By Mounu Mataele
Funding by a BYU Environments Research grant, a group of students and professors spent the spring and summer terms next to Mt. Kilimanjaro, Africa”s tallest mountain.
BYU professors Mark Jackson and Jeff Durrant embarked on the adventure with 11 students with the purpose of giving students research experience and the opportunity to produce publishable material.
“We went with the purpose in mind of getting to know the area and getting to know the region,” said Marie Durrant, Jeff Durrant”s wife. “It”s kind of getting to be a land squeeze. There”s been a lot of population growth. There”s been a squeeze on land and inheritance. They inherit land there.”
Students” responsibilities varied on the project.
“We got to do a lot of different things,” said Elizabeth Parnell, 23, a graduate student from Spring City, Utah, majoring in geography. “There was one (student) looking at soils, one that looked at irrigation. There were a few that were looking at women”s issues and one was looking at education. We were all involved in doing the surveys and mapping.”
Day-to-day activities varied.
“If you”re a planner person, leave it at home,” said Sarah Udall, 26, a graduate student from Lindon, Utah, majoring in geography. “Nothing goes like that in Africa.”
Students were given leeway to choose individual research projects.
“I did a lot of mapping,” said Ezra Owen, 26, a graduate student from Powder Springs, Ga., majoring in geographic information systems. “I did GPS, which stands for global positioning system. I had a backpack unit wherever I walked. It takes points to where I walked. Mapping gave me the opportunity to go everywhere.”
Other students spent time interacting with the local people.
“The biggest thing I did was informal interviews,” Udall said. “I interviewed a lot of villagers and people as I bumped into them. My focus was the community conservation of Mt. Kilimanjaro.”
Each student was asked to write in a field journal daily.
“We had specific things that we wanted them to observe, to know how to use the land in their villages and the kind of family structure,” said Marie Durrant.
In addition to field journals, students wrote ethnographies.
“I actually did an ethnography on a grandmother, and it was really interesting,” said Lisette Borchert, 21, a senior from Ogden, Utah, majoring in geography. “She was older and had not gone to school. She told me a lot about the village. They were hiding from the German troops and just some interesting stuff.”
Ethnographies were useful to understanding the lifestyle there.
“For me, I guess it (ethnographies) was to find out more about people”s lives more than just talking to them,” Bochert said. “It was more to find out their lifestyle and the way they lived and compare to our lifestyle.”
In addition to becoming familiar with the people, students also came to know the areas well.
“It”s an amazing area,” Owen said. “It”s not the Africa we think of. It”s a rain forest. It wasn”t like a desert and people starving. It wasn”t the typical African scene.”
The group lived in three different villages at three different elevations. Two or three students lived in each village. At the highest elevation was the National Park Mbahe, the one in the middle zone was called Sembeti and the low one was called Chekereni.
Marie Durrant, who was working on her doctorate, brought her three children along on the trip.
“I was the link between the three villages,” she said. “I did some personal interviews with grandmothers in each of the three villages and found out a interesting custom of grandmothers taking care of children.”
Students said the living situation they encountered in Africa was surprising.
“The economic situation where we were was very different from anything we had ever experienced,” Parnell said. “Almost everybody had a little outhouse behind their huts.”
This work is an ongoing project that will continue for at least the next three to five years.
“There are several national parks, and there”s a need for managers to work with communities in or around these protected areas,” Marie Durrant said. “We want to facilitate the parks and villages knowing what is expected and to hopefully get more dialogue and communication going. We”re hoping to help understand the situation better and hopefully help ourselves academically.”
Plans are already being made to expand this research to the grasslands of the Serengeti and to add Dr. Perry Hardin to the team. Students interested in going next year can contact Marie Durrant at 422-8241.
