Second day of classes went very well. We started the day with an hour long class of Wildlife Ecology which was much more enjoyable after yesterday’s intro class. In the afternoon we had three classes of Wildlife Management all of which were so cool. Even the hour and a half lecture on African mammal classification was really interesting. Of course class means homework…just some reading but still I wish my vacation was not over. Tomorrow we are going for the first half of our trip into the Lake Manyara National Park. While there we will be identifying animals that we see and eventually writing a report on classification, habitat, and feeding patterns on them.
During our afternoon break between classes, a group of us walked up Moyo Hill. While it was really, really hot the walk was totally worth it. The view was spectacular and allowed us to see all the way to Lake Manyara and the entire valley spread out below us.
After my last class I was headed back to my banda (house) when I was invited to a microfinance meeting in the town. Since I have been making small micro loans for several years now, I was curious to see the actually people and how these local groups really worked. One of the staff members here at the camp is a member so he took me and two of the guys down to the village government building where the group meets. We met all the leaders of the group, just under half the members an learned all about how the group works, the type of loans they do etc. It was very exciting to hear so much Swahili spoken and to meet and interact with a larger portion of the local community.
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