August 9, 2025

The past week has been so full, I have struggled to know where to begin writing. 

When I designed the research project I’m implementing right now, I had access to a household survey dataset from 2024-2025. This allowed me to sort households by the ethnicity and gender of the survey respondent, and their recent experience of carnivore conflict. I aimed to interview about 60 people, divided evenly between the two dominant pastoralist groups in this region: Maasai and Barabaig. Within each ethnic community, I wanted to interview about 15 men and 15 women, and I wanted at least 33% of my interviewees to have had a carnivore-related loss experience. I randomly selected from the “bins” of sorted participants to form a list of interviewees, though I adjusted this list where needed to ensure that I was sampling from all of the villages and subvillages that the original surveys had covered (in other words, I wanted my interviewees to be spread across the same geographic footprint as the participants in the original survey rather than ending up with hotspots and dark spots).

I needn’t have bothered to select for carnivore experience. No matter how far we drive, what ethnic community we’re in, or how seemingly different the economic standing of the household is, we’ve heard story after story of encounters with these species. One elderly man living in a rugged and hilly upland area was clearly still emotional as he described a single hyena attack that had resulted in the loss of over 20 goats in 2024. To date, they have received nothing from the government’s loss compensation program.

Another man showed us the scars on his upper arm and leg from when he was attacked by two male lions nearly 10 years ago. He was a big man, but he pointed out how the lion’s jaw had wrapped around his thigh, leaving scarred indentations on both sides to this day. He related how they killed his herding dog and he had thrown his spear but missed the lion, leaving himself defenseless. Today, he understands that the lions were only doing what was in their nature, and the importance of finding ways to coexist. Many people we speak with aren’t as forgiving.

Stories of livestock loss and human attacks aren’t the only things that stick with you. Social research can be weighty. People are opening up a part of themselves to your view—either through what they say, or simply by inviting you into their space for half an hour. As social scientists, we’re trained to work as neutral, restrained observers, never interfering in or passing judgements on the lives of our subjects. Yet some things pierce through this shell.

At one household, we observed clear signs of domestic abuse. In a country where polygamy, arranged marriages, and child marriages are still common, and where women are often given little or no opportunity for an education let alone a livelihood of their own, it can create the conditions for toxic patriarchy. I admire and support the work of the Pastoral Women’s Council on this issue, and hope their efforts to change these norms will one day have spread across Tanzania to the many, many women who need this education and agency. It cannot come soon enough for women like the one we met.

Though some interviews are difficult, each encounter is braiding small ties with the communities surrounding the field camp. Earning trust is critically important to my work, so I look for ways to show people I’m genuinely invested in their lives and concerns even though my Kiswahili is limited. Sometimes this means admiring their cattle herd (you get major points for asking to take a picture) or scratching the budding horns of the kid goat that keeps butting our chairs during an interview. Sometimes this means offering rides (referred to in local slang as “lifty”) as I make my way around these scattered villages and bomas. Most local people have a bicycle in the family, but no means of group transportation, and limited means to transport heavy or bulky goods other than hiring a motorcycle taxi.

We’ve picked up strangers, past interview participants, or pastoralist guides from the roadsides many times, hearing about their day for a short time as we help to accelerate their journey to the next dot on the map. And slowly, I’m shifting from a novelty—the only woman who drives for miles around—to a feature of village life. Yesterday, I was even flagged down to transport a large bucket of fresh milk to the micro-shop near camp, saving one of our neighbors a long walk in the hot sun. As I pulled up to the dusty roadside a couple kilometers later, the shop manager was already waiting with an amused smile as he talked to someone on the phone—almost certainly the woman who had tasked me with the errand, making sure that I wouldn’t get lost with my valuable cargo and my broken Kiswahili. After we exchanged greetings and the bucket, and I put the truck back in gear to finish the drive to camp, I felt a pang of sadness that my time here is coming to an end soon.

It is a strange kind of division of your heart to love two places. To feel so at home, so welcomed on the other side of the world. To fall into the rhythms of life in camp. To time each day by the sun and the stars. To be in this intimate, unbroken communion with nature in all its beauty and harshness. To see familiar faces on the roads and in the markets, to be indebted to people for their gifts and kindness, and to repay those kindnesses as you see opportunities in a cycle of generous and interconnected living. And yet there is a part of me that misses my dog and my family. I sometimes lay awake at night thinking of my little rowhouse and garden, the way the morning sun beams across the living room rug, the long hikes and bike rides in the Colorado foothills. I have always struggled with this division of my heart, and finally being back in Africa after a much longer absence than I planned has forced me to come to terms with it. It is a bittersweet state of perpetual separation to hold two loves, but I think I am incredibly fortunate to have loved at all.

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.