So for the last month and a half or so we've been working on presents for the staff. That might not mean much to anyone but us, but the entire student group donated money and LOTS of time to make/buy presents for all 26 staff members. We embroidered names and nicknames on hats, shirts, aprons, and lab coats. We bought new cleats for Sipaya (the ones he has don't fit so he can't wear socks or lace them--picture playing soccer with that). We made Sarah a video and got her a gift certificate to the closest thing to a Starbucks Kenya has to offer. We decorated mugs and filled Okello's with candy and beef jerky (two of the food vices he picked up while he was in grad school at the U of I). My friend Haley drew AMAZING birds all over Kiringe's lab coat (he loves birds). The list goes on. We did all of this work on top of finishing DR and wrapping up the semester. I can't tell you how much I was looking forward to tonight. Megan and I ran all over campus last night posting formal invitations all over office, garage, generator, kitchen, and bathroom doors. I even posted one on the door of the TV room where they were having a staff meeting without them noticing. We rearranged the chumba and practically held them in their chairs (most of them, especially the ones who don't speak English don't usually stay for RAP after dinner) until we started the presentations. It was two hours of cheering and gift-giving (and lots of girls crying). Apparently no other group of students has ever done this for the staff--gotten individual presents for every one of them. I can't imagine why because these guys bend over BACKWARDS for us all semester and could not have taken better care of us. Not only that, but I have had irreplaceable conversations with many of them about the U.S. and Kenya and conservation and life. Megan and I spearheaded a lot of this and at the beginning we were afraid other students weren't going to pitch in enough money or want to contribute their artistic talents but literally everyone did something. I was so proud of this group and so happy watching the smiles on the staff's faces as everyone got something. It was the perfect, perfect, perfect end to the semester.
We're leaving tomorrow morning and I already have plans to see SAM Sarah and Manuel in the Netherlands. Nicole's boyfriend goes to school at the U of I, so I will see her during winter break and Haley is COMING TO THE FLEETWOOD MAC CONCERT with me in March at Madison Square Garden.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Today we graduated
I apologize for the rambling nature of this blog. It’s getting towards the end of the program and I’m trying to assemble my thoughts on this semester.
We turned in our directed research projects on Thursday after a month of working on them. I assumed that writing up two weeks worth of field work would be the hardest part. That pressure, for me, was almost nothing compared to preparing to present our findings to the community. I felt like our professors had prepared us as well as they possibly could have and that our research was valid, but I still resented the implication that a bunch of twenty-something year old Americans were going to present information about an ecosystem to the people who were living in it. Therefore, I spent all of yesterday, well, freaking out. I finally decided I was going to ask one of the staff members how this was okay. Sipaya was able to give me a new way of thinking about it. He told me that we had gone into community members’ homes and asked them questions and this was their opportunity to do the same to us. I felt a little bit better, mostly because Sipaya is one of the community members (as are most of the staff) and if the community didn’t like the idea of the presentations, there would be more consequences for them than for us. I was about a quarter of the way off the ledge at that point. I got a little more feedback from SAM Sarah and she gave our project adviser Tome a heads up that I was having a problem with it. Tome sought me out and talked to me too and I became resigned to the idea that even if I didn’t like it, I was going to do the best job with the information.
That was yesterday.
Today, all three groups presented along with another researcher from SFS and several community leaders. SFS sends our Landcruisers out to all of the areas we’ve conducted our research in to pick up community members for our presentations. They arrived around 10:40 AM and left just before 5:00 PM. I can’t tell you how different the day was than what I had imagined. Explaining the logistics behind the information we gave out today would take about three months, which is a testament to how much we’ve learned. Long story short, SFS has connections with the local government that have been established over the ten years they’ve been located at KBC. We also have thirty-three students who are here to serve the community with research. Our students can walk into offices and ask questions about how much money conservation is earning at the national parks and where it’s going and it will get answered. Our professors and previous students have built a relationship of trust with these presentations. Everyone trusts that we will gather honest information and present it without (too much) bias. Basically, when we point fingers, we point them at everyone. The eleven of us on Tome’s team presented the information and then stood up there and answered every question the community members asked. When we got a question about the logistics of distribution we were able to point to a representative of the government and say, “Ask him.” He called his supervisor to get the exact figures and then announced them.
After the student presentations were done, many community leaders stood up and told us that we called ourselves students, but that we were really researchers and experts. The compliment was flattering, but hard for me to swallow. I prefer to think of it like our center director, Seno, put it, “We are not presenting new information to you today. It is our job as researchers to collect information, process it, and explain it to the larger community so that you can implement it.” He kept reinforcing that we, as SFS, exist to do research for the community. I’m not okay presuming, or even appearing to presume, that I am an expert on wildlife issues in Kenya, but I can appreciate my role as a conduit of information that wouldn’t otherwise be available.
Now that this exchange is almost over, I can’t help thinking about what I’m going to say when I go home. This has been an entirely different experience from my last exchange and I can’t say that I learned less or more from my time in Kenya. In the Netherlands, there was no formal system in place for me to learn about the government and the issues like there was here. At the same time, I spent a lot more time learning that way here and very little time by myself among Kenyans. I talked to Sipaya after the presentations because he wanted to follow up on my feelings it. He told me that his own father corrected him when he called us students. He also said that today was the day the people in the community realize that the wazungu they see in Kimana market are more than tourists.
We turned in our directed research projects on Thursday after a month of working on them. I assumed that writing up two weeks worth of field work would be the hardest part. That pressure, for me, was almost nothing compared to preparing to present our findings to the community. I felt like our professors had prepared us as well as they possibly could have and that our research was valid, but I still resented the implication that a bunch of twenty-something year old Americans were going to present information about an ecosystem to the people who were living in it. Therefore, I spent all of yesterday, well, freaking out. I finally decided I was going to ask one of the staff members how this was okay. Sipaya was able to give me a new way of thinking about it. He told me that we had gone into community members’ homes and asked them questions and this was their opportunity to do the same to us. I felt a little bit better, mostly because Sipaya is one of the community members (as are most of the staff) and if the community didn’t like the idea of the presentations, there would be more consequences for them than for us. I was about a quarter of the way off the ledge at that point. I got a little more feedback from SAM Sarah and she gave our project adviser Tome a heads up that I was having a problem with it. Tome sought me out and talked to me too and I became resigned to the idea that even if I didn’t like it, I was going to do the best job with the information.
That was yesterday.
Today, all three groups presented along with another researcher from SFS and several community leaders. SFS sends our Landcruisers out to all of the areas we’ve conducted our research in to pick up community members for our presentations. They arrived around 10:40 AM and left just before 5:00 PM. I can’t tell you how different the day was than what I had imagined. Explaining the logistics behind the information we gave out today would take about three months, which is a testament to how much we’ve learned. Long story short, SFS has connections with the local government that have been established over the ten years they’ve been located at KBC. We also have thirty-three students who are here to serve the community with research. Our students can walk into offices and ask questions about how much money conservation is earning at the national parks and where it’s going and it will get answered. Our professors and previous students have built a relationship of trust with these presentations. Everyone trusts that we will gather honest information and present it without (too much) bias. Basically, when we point fingers, we point them at everyone. The eleven of us on Tome’s team presented the information and then stood up there and answered every question the community members asked. When we got a question about the logistics of distribution we were able to point to a representative of the government and say, “Ask him.” He called his supervisor to get the exact figures and then announced them.
After the student presentations were done, many community leaders stood up and told us that we called ourselves students, but that we were really researchers and experts. The compliment was flattering, but hard for me to swallow. I prefer to think of it like our center director, Seno, put it, “We are not presenting new information to you today. It is our job as researchers to collect information, process it, and explain it to the larger community so that you can implement it.” He kept reinforcing that we, as SFS, exist to do research for the community. I’m not okay presuming, or even appearing to presume, that I am an expert on wildlife issues in Kenya, but I can appreciate my role as a conduit of information that wouldn’t otherwise be available.
Now that this exchange is almost over, I can’t help thinking about what I’m going to say when I go home. This has been an entirely different experience from my last exchange and I can’t say that I learned less or more from my time in Kenya. In the Netherlands, there was no formal system in place for me to learn about the government and the issues like there was here. At the same time, I spent a lot more time learning that way here and very little time by myself among Kenyans. I talked to Sipaya after the presentations because he wanted to follow up on my feelings it. He told me that his own father corrected him when he called us students. He also said that today was the day the people in the community realize that the wazungu they see in Kimana market are more than tourists.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
DR and Thanksgiving
Sorry about the delay between posts. I'll summarize what we've been doing.
Field work (10 days):
Leave camp between 7AM and 8:30AM to do field interviews until 3PM (other projects had different schedules and field work)
Arrive back at camp around 4 or 5PM
Stress level: mild
Likelihood of being asleep by 9:30PM: very high
Post field work (7 days so far, 2 left):
DR write-up all day, every day.
My average stress level: medium to high
Average stress level of student body: very, very high
Total pages of rough draft: Without the appendix, references, abstract, or title page--45
Enough of that. Let's talk about Thanksgiving! Those of us who wanted to cook something took a day off from writing to fumble about in the kitchen and butcher our family recipes. Dinner tasted much better than that makes it sound, but everything came with an, "Oh well, we're in Kenya," disclaimer. All of the staff came inside to eat with us and many of them were dressed up better than the students. We had sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, stuffing, turkey stew, green bean casserole, onion rings, apple crisp, pumpkin chiffon (sorta) pie, and challah. We also rearranged all of the tables and put out a centerpiece of fall leaves that someone had gotten sent from home. I cut apples, watched the challah being braided, fried onions, made the pumpkin pie recipe (x 10 and from whole pumpkins!), and ate dough off of pie crusts. We may be in Kenya, but we got the spirit right and it was a fantastic day. I was also MOD (mwanafunzi, or student, of the day) which means that after dinner I have to do a reflection or presentation. I compiled pictures of people from this semester into a presentation and included a lot of in-jokes. We all finished dinner with a big laugh and crashed back into our papers with smiles on our faces.
The final draft of our paper is due in 26 hrs., so I'm into the home stretch. I'll try to post pictures of Thanksgiving and hopefully a link to my Thanksgiving presentation in the next couple of days.
Groetjes Nederlandse gezin! Ik heb onzettend zin in jullie weer zien en heel veel foto's en verhalen. Tot snel!
Field work (10 days):
Leave camp between 7AM and 8:30AM to do field interviews until 3PM (other projects had different schedules and field work)
Arrive back at camp around 4 or 5PM
Stress level: mild
Likelihood of being asleep by 9:30PM: very high
Post field work (7 days so far, 2 left):
DR write-up all day, every day.
My average stress level: medium to high
Average stress level of student body: very, very high
Total pages of rough draft: Without the appendix, references, abstract, or title page--45
Enough of that. Let's talk about Thanksgiving! Those of us who wanted to cook something took a day off from writing to fumble about in the kitchen and butcher our family recipes. Dinner tasted much better than that makes it sound, but everything came with an, "Oh well, we're in Kenya," disclaimer. All of the staff came inside to eat with us and many of them were dressed up better than the students. We had sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, stuffing, turkey stew, green bean casserole, onion rings, apple crisp, pumpkin chiffon (sorta) pie, and challah. We also rearranged all of the tables and put out a centerpiece of fall leaves that someone had gotten sent from home. I cut apples, watched the challah being braided, fried onions, made the pumpkin pie recipe (x 10 and from whole pumpkins!), and ate dough off of pie crusts. We may be in Kenya, but we got the spirit right and it was a fantastic day. I was also MOD (mwanafunzi, or student, of the day) which means that after dinner I have to do a reflection or presentation. I compiled pictures of people from this semester into a presentation and included a lot of in-jokes. We all finished dinner with a big laugh and crashed back into our papers with smiles on our faces.
The final draft of our paper is due in 26 hrs., so I'm into the home stretch. I'll try to post pictures of Thanksgiving and hopefully a link to my Thanksgiving presentation in the next couple of days.
Groetjes Nederlandse gezin! Ik heb onzettend zin in jullie weer zien en heel veel foto's en verhalen. Tot snel!
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Directed Research
There are eleven people in each directed research group. We got to submit our first, second, and third choices for DR and they tried to put everyone on a project they were interested in. It seemed to work out pretty well although Okello's project was probably the most popular, Kiringe's the next, and Tome's the last. Okello is working on mapping wildlife in relation to human settlements in the group ranch outside of Amboseli National Park. Kiringe is looking at vegetation in the Kimana group ranch. Tome is researching community conservation initiatives in all of the group ranches in the Loitokitok division of the Kajiado district. I'm in Tome's group (along with Tommy, Izzy, Rose, Lindsey, Siena, Rocky, Liz, Kim, Mike, and Amy) and we've been conducting surveys with local guides for the last seven days. We leave around 7:30 AM and finish taking surveys at 3:00PM. Our goal for each day is about fifteen surveys each, but it depends on how long we have to drive to get to our destination and how far apart the settlements (bomas) are. We go out in pairs, so there are five survey groups and one person stays to do the data entry for the surveys collected the day before. It's been really interesting to drive all over the Loitokitok district interviewing people about wildlife conservation. The most common livelihoods around here are agriculture and pastoralism (or a combination). The farms are all cultivated entirely by hand, so they usually aren't more than an acre or two. You all can imagine what quick work an elephant herd makes out of that. The predators also eat livestock (cattle, sheep, and goats), so neither livelihood escapes unharmed. Given those things, the responses are a bit discouraging from a wildlife conservation point of view and entirely understandable from a human point of view.
Today, Izzy and I went to Mbirikani group ranch with our favorite guide Joseph. He had a lot of family around the area, so we got to go inside a lot of houses and sit down for coffee. Kenyan coffee is extremely watered down instant coffee with enough sugar in it to give an elephant a buzz. We had two cups in less than two hours because we didn't want to be rude and turn them down. Neither of us are coffee drinkers, so we were making a lot of eye contact and rueful smiles over our cups. Despite that, it was probably the best day I've had out in the field. We were welcomed into the homes and invited to play with the children and take pictures and people were asking us questions and showing us their pictures. I've only had one person turn down our survey so being welcomed isn't usually a problem, but we're often standing outside in the sun while the people work and it's easy to feel like an intrusion.
Today was our last day out interviewing group ranch members and land owners and tomorrow we start doing key informant interviews. We're going back to Amboseli to interview Kenya Wildlife Service rangers, lodge owners, group ranch officials, etc. tomorrow. After that we're starting our data analysis and writing our individual papers. Our final presentation of our results is on December 7th and we're all flying out (or moving on to our next destination) on December 10th. Hard to believe it's almost over!
Today, Izzy and I went to Mbirikani group ranch with our favorite guide Joseph. He had a lot of family around the area, so we got to go inside a lot of houses and sit down for coffee. Kenyan coffee is extremely watered down instant coffee with enough sugar in it to give an elephant a buzz. We had two cups in less than two hours because we didn't want to be rude and turn them down. Neither of us are coffee drinkers, so we were making a lot of eye contact and rueful smiles over our cups. Despite that, it was probably the best day I've had out in the field. We were welcomed into the homes and invited to play with the children and take pictures and people were asking us questions and showing us their pictures. I've only had one person turn down our survey so being welcomed isn't usually a problem, but we're often standing outside in the sun while the people work and it's easy to feel like an intrusion.
Today was our last day out interviewing group ranch members and land owners and tomorrow we start doing key informant interviews. We're going back to Amboseli to interview Kenya Wildlife Service rangers, lodge owners, group ranch officials, etc. tomorrow. After that we're starting our data analysis and writing our individual papers. Our final presentation of our results is on December 7th and we're all flying out (or moving on to our next destination) on December 10th. Hard to believe it's almost over!
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Initials explained!
Just in case I forgot to mention this before, SFS has two sites in Kenya--NPS and KBC. NPS stands for National Park Site and it's right next to Nairobi National Park and twenty minute (or three hour) drive to Kitengela. KBC stands for Kilimanjaro Bush Camp and it's in between Isinet and Kimana. KBC is where we spent the first two months of the semester and returned to after three weeks at NPS.
So, you know when people come back from other countries having survived very sketchy situations that make for really good stories? This wasn't quite like that, but I held a baby cheetah.
Three of us decided to visit the animal orphanage outside Nairobi National Park in the twenty minutes we had between activities. We even talked our way in at the resident price (200 KSh or ~$2.50). We were walking around and one of the staff members decided to give us a personal tour (i.e. we were white and looked like we had money). After leading us through the entire orphanage, he asked us if we wanted to go into a cage with a cheetah. There were two cheetahs that had been rubbing against the fence and chirruping for attention (we were scratching their chins and rubbing their sides through the fence), so we all assumed he meant those two.
Before we knew it, he was leading us through a fenced-in area behind the orphanage and into a little building where they kept all the baby animals that were too young to be on display. They brought out this two-month old cheetah named Mac from Narok. All three of us (all girls) started cooing immediately and sounded surprisingly like Mac. Mac was a bit nervous about all the new people and calmed himself down by licking our fingers. Needless to say, we were a little late meeting the group. Once we decided we really, really did have to go we started to leave the building and were not so subtly reminded that we had had a good time and should compensate "our friend" for that. Bribes are extremely common in Kenya and I had seen that coming a mile away. Someone else paid because they thought it was worth it and fair, but I didn't and I still haven't figured out how I feel about two things--being singled out as a person who has money because I'm mzungu AND the zookeepers at one of the most prominent animal sanctuaries in the country letting total strangers pass a wild animal around amongst themselves for about ten bucks.
I guess I hope that money went somewhere useful so that it was a win-win situation.
(P.S. Hi Izzy and Tommy's families!
These are for you! The first one is Daniel, Devin, Wendy and Izzy's volleyball team. The second one is Tommy. Riding an ostrich. This was at the ostrich farm on his twenty-first birthday.)
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
I'm back!
We are back at KBC for the duration of the program (which I just realized is now less than a month away)! The drive up to NPS was about seven hours with a couple of chocolate refuelling stops. Gas station food has never tasted so good. NPS is a whole new world. Rainy season had started about a week before we got there, so everything had turned green and misty by the time we arrived. I'm pretty sure we didn't get over that the entire time we were there. There are also a lot of spiky things on the ground at KBC that are not at NPS, so some brave souls tried feeling the grass on their bare feet. That resulted in a few embedded Acacia thorns. Brave in Africa often results in injury.
Our experience at NPS was defined by our expedition to Lake Nakuru, Lake Naivasha, and Hells Gate National Park. We finally saw a leopard at Nakuru stalking through the grass and climbing up a tree. We also saw a hyena successfully hunt a flamingo and three lions sleeping away the afternoon in an Acacia tree. We're pretty sure they were the same pride we would hear roaring at night which caused our poor SAM to nearly have heart failure. She spent at least two nights physically rounding people up and driving them away from the fence. "I'm not joking! Did you see those lions in the trees?! They can get over this fence and you are tasty, slow, and weak."
After we got back from expedition we worked for three straight days on finishing up our last four classes. We've had tests for three of them, but we had four final assignments and one last exam. Unfortunately, that all fell on the days following the election and we couldn't savor it the way we wanted to. We did, however, manage to fit in a couple more trips to the grocery store where we bought imported Dutch cheese, apples, chocolate, and chips.
The last couple of days at NPS it POURED. It turned our drive out of camp onto the main (paved!) road into a three hour slog through the mud. That drive normally takes us twenty minutes. We have a giant white van we pile all of our gear into called the Rhino and Sipaya drives it. Daniel's landcruiser had to pull Sipaya and the Rhino out of the mud twice.
(Picture: Sipaya in the back of the Rhino in his Rhino driving outfit.) Picture nine students standing in the rain on the side of the road while all of the staff push the landcruiser that is pulling a giant white vehicle through mud past its hubcaps and three other landcruisers sit full of students who aren't allowed out. Let's just say we had plenty of entertainment while we were driving. The drive back took over ten hours.
(Picture: Daniel's landcruiser pulling the Rhino!)
We have now started the last portion of our semester--directed research. I'm in Tome's project and we're surveying people about the effectiveness of community conservation initiatives in the group ranches surrounding KBC. My team is going the farthest afield and rainy season is in full blast. Good thing I really like getting stuck in the mud!
(Picture: Running from class to close our banda windows. I'm on the left.)
Our experience at NPS was defined by our expedition to Lake Nakuru, Lake Naivasha, and Hells Gate National Park. We finally saw a leopard at Nakuru stalking through the grass and climbing up a tree. We also saw a hyena successfully hunt a flamingo and three lions sleeping away the afternoon in an Acacia tree. We're pretty sure they were the same pride we would hear roaring at night which caused our poor SAM to nearly have heart failure. She spent at least two nights physically rounding people up and driving them away from the fence. "I'm not joking! Did you see those lions in the trees?! They can get over this fence and you are tasty, slow, and weak."
After we got back from expedition we worked for three straight days on finishing up our last four classes. We've had tests for three of them, but we had four final assignments and one last exam. Unfortunately, that all fell on the days following the election and we couldn't savor it the way we wanted to. We did, however, manage to fit in a couple more trips to the grocery store where we bought imported Dutch cheese, apples, chocolate, and chips.
The last couple of days at NPS it POURED. It turned our drive out of camp onto the main (paved!) road into a three hour slog through the mud. That drive normally takes us twenty minutes. We have a giant white van we pile all of our gear into called the Rhino and Sipaya drives it. Daniel's landcruiser had to pull Sipaya and the Rhino out of the mud twice.
(Picture: Sipaya in the back of the Rhino in his Rhino driving outfit.) Picture nine students standing in the rain on the side of the road while all of the staff push the landcruiser that is pulling a giant white vehicle through mud past its hubcaps and three other landcruisers sit full of students who aren't allowed out. Let's just say we had plenty of entertainment while we were driving. The drive back took over ten hours.
(Picture: Daniel's landcruiser pulling the Rhino!)
We have now started the last portion of our semester--directed research. I'm in Tome's project and we're surveying people about the effectiveness of community conservation initiatives in the group ranches surrounding KBC. My team is going the farthest afield and rainy season is in full blast. Good thing I really like getting stuck in the mud!
(Picture: Running from class to close our banda windows. I'm on the left.)
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Finally
Kibaki (the president of Kenya) declared tomorrow a public holiday. Does more really need to be said than that?
I woke up to the generator this morning because they turned it for us to watch the returns. I didn't even make it to the TV room before I could hear the cheering from other students. I wish we had a bigger group to celebrate with (we all wished we were in Grant Park), but we packed into the TV room and cheered (and cried) through his acceptance speech nonetheless.
Thanks to everyone who voted.
I woke up to the generator this morning because they turned it for us to watch the returns. I didn't even make it to the TV room before I could hear the cheering from other students. I wish we had a bigger group to celebrate with (we all wished we were in Grant Park), but we packed into the TV room and cheered (and cried) through his acceptance speech nonetheless.
Thanks to everyone who voted.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Taste of KBC
Mom wrote in an email that she was having a hard time picturing where I was, so I thought I'd help out with that by giving you all a short tour of KBC.
This is our chumba. We have classes, meals, and R.A.P. there every day we're at home. It also has our kitchen and our library.
These are our bandas. There are ten of them total, five on each side facing out the back porch of the chumba.
This is my banda--Engorungoru. It means bush baby in Maasai. I live there with Liz, Rocky, and Wendy.
This is my bed! I have two batiks to decorate my mosquito net and my own window. When there's a full moon it shines right onto my pillow around eleven o'clock at night. My matress is a two inch piece of foam over wooden slats. I have sheets and a sleeping bag if it gets cold. It actually does cool down very well at night, so it's usually pretty comfortable (although I could use another two inches of foam).
Trea doing her best impression of a washing machine. I LOVE the washboards. I get all of the red dirt out of my clothes and I tone my arms. It's one of my favorite things to put music on and pour black water down the drain. We can pay the mamas 200 KSh (about $3 USD) to do our laundry, but so far I haven't paid anyone to do my favorite chore.
The best part about the African sun (besides having blonde arm hair for the first time in my life) is that I can wash my sheets and put them on my bed twenty minutes later. Bonus points for people who can pick my laundry off the line.
Spenser doing his best impression of a student studying. Ben brought the hammock and put it up on the back porch of the chumba. There is a general rush to the hammock every time we get a break from class and I am happy to report that I usually win. I also usually wrap myself up in it and get sat on (apparently I look like an empty hammock). The person that sits on me is usually more suprised than I am though.
Just to let everyone know, this will probably be my last long post (and communication) for about three weeks. We're moving to our Nairobi National Park site on Wednesday (after our exams tomorrow) and we don't have internet there. We'll be going on our second expedition to Nakuru, Naivasha, and Hellsgate National Parks while we're there too. Don't worry, though, we'll have a TV to watch the election returns. It would be amazing to be in Kenya if Obama wins, especially since we might actually get some residual celebration from Nairobi unlike our usual backcountry site. The ironic thing is that Sarah said most of the Kenyans wouldn't vote for him if they actually knew what policies he stood for.
This is our chumba. We have classes, meals, and R.A.P. there every day we're at home. It also has our kitchen and our library.
These are our bandas. There are ten of them total, five on each side facing out the back porch of the chumba.
This is my banda--Engorungoru. It means bush baby in Maasai. I live there with Liz, Rocky, and Wendy.
This is my bed! I have two batiks to decorate my mosquito net and my own window. When there's a full moon it shines right onto my pillow around eleven o'clock at night. My matress is a two inch piece of foam over wooden slats. I have sheets and a sleeping bag if it gets cold. It actually does cool down very well at night, so it's usually pretty comfortable (although I could use another two inches of foam).
Trea doing her best impression of a washing machine. I LOVE the washboards. I get all of the red dirt out of my clothes and I tone my arms. It's one of my favorite things to put music on and pour black water down the drain. We can pay the mamas 200 KSh (about $3 USD) to do our laundry, but so far I haven't paid anyone to do my favorite chore.
The best part about the African sun (besides having blonde arm hair for the first time in my life) is that I can wash my sheets and put them on my bed twenty minutes later. Bonus points for people who can pick my laundry off the line.
Spenser doing his best impression of a student studying. Ben brought the hammock and put it up on the back porch of the chumba. There is a general rush to the hammock every time we get a break from class and I am happy to report that I usually win. I also usually wrap myself up in it and get sat on (apparently I look like an empty hammock). The person that sits on me is usually more suprised than I am though.
Just to let everyone know, this will probably be my last long post (and communication) for about three weeks. We're moving to our Nairobi National Park site on Wednesday (after our exams tomorrow) and we don't have internet there. We'll be going on our second expedition to Nakuru, Naivasha, and Hellsgate National Parks while we're there too. Don't worry, though, we'll have a TV to watch the election returns. It would be amazing to be in Kenya if Obama wins, especially since we might actually get some residual celebration from Nairobi unlike our usual backcountry site. The ironic thing is that Sarah said most of the Kenyans wouldn't vote for him if they actually knew what policies he stood for.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Kwaheri Conrad
I would just like to mark today as the day we found out one of our friends is leaving. He's been in a hospital in Nairobi for the past four days (with a medical condition unrelated to being in Africa) and they've decided to send him home. He was in one of the pictures in my last blog (Conrad was the one with the elbow on Haley's head) and he will be greatly missed by everyone at KBC. Below is Conrad sleeping on the plane to Nairobi. 
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
From lions to homework...
We’ve been back from Tsavo for almost a week now and in that time we’ve had three big assignments due, a couple more field exercises, and a minimum of five hours of class a day. We’ve had a pretty consistent workload up until this point, but homework isn’t nearly as exciting to write (or read) about.
Right when we got back from Tsavo we had our first true non-scheduled rest day of the entire semester. Of course, that would have been boring so we scheduled our own fun. Two of the students here, Catie and Nic, had been talking to Daniel about milk. The Maasai have been pastoralists forever and most of the time the only thing a herder will take in all day while he’s out with the cattle is milk. Catie and Nic told Daniel that it was scientifically impossible for a human to drink a gallon of milk in an hour and keep it down. Daniel insisted that he could and a bet was made. Not only did Daniel drink an entire gallon of WHOLE milk in an hour, he drank the first TWO liters in less than six minutes. Then he waited almost the rest of the time out and drank the last part of the gallon in another five minutes. He looked a little miserable, but Catie and Nic ended up paying him over $70 USD and he kept it all down. The best part was all of the support he got from the rest of the staff and most of the students. Marius (who was the last staff member left in the game of assassin in Tsavo) was dressed up in a track suit like his coach. When Daniel had finished, he was sitting under a tree and one of the students brought an electronic fan out to make him more comfortable and Marius examined it for a second and then turned it on himself while waving a hand haphazardly in Daniel’s direction. High comedy.
Otherwise things have been pretty quiet at camp.
This is the first time in a while I've been able to get my blog to work very well, so I thought I'd post some pictures. Our internet connection gets a little crowded sometimes. This picture is of my car in Tsavo. I would like to point out that I look much shorter because Ben and Rose are sitting on the top of the car. I might also actually be quite a bit shorter. The three in the front from left to right are Haley, Conrad, and Catie.
The picture below is of one of the two wild dogs we saw in Tsavo. Credit goes to Spenser for both of these because my camera ran out of batteries. There is another picture of just me that I refuse to post for general public consumption, but I will distribute it by special request. I had my assassin safeties on and in the picture I have been compared to G.I. Jane. Huh. I guess there's no better time to resemble G.I. Jane than when in Tsavo West National Park.
Right when we got back from Tsavo we had our first true non-scheduled rest day of the entire semester. Of course, that would have been boring so we scheduled our own fun. Two of the students here, Catie and Nic, had been talking to Daniel about milk. The Maasai have been pastoralists forever and most of the time the only thing a herder will take in all day while he’s out with the cattle is milk. Catie and Nic told Daniel that it was scientifically impossible for a human to drink a gallon of milk in an hour and keep it down. Daniel insisted that he could and a bet was made. Not only did Daniel drink an entire gallon of WHOLE milk in an hour, he drank the first TWO liters in less than six minutes. Then he waited almost the rest of the time out and drank the last part of the gallon in another five minutes. He looked a little miserable, but Catie and Nic ended up paying him over $70 USD and he kept it all down. The best part was all of the support he got from the rest of the staff and most of the students. Marius (who was the last staff member left in the game of assassin in Tsavo) was dressed up in a track suit like his coach. When Daniel had finished, he was sitting under a tree and one of the students brought an electronic fan out to make him more comfortable and Marius examined it for a second and then turned it on himself while waving a hand haphazardly in Daniel’s direction. High comedy.
Otherwise things have been pretty quiet at camp.
This is the first time in a while I've been able to get my blog to work very well, so I thought I'd post some pictures. Our internet connection gets a little crowded sometimes. This picture is of my car in Tsavo. I would like to point out that I look much shorter because Ben and Rose are sitting on the top of the car. I might also actually be quite a bit shorter. The three in the front from left to right are Haley, Conrad, and Catie.The picture below is of one of the two wild dogs we saw in Tsavo. Credit goes to Spenser for both of these because my camera ran out of batteries. There is another picture of just me that I refuse to post for general public consumption, but I will distribute it by special request. I had my assassin safeties on and in the picture I have been compared to G.I. Jane. Huh. I guess there's no better time to resemble G.I. Jane than when in Tsavo West National Park.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
I forgot!
Just in case you wanted to hear from other students, here are some links from the SFS website:
http://www.fieldstudies.org/pages/4092_kenya.cfm
http://www.fieldstudies.org/pages/5242_kenya_news_september_23.cfm
http://www.fieldstudies.org/pages/5108_kenya_semester.cfm
http://www.fieldstudies.org/pages/4092_kenya.cfm
http://www.fieldstudies.org/pages/5242_kenya_news_september_23.cfm
http://www.fieldstudies.org/pages/5108_kenya_semester.cfm
Tsavo Expedition
I’ve been having some problems posting to my blog, so if you didn’t know, I was on expedition for the last five days. I've been debating what to say about expedition, so when you read this keep in mind that danger (when it is handled well) makes for better stories.
Expedition is basically camping in a national park, in this case, Tsavo West. It takes us about three and a half hours for us to drive straight from KBC to the campsite, but on the first day we stopped at the Shetani Lava Flows and Mzima Springs. Mzima Springs is famous for its hippos and crocodiles. One of our warnings at the beginning of the program is that crocodiles can jump up to nine feet out of a body of water, so SFS students are to remain ten feet from all bodies of water. Mzima Springs has a built-in path, so it was a bit of a moot point, but everyone got a kick out of it nonetheless. We saw lots of hippos, one full grown crocodile, and one baby crocodile. The Vervet and Sykes monkeys made a reappearance and tried to steal our lunches.
Tsavo West is part of the larger Tsavo ecosystem which includes Tsavo East, Tsavo West, the Chyulu Hills, and a bunch of the surrounding group ranches. The Tsavo ecosystem is the largest collection of protected areas in Kenya and it was by far the most “pristine” wilderness area we’ve seen yet. That’s a tiny bit of the background. If you googled Tsavo, you’d probably find a lot more about the man-eating lions (Ghost in the Darkness anyone?), charging elephants, poaching, etc. SFS has a bunch of armed guards (Maasai warriors armed with spears) they employ at the camp and we brought a couple of those guys with us. We also brought in two armed (with AK-47s) Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) guards every night. They were there to protect us from lions and elephants. Tsavo has a problem with poaching, so the elephants are more aggressive towards humans than in Amboseli.
We spent the entire day before expedition being briefed on safety for the expedition. Mostly they told us to drink a lot of water, put on a lot of sunscreen, look out for Acacia thorns when we were hanging out above the cars, and to follow all staff instructions because they know their way around the African bush better than we ever will. The usual warnings about snakes, scorpions, ticks, and mosquitoes also applied. We hadn’t seen any snakes at camp yet, but the first night in Tsavo, a baby black mamba slithered right into the path of my headlamp. The staff here react FAST when someone says snake. The snake was right behind a bunch of students eating dinner and before they even stood up Daniel was standing over the snake with a stick. Once they confirmed it was a black mamba, Daniel killed it with a single strike to the head with the sharp end of a stick. First black mamba incident officially over.
About six hours later, our camp was surrounded by lions. The camp setup is this—student tents are circled in the middle, staff tents are around the outside, and the landcruisers surround that so that the lights can be turned on to scare away inquisitive predators. Our askaris (the armed guards) also stay up all night patrolling the edge of the camp (camp = short grass, long grass = forbidden). The bathrooms are near the edge of camp and have been known to attract wildlife at night because there used to be a water source near them. We were all told stories of lions surrounding the bathrooms at night to make sure we were taking their warnings seriously. Given all that, we were required to have an armed escort to the bathroom after dark. I was asleep by about ten the first night at camp and by one o’clock the lions were roaring. They came up to the edge of camp and woke everyone up. Well, not everyone. I slept through the ENTIRE thing. Leave it to the lightest sleeper ever to sleep through the camp being surrounded by man-eating lions. Fortunately, they came back the next two nights (although much farther off), so I did eventually get to hear them before I went to bed. Some of the cars saw lions and leopards on the game drives, but I wasn’t in any of those cars.
What I did get to see was AFRICAN WILD DOGS! If I was absolutely forced to choose my favorite animal, they would be it. They are so rare that the staff have only seen them twice since the existence of the SFS program in Kenya (about a decade). We were about to leave for an optional game drive on the second afternoon when Daniel ran up and yelled at us to get in the cars. We got in and he took off as fast as our landcruisers go. About half my car thought there was something dangerous in camp that we had to get away from and the other half (including me) had heard him say that we were trying to see something really cool. Our professors had been driving to town and happened across two wild dogs just lying on the side of the road. The dogs stayed there until all four landcruisers had a chance to come up, take pictures, and soak them in. It was amazing to watch their ears swivel any time someone’s finger moved or they exhaled too loudly. I had tried not to get my hopes up about seeing them and the staff is still talking about our luck.
Our expedition days tended to be classes or field work in the morning followed by a hike, lunch, and game drive. We went to another lodge for lunch and swimming on the last day after we spent all morning in the Ngulia Black Rhino Sanctuary. There are over sixty black rhinos in a 100 square kilometer sanctuary and seven elephants. We saw one of the seven elephants and NONE of the black rhinos. Last year, they released nine rhinos from the sanctuary into Tsavo West (there were none left outside of the sanctuary). We had just eaten our buffet at the lodge, taken a swim, showered and were reveling in our high class environment (i.e. flushing toilets and showers) when we saw one of the NINE released rhinos walking on a hill towards the lodge. We will definitely see more rhinos on our next expedition to Nakuru, but it was very satisfying to see them in Tsavo.
Lastly, to add an(other) element of excitement to expedition, we played a game of assassin. Everyone (students and staff) get an assignment to “kill” another person (by throwing a sock at them). Once you’ve killed your assignment, they have to tell you who their assignment was and you go after them, etc. Each day there was another safety and if a person was doing it, then they couldn’t be killed. We were always safe in class, in the cars, in the bathroom, and in our tents. The first day, the safety was wearing a hat or bandana, then it was sticking a pencil behind your ear, then it was touching another person, then it was doing all three of those things at once, then it was only having one foot touching the ground, and then all safeties were off on the last evening. I killed three people and lasted until the last evening, until I had a little incident.
We have these huge hatches that come off the top of the car when we are game driving so that three people in each row can stand up. I was sitting in the last row on our last game drive back from the lodge. We were closing the hatches and the boy sitting next to me told me to duck while he closed the hatch. I ducked and imagine my surprise when I get what feels like a brick dropped on my head. It was his elbow with the full weight of the hatch behind it. To make a semi long story short, I sat in the car for two hours being attended to by Sarah, Daniel, and my banda mates. I never blacked out, I didn’t throw up, and I could remember everything, but it felt like waking up from anesthesia. I was nauseous, tired, and all of my limbs felt very heavy. I had someone sitting with me the entire time and Sarah gave me a word I had to remember. I have never had anyone so excited about me saying spaghettios before. Sarah walked me around the rest of the evening while I got ready for bed and took my malaria pill (haven’t missed a night yet!). It was ironic because everyone else left playing assassin had been drinking at the lodge, which was part of my winning strategy (imagine how easy it would be to “kill” four drunk people trying to stay safe by hopping on one leg), and I was the one wobbling around, falling over, and being escorted to the bathroom. (To reiterate I am totally fine now—no headache, no nausea, 100% fine.)
It was a hard fought five days and there were five people left in assassin at that point, but all the safeties were off after dinner on the last night. Ben (at that point it was me, Ben, and Katherine left) came into the car around eight thirty (hour two of hanging out in the car) and asked if he could kill me so that he could kill Katherine and win the game. I let him and he won, but in Nakuru it is ON.
I have a ton of other expedition stories and some awesome pictures, but I am cutting it off before my parents fly over here to retrieve me. Expedition was AWESOME and I can’t wait to go on our second one.
Expedition is basically camping in a national park, in this case, Tsavo West. It takes us about three and a half hours for us to drive straight from KBC to the campsite, but on the first day we stopped at the Shetani Lava Flows and Mzima Springs. Mzima Springs is famous for its hippos and crocodiles. One of our warnings at the beginning of the program is that crocodiles can jump up to nine feet out of a body of water, so SFS students are to remain ten feet from all bodies of water. Mzima Springs has a built-in path, so it was a bit of a moot point, but everyone got a kick out of it nonetheless. We saw lots of hippos, one full grown crocodile, and one baby crocodile. The Vervet and Sykes monkeys made a reappearance and tried to steal our lunches.
Tsavo West is part of the larger Tsavo ecosystem which includes Tsavo East, Tsavo West, the Chyulu Hills, and a bunch of the surrounding group ranches. The Tsavo ecosystem is the largest collection of protected areas in Kenya and it was by far the most “pristine” wilderness area we’ve seen yet. That’s a tiny bit of the background. If you googled Tsavo, you’d probably find a lot more about the man-eating lions (Ghost in the Darkness anyone?), charging elephants, poaching, etc. SFS has a bunch of armed guards (Maasai warriors armed with spears) they employ at the camp and we brought a couple of those guys with us. We also brought in two armed (with AK-47s) Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) guards every night. They were there to protect us from lions and elephants. Tsavo has a problem with poaching, so the elephants are more aggressive towards humans than in Amboseli.
We spent the entire day before expedition being briefed on safety for the expedition. Mostly they told us to drink a lot of water, put on a lot of sunscreen, look out for Acacia thorns when we were hanging out above the cars, and to follow all staff instructions because they know their way around the African bush better than we ever will. The usual warnings about snakes, scorpions, ticks, and mosquitoes also applied. We hadn’t seen any snakes at camp yet, but the first night in Tsavo, a baby black mamba slithered right into the path of my headlamp. The staff here react FAST when someone says snake. The snake was right behind a bunch of students eating dinner and before they even stood up Daniel was standing over the snake with a stick. Once they confirmed it was a black mamba, Daniel killed it with a single strike to the head with the sharp end of a stick. First black mamba incident officially over.
About six hours later, our camp was surrounded by lions. The camp setup is this—student tents are circled in the middle, staff tents are around the outside, and the landcruisers surround that so that the lights can be turned on to scare away inquisitive predators. Our askaris (the armed guards) also stay up all night patrolling the edge of the camp (camp = short grass, long grass = forbidden). The bathrooms are near the edge of camp and have been known to attract wildlife at night because there used to be a water source near them. We were all told stories of lions surrounding the bathrooms at night to make sure we were taking their warnings seriously. Given all that, we were required to have an armed escort to the bathroom after dark. I was asleep by about ten the first night at camp and by one o’clock the lions were roaring. They came up to the edge of camp and woke everyone up. Well, not everyone. I slept through the ENTIRE thing. Leave it to the lightest sleeper ever to sleep through the camp being surrounded by man-eating lions. Fortunately, they came back the next two nights (although much farther off), so I did eventually get to hear them before I went to bed. Some of the cars saw lions and leopards on the game drives, but I wasn’t in any of those cars.
What I did get to see was AFRICAN WILD DOGS! If I was absolutely forced to choose my favorite animal, they would be it. They are so rare that the staff have only seen them twice since the existence of the SFS program in Kenya (about a decade). We were about to leave for an optional game drive on the second afternoon when Daniel ran up and yelled at us to get in the cars. We got in and he took off as fast as our landcruisers go. About half my car thought there was something dangerous in camp that we had to get away from and the other half (including me) had heard him say that we were trying to see something really cool. Our professors had been driving to town and happened across two wild dogs just lying on the side of the road. The dogs stayed there until all four landcruisers had a chance to come up, take pictures, and soak them in. It was amazing to watch their ears swivel any time someone’s finger moved or they exhaled too loudly. I had tried not to get my hopes up about seeing them and the staff is still talking about our luck.
Our expedition days tended to be classes or field work in the morning followed by a hike, lunch, and game drive. We went to another lodge for lunch and swimming on the last day after we spent all morning in the Ngulia Black Rhino Sanctuary. There are over sixty black rhinos in a 100 square kilometer sanctuary and seven elephants. We saw one of the seven elephants and NONE of the black rhinos. Last year, they released nine rhinos from the sanctuary into Tsavo West (there were none left outside of the sanctuary). We had just eaten our buffet at the lodge, taken a swim, showered and were reveling in our high class environment (i.e. flushing toilets and showers) when we saw one of the NINE released rhinos walking on a hill towards the lodge. We will definitely see more rhinos on our next expedition to Nakuru, but it was very satisfying to see them in Tsavo.
Lastly, to add an(other) element of excitement to expedition, we played a game of assassin. Everyone (students and staff) get an assignment to “kill” another person (by throwing a sock at them). Once you’ve killed your assignment, they have to tell you who their assignment was and you go after them, etc. Each day there was another safety and if a person was doing it, then they couldn’t be killed. We were always safe in class, in the cars, in the bathroom, and in our tents. The first day, the safety was wearing a hat or bandana, then it was sticking a pencil behind your ear, then it was touching another person, then it was doing all three of those things at once, then it was only having one foot touching the ground, and then all safeties were off on the last evening. I killed three people and lasted until the last evening, until I had a little incident.
We have these huge hatches that come off the top of the car when we are game driving so that three people in each row can stand up. I was sitting in the last row on our last game drive back from the lodge. We were closing the hatches and the boy sitting next to me told me to duck while he closed the hatch. I ducked and imagine my surprise when I get what feels like a brick dropped on my head. It was his elbow with the full weight of the hatch behind it. To make a semi long story short, I sat in the car for two hours being attended to by Sarah, Daniel, and my banda mates. I never blacked out, I didn’t throw up, and I could remember everything, but it felt like waking up from anesthesia. I was nauseous, tired, and all of my limbs felt very heavy. I had someone sitting with me the entire time and Sarah gave me a word I had to remember. I have never had anyone so excited about me saying spaghettios before. Sarah walked me around the rest of the evening while I got ready for bed and took my malaria pill (haven’t missed a night yet!). It was ironic because everyone else left playing assassin had been drinking at the lodge, which was part of my winning strategy (imagine how easy it would be to “kill” four drunk people trying to stay safe by hopping on one leg), and I was the one wobbling around, falling over, and being escorted to the bathroom. (To reiterate I am totally fine now—no headache, no nausea, 100% fine.)
It was a hard fought five days and there were five people left in assassin at that point, but all the safeties were off after dinner on the last night. Ben (at that point it was me, Ben, and Katherine left) came into the car around eight thirty (hour two of hanging out in the car) and asked if he could kill me so that he could kill Katherine and win the game. I let him and he won, but in Nakuru it is ON.
I have a ton of other expedition stories and some awesome pictures, but I am cutting it off before my parents fly over here to retrieve me. Expedition was AWESOME and I can’t wait to go on our second one.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
About a goat
Warning: This post is a little more educational, opinionated, and serious than my usual post. It's also about a goat slaughtering (although not extremely graphic and I'm not including pictures).
Kenyans, and especially Maasai, love meat. Maasai are traditionally pastoralists who raise cattle, sheep, and goats. They are everywhere around here, but it is a very special thing to actually eat meat because it's such a precious resource. The staff (in this case Okello), try to find an excuse every semester to slaughter a goat for the students (mostly because they love eating the meat). The excuse this year was that the students needed to examine the four chambers that make up the ruminant digestive system (and a cow is too big).
Goat day was last Wednesday. We had classes until four and then we all trooped out to the yellow fever acacia forest to witness the slaughtering of the goat. I say all, but it wasn't compulsory and about half the students watched. There are a fair amount of vegetarians (myself included) and two vegans in the group, but some vegetarians watched and some meat-eaters abstained. I chose to watch for a number of reasons. I don't eat meat because I disagree with the way most commercial meat is produced in the United States. Not only is it crueler than necessary to the animals, it is also inefficient and unsustainable. The Maasai are being gradually influenced by Western and other Kenyan (but not Maasai) cultures and have started to change some of their land uses. Agriculture is becoming more predominant and the land is also being divided in ways that can't support pastoralism like it used to. This has also forced the wildlife (who compete with the cattle and shoats for grass) into smaller and smaller areas (like Amboseli National Park), so the land and its resources here are currently being pushed past their carrying capacity. Even given that, the livestock here is driven from "pasture" to "pasture" where they can eat their fill of their favorite grasses and mingle out in the open--it's as natural a life as domestic livestock is going to have. I also believe that part of the problem with the system in the U.S. is that we are so disconnected from where our food comes from. I ate meat for 14 years and last Wednesday was the first time I saw an animal being slaughtered for food. One of our staff members is Muslim, so he slaughtered it so that it would be halal. It was a female goat one of the students nicknamed Kilimanjaro (Kili) in the five minutes she was alive on campus. She was grazing on the grass right up until her throat was slit. She was dead within seconds.
I understand eating meat. I don't understand needless suffering of sentient creatures. I can't say I enjoyed watching any of it, but I'm glad I saw it. I do believe this particular goat lived a natural life, but I didn't eat any of her. Okello did explain the four-chambered ruminant digestive system, but I think the greater lesson was to show a group of American students of wildlife management how intimately connected land, people, and animals can be.
Thank you, Kili.
Kenyans, and especially Maasai, love meat. Maasai are traditionally pastoralists who raise cattle, sheep, and goats. They are everywhere around here, but it is a very special thing to actually eat meat because it's such a precious resource. The staff (in this case Okello), try to find an excuse every semester to slaughter a goat for the students (mostly because they love eating the meat). The excuse this year was that the students needed to examine the four chambers that make up the ruminant digestive system (and a cow is too big).
Goat day was last Wednesday. We had classes until four and then we all trooped out to the yellow fever acacia forest to witness the slaughtering of the goat. I say all, but it wasn't compulsory and about half the students watched. There are a fair amount of vegetarians (myself included) and two vegans in the group, but some vegetarians watched and some meat-eaters abstained. I chose to watch for a number of reasons. I don't eat meat because I disagree with the way most commercial meat is produced in the United States. Not only is it crueler than necessary to the animals, it is also inefficient and unsustainable. The Maasai are being gradually influenced by Western and other Kenyan (but not Maasai) cultures and have started to change some of their land uses. Agriculture is becoming more predominant and the land is also being divided in ways that can't support pastoralism like it used to. This has also forced the wildlife (who compete with the cattle and shoats for grass) into smaller and smaller areas (like Amboseli National Park), so the land and its resources here are currently being pushed past their carrying capacity. Even given that, the livestock here is driven from "pasture" to "pasture" where they can eat their fill of their favorite grasses and mingle out in the open--it's as natural a life as domestic livestock is going to have. I also believe that part of the problem with the system in the U.S. is that we are so disconnected from where our food comes from. I ate meat for 14 years and last Wednesday was the first time I saw an animal being slaughtered for food. One of our staff members is Muslim, so he slaughtered it so that it would be halal. It was a female goat one of the students nicknamed Kilimanjaro (Kili) in the five minutes she was alive on campus. She was grazing on the grass right up until her throat was slit. She was dead within seconds.
I understand eating meat. I don't understand needless suffering of sentient creatures. I can't say I enjoyed watching any of it, but I'm glad I saw it. I do believe this particular goat lived a natural life, but I didn't eat any of her. Okello did explain the four-chambered ruminant digestive system, but I think the greater lesson was to show a group of American students of wildlife management how intimately connected land, people, and animals can be.
Thank you, Kili.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Picture Post!
I've talked a couple of times about Amboseli National Park so far, so I'm finally providing pictures! It's known for its elephants and this was the best picture I got of them. You can see Kili in the background. These three guys were about ten meters to the left of our Landcruiser. A couple of minutes after I took this picture, they walked in front of our car. You can see the one in front is playing with a branch with his trunk. He picked it up for a bit and started walking toward our car. Our driver for this trip is named Sipiya. He's worked for SFS for seven years and he had the car ready to go just in case the elephants decided they didn't actually like us there. As you can see from the next picture, we're all hanging pretty far out of the car.
We actually saw these zebra on our drive into KBC (Kilimanjaro Bush Camp) from Nairobi, but it's one of the better pictures I have of zebras.
One of the hallmarks of the Kenya SFS program in particular is how scheduled it is. In a lot of the other programs, their proximity to towns or safety in the country makes it possible for the students to have free time outside of the camp and in the country. I've never not felt safe here, but we're still not ever allowed outside of the camp without an SFS escort of some kind. Our daily schedule varies, but it's usually:
6:30 AM Sunrise and cook crew (once a week)
7:30 AM Breakfast
8:00 - 9:30 AM First class
10:00 - 11:30 AM Second class
12:00 PM Lunch
2:00 - 3:30 PM Third class
6:30 PM Generator comes on
7:00 PM Dinner
7:30 PM Reflections, Announcements, and Presentations (RAP)
11:00 PM Generator turns off
The meals, especially lunch and dinner, are pretty fixed if we're at camp. Breakfast tends to move earlier if we're doing a lab or field exercise in the morning. The afternoon schedule between lunch and dinner is usually pretty flexible. We've done a couple of our trips to Amboseli in the afternoon and in those cases, we're gone from after lunch till just before dinner. If we stick to the basic schedule, though, the afternoons are usually when everyone plays sports, jogs around the perimeter of the camp, "works," reads, sits on the chumba porch and watches. One of the boys in the group decided we needed to get more organized about the sports and set up a volleyball tournament. Each team is made up of four people (staff and students) and most people, myself included, are hilariously bad at volleyball. Each team was also required to come up with a team name, uniform, and song. My team is The Pajammers. We won our first two games and beat the (second) best team in our bracket, so we might have a chance. This was our team picture!
L to R: Me, Nic, Liz (who's in my banda), and Lindsey
As to our weekly schedule, we don't have weekends at all; we have non-program days. We get about one every week although sometimes it's more often and sometimes it's less. We had our third non-program day yesterday and went to an AIDS clinic in Loitoktok and then to a bar. The AIDS clinic was incredible. They provide free testing, medicine, and counseling for anyone who shows up. Their support group is just under sixty people and five women from the support group told us their stories yesterday. They also make bead work and other crafts to support their families because they can't do the hard labor they would normally do (everyone here farms). Our group as a whole spent a TON of money there and nearly bought out the bead work. I definitely picked up most of my souvenirs there.
On an entirely less sober (pun intended) note, we ate our packed lunches and then went to the bar. Sarah (our SAM) calls everywhere ahead of time and tells them 34 muzungus (white people) are showing up. The bar then calls a guy who sells carvings and other trinkets out in front of the bar. High comedy is watching a bunch of college students walk right by him into the bar and then spill out a few drinks later and drop thousands of shillings on things they ignored two hours before. Smart guy! The bar even turned the generator on for us yesterday so that they could play music. The power has been down in Loitoktok for the last two weeks or so, so if a place is going to have electricity, it has to come from a generator.
Last thing, the big "crisis" in camp right now is that our SAM (student affairs manager) Sarah is currently off. She's gets four days off a month, so she's in Nairobi and the students are beside themselves. She's a 24-year-old American who's been living in Kenya for the last two years. She's the perfect go between between the students and the rest of the Kenyan staff because she speaks/understands Kiswahili and has been the SAM for the last year. She's also awesome and acts as the mom. She counts everyone anytime we go somewhere and takes care of everyone's medical issues and issues in general. If you tallied how many questions she gets asked a day, it's probably over four hundred. Anyway, she's gone and now we have about five Kenyan dads. (Sarah is also one of three female staff members in the entire camp. The other two work in the kitchen.) Our five teachers are Daniel (Swahili), Tome (Environmental Policy), Kiringe (Wildlife Ecology and he's the one lecturing in the picture in the chumba below), Okello (Wildlife Management), and Seno (Culture). We went on a traveling lecture this morning where we drove
to different sites and we'd stop for the teachers to lecture. I was in Okello's car and he spent the entire ride talking about his family and what responsibilities he believes fathers have to their daughters. Tome and Okello had apparently been arguing about whether or not one of them was going to give a lecture about the AIDS problem in Kenya and in the end Tome set Okello up for it. After threatening Tome a couple of times, Okello gave one of the more direct (and impassioned) speeches I've heard from a Kenyan about sex (very taboo subject) and the responsibility fathers have to tell their daughters about AIDS and resisting pressure from men. Women have a much higher infection rate than men and every single woman who told her story yesterday had contracted the virus from her husband. It just goes to show you that somethings that feel like a step you're not ready for yet (Sarah leaving) can give rise to opportunities you wouldn't have had otherwise (we've all definitely been bonding with our Kenyan dads since she's been gone).Longest. Blog. Ever.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Amboseli National Park
Somethings change in Africa, but one of the things that doesn't (at least not for me) is procrastination. We have two observation write-ups due tomorrow and while I have made more progress on them than I would have had I been at school, I probably shouldn't be updating the blog right now.
I promised a week or so ago that I would devote an entire blog to Amboseli National Park. We went back yesterday, so I have even more to write about now. Amboseli National Park was established as a national park in 1974. It's most famous for its concentration of elephants and it's not very big, so they're pretty easy to spot. The first time we went to Amboseli, we were officially on a "game drive." Officially, we're there as students of wildlife management so we try to spot and observe as many species as possible. I managed to write down all kinds of observations, but I can't say the notebooks made our vehicle full of white kids look any less like a bunch of tourists on safari. We did, however, have very good luck as far as species spotted goes. Maasai giraffe, hippos, Maasai ostriches, African elephants, blue wildebeest, Grant's gazelle, Thomson's gazelle, impala, oryx, olive baboons, vervet monkeys, reedbuck, common zebra, water buffalo, and most notably THREE prides of lion.
The second time we went in an even more official capacity. We divided the park up into sections and each car was assigned a section to divide into transects and count the animals. Oh yes, all of the animals. I was the secretary, so I fielded the counting and we had a lot of fun. We also added spotted hyena, waterbuck, and black-backed jackal to our list of species spotted. Sipiya (our driver) and I even saw two lions mating. Sipiya thought the male was eating something at first and then the other lion stood up and we both went, "Oh." The rest of the car was very jealous. We waited around to see if anything exciting was going to happen again, but they just fell asleep. Cats.
I would say, however, that the most exciting portion of the day was going to Ol Tukai lodge. Not because it had a pool. Not because they had a green lawn and exotic garden. Not because they had fancy bathrooms and grand entryways. Not because we saw a tiny nursing baby vervet monkey. And certainly not because they served french fries and soft drinks. No. It was because I had my orange peel stolen by a GIANT male olive baboon. The definition of amusing is watching thirty-four college students squeal, stand up, argue about whether to stand our ground and then reflexively retreat from an advancing sixty pound baboon. I was about five feet away from him trying to decide what he was going to do when he rushed in and grabbed my orange peel away from the step next to my foot. Better the orange peel than me I say. The noise we made (there was a lot of squealing and not an insignificant amount of swearing) attracted a couple of askari (guards) from the hotel who came over and chatted with us while throwing rocks at and threatening the baboon with spears.
Speaking of Maasai spears, my sword and spear arrived this week. I am never making it through customs again. These are not fake, decorative tourist spears. These are I'm-going-to-hunt-a-water-buffalo-for-dinner spears. Apparently, we are going to have our throwing lessons using very old, very dull spears. Until then, we were instructed to put them as far under our beds as we were willing to reach (there could be poisonous things under there). SFS truly has our well-being at heart.
I promised a week or so ago that I would devote an entire blog to Amboseli National Park. We went back yesterday, so I have even more to write about now. Amboseli National Park was established as a national park in 1974. It's most famous for its concentration of elephants and it's not very big, so they're pretty easy to spot. The first time we went to Amboseli, we were officially on a "game drive." Officially, we're there as students of wildlife management so we try to spot and observe as many species as possible. I managed to write down all kinds of observations, but I can't say the notebooks made our vehicle full of white kids look any less like a bunch of tourists on safari. We did, however, have very good luck as far as species spotted goes. Maasai giraffe, hippos, Maasai ostriches, African elephants, blue wildebeest, Grant's gazelle, Thomson's gazelle, impala, oryx, olive baboons, vervet monkeys, reedbuck, common zebra, water buffalo, and most notably THREE prides of lion.
The second time we went in an even more official capacity. We divided the park up into sections and each car was assigned a section to divide into transects and count the animals. Oh yes, all of the animals. I was the secretary, so I fielded the counting and we had a lot of fun. We also added spotted hyena, waterbuck, and black-backed jackal to our list of species spotted. Sipiya (our driver) and I even saw two lions mating. Sipiya thought the male was eating something at first and then the other lion stood up and we both went, "Oh." The rest of the car was very jealous. We waited around to see if anything exciting was going to happen again, but they just fell asleep. Cats.
I would say, however, that the most exciting portion of the day was going to Ol Tukai lodge. Not because it had a pool. Not because they had a green lawn and exotic garden. Not because they had fancy bathrooms and grand entryways. Not because we saw a tiny nursing baby vervet monkey. And certainly not because they served french fries and soft drinks. No. It was because I had my orange peel stolen by a GIANT male olive baboon. The definition of amusing is watching thirty-four college students squeal, stand up, argue about whether to stand our ground and then reflexively retreat from an advancing sixty pound baboon. I was about five feet away from him trying to decide what he was going to do when he rushed in and grabbed my orange peel away from the step next to my foot. Better the orange peel than me I say. The noise we made (there was a lot of squealing and not an insignificant amount of swearing) attracted a couple of askari (guards) from the hotel who came over and chatted with us while throwing rocks at and threatening the baboon with spears.
Speaking of Maasai spears, my sword and spear arrived this week. I am never making it through customs again. These are not fake, decorative tourist spears. These are I'm-going-to-hunt-a-water-buffalo-for-dinner spears. Apparently, we are going to have our throwing lessons using very old, very dull spears. Until then, we were instructed to put them as far under our beds as we were willing to reach (there could be poisonous things under there). SFS truly has our well-being at heart.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Worth a try
So, as per usual, I arrived and then I got sick. Not really sick, just my usual sore-throat, absent-voice, bit-of-a-fever sick. I wasn't going to say anything because I have Parents Who Worry, but the story that came out of it was just too good to pass up. I was doing laundry on Sunday afternoon when I started to feel bad and I had pretty much lost my voice by the time I went to bed. It was entirely gone on Monday, so there was a lot of gesturing during meals and across the camp to apologize for my apparent lack of response to people and their questions. I didn't have to talk in class until Monday afternoon in Swahili. Daniel is our Swahili teacher and he got kinda worried when I gave a croak and a wheeze instead of a word. Since then, he's been making me talk to him every time I see him to check on the progress of my voice. It was better this morning and then we went to Amboseli National Park (more on that later because it deserves its own entry). Amboseli is basically two things--wildlife and dust. Guess what the dust did to my newly restored voice? Ah, yes, gone again. This time Daniel pulled me out of the dinner line to tell me that I had to try, "Water, honey, and (?)gali" for my throat. They have a food here called (HU)gali which is a pretty bland cornmeal bread/paste. I was picturing some kind of oatmeal concoction and readily agreed to give it a try. Daniel found me after dinner and took me into the kitchen to find James (the head cook). James wasn't there, so Daniel starts pulling things out of cupboards. About then is when it dawned on me that he was saying GARLIC. Daniel boiled water, added honey, chopped up the garlic, added that to the boiling mixture, and strained the entire thing into a mug with instructions to drink it while it was still steaming. For better or worse, I can't actually taste anything right now, so I drank the entire thing as instructed. By the time I finished the cup, my voice was almost ENTIRELY back. This is a recipe that proved too effective not to pass on. Also, Daniel is my new favorite person. The moral of this story is that SFS has put us all into very good hands.
Friday, September 12, 2008
It's not a weapon...
...if I'm going to use it as a wall decoration, right? I bought a genuine Maasai sword and spear. They weren't that expensive and how many opportunities am I going to have to do that? Daniel (who I've talked about before) goes to Tanzania and special orders them, so they are forged specifically for us. Then Daniel is going to teach everyone who has them how to throw them. I can't wait for those lessons. We have a fantastic group of people, but a lot of them are prone to giggle fits. I can just see the group collapsing into a fit of giggles while a spear sails off in an arbitrary direction. It's gonna be great. The Maasai use these spears to bring even elephants down and we're not going to be able to lift them above our heads. Apparently it's one of the challenges of the program to figure out how to bring them back home on the plane.
We have our first non-program day tomorrow which means we won't spend the usual five hours of the day in class. We only have one "day off" per six or eight days, so it's a pretty heavy schedule as far as school is concerned. My only complaint is that the wooden chairs are a little hard on my twice-broken tailbone. Our classes are at least 1.5 hrs apiece and so far all but two of them have been in the chumba. As our semester really gets going, we're going to be out in the field a lot more. All of my classes (Wildlife Ecology, Wildlife Management, Socioeconomic and Environmental Policy, and Culture/Swahili) are GREAT! My teachers are really enthusiastic and very knowledgeable. They all live at the camp so their office hours are basically whenever you feel like knocking on their door. My wildlife management teacher (Dr. Okello) went to grad school at the U of I (1993-1996) and he LOVES Idaho. He says I'm the first student he's ever had from Idaho and he's very excited about it. His exact quote was, "People ask me if I love America and I say, 'I love Idaho! America was not good to me; Idaho was!'" He mentions Moscow at least three times every lecture and talks about a lot of wildlife issues from back home. A lot of students are from the west too, so it feels very different from the student body I'm surrounded by in New York. The student body is fairly representative of all the states though.
This particular picture will have to be enlarged to really see the animal. I have better pictures, but they haven't been uploaded yet. We're going to Amboseli National Park next week where we are guaranteed to get even better pictures. Until then, the plan for tomorrow is to go for a hike and then hit up a grocery store in a bigger town nearby to resupply on snack food, i.e. chocolate. The Landcruiser drives are growing on me. It feels almost IDENTICAL to the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland. It's just a little slower, a lot more dusty, and there's a greater possibility of blowing a tire or getting stuck in a hole. The wildlife, the landscape, and the stories we hear from our drivers more than make up for it though.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
A word about malaria
Secretly (and now not so secretly), one of my favorite things about my living situation is the mosquito net. I LOVE IT! It's huge and I tuck it under my mattress all 360 degrees around the bed. Not only does it keep out mosquitoes, but I don't ever have to check my bed for snakes. I can hang my laundry on the line and I've decorated the net with the batiks I bought on the first day. My batiks are another thing I love. The colors here are so vivid and feel so much more alive than the blacks, greys, and browns of New York in the winter.(Left) I have another one, but this picture of my pink batik shows you a little bit of the banda door. Now that I've gone on and on about my mosquito net, I have to confess something. There are no mosquitoes here. Okay, so I've seen two or three, but it hasn't rained since April, so as you can imagine there's not a lot of standing water for them to be breeding in. I haven't actually been bitten by *anything* yet let alone a mosquito, so, Mom, you can officially stop worrying about malaria.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Maasai
The classes have started in earnest now, so we spend about five hours a day in lecture. The chumba (CHOOM-ba) is our main hall so we have lectures, meals, and meetings there.
(Left) After lecture today, the students and staff started an impromptu soccer game in front of the chumba. The cloud of dust will obscure the field enough that the players will lose the ball and run right into bushes. It's really quite fun to watch.
Today, we went to a local Maasai boma (homestead) as part of our afternoon lecture. We were greeted with a song by the "mamas" of the village (about twenty of them). We returned the greeting with a call and response song some of the group had learned at summer camp about a moose drinking juice. There were lots of hand gestures and giggles (on our part), but it seemed to be well received as they started clapping before we had gotten through all the verses. I suppose that also could have been a desperate attempt to get us to stop. We were allowed into the houses and went to a "market" that the mamas had set up for us outside of the boma. We asked a lot of questions through a translator and tried to play with the children. One of our staff members, Daniel, is Maasai, so he explained a lot of the traditional customs and helped us negotiate prices with the mamas.
(Right) The circle of mamas with their beaded necklaces, carved masks, wooden-handled knives, and colorful fabrics.
There are many more pictures to post, but the internet here allows me to upload about two an hour, so they will come slowly. I tried to upload a video of the mamas greeting us, but it was a little too much for the connection. Something for you all to look forward to when I get back.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Arriving in Africa
After nearly 41 hours of travelling, I arrived safely at the Kilimanjaro Bush Camp yesterday afternoon. There are thirty-four students and we made pretty good headway getting to know each other while sitting on planes, in airports, in cars, and in subways around London. We had a red-eye flight from New York to London and another from London to Kenya. During the twelve hours we had between flights, a group of twelve of us went into London. We stored our carry-on luggage for ease of movement and managed to see the London Eye, parliament, the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, and St. James Park. We also ate lunch at the Sherlock Holmes Tavern near the Thames. The reason there are no British restaurants is because there are very few redeeming qualities in their food. The tavern environment, however, was warm, dry, and friendly.
One person managed to stay awake on the tube on the way back to the airport to make sure that we all got off at the right stop. We all reluctantly got back onto a plane and made the nine hour flight to Nairobi. I had a moment of panic when they seemed to run out of vegetarian food on the plane (that's what happens when you fly thirty-four environmentalists at a time), but was finally served Indian food just after midnight. The last forkful of food barely made it into my mouth before I fell asleep.
I woke up just in time for a breakfast of two biscuits and the Kenyan sunrise. We landed soon after and spent four hours sitting on the floor of the Nairobi airport while we exchanged our money, got our visas, and claimed our baggage. We were all looking forward to getting to KBC, so there were a lot of long faces when our student affairs manager (Sara) announced we had a six-hour drive ahead of us. What she didn't mention is that the ancient Toyota Landcruisers we drive around in lost their shocks decades ago. There are many, many, many, bumps in Kenyan roads and we felt every bone-jarring one of them. We were also covered in a fine layer of blood red dust by the second bump and a thick layer of it by the last bump. All of that was part of the adventure as we drove past zebra, giraffe, ostriches, baboons, birds, antelope, and gazelle. I surprised myself by how exciting I find the birds. It is a rare moment when a bird catches the sun and doesn't flash brilliant blue, yellow, green, or red. We also got to stop at a trading post and try our hand at negotiating for our wares. A negotiator picks you out as you walk through the door and it is his job to explain the items and haggle over the price. My negotiator was named David and I'm pretty sure he ripped me off. I definitely didn't pay any more than I would have in the U.S. for two tapestries and a wooden bowl, but I probably could have talked him down another couple thousand shillings (about twenty dollars). I'm already strategizing about my next purchase.
It was an immense relief to finally make it to camp and it seems luxurious--horizontal beds, available showers, abundant wildlife, fresh food, mountain views, and not an airplane seat to be found. We spent most of yesterday and today meeting each other and the staff and learning about our surroundings. Everything is poisonous, thorny, or large, so there was a four hour lecture on what to avoid. Checking our beds for black mambas seems to be everyone's least favorite warning and avoiding having your sandwich stolen by a monkey everyone's favorite.
Everyone I've met so far has been wonderful. It is the biggest group of animal nerds I have ever had the privilege of being a part of. References to the Lion King, Animal Planet, random wildlife trivia, and environmental policies in the U.S. are as common as the clicking of our camera shutters. We're all in our element.
One person managed to stay awake on the tube on the way back to the airport to make sure that we all got off at the right stop. We all reluctantly got back onto a plane and made the nine hour flight to Nairobi. I had a moment of panic when they seemed to run out of vegetarian food on the plane (that's what happens when you fly thirty-four environmentalists at a time), but was finally served Indian food just after midnight. The last forkful of food barely made it into my mouth before I fell asleep.
I woke up just in time for a breakfast of two biscuits and the Kenyan sunrise. We landed soon after and spent four hours sitting on the floor of the Nairobi airport while we exchanged our money, got our visas, and claimed our baggage. We were all looking forward to getting to KBC, so there were a lot of long faces when our student affairs manager (Sara) announced we had a six-hour drive ahead of us. What she didn't mention is that the ancient Toyota Landcruisers we drive around in lost their shocks decades ago. There are many, many, many, bumps in Kenyan roads and we felt every bone-jarring one of them. We were also covered in a fine layer of blood red dust by the second bump and a thick layer of it by the last bump. All of that was part of the adventure as we drove past zebra, giraffe, ostriches, baboons, birds, antelope, and gazelle. I surprised myself by how exciting I find the birds. It is a rare moment when a bird catches the sun and doesn't flash brilliant blue, yellow, green, or red. We also got to stop at a trading post and try our hand at negotiating for our wares. A negotiator picks you out as you walk through the door and it is his job to explain the items and haggle over the price. My negotiator was named David and I'm pretty sure he ripped me off. I definitely didn't pay any more than I would have in the U.S. for two tapestries and a wooden bowl, but I probably could have talked him down another couple thousand shillings (about twenty dollars). I'm already strategizing about my next purchase.
It was an immense relief to finally make it to camp and it seems luxurious--horizontal beds, available showers, abundant wildlife, fresh food, mountain views, and not an airplane seat to be found. We spent most of yesterday and today meeting each other and the staff and learning about our surroundings. Everything is poisonous, thorny, or large, so there was a four hour lecture on what to avoid. Checking our beds for black mambas seems to be everyone's least favorite warning and avoiding having your sandwich stolen by a monkey everyone's favorite.
Everyone I've met so far has been wonderful. It is the biggest group of animal nerds I have ever had the privilege of being a part of. References to the Lion King, Animal Planet, random wildlife trivia, and environmental policies in the U.S. are as common as the clicking of our camera shutters. We're all in our element.
Friday, September 5, 2008
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