Sweet
Briar College senior Savanna Klein photographed lots of wildlife during
her semester-long stay in Tanzania — such as this elephant in the
Ngorongoro Conservation Area.
Savanna Klein’s semester abroad in Tanzania really started nearly
three years ago during a lecture by Barbara Kingsolver. Klein asked the
novelist, who spoke at Sweet Briar’s 2013 Waxter Forum, what advice she had for aspiring environmental writers.
“Travel as much as possible,” Kingsolver told the then-first-year.
Two days later, a representative from the School for Field Studies visited one of Klein’s classes.
“I immediately knew that was the program for me,” says Klein, who
will graduate in 2016 with a major in environmental studies and minors
in creative writing and economics.
The School for Field Studies runs multiple programs throughout the
world, most of them in remote areas. What unites all of them is their
academic and environmental focus, says Klein. She chose the Tanzanian
program, Wildlife Management, because it fit best with her academic interests.
“I am not sure if I want to make a career out of environmental
studies and economics, but I am very interested in how the two work
together to implement successful environmental policies,” she says.
Klein’s trip to the East African country this past spring took her to
the village of Rhotia in northern Tanzania, where she stayed at a place
called Moyo Hill, the field site for the School for Field Studies.
Spending her nights in a cabin-like “banda” — Swahili for “shed” —
Klein took advantage of the site’s dining hall, classroom and a small
library during the day. In addition to her four classes — Wildlife
Ecology, Wildlife Management, Environmental Policy and Socioeconomic
Values — Klein also completed a Culture and Swahili course.
Afternoons were often spent doing fieldwork, such as “walking
transects and doing detailed observations for Wildlife Ecology and
Wildlife Management,” Klein says, or “walking through villages
conducting interviews for Environmental Policy.”
The semester also included two five-day trips, one to Tarangire
National Park, in the Manyara Region, and another to Serengeti National
Park, which spans 5,700 square-miles in the Mara and Simiyu regions.
“The expeditions were a mix of classwork and having fun randomly
driving around on game drives,” Klein says. “We were lucky enough to see
African wild dogs, bat-eared foxes, leopard cubs, lions hunting and a
caracal, along with the usual East African wildlife.”
But her favorite part of the whole experience was her final project.
“Directed Research is what every SFS student spends their last month
in the program working on,” Klein says. “Each SFS program has a
Five-year Plan for the area in which the program is located. These plans
are a collaboration effort between the professors and the people in the
area to improve social and environmental issues. Directed Research
projects are the components that help implement the Five-year Plan. For
Tanzania, the Five Year Plan focuses on ways to change land and resource
use in a way that will benefit communities as well as the ecosystem.”
Klein’s project involved analyzing beekeeping and its contribution to
household income and poverty alleviation. For several weeks, she
interviewed beekeepers in two villages. Klein designed the questionnaire
she used for data collection, organized and analyzed her data, wrote a
report and presented her findings to the community.
“I found out that, while beekeeping is a useful secondary source of
income for some farmers, the full potential for profits could not be
reached due to the lack of access to education on modern beekeeping
techniques,” she explains. “With sturdier, better-protected hives,
beekeepers could make much more honey at less of a cost. Ultimately, it
would be ideal for beekeepers to learn how to make these modern hives
and how to process the honey in a way that would increase the quality.”
A lion in Serengeti National Park
Klein’s research was sent to district officials, along with other
students’ findings. She is hoping the region will start implementing
some of her suggestions.
In the meantime, Klein is educating people back home about some of
the things she learned in Tanzania. One issue in particular stood out.
“The most important thing I took away from this trip is how important
it is to address human-wildlife conflict,” she says. “A lot of people
from all over the world want to go to Africa to see the wild animals,
and they get all worked up about these animals being killed. What most
people don’t realize, though, is how much the people who have to live
with these animals struggle.
“A Tanzanian living right next to a national park will most likely
never set foot into it. The zebras and elephants, however, will have no
problem eating that person’s crops, and the lions, hyenas and leopards
won’t think twice about killing off that person’s cattle. It is illegal
to kill the wildlife, so the Tanzanians have no way to retaliate.”
The national parks, says Klein, bring in lots of money, but hardly any of that profit trickles down to the local population.
“If you care about wildlife,” she suggests, “start thinking about the
people, because the fight for conservation will be much easier if the
local people value the wildlife as much as you do.”
Klein (right) with Mama Sho, a retired primary school principal
Klein returned to Sweet Briar after the events of last spring and
picked up where she left off. She represents the Class of 2016 on the
Honors Program Student Council, plays viola in the orchestra and is a
member of Tau Phi.
The most important things, she says, haven’t changed, and that’s why she came back.
“I chose to come to SBC because of the small class sizes, wonderful
professors and amazing campus. Many liberal arts colleges can say they
have small classes and good professors, but none of them have the
incredible outdoor classroom that is our campus,” she says. “I came back
because of the relationships that I have with my fellow students, my
professors and the land. Many of the people and places at SBC have
inspired me more than I ever imagined possible.”
You can read more about Klein’s semester abroad on her blog.
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