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.