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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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