, clean, and raise children and can’t inherit anything.  Male and female circumcision are still common however there is progress toward eliminating female circumcision.  Most of the income comes from cattle and crop harvest.  Probably my favorite part of the talk was at the end when the speaker asked us to describe how the Iraq differed from our society in the US.  They (our professors too) laughed in disbelief when we told them women (usually) inherit everything if their spouse dies.  In the Iraq tribe, all the property goes to the deceased husband’s younger brother including his wife and kids!  Also the idea that women go out and earn money from a full time job and don’t raise their children as their main occupation was pretty foreign to them.  It was interesting to hear their questions and know that even though they put on nice clothes to come to class and have fairly good English, they are still very puzzled by our culture and don’t really know that much about it. 

            The afternoon was spent compiling data from our game counting in Tarangire yesterday.  Analyzing is always a pain but when people are just rushing to put together 4 different groups data on one flashdrive then hand it around, well things get messy.  I read once that the fastest way somewhere is the slowest way around.  I don’t listen to this quote often but it definitely applies here.  What ended up happening was of course most of the class quickly copied this file onto their computers and walked out the door.  Three students and I spent the next hour and a half entering the correct data manually into our files.  At least we have to right stuff.  SO now I sit here in the computer room finishing my three papers before heading to bed.  Tomorrow is another non-program day and the plan is to hike up the escarpment and then explore the town in the valley below afterwards.  More tomorrow