Sayansi

Yesterday we went to Sinda Island (I'm not actually sure if that's how it's spelled), a small island just off the coast of Dar es Salaam. In order to avoid traffic and make all of our transportation connections (bus --> ferry --> dala dala --> boat) we had to wake up before sunrise. The ferry, which based on our past ferry experiences here we had anticipated to be long, cramped and miserable, ended up only taking 2 minutes and literally just crossed the harbor, avoiding all of the morning rush hour.



We went on the trip with Matt Richmond, who is a Brit living in Dar es Salaam who wrote our field studies textbook - basically, he knows everything there is to know about organisms of the West Indian Ocean. Our activity for the day was studying the biodiversity of the region, by documenting organism populations in quadrats along a 50 meter transect. Found LOTS of crazy anemones, starfish, brittle stars, and sea cucumbers...and a lot of rocks.







After a couple hours of compiling data, we got to eat lunch, swim, and sunbathe. Becky and I found a dying baby squid that was squirting its ink into a black cloud in the otherwise very clear water. Sounds kind of sad, but it was pretty cool. We had to beat rush hour coming home so we couldn't stay too long, but we got to have a relaxing dhow sail on the way back to the mainland.



In other news, if anyone knows of any agriculturally-related NGOs or has any connections with businesses that would potentially be interested in donating masks, gloves or rubber boots to farmers in Africa...let me know!

-Brooke