The park scene

We spent the first week of travel doing ecological field studies in the Serengeti ecosystem. That means I counted some birds, saw a lot of cool animals and had some good talks.

First stop was Ngorongoro Crater, once a volcano, and now home to the highest concentration of predators in the world. Too bad we didn’t see anything..


A male lion chilling near the car



So many safari cars. Unreal!



Hyenas are actually really cute. The lion king gives them a bad rap.


The Lion King reenacted. Simba and Nalla!

Next we visited Olduvai Gorge, where homo-sapiens did some evolving. I gave a presentation with Lizzie on paleoecology there. Not a bad stage, ay?



Last stop was the Serengeti National Park itself. We got there at the exact same time as the Rainy Season arrived. Things got wet. Our land rovers turned into boats and we forded rivers like the oxen of Oregon Trail.

Even little simba got wet

While on safari, a lunchtime discussion about peanut butter led us to a debate on acting locally –v- globally. The connection to peanut butter eventually got a little hazy, but here’s what I came away thinking about:

Though we may have good intentions involving international causes, acting outside of your “local” means that you won’t be a part of the consequences and repercussions of your actions—and you won’t know when you fail. All actions have consequences and repercussions, even local action, or inaction, but if you never know when you fail, then you may be doing more damage than good without ever knowing it.

This kind of damage is both tangible and unconscious. An example of the tangible: most people who donate to organizations like Conservation International or World Wildlife Fund don’t realize that they are also donating to the forced eviction of indigenous peoples off of their land in countries like Tanzania. As an outsider you can try to educate yourself on the issue, and weigh the pros and cons of your donation, but you will never know. Regardless, the real destruction may be the under the surface. This destruction is theoretical, but a lot of service re-enforces systems of power and dominance without our realizing it. So by making the choice to donate to an organization, you are exercising your power as a Westerner to say what you think is better for a place like Tanzania that you probably don’t know very much about if it is outside of your local.

But in spite of these problems with acting outside of your local, I'm not ready to give up on international responsibility and the connection that exists between all humans, regardless of location. Essentially, I’m not sure how to act on global issues at this point without ignoring these factors. But I am not ready to dismiss them either.

In the article I mentioned before, “To Hell with Good Intentions”, Ivan Illich writes about this issue specifically about Mexico, and I’ve included a quotation where he says what he thinks we should do… His article is pretty harsh..

“I am here to suggest that you voluntarily renounce exercising the power which being an American gives you. I am here to entreat you to freely, consciously and humbly give up the legal right you have to impose your benevolence on Mexico. I am here to challenge you to recognize your inability, your powerlessness and your incapacity to do the "good" which you intended to do.”
-Ivan Illich, “To Hell with Good Intentions”

It is kind of tough idea to handle. Especially because I feel a responsibility to use my education and privilege to try to do good in the world and fight for social justice. But at this point, I definitely do not know how. And maybe the real lesson for me is to be more humble about what I can do in the world, because what I can do is actually just like what anyone can do—act imperfectly. Perhaps this is best done by acting locally, which again, anyone can do. The great equalizer?

Not sure how it translates into the next step for me, but we shall see…