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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.