University of Tennessee at Chattanooga environmental science major Joslyn Primicias, right, camped and did field work at Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda as part of her fall 2021 semester travel abroad experience.
“Mzungu.”
Joslyn Primicias, a University of Tennessee at Chattanooga environmental science major and Honors College student, laughed when talking about her height. She might stand 5-foot-2, but the junior definitely stood out during her fall 2021 travel abroad experience to Uganda.
“In smaller villages where people are less used to seeing someone like me, a white person is called ‘mzungu.’ So you hear, ‘Mzungu, mzungu,’ all the time,” Primicias said. “But if you were in a smaller village and it was rare to see mzungu, every single person in the village would have their eyes on you, which was such a crazy feeling.
“It was always uncomfortable, but it got to be the norm. When I got to the airport at the end of my time there and no one was looking at me, that felt weird.”
As Primicias and the rest of the UTC student body prepare for final exams, which begins April 27, the classroom is a far cry from where she found herself at this point last semester.
Thanks to a study abroad opportunity offered through the School for International Training, Primicias spent 15 weeks in Uganda—from Sept. 4 to Dec. 17—on an excursion she termed “everything I could have asked for and more.”
She went with 14 other U.S. students to five different national parks—Mabira Forest, Lake Mburo, Queen Elizabeth, Kibale and Murchison Falls—where they camped and did their fieldwork.
Her group went on safaris in big vans where the roofs popped up so they could stand up and look out at the wildlife.
She stayed in 13 different places between camping, guest houses, hostels and a one-week homestay.
Joslyn Primicias
It was a unique program in which she said she didn’t do anything as far as traditional American academics go.
“I was challenged every day in ways I wasn’t expecting to be,” Primicias said. “I learned a lot academically, of course, but definitely more about who I am living in this world.
“In the mornings, we would go and do our work and be scientists, identifying ruminants or non-ruminants. In the evening, we would be tourists and just get to drive around in our vans and look at the animals. I was living very simply, yet at the same time, living very extravagantly. Being around animals and being in nature just made me the happiest I’ve ever been.”
Primicias pointed out the irony in traveling to Uganda; she had to go there to get away from online classes. Thanks to COVID-19, the Cordova, Tennessee, native had not yet had an in-person environmental science class at UTC.
“I think I learned more from the other students than from my instructors because this was the first time I was surrounded by students from my major. It was the first time that I got to interact with people with my same passions and studying the same things as me, and that was really cool,” she said.
“We all got so excited about the same things, like the crazy bugs that we saw or everything we learned when we went on safaris.”
Primicias said they weren’t allowed to leave their vans for safety reasons. That didn’t stop them from getting up close and personal with different animal groups, particularly giraffes and primates.
She shared the story of watching red-tailed monkeys and colobus monkeys, “and they would jump from tree to tree. Seeing it happening was so scary because they like to catch on to the trees at the very last moment; we would always think that they would fall. And then we learned that those monkeys don’t have opposable thumbs, so they’re doing it only with four fingers.
“But what was also surprising was how close to camp they were to us. We would wake up in the middle of the night, hearing their calls back and forth just from the trees surrounding us. Or after dinner, we would look up; these monkeys would be watching us in the treetops, wherever we were camping.”
The Uganda experience was eye-opening in another way, showing her the path she was on was not the one she wants to pursue.
“We did a lot of scientific research and data analysis and data collection,” Primicias said, “and I realized that’s not what I want to do, but I’m still glad that I did it. It got me thinking a little more about environmental justice and the social aspects of environmental problems, so now I’m branching out to more of the anthropological part.
“Right now, where we are in this day and age, I feel like the spiritual connection of humans to nature and how we view nature through science are two very separate lenses. In order to create a sustainable consciousness and an eco-consciousness, we need to bring those two very separate entities together.”
