Student Takeover: Lessons from the Zebras

On Saturday we traveled a few hours outside of Iringa to Tanzania’s largest National Park (Ruaha National Park) for a safari filled weekend. Impalas, zebras, giraffes, crocodiles, hippos as well as various bird species were spotted more than a few times! The biggest surprise of our weekend came while arriving back to camp after our evening game drive to find a lone hyena hanging out. Or it might have been on our final drive Sunday morning when we saw 6 lionesses and 1 lion napping in the tree shade right next to the rode. Don’t worry we got it all on camera, check out our videos at the bottom of the post. 

Hear from one of our students Aminata about her take-always from the weekend:

“On my journey of learning to play a new sport while teaching others and eating ugali, the Safari has been the best part. To say the least, the almost three hour drive to Ruaha National Park was long but, nonetheless, it was worth it. The first animal spotted was an elephant and from there I was amazed at how unified these animals were. We saw a lot of impalas but never did we see an impala alone, and the same goes for the zebras, monkeys, and guinea fowls. They moved in large groups and even had different strategies for how they watched out for predators. For the zebras, we could see how one stood facing one direction and another would stand facing the other. The impalas ran with purpose and always moved in big pacts. Then there were the monkeys, who would run off in different directions when disturbed. Some of the strategies that I saw in the monkeys, I saw in the six of us too. We had code words and moved in twos, threes or in one big group of six. We also had different strategies for unknown outcomes. Over these past three weeks, we had become unified, like the zebras, monkeys and impalas, and that’s something admirable in itself.” - Aminata 

The following videos may make you stop whatever you’re doing right now and book a safari in Tanzania:

[VIDEO::https://youtu.be/arygAPW75MI]