Hello everyone!
I am so sorry it has been so long since I’ve written. Since I was last in touch, I have attended a Hindu wedding in Nepal, I conducted three weeks of fieldwork for my independent research project, I wrote and presented on my findings from my research, and lastly, I traveled over 24 hours to Madagascar, where I have been for almost 3 weeks with 10 other students from my college while we have been mentoring Malagasy students in English, TOEFL, and SAT preparation. So, to say the least, I have been rather busy! I have been meaning to write my final blog for a while now, but wrapping up my research, limited wifi, and adjusting to an entirely new country have gotten in the way. So, again, sorry for the delay, but I am so happy to share with you now a bit more about what I’ve been up to and what I am planning next.
One of my favorite days in Nepal was when I attended a Hindu wedding. During my time in Kathmandu, I made a good group of Nepali friends who became very important to my experience in Nepal. They helped show me around, get deals when buying things, and take me to all of the best local restaurants. I really miss them now and I hope I will be able to meet them again someday soon! Anyway, my friend’s older brother was getting married and, somehow, I was invited to the wedding. I felt a little apprehensive about this because I had never met my friend’s brother and I knew next to nothing about Hindu marriage ceremonies and I felt like I might be intruding. However, my friends reassured me that I was very welcomed and that they wanted me to witness such a special part of their culture, especially since tourists rarely get to see weddings like this. The wedding ceremony itself lasted most of the day, complete with multiple rituals, traditions, and other religious customs. I won’t pretend to understand much of the significance of what I saw, but I can say that the day was absolutely beautiful. I was even invited to take photos of the ceremony and I had a great time acting as an unofficial photographer (some of my photos are below!). The wedding reception took place later that night, and my friends and I danced the night away!
A few days after the wedding, I began my three weeks of fieldwork. I spent this time in the southern part of Nepal known as the Terai, specifically near Chitwan National Park, a biodiversity and conservation hotspot. My research there focused on better understanding how this national park and the development associated with it has impacted the traditional ecological knowledge of the indigenous population in this region. I traveled there alone and lived with an indigenous host family during my time there. Since I was performing my research in an anthropological style, I primarily focused on conducting interviews with locals and writing field notes about my observations and experiences living in this community. Overall, although this process was extremely challenging, I thoroughly enjoyed it. With the help of translators, I had some incredible conversations with indigenous elders who told me fascinating stories about their childhoods, their interactions with animals like tigers, elephants and rhinos, and how they used to use the local jungle plants for food and medicine while they were growing up. Today, the land within the national park is considered protected and no one is allowed to access it, so their traditional ways of life that relied on the jungle have all but gone away. For this reason, I decided that these practices were worth studying. I compiled my research findings into a roughly 30-page research report, and if you would like to read it, just let me know!
And now, this brings me to my time in Madagascar. I have spent the past two and a half weeks as part of a team of fellow students from my college mentoring Malagasy high school students in an advanced English-learning program. As native English speakers but mere college students who are not trained teachers, the most important thing we can help our mentees with is better understanding spoken English, which is uncommon in Malagasy classrooms. During our classroom days, we have been leading sessions on various English skills and other important aspects of applying to college in the United States, which is the goal for most of our students. This mentoring has been extremely fun, rewarding, and rather exhausting. However, we have broken up our time in the classroom by doing some sightseeing- especially of the unique wildlife in Madagascar. We spent one weekend visiting a wildlife refuge where we saw lemurs, chameleons, snakes, geckos, and much more (photos below!). These animals were certainly a highlight of my time in Madagascar.
However, what has been on my mind most these days is that tomorrow, June 10th, I am leaving Madagascar and flying to Kenya, where I will be for the next 7 weeks. As mentioned previously, I have received a fellowship from the National Science Foundation to study at an anthropology field school in Northern Kenya, in a remote location east of Lake Turkana. This field school was founded at Koobi Fora, a location famous for its discovery of one of the oldest and most complete early hominin skulls. For this reason, it is called the Koobi Fora Field School (KFFS) and is known as the world's premier field research and training program in paleoanthropology. At KFFS, I will be focusing my studies less on the bones and old stuff and more on assessing the health needs of the current local community, by working with them to address issues like water scarcity, food insecurity, and persistent drought. I will be working on a team of students conducting this type of research all summer, while we all live and camp in the desert at Koobi Fora. Since we will be so remote, I will be completely off the grid for my month and a half of research at base camp. I will have occasional service to send messages over Whatsapp, but no internet all summer- which I know will be challenging. So, although I am a bit nervous about such a big change, I am SO excited for this new journey!!!
Thank you for reading this rather wordy blog- I wanted to make up for all of the writing I was not able to do lately. Since I will be completely off the grid in Kenya, do not expect to hear from me much anytime soon, but I hope to be back after 7 weeks to share stories and photos from my time at the Koobi Fora Field School. If you would like to stay in touch over Whatsapp while I am in Kenya this summer, please respond to this email and let me know!
The bride in her traditional dress.
The bride and groom.
Scenes from the wedding.
My friends and I at the wedding reception.
I don’t have many photos from my fieldwork, but this shows my host family’s backyard, with the border of Chitwan National Park starting at the treeline not far away.
Day 1 mentoring.
Two of the Malagasy students I have become good friends with.
LEMURS!!! And other amazing wildlife.
Bonus photo: I didn’t have space to write about this, but here is a photo I took at a large religious festival I attended in Nepal, another one of my favorite days there.