When scientist Danielle Lee travels to Tanzania to study pouched rats, she finds she's more of an outsider than she'd expected.

Danielle N. Lee is an outreach scientist who studies animal behavior and behavioral ecology. She studies the behaviors of mice and rats in the Metro St. Louis area and the natural history of African giant pouched rats. Lee was selected as a 2015 TED Fellow and was named as one of EBONY Magazine’s Power 100 and a White House Champion of Change in STEM Diversity and Access. Her current science outreach efforts emphasize engagement with broader audiences via science communication. In 2013, Lee helped found the National Science & Technology News Service, a media literacy initiative to bring more science news to African-American audiences and promote science news source diversity in mainstream media.

This story originally aired on November 22, 2019 in an episode titled “Outsiders.”

Story Transcript

About less than a year after I finished my PhD studying the behavior of field mice right here in St. Louis at University of Missouri-St. Louis, I got a phone call from a colleague who had just gotten this really big grant to study African giant pouched rats. Really large rats. Cat-sized rats that have cheek pouches like hamsters that could sniff out landmines very deep in the ground. It’s an amazing innovation using rats to detect explosives and to save lives.

Now, he was looking for someone for this project who had experience and who would be willing to do this work. When I realized the research would take me to Africa to do the study, I decided I wanted in. I had been dreaming of studying wildlife in Africa since I was a child sitting in front of the TV mesmerized before nature shows like Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.

Now, this research was funded by the U.S. Department of Defense and they were interested in it because, one, it was amazing that these pouched rats could do this but there had been some hiccups to it. The place that trained these rats invested a lot of time. It took almost a year to train them and only about 35% of the rats could successfully be trained. So the goal was to do some basic biology to examine their behavior and to learn more about just them because they hope to be able to scale this project and to recommend some viable training and breeding protocols in service of U.S. security.

I jumped at the chance. Like it was my goal to convince him I was ‘the’ person he needed for this job. And I did that by really highlighting the fact that I had field research and I had experience studying the personality, behavior of wild rodents. I successfully did that so he didn’t even put in a job ad. I convinced him I was the person for the job.

My first arrival getting off the plane in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, I was excited. As the humidity hit my face and the wind hit my face and I stepped off the plane and I heard the loud clamoring of people at the arrival gate and I was just struck. I was doe-eyed.

The thing I was really looking forward to in Tanzania was being able to do science in a place where I could blend in. I don't really have that opportunity here in the States. I don't really blend in in science spaces, but I didn’t blend in at all. I stood out. I stood out a lot. Between my wide eyes of curiosity and my reluctance to step boldly in the queues and the bob in my step, so even simple things like how I walked, my naturally-smiling faces and making eye contact with people, and carrying a camera, my hand taking pictures every five seconds, and traveling with wazungus, which means foreigner, signaled that I too was a wazungu even though the term is typically used for white people.

Despite my brown skin and natural hair, no would mistake me for Tanzanian. I was western, so western. And I was trying to figure out how that made me feel then I realized I felt conspicuous. And that conspicuousness made me really, really uncomfortable, because I had hoped to be able to do my science and kind of move about town mostly untracked and it just wasn’t happening. Everywhere I went I would have everyone literally stop and stare at me, young and old, women and men alike.

I began to really just self-critique, like what was I wearing? Was I wearing something inappropriate? I wasn’t wearing logos and I was wearing field clothes, long pants and t-shirts, which is pretty conservative. I was dressed like the other researchers and none of them, men or women, were getting those looks, but they were also white.

So I took a long hard look at everyone around me and I really started paying attention to the local women. What I realized is that most of the local women didn’t wear pants, well, at least not as an outer layer. So they either wore medium to long skirts or they wore this piece of cloth called the kanga, really bright pattern African cloth that’s anywhere from two to three yards long and they wrap it around their waist.

So I decided to test my hypothesis. My second week in the country I decided to go to market and buy a kanga. I got this really bright orange and burgundy-pattern cloth and before I stepped out of the truck into town the next time, I quickly wrap it around my waist. It was like magic. The stares disappeared and I seemed to blend in and move about town in public spaces very comfortably with the other women.

That was amazing. I loved that. And it really made me pause and just pay attention to the feedback I was getting from people, especially women.

Now, I spent most of my time around this time mostly interacting with women. The women I interacted with were primarily house girls or service girls. And because my Swahili was poor and their English was poor a lot of this was mostly nonverbal. So they would come into my room and pick up and then they would often indicate that they wanted to do my laundry and I always kindly shake my hand and my head no. “No, thank you.”

I grew up in a working class family. I've been washing my own clothes since I was ten years old. Never in my life would I have imagined having someone else do my laundry especially by hand, since that’s how it’s mostly done there. I grew up in the kind of family where everyone had to pull their own weight and nobody was picking up after you, so I said no. I didn’t think what the big deal was.

But after about being there a month and my language skills started getting a little bit better, one of the house girls finally inquired why I wouldn’t let her do my laundry. I was staying in a rest house which by those local standards was a pretty expensive one, by their standards, but I was so cash strapped I couldn’t spare the 3,000 to 5,000 shillings a week. That’s around two or three dollars in U.S. money to let her do my laundry.

Plus, when I thought about it, doing my own laundry wasn’t the best use of my time since I was only there for a short period. And what seemed like a little amount of money to me, two or three U.S. dollars translated to a big deal to her. Like it made a big difference and I was just sitting on it. I was just sitting on that money that was pennies to me.

That was my first big eye-opening thing is that how we spend our money when we’re doing science really matters who we spend it with. And I also realized it’s okay to hire people to do service work for you. That was important to me that I can be spending my time focusing on my science especially since I was only there for a couple of months at a time.

So I've been going back and forth to the country several times, so many times. I've been there back and forth for about five years but I didn’t really, really start making friendships with local women until my second year there when I hired Ms. Pendo Msegu.

I'd met her the year before and I hired her as my research assistant and she was the first woman supervisor at the pouched-rat training facility, the place where they actually train the rats. So after working all day, she worked an additional two to four hours in the afternoon for me handling pouched rats and helping me set up behavior experiments.

And she taught me about pouched rat husbandry, she helped me with my Kiswahili and we actually took a lot of time to actually get to know each other. We talked about our shared experiences of working in male-dominated fields. I was able to ask her a lot of basic questions because her English was so good, like where can I buy personal care items, where can I get my hair done, what does it mean when men make those kissing noises at you on the street. It means the same thing there that it does here. So basically she helped me out and I really appreciated her patience with me.

I once remarked that I wanted a locally-made African print dress and she offered to make it. So Pendo was important not just helping me figure out and navigate my time in Tanzania but she actually made things happen for me personally and professionally. She was really important.

So as my time was coming to a close, I was beginning to panic about getting enough data. I had half joked with her one afternoon, I was like, “I’m going to drive around town, get on a loudspeaker and announce I’m going to pay 5,000 shillings,” about three dollars U.S., “to anyone who brings me a pouched rat”.

She laughed and she was like, “Wow, if you do that you're going to cause a riot in town.”

And I was like, “What?”

She's like, “No. If people heard that, they would literally run from their jobs to catch pouched rats and anything else that they think looks like a pouched rat and bring it to you.” And she explained, “Even me, I would leave my job now for that much money.”

And I laughed but I realized she was serious. I paused and I was like, “Wait a minute. You'd do that much for 5,000? Like it means that much to you like these three dollars?”

And I started just paying attention and I realized most of the local Tanzanians I knew all had extra jobs or side hustles. I mean Pendo was side-hustling in that moment in addition to all the other extra things she was doing, like dressmaking to make money. So a lot of the expats at the pouched-rat training center would often kind of jab and make jokes and tease Pendo and the other Tanzanians about always being so eager to do extra work here and extra work there while simultaneously talking about how much they begged for money.

I didn’t like that and it bothered me. One day, Pendo confessed something to me in the middle of one of those interactions and she said, “Every day I am chasing tender.” And I knew what she meant exactly. I just started thinking ♪“Every day I’m hustling, hustling” ♪.

She was on a paper chase and I knew that because I grew up in a cash-strapped community in a home surrounded by other neighbors, all of us equally devastated by Reaganomics. Everybody had to side hustle. The guy who cut grass on a weekend washed cars. My mom sells plates. My sister does hair. Hell, I was blogging about my experiences in Tanzania that very moment to earn extra money myself. I know side hustles. Side hustles are the language of the underpaid.

And despite working all day and all weekend, almost everybody was always scrapping for more money. Most of the Tanzanians, especially the working class Tanzanians, spent a lot of their times running errands for expats or wealthier Tanzanians or doing whatever little errands they could, so I got it.

And it opened my eyes up yet again. How we spend our money and who we spend our money with while doing science matters, and whether intentionally or not, our science can really exacerbate inequalities that exist especially when we’re doing international research.

Before these big revelations, I was so hyper focused on just doing my work, getting to Tanzania, trapping pouched rats, doing behavior work. I actually was hungry a lot of times, lonely. And despite being surrounded by so many people, my failure to connect to people just really made it hard to get things done because I was blocked by thinking that my work, that science was the most important thing I can get out of that trip.

When I took the time to get to know people and listen to what they needed, I got more than what I needed out of that trip. When I hired people to work with me, I not only got folks I needed to help me actually get the data I needed but what I paid them made a big difference in their lives. And what I mean by that is I literally paid people and that was the difference between being able to send their kids to school that term or not, paying off a looming debt, sending money back home to their parents to get much needed medicines. That money mattered.

And in return, when I get to town, I know I have a team on the ground because I go back year after year ready to go, ready to get me what I need. I don't have to waste a lot of time waiting to do things. Because I was willing to engage in equitable and respectful economics, I was given privy to things that I don't think most other foreigners or wazungus get. I gain this friendship and trust. I was able to get home-cooked meals. I was invited to homes. I was invited to church and bible study. I was privileged to hear the chatter of old women talking about me getting a husband before I left that day.

But I think what I really like the most was just being greeted around town as Dada Daniella, which means Sister Danielle. And when I return to Tanzania now, I’m no longer wazungu. They call me Mbongo which translates to a Tanzanian who’s been away and has now come back home. Thanks.