August 3, 2025

A colleague recently messaged me, “I hope you’re having the trip of a lifetime.” I thought about that for a while. If I’ve led you to believe that life in the Tanzanian backcountry is anything like a bucket-list vacation, let’s dispel that misconception.

Life here is difficult. Full stop. While we may live better than some of our neighbors and are grateful for things like solar power and a camp kitchen, there’s nothing about living in a tented camp that is polished or particularly comfortable. To start with, there is dust on everything, all the time, and you have to clean it by hand. No vacuums. No washing machines. No dishwashers. We even have to wash bedding by hand, and if you’ve never tried, I can attest that it makes you incredibly appreciative of the powerful appliances we take for granted throughout much of the Global North.

We also have no means of climate control. With nights in the 50’s and days in the high 80’s, it might seem like a comfortable vacation. But let me tell you, after spending seven hours a day bouncing around backroads (without air conditioning), hiking 3-5 miles in the sun, and sitting in sun so bright that your eyes hurt and your skin feels singed during interviews, you’re drained. And you don’t come back to a nap in a cool room, you come back to a steaming hot tent.

Night bring cool temps but its own challenges. If it’s windy (as it often is) and your tent is whipping around, you just don’t sleep. If there’s a wild animal vocalizing or scrambling around near your banda, you’re probably awake. If there’s a call-out in camp and people and vehicles are being scrambled at 4:15 am to respond to a lion attack or medical emergency, you might just want to give up and start your day early.

Which brings us to the subject of darkness. A few evenings ago, the camp staff were gone for an event, and I was the oldest person left in camp, keeping a distant eye on the six undergraduate students interning here. As darkness gathered, something felt off, and I finally realized that no one had turned on the lion lanterns around the perimeter. Each banda has its own solar powered lantern. They help us find our way back to our tents, which are widely spaced along meandering trails through the bush, but these lights also serve the important function of showing wildlife that there is human presence here. Since I felt a sense of responsibility for the safety of my younger colleagues, I grabbed the brightest lantern I could find and started making the rounds.

It’s hard to describe the inky blackness of night here. I consider myself a pretty sturdy soul, but even I had some chills run down my spine as I shuffled down a narrow trail in a pale circle of light and something rustled through the dry vegetation in the void beyond the lantern’s reach. One by one, I found all of the bandas and turned the lights on, and was cheered by the familiar landmarks in the sea of darkness. But it was a reminder of how challenging it must be to live in some of the remote areas we have visited over the past week, where households still have no power source. Here, night is the domain of the wild things.

Maybe you don’t find darkness intimidating, but there are a lot of things here that can hurt you here, and you need to keep an eye out for them all the time. Setting aside the large animals that could be hanging out in the bushes, there are no less than four species of snakes that can maime or kill you occurring in the region around camp (think cobras and black mambas; we’ve already sighted both since my arrival). You can also find multiple models of scorpion, big spiders, and big thorns. In fact, it seems that more trees and shrubs are out to spike you than not. One day I tried to pull a bit of twig off the bottom of my Blundstone field boot and encountered surprising resistance. Eventually, I pried loose a ¾-inch long thorn that had punched straight into the sole like a nail.

We haven’t mentioned ants yet, and they deserve their own paragraph. They come in more sizes than Starbucks cups, and the slightest inkling of a meal can bring a militant stream pouring through any hole in a tent within hours. You develop a strange paranoia about anything with a scent. You double bag things that you’d never thought to put in a bag at all before. You start looking for ways to suspend your belongings from the ceiling. New hills rise up ominously around the banda overnight. Almost daily you’ll find an ant in your tea, your porridge, your shower water. It’s a cold war, and you come to accept that their spies are always among us.

Moving past the physical challenges of life here, there’s the language barrier. I’m currently the only native English speaker in camp, so this is a total immersion experience. The mental load of trying to function at the most basic level in a Bantu language is not unlike trying to run in a swimming pool. You don’t just have to translate words, you have to translate entire concepts. For example, to say a simple thing like “good morning,” you might think that stringing nzuri (good) and asubuhi (morning) together would get the job done. And you’d be wrong. The culturally appropriate way to say good morning is to ask someone how they woke up (umeamkaje?) or for “news of the morning” (habari za asubuhi?). But that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to your repertoire of greetings, which are a major part of the social tradition here. And they’re all a challenge to pronounce before you’ve had caffeine.

Finally, there’s the matter of time. In rural Tanzania, there are no posted schedules. No online ticketing. No standard business hours. You must be very early for everything even though the thing is likely to be very (very) late. You must drive to a business to obtain the phone number to call (usually painted on the wall) to find out when they will be open again. You must accept that if you need anything from a government office, you should show up in person to be served, though you will almost certainly be asked to return the next day (or week). Essentially, while time might be currency in San Francisco or New York City, it’s far less valuable than relationships in a collectivist society. The sooner you accept that your time will be treated as worthless but your network is invaluable (for collecting intel, hearing news, finding people, getting service reviews, reserving seats, and generally getting things done that you might use the internet for in other places) the less frustrating your stay will be.

So is this a fantastic experience? To me, yes. Is it some kind of Instagram-worthy retreat? Not remotely. If you can’t handle:

• being moderately dirty, tired, hot and/or cold every minute of the day,

• having to adjust your plans constantly because a vehicle breaks down or a person isn’t where they said they’d be, and 

• having to defer things you want to do (even something as simple as sending an email) because the wind is blowing the wrong way to get cell service or the solar power has been run down for the day, 

then I suggest you choose another destination. I hear France is lovely right now.

To join me on this journey, you can follow along with new posts in the Field Notes blog on this website or LinkedIn. My work is partially supported by the Center for Human-Carnivore Coexistence and the Salerno Lab. I am actively fundraising for the next phase of my research, and welcome referrals to funders who are interested in supporting work on global challenges including human-wildlife conflict, poverty alleviation, biodiversity conservation, and the impacts of a changing climate on all of these issues.