Curious Baby Chimpanzee Inspects My Mysterious Boot

Author: William Donnel-Lonon | Major: Data Science | Semester: Summer 2025

Tanzania, my one true love, how I long for thee. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. I have never been on such a journey until I found ye!

I, alongside a beautiful menagerie of students, teachers, deans, and a teenager, went to the epicenter of human origin to meet our great great great (insert several hundred thousand greats) grandmother, Lucy, and her friends, Giraffe, Lion, Hippo, Wildebeest, Zebra, Chimp, and Rizki the bartender. Where was this mysteriously biologically diverse place, you might wonder? Why I am so glad you asked! Let me introduce you to my friend, Tanzania!

Tanzania. I have never been on a trip so eventful, intriguing, educational, exciting, and absolutely mind boggling in my entire life. I have always wanted to go to Africa, at least for the past few years, and when the opportunity presented itself to me, I hopped onto it with great haste and no time to waste! My interest sparked mainly because of my music addiction (my dominant personality trait), as African music has always been in my life, and I, put simply, wanted to go. Although I was only there for a mere three weeks or so over the summer, they were some of the happiest days I have had in a loooong time.

I must, however, admit that the true adventure started before we even left Fayetteville, Therefore, I must mention the absurd and miraculous ridiculousness of the journey to. Picture this: It is the day you are supposed to fly. It’s 6:00 AM. You just wake up from what was surely the weirdest and worst dream you can recall in 4K ultra HD (a dream that I shall benevolently spare you the details of). You try your best to ground yourself in reality, only to find that your flight out of the country was cancelled 3 hours before departure due to someone else’s questionable decisions. You and your new friends must scramble to find some nearby circuit of flights that get you to and from Tanzania on time. Phone calls are made, trips to the car rental facility are very poorly arranged, and we all decide to drive to Dallas and fly to the Middle East, a drive wherein our professor’s daughter gets engaged, a hailstorm nearly destroys our windshields, a rock actually destroys our windshields, an Oklahoma state trooper gets bored, and a turtle gets his atoms mysteriously rearranged. Better to get the misfortune out first, we decide, so we cashed out all our bad luck. With every great adventure comes its misadventures, as the old sage adage goes. Anyway, we get to Qatar, and we all the sudden realize we were living our whole lives in poverty. I have never felt more broke than the time I was in the Doha airport, let me tell you.

What I gathered from this portion of the trip can essentially be boiled down into one philosophy: Everything is a learning opportunity. We, as monkeys or men, must learn to adapt and change our behaviors to avoid total catastrophe. Therefore, with this in mind, I shall admit to you our courses of study.

We went to study biology and anthropology, and as such we had some amazing distinguished professors to guide us through our travels. Peter Ungar, a man of teeth, was quite learned in the region, and he did not hold back on filling us up with knowledge, ranging from cultural norms, geology, geography, animal psychology, dentistry, human development, evolutionary biology, and everything else you could imagine. He was quite the hoot. Primarily, we studied how the geography and geology of the region inform the evolution of the species involved. We learned how different continental plates create rain shadows, affecting precipitation. We learned how geologic activity led to volcanic eruptions that permanently changed the landscape. We learned how population bottlenecks made every cheetah in the Serengeti nearly identical. All that is to say, my understanding of life on earth is irreparably enlightened.

We did everything a person would want to do in Tanzania, and a few things most people would not. For instance, we got spitting distance to elephants, lions, cheetah, and Rizki the bartender. We got to see chimpanzees fishing for termites. We got to see a cheetah on top of a safari vehicle. We got to meet groups of people whose lifestyles weren’t contorted by consumerism and monopolies. We got our nuts stolen by baboons, our flesh harassed by tsetse flies, our skin completely reddened by the equatorial sunlight, and our dreams… weirdened… by malarone. We also got our land rover stuck in what was very possibly the slinkiest place on the planet: The fetid mud pool off the bank of a hippopotamus hangout spot.

Anyway, you might be a new student, and I am obligated to tell you a little wisdom about studying abroad. Here’s the thing, kid. Roll with the punches. Bob and weave, man, bob and weave. You might eat something truly funky and get to experience the joy of joining Sal’s Club, and that’s okay! Take it as a learning opportunity. But here’s the golden rule, and this applies to everything: Don’t do anything stupid! Make good choices! And, of course, call your mother (if applicable). And don’t give Rizki your Instagram.

The end.