(Dec. 1, 2008) Thirteen students and two professors from UC Denver are awakened in the middle of the night by noises normally only heard in a zoo. In tents, eyes wide and listening, each wonder when dawn would come.
One among them, however, sleeps peacefully.
Charles Musiba, assistant professor of anthropology, at left, was born in Tanzania, Africa, and now directs UC Denver’s Tanzania Field School. He’s been taking students to his country for 11 years.
The field school is located in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in northern Tanzania and, according to all accounts, it offers students and professors a rare experience, including international research partnerships, extraordinarily diverse types of research and a strong connection to the local community.
Students, both undergraduates and graduates, and professors at the school may study malaria, tuberculosis, fossils, geography, geology, culture, health care, ecology, child development, conservation or primates. They may even arrive planning to study one thing, only to discover that the nearby Enduleni Hospital, where Musiba has also established friendships, has different needs.
“I was originally planning to participate in the malaria mapping project, but the hospital needed someone to do HIV research,” says Hillary Bell, a master’s candidate in medical anthropology. “I took it! I looked at the rate of sexually transmitted infections as it related to HIV transmission.”
Deborah Thomas, associate professor of geography and environmental sciences, is most excited about the ability of researchers to react to needs at the local level.
Among other things, Thomas conducts “health mapping,” a technique that creates layers of maps that can capture information about the environment, topography, water sources and land use and relate that to where populations are infected with certain diseases to better understand the relationship between the environment and the disease distribution. During the 2007 trip, she was able to map malaria data from the area and share her findings with Enduleni Hospital.
“It was immediately helpful to them and that’s the most exciting piece,” she says, explaining that the information helped the health care workers plan where to hold clinics.
Thomas also said that the hospital’s director will use the maps in other ways. “They can start to predict when malaria outbreaks might happen. They may also use the maps to show that they’re involved in research, which gains a reputation for the hospital. And, they can use them as leverage for funding.”
Musiba says all of the studies are helpful to the community, including curriculum development for local school teachers, primate conservation assistance for the national park and many health studies for the hospital.