The Plant Ecology group of the Institute for Integrative Biology has been doing research in Saadani National Park, Tanzania, since the year 2000. When the first PhD students started there was nothing here, no house to live in, no infrastructure to drive on, no water to wash with and no cellular network to phone by. They had to start from scratch and managed to build up a now already ten years lasting research initiative. I am one of the two third generation PhD students to be working here together with my colleague Annette.

For the first two years of my PhD I travel to Saadani off and on for three to four months. The coast of Tanzania experiences two dry seasons, in which we do our fieldwork, as the roads are inaccessible during the wet seasons. My PhD focuses on nutrient cycling in the savanna ecosystem and the effects herbivores have on the spatial distribution of these nutrients. As they eat vegetation in a certain location and produce dung in another location, they transport nutrients around the ecosystem. My main aim is to map these in- and output fluxes over the area after which we will have a better understanding of the nutrient balance in savannas. In the field I have set up multiple experiments which I monitor for a certain period of time. This monitoring consists of collecting data on vegetation composition, plant biomass removed by herbivores, fire burning practices, growth of plants, distribution of herbivore dung and so on. I collect many vegetation, soil and dung samples, which I later analyze for nutrients in the lab of the ETH. During the months I spent at the ETH in between field seasons I am behind my computer doing statistics on my collected data sets and always preparing for the next field season.

Doing fieldwork in Tanzania is adventurous, rewarding and of course just totally awesome. It is, however, never without its challenges, with the first one starting before even arriving in the country. As a researcher you need to have an official research permit before entering Tanzania and the National Park you plan to work in. However, getting a research permit is one of the big bureaucratic pitfalls we try not to fall into, while breaking both our legs, leaving us unable to get out of. You need to apply for a research permit at the Tanzanian Wildlife Research Institute (TAWIRI) by sending in your research proposal and an application form, three months before you plan to start your fieldwork. TAWIRI is scheduled to have meetings, in which research applications are discussed, four times a year. However, it seems that these meeting dates are not written in stone and may vary due to unclear reasons. It could just be the case that in the year you are applying, they, for some unforeseen reason just plan two meetings for the whole year. However, regardless of that, they will still tell you nicely in an email that the meeting is scheduled for the middle of a certain month to shamelessly tell you two months after that month, and after countless of emails from you and unclear phone calls with secretaries who apparently have no idea what is going on in their organisation, the meeting was postponed to three months later. And of course you will have already bought your flight ticket and will end up in the country on a normal tourist visa. Once in the National Park, the chief park warden will not understand why you are there without a research permit and will tell you, that as a tourist you need to pay normal visitor fees and are not allowed to get out of your car.

Still it could be the case that TAWIRI has its planned meeting and is in favour of giving you a research permit. They will then send a letter of recommendation to the next organisation, the Commission of Science and Technology (COSTECH), which is in charge of giving out the actual permit. But of course, they also first need to have a meeting, which is unfortunately subject to the same unclear reasons of postponement. Then you personally need to travel to Dar-es-Salaam to collect your research permit and from there go straight to immigration to apply for a residence permit as you are still in the country as a tourist.

When you enter the immigration office you are welcomed by a gust of freezing air from the air conditioners working overtime. Inside you will find a confusion of sweaty bodies, all trying to figure out which counter to go to. The idea of queuing has not yet reached Africa, it is just a matter of elbowing your way forward into the crowd and sticking your hand through the counter window before anyone else decides to kick your feet away from under you. The counter ladies (if not off to have some chai) are not able to give you any information except shouting for forms: “Which forms do you need?”, “ALL FORMS! GIVE ME THE FORMS!”, “...?” There you are, squished up against the counter with a horde of elbowing Tanzanians behind you, hoping that ALL forms means the four you have in your hand. After a quick glance at the forms, they are tossed behind her on a pile of other forms, which seem to have been lying there since last Christmas. You are ordered to return some two weeks later to pick up your permit.

Two weeks later, you return and the lady has to reach back on the pile of forms to see if yours are still present (did the forms go anywhere in the mean time? This is the big mystery...). After some help from you, as she did not manage to find your application after three concessive searches through the pile, you are ordered to go to another counter to pay money. “GIVE ME THE MONEY!”, “mmm, all the money?”, “MONEY!” Giving them your brand new dollar bills, they apparently need to write all text and numbers present on a bill into a big book, containing all the text and numbers of many, many dollar bills. After payment you should be able to get your permit straight away, however, half of the times you need to return the following day and half of these following days seem to be holidays in which the immigration office is not open. So at a certain point you get tired and a bit cranky and try to explain them (in your sweetest cranky voice) that you really need the permit today and cannot wait for another two days in Dar until the immigration office opens again. It is a difficult line to walk at immigration, you do not want to be a pushover and leave while they are supposed to give you your permit, but you also don’t want to press them too hard and end up with angry officials who make the decisions on your permit fate.

In the end, Annette and I ended up in immigration well beyond closing time (which is ridiculously at 2 pm in the afternoon) because we decided to not leave before we had our permit. Our very angry counter lady did eventually give us a permit and after a lot of asking/begging/shouting from us, also the long-waited for stamp in our passport. Later we noted that as revenge she cut us off by a month, giving us a permit for eleven months instead of one year. Fortunately, we got to see her again, as research permits are only given out for a maximum of a year. And let’s just make our PhDs there ...

About the author

Judith Sitters is originally from the Netherlands although she grew up in Africa (Zambia and Kenya). She moved to Zurich in September 2008 to start her PhD at the Plant Ecology Group of the ETH. Her research is focused on the effect herbivores have on the nutrient cycling in the humid savanna of Saadani National Park in Tanzania. Therefore, she travels to Tanzania twice a year for three to four months to conduct her field work. Momentarily she’s in Tanzania for her final field season after which she will spend most of her remaining time in the lab and behind her computer at the ETH. She’s scheduled to finish her PhD in September 2011.