Less than 6 weeks to go...

It is now less than six weeks before I board my plane for Kenya, and it is taking every ounce of my will power to stay focused on studying and final exams - all I really want to do is prepare for Africa and think about everything I am going to get to do while in Uganda, and Kenya, and Tanzania.  Not to mention daydream about the Kibale forest literally dripping with primates... 

Over the past few months I have been slowly organizing insurance, flight plans, visas, and vaccinations.  I have had a couple meetings with the program coordinators and met some other students who will also be participating in the field study.  While I don't know any of the other participants very well, there will be some friendly faces that I'll recognize from the Introduction to African Studies course I took this fall, and I've discovered there is one other neuroscience student going, too.  For some strange reason, almost all of the students are women... I can't figure out why there would be a gender bias to something like this - any theories??

Our itinerary as of now is to depart on January 15th from Montreal and arrive in Nairobi, Kenya on January 16th.  We will spend a few days in Kenya, then head out to Uganda for a three week session, during which I will be taking a course in Primate Studies and Conservation - can't wait!!!  We will be focusing on primate behaviour, ecology, and conservation while working on research design and developing field methods.  Now, while I really did enjoy my Biostatistical Analysis class this semester, I just don't think that typing away on a yellowing keyboard in a computer lab is going to even begin to compare to getting up at dawn in the middle of Kibale National Park to go out and observe endangered chimpanzees. Unreal.
After Uganda, we will be heading back to Kenya, where I will be focusing in on bird studies with an Ornithology class, taught by Prof David Bird - ironic, yes?  And for the last few weeks, we will be in Tanzania and Zanzibar, where I'll switch gears a bit from biology to anthropology and delve into an archeology course studying the prehistory of Africa. 

Throughout the whole program, it is clear that I will be getting my hands dirty and be entirely enveloped in a completely new kind of learning experience, perhaps only mildly comparable to my Winter Camp and Bike Trip adventures of my grade 10 Leadership class.  Getting out of a classroom and putting myself in foreign and stressful situations taught me so much about teamwork and and leadership, and even more about myself - as cheesy as that may sound.  And I can only imagine that the same, and more, will happen again in Africa.
Wish me luck,
Love, Kirsten