Monday, Feb. 13
Gombe, Tanzania
Today, after several days of hard rain, Elizabeth Londsdorf and I took the three-hour boat ride back to Kigoma for our flight to Dar es Salaam . It is always difficult leaving Gombe since time spent there seems like a dream—you arrive one minute and leave the next. 

This was a very successful trip; we can see substantial progress since we began monitoring the health of the chimpanzees two years ago. Although there is still a lot more work to do, it seems that the more success you have, the more questions there are to ask.
 
Tuesday, Feb. 14 
It is Valentine’s Day and Elizabeth leaves tonight on the midnight plane to Amsterdam. I will leave for Arusha tomorrow and meet with Lisa Faust for the second half of both of our trips. We spent the day with Doug Cress of the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance (PASA), discussing primate conservation and research. PASA is the organizing body for many of the major sanctuaries on the continent and, as such, is involved in education, conservation, research and politics in many range countries.

Doug’s family is moving back to the United States soon. While this will make his work easier, it will make our future trips to Dar es Salaam more difficult since we’ll have to find another place to stay.

Wednesday, Feb.15th
I left Dar es Salaam around noon to take a flight to Arusha , where I’ll begin the second half of the trip.  Precision Air, a Tanzanian airline, is always interesting since all of their planes are smaller, propeller driven planes that are extremely loud. The company is related to Kenya Air but still very small - they announce every new plane added to the fleet in their magazine, which is incredibly nice!  Today we left two hours late so I felt like I was at home in O’hare!  When I arrive, Dr. Lisa Faust and I will be going to check on a collaborative project with Craig Packer from the University of Minnesota aimed at vaccinating domestic dogs around Serengeti National Park for rabies and distemper.  The goals of this project are to protect humans, domestic dogs and wildlife from these important diseases.  
Thurs 16th

Last night, I met up with Dr. Faust in Arusha as she was finishing her work with the Foleys.  We had a nice dinner with Charles Foley, Craig Packer and some of his lion researchers.  All are incredibly busy and it was nice to touch base before heading out to the park.  This morning we met the car and driver that we hired for the week, stocked up on supplies (food, water, mosquito nets etc.) and headed off on a 6 hour drive to the park.  On the way to Serengeti, we passed through the Ngorongoro conservation area and got a beautiful view down into the famous Crater.  We arrived at the Serengeti Research Institute, where we are staying, just before dark, retrieved our key and got settled in.  It was a long, dusty day and we are ready for some sleep.  Tomorrow, our colleagues should meet us here to begin our work.

Friday, Feb.17th
This morning we took advantage of our hired car and woke up early to get in a Safari before breakfast.  We saw remnants of the annual migration including wildebeest, zebra, and lots of lions; the park has a very short growth of green grass even though the rains are very late this year.  We arrived back to the house and met the coordinator of the "Carnivore Disease Project" and planned our next few days. We have many people to meet, both inside and outside the park, the vaccination project to visit, and much planning to do for future projects - there are many health issues to deal with here!

Saturday, Feb.18th
Today, we got up at 5 a.m. again for an early morning Safari through the park and saw even more animals, including a leopard with a kill.  This is my favorite animal and I have only seen one before in 9 trips to Africa! We arrived back at the house for several meetings.  First, we visited with officials from Tanzanian National Parks (TANAPA) and the Tanzanian Wildlife Research Institute (TAWIRI), including the head TANAPA ecologist, Mr. Lajora, who I have never met before but who has supported all of Lincoln Park Zoo's efforts for the last three years.  We also met with officials from the Frankfurt Zoological Society - they have had a permanent presence in the park since the 1950s and we have many ideas for potential research collaboration.  In addition, we got to catch up with friends from the Serengeti Lion Project and a large Biodiversity Project in the park. Tonight we will have dinner with the Frankfurt folks to expand these ideas and see a beautiful sunset from their porch! Tomorrow we will leave the park to go to an area called Loliondo to see the vaccination project and meet with local officials about diseases and wild dogs.

Sunday, February 19th
Today we traveled up to the northern part of the Serengeti and saw a large part of the migration that is out of the normal range; it was very green and beautiful.  We headed to the Loliondo district outside the park , which is a game controlled area where the Masaii live.  This means that people and their livestock range in the same area as the park’s wildlife, which can lead to conflict.  There are reports of a new pack of endangered African wild dogs outside the park and the local villagers have decided to try ecotourism instead of extermination at this point.  This is a major development since wild dogs have not been seen in this area for many years and the normal reaction to livestock depredation is revenge.  We had an impromptu meeting with Lincoln Park Zoo President Kevin Bell and part of the board of directors, who were on Safari, along the way – I was glad I wore my Lincoln Park Zoo t-shirt today!

Monday, February 20th
I woke up early today after eating a dinner of boiled goat and rice and spending an interesting evening in a $3.00 hostel in the village of Wasso.  The people are very friendly and the landscape is incredible.  We walked through the valleys between Masaii bomas (settlements) to vaccinate their dogs for rabies and distemper.  There was an outbreak in this area in 2003 which affected human children, dogs and cattle, but no additional cases have been documented since the vaccine program began.  We were greeted at every stop by the stares of the men and women and shouts of "mzungu" (ghost or white person) from the kids; they all wanted to touch us and run away!  Overall, it was an incredible day of walking through the Masaii area, learning about the working conditions.  At night, we drove a 20 kilometer transect to help with a carnivore research project in the area; our most exciting find was a striped hyena!