August 5, 2025

Day by day, the interviews are progressing, but it would be hard to say that we’ve settled into a routine. Every day brings its own challenges to my logistics management, planning, and stamina. Barabaig and Maasai pastoralists are among the world’s best remaining examples of transhumance. They live a semi-nomadic lifestyle, moving with their livestock from season to season, which can present very real challenges for scheduling a meeting.

On one occasion, we lined up 5 interviews the day before, but our first interviewee left home in the early hours of the morning in search of a lost goat. We ended up traversing jeep tracks and footpaths until we met up with him and transported him home for the interview. Later in the day, we intercepted a woman en route to her home after a trip to a different village and sat to talk with her at a construction site. Our last interviewees for the day were out in their seasonal grazing lands, where we perched on the gnarled roots of an old tree, surrounded by cattle. I can’t wait to hear the audio recording for that one.

To some, this may sound like an epic adventure, but I have experienced southern Tanzania as a land of contrasts. Daily, we see scenes of stunning beauty but just as frequently are immersed in scenes of gut-wrenching poverty. Vast natural wealth stands in striking relief against pervasive human and animal suffering.

I am constantly reminded that intellect, beauty and talent are distributed equally, but opportunity is not. We hike to bomas where few visitors will ever enter and meet women that could be supermodels in Paris or London. We talk to men and women alike who have the mental acuity, charisma, or business savvy to have excelled in university and beyond. We pass girls of 10 or 12 tending the family’s cattle herd who are so bright and curious but will never have the chance to attend school. We watch the village boys competing on the football field—a dusty expanse with two goals made of rusty iron pipe—and think that even Messi couldn’t fail to be impressed with that focus and ball control.

While there are unquestionably some disadvantages in life here, it is inspiring to meet people who are making the most of it regardless of the challenges. On one day, we crossed a river on foot and hiked uphill through farms and wildlands before meeting some of Lion Landscape’s staff. They walked along with us for a while to point out the footprint of a large male lion from the night before. The individual toe pads were almost as large as the palm of my hand. Near the top of the hill, we reached our destination: an isolated boma where an elderly widow still tends her cattle and chickens alone, with only a young relative for help around the homestead. She was delighted to have visitors, and shared a tempered, balanced perspective on her lifetime of coexisting with large carnivores. Simply put, wild animals and domesticated animals "all have four legs," and are deserving of our care and protection. It is impossible not to admire the deep well of strength and fighting spirit that has allowed her to live to old age in these difficult conditions. 

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think our world needs more Kardashians or Musks. It needs more stories about role models like her. Ordinary, unassuming people who just accepted the hand they were dealt without complaint, surmounted every obstacle with grace and compassion for the living beings around them, and lived a good life in spite of the odds.

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.