My Last Days in Bagamoyo

Kim and I are leaving Bagamoyo three days before the students. On Saturday I have a visit planned to the Arusha Observatory which is under construction.  For Sunday Kim and I booked a safari to Arusha National Park, so we are excited to get out and see some beautiful scenery, Mount Meru, the fifth tallest mountain in Africa, and some wildlife. The rest of the party will arrive on Monday afternoon. But here is a run down of the last few days in Bagamoyo.

The Reef

As a part of the Environmental Justice course, Dr. Plaxedes Chitoyo planned a walk on the local reef followed by a beach cleanup. The timing worked out to meet briefly at 9:00 in the pavilion, then walk out to the reef. The reef was very interesting with many different creatures waiting for us. Only at low tide is the reef exposed. It is several hundred yards from the shore out to the reef. At low tide the reef sticks up and forms tide pools with lots of life in them.

Two students walking through a tide pool on the reef.

Two of the Duquesne advisors who visited with an alumni tour.

There were lots of crabs scuttling around, sea weed, small fish, sea cucumbers, starfish, live coral, small shrimp, and some unidentified creatures. I wish I knew more marine biology.

Beach Clean-Up

Associated with the Firefly is the Bagamoyo Beach Lovers (BBL), an NGO that promotes the clean up and care of the beaches in the area. We all walked the beach down to the Firefly and the head of BBL talked to us about their effort. Then we spent a couple of hot hours picking up plastic and other trash from the beach near the fish market. The Firefly hosts a recycling point from which plastics, glass and other recyclables are transported to Dar es Salaam for proper treatment.

The crew armed with gloves and bags ready to head out.

It took significant pick up to even make our way down to the beach.

Finally, digging old nets and plastic out of the sand.

We filled quite a number of bags.

This is a typical scene in the town of Bagamoyo. There are a few paved roads, and a network of neighborhood houses on dirt roads or paths. There are open wells every 200 yards or so.

Just another day making a very small impact in the overall environmental problems in Tanzania. But it had an impact on the students and opened their eyes to magnitude of the issue of trash. This triggered a lot of discussion the next day in class and the rest of the Maymester.

Today, Thursday May 31st, was my last session with the students before the final wrap up at the very end of the trip. The next to last chapter in the book we are reading for class, The Story of Earth, tells of how there have been many changes in the Earth's climate, oceans, land, life over the last 560 million years. The author, Robert Hazen, also highlights how each change drove the extinction of many species and opened opportunities for the diversification of surviving species, but it is a story that should give all of a warning to think about how the rapid changes we see now will affect the future of the Earth. Life survives, but it will be very different in the future.

Enough for now. I will post again from Arusha.