hadi basi

Checking 8 months off the list - I guess this is it for a while. Your nerves can be tamed once more and your interests, peacefully subsided. No more scorpions or zebra carcasses - no more lion collaring or hyena catching- no more picking up poop or attending lengthy Maasai meetings. Speaking of which - the goodbye barbecue.

Asking the Maasai to organize “a little get together” with friends and family isn’t a request lightly received. After a week in Nairobi, we showed up to camp the day of the party, expecting to say our good-byes and thank-yous over some goat stew and a soda. The goat was there, the soda arrived with us, but instead of diving right into it we were seated in rows of chairs facing each other - and then the introductions began. Maasai women are surprisingly shy about saying their names; you would have no trouble getting them to get up and sing you a song, but they giggled when asked to say their names. Introductions were followed by thank-yous, followed by speeches, each reiterating that this was supposed to be a “casual” get together. I guess getting together a group of nomadic pastoralist people is kind of too big of a deal to be casual about it.

Goodbye camp – goodbye Nairobi - we’ll be seeing you – as my grandparents used to say instead of goodbye. I’d like to think that my transition into American life came from an undercover CIA agent my last day in Nairobi. A man came up to me looking rather out of place in his dressed down sweatshirt and ball cap – like a suit that doesn’t know how to put himself together without one. I saw him out of the corner of my eye starring at me and he finally came up and asked what country I was from. He sounded American, looked like everything, and seemed to be quizzing me on my knowledge of the places I said I was from. Then he asked what my heritage was because he couldn’t place my face. I said the name was Czechoslovakian and he asked if I had ever been and when I told him no he said that Prague was a really nice place. Finally he asked if I was a missionary or what I was doing in Kenya. I said wildlife research and that seemed to lose his interest and he ended the conversation casually and walked away. But as he walked away I saw him bring a black bag up to his face and say something into it. Maybe I’m analyzing this too much, maybe I’m just looking for something exciting to say in my last blog entry, maybe he just pick pocketed me and I still don’t know what I lost.

Ticket confusion left Paul and I without seats together on the plane and so we had to do some confronting to get to sit next to each other. We worked the Nairobi-London leg ourselves and Paul, in so many words, told the large guy sitting in his row that my seat up front had more leg-room. He left willingly, I even watched him get served my vegetarian meal and eat it. I happily enjoyed his lamb curry. I don’t know why I selected the “special” meal – I think someone told me that the vegetarian meals were better on airplanes. After we sold our deal to the man who could use some extra leg-room, I tried to get the woman sitting in the middle seat to trade with me for the aisle. Middle seat for an aisle – seemed easy enough. She didn’t say anything, just waved her finger at me like I was being naughty and pointed to her own seat. Then Paul asked if she wanted the window seat and she gave him the same response. So she sat between us the whole eight-hour flight. I don’t think that she spoke much English, or maybe she just didn’t speak, because she conversed with the flight attendants through a series of finger pointing and she hit me once when I was sleeping because she wanted to get up to use the bathroom. She hit me a couple more times because she didn’t seem to know how to use her lap beat and wanted me to do it for her. At that point, I wanted my extra leg-room back.

I also want my British airline employees back. I can’t decide if it’s just their pleasant accents or if they really are just nicer. Upon arrival in Chicago a woman working the customs line used a series of voice raises to get her point across to me. Why waste the extra breath on an actual explanation, just say the same thing louder that you said before. Welcome home. Back in Bozeman – after a 20-hour road trip from St. Louis, which neither of us bothered to check out until the morning we were leaving – estimations had been slightly lower. Kenya even said good-bye to us one more time in South Dakota. If you are familiar with Wall Drug you’ll know that they begin their advertising in all adjacent states. One billboard on I-90 read: Wall Drug – there’s a sign for it in Nairobi, Kenya.

moja tu

Sampson – stripped of his wisdom by a woman – and so the story goes of Sampson and Delilah. Sampson - momentarily stalled in his path by a woman - and so the story goes of Sampson and Christine. My novice trap setting skills, the first trap I set, proved good for one go at it. I’d have to say it was beginners luck; the settings since have not been as fruitful though we think we’ve perfected the method for next time, next year. You can look forward to my reunion entry in January - telling you about a handful of new hyenas that have signed up to the cause.

A week ago we were invited up to the infamous lodge. If one was so inclined, it would cost that individual somewhere in the neighborhood of seven hundred dollars a night to stay there – per person, not per room. Our presence was allotted for because Johann, Sam’s boyfriend, had clients on safari staying there. We spent our token afternoon sunning ourselves at the private pool on top of the compound called 360 – so named for your three hundred and sixty degree view of the land lingering below. This little bungalow would set you back eight thousand dollars a night. Each structure has its own pool perched on the edge of the cliff. Low walls etch out the perimeter and the bathroom, but everything else is open. There is little else to the space actually - slippery white tile floors and a large white bed encased in a mosquito net – all seemingly trying to defy the dusty conditions that surround it; even the staff wear long white robes. I’m told that all the white is about portraying a coastal ambiance. In the gift shop you can buy beaded waste bins, appropriately sized for your bathroom, for three hundred dollars. Though I guess the tolerance of a person paying close to a thousand dollars a night to be there is ample enough to find these prices in the margin of fairness

Camp is winding down; we’re back in Nairobi for a week while Paul prepares his poop samples for export. Poop - we introduced Albert in camp to this word when we were out doing animal counts one morning. We found a herd of wildebeest and drove over to collect some fecal samples - but we told Albert we were looking for poop. Hearing Paul use this terminology, he must have thought that poop was the correct word to use and when he was out with Sam another day recording what animals had been to her plant plots, he said, “I think this one is some weird sort of giraffe poop; it must have been at the end of pooping.” Sam subscribes to a proper British style of English - the right style of English most Brits would say - so she was less than pleased with the infiltration of our American slang. In true Christine spirit, I can finally count the days remaining on my hands and feet so productivity can wake up alert from its pondering slumber. We finished the stones dictating the paths of travel, each accompanied by a skull and its appropriate hoof track painted on the stone. I clear coated the stones and the skulls to save them from the sun and the dogs. Bucket and Monster seemed to have thought that I laid out these skulls as a dinner menu for them despite my insistence to the contrary. Once I soaked them in shell-ac they started to believe me.

All this research going on around me has inspired me to ask my own study questions. There’s some research going on in the Mara on spotted hyenas and their resistance to anthrax. I’ve decided to start doing my own research, using myself as the study animal, and inquire about the build up of immunity to scorpion stings. Two down and so far they still hurt.

masharti

We traded the Creels for a second helping of researchers from Montana who must have spent a considerable amount of time hoping for an African adventure lacking ease. Their own travels were delayed a day due to airplane mechanics and so the story goes from there. We took them to the Nairobi orphanage on the way out of town, no sooner had we bought our tickets and taken one step past the covered walkway into the coverless park that it started pouring down rain. My head didn’t even get wet, that is how instantaneous the rain had been with step one. Getting our money back wasn’t an option though and we could barely get the guy behind the desk to let us come back tomorrow. The orphanage is amazing by the way. It was worth the delay to enjoy a private tour the next morning. We held two week old baby cheetahs and stood a chain link fence width away from numerous roaring lions. Our guide also told us that the friendly, fluffy, spotted hyena that we were petting was 22 years old. Kenya likes to give you full control of your own safety. There is no moat around the predator cages keeping you, mindlessly, at a respectable distance. My age conforms me to my own fears so I didn’t need the four-inch minimum spacing requirements between bars to keep me from trying to stick my head inside the rhinoceros’s pen - although if you were caravanning with small children I wouldn’t expect their safety to already be managed for you.

Well Happy Birthday America – Sam’s birthday was the day before and we successfully baked a cake for her over the campfire. Then we colored the icing green and I wrote the word PLANT on it out of cookies and candles. Sam’s research includes vegetation monitoring and she jokingly, in comparison to Paul’s exciting carnivore project, says that she just studies plants. I meant to write PLANTS, but ran out of room and hence made her research seem even more specialized. After devouring the baked goods and a bottle of wine, we wished her a happy birthday and apologized in advance since we were going to have to beat her up the following day due to her British heritage.

The next day brought us lion number four which we named Esipata, meaning freedom or truth in Maasai – opinions tend to vary. She was one of the females in Ren’s pride, the male we collared at the end of May. He had been evading us for a few days when we went out to track him, but as we were sitting there waiting for one of the lionesses to get close to us, he meandered on over and butted his way into the carcass feast. We sat patiently while he took his turn, but when he fell asleep at the dinner table three hours into our stake out we unapologetically started up the car to wake him up. The offering was big this time - an entire Zebra that had died from drought. An attempt to partition the carcass led to the release of gases that were still building up in the bloated animal. Instead, Vicki and Chris helped Paul tie it up to the back of the truck and they dragged it across Shompole to an area we were expecting the lions to be. The trail of this process led to some curious phone calls from the rangers in the area.

A few days later we put Chris and Vicki on the bus so they could go to the Maasai Mara. Six in the morning and already jam packed with people, they said they were basically hanging out the door. An hour into their trip they stopped in Magadi and virtually everyone on the bus was kicked off except for the three wazungu, white people. A school choir group had chartered the bus from there to Nairobi, but the drivers must have realized that the white folks wouldn’t know what to do if they were kicked off in this random little town. Two days later we drove back to Nairobi ourselves to renew our overdue car insurance. On the way to the insurance agency we got pulled over by the cops. This has never happened before - ever. They don't have vehicles so they just stand in the middle of the road and flag you down. Paul tried several times to talk his way out of this situation. "They never sent us a reminder notice - can't I just go get it and bring it back to you - how about a warning?" - all to no avail. We had to take a cop with us to escort us to the police station where Paul tried several more times to get the lieutenant to just let us pay our fine and leave. Tickets can’t be mailed or paid on the side of the road so your time, the policeman’s time, the court’s time is taken up for every single traffic violation. We sat in the police parking lot while ACC went and got our renewed stickers and delivered them to us. They assured us that, though rather inefficient, this was standard procedure. Court was Monday morning – but first we were going to Mt Kenya.

We drove to Mt. Kenya with Chris and Vicki for their last night. We stayed at a place called Mountain Lodge where every room has a balcony and view of the watering hole. At dinner they bring around a list of animals and you can check off which ones you would like to be woken up for if they come during the night. We were feeling pretty lucky already because we had just gotten back from our all day hike up the slopes of the mountain when they met us at the door with champagne and as we walked up to the window a herd of elephants came down into view. There was a pond of clean water closer to the lodge that the elephants prefer and a few of them walked over to take a drink and scratch their butts on a cement cylinder. Champagne glasses in hand, we walked downstairs to the underground viewing deck that took you about 20 yards away from where they were. Dessert came with a song and a certificate congratulating each of us on our hiking accomplishment. The lodge is full of little surprises like this and before we left on our hike that morning they had asked Paul to write down each of our names. There was some question over the handwriting and they deciphered correctly all but one name. Paul Schnette – congratulations on climbing to 10499 feet.

Monday morning rolled around and after waiting around for a couple of hours for the judge to even show up in a room dedicated to traffic violations, each case came personalized with the choice of a monetary sum or a jail term. Paul's choice was 6000 shillings or 2 months in jail. The menu of options must have been rather enticing, or Paul was just lacking his morning coffee, because he combined the two and said, "I'll take 6 months." The judge luckily asked for clarification and he answered, “Yeah, I’ll just pay.”

mwalimu

Before Paul had any animals collared last year he had to take a visiting friend to the Nairobi zoo to see a lion. Many wageni, tourists, come on African safaris hoping to get a glimpse of a lion living in the wild. They replace the bars of the cage with the steel of the vehicle - I’ve yet to see anyone willing to replace all barriers with fate. Lazy carnivores make this search difficult and national park regulations about driving after dark, you can’t, curb those chances even more. Keeping that in mind, a week ago we arrived back at camp with Paul's advisor, Scott and the whole Creel family. His daughters, 12 and 13 years of age, were on their first African safari. Their first night in camp, second day in the country, we took them on a game drive and tracked one of the lions. We found Mwanzo, the lioness, saw a hunt, and saw her and another lioness kill a zebra. Not only was it their first lion hunt and kill – it was my first lion hunt and kill; it was the Kenyan’s we had with us in the car first lion hunt and kill. What’s next? We had a lot to live up to with the remaining portion of this trip. Somehow we found a way to put icing on that cake by collaring another male lion a few days later. He hasn’t been officially named, but there has been some talk about his name being something like, 7 People and a Dog, because those were the contents of the truck when we found him. With a little man handling the little Jack Russell, Diesel, managed to keep relatively quiet throughout the whole procedure. I envisioned placing him on the lion to get a good picture, but
I decided that that might be pushing the limits of various ethical and security arguments.

Hyena hunting went a little bit slower. They managed to steal the bait once and evade the whole situation altogether most of the rest of the time. In fact, instead of us catching a hyena with our professional gear, one of our camp dogs, Monster, managed to get herself snared by a homemade version lingering somewhere along the river. She came up to me in the morning dragging a long piece of old metal. It extended into a loop around her neck pulled pretty tightly though she seemed to have forgotten about it already. The fact that she was dragging it meant that she was able to snap it loose from whatever tree it was tied to so it must have been an old trap. What its intended target was is a mystery.

Before closing the Creel chapter of this year, we took them to visit a couple of the schools. The children greeted us with practiced song and dance routines and the story was the same at both schools; they had qualified for the countrywide competition, but couldn’t afford to go. We introduced ourselves and left them with some school supplies collected from visitors of the research center. Then Scott’s daughters showed a video that they had made of students from their school. One of the teachers said that she was pretty sure that that was the first time 90 percent of the children had ever seen a computer screen. The video showed little clips of various school subjects and then a bunch of the students were asked what they liked to do for fun. Being a school in Montana, I think about 95 percent of them said that they liked to ski. The girls thought this through and realized that children in a remote, arid part of Kenya probably didn’t know what skiing was, let alone snow. So they included some snapshots of snowy mountaintops and people skiing. The children pushed and shoved for a better view of the screen and another one of the teachers turned to me and asked, “So what subject in school is skiing?”

kazi mzuri

Once again reporting from the infirmary – I have now been attacked by an acid bug. It may sound made up, I think its official non-official name is the Nairobi Eye. Its defense mechanism, upon death, is to release a smear of acid on the point of contact – which happened to be my face on this occasion - a full on red bubbly burn from the slope of my nose to the crevice of my right eye. I’ve been assured that it will go away and I’ll be as good as new – if so maybe acid is too strong a word for it.

2 more months and this blog is scheduled for a sabbatical. I can’t believe how fast August is approaching. When I was in school I operated on strict moral principles of not truly starting any of my projects until it was absolutely necessary. Sleep was for those who needed to operate heavy machinery. I reached optimum inspiration when I could count the number of hours I had left to achieve it on my hands and a couple of wiggling toes. So we’ve started to see the end and increase our production. 25 tree cuttings have been planted along the paths of travel. I’m told that they are fast growing trees so I look forward to them towering over my head when I return in January, shading the walk of death between my tent and the kitchen in the middle of the afternoon. January 2010, being only six months away may be a stretch of the imagination but I’ve always been a fan of positive thinking. Camp beautification will also include some stone paintings to delineate traffic accompanied by the skulls and tracks of the various animals we’ve been able to collect. We collected the stones from up the road in Entasopia - the shamba, farm area. The pictures I've posted are from that area to show you what a five minute drive closer to the streams of the escarpment will get you.

Quality over quantity - we’ve taken a break from trying to collar more animals and have spent the last couple of weeks tracking the ones we already have. Mwanzo was found with another lion up in a tree answering the question, do lions climb trees? Yes – although, to be fair, the trunk of the tree looked more like an escalator, there was nothing vertical about the climb. The new lion, Ren, was found with 6 other female lions one morning and he was mating with one of them. The five others kept their distance and begin to mimic the behavior from time to time. Even Pizza Hut, the hyena, allowed us to follow her for a couple of hours one night. She usually holds us to a 200 meter distance, but we graduated to a mere 50 and saw her sleeping next to a couple other hyenas and two little cubs. Hyenas’ kind of look like hunchbacks, a design that’s build for endurance rather than speed, and the little ones hopped quickly, straining to keep up. On our drive back that morning we came across fresh elephant dung and baby elephant tracks, though I’m not convinced that there are really elephants here seeing as I’ve never seen one. I’ve heard them, seen their tracks and dung, but this could just be planted evidence. There are supposedly hundreds of elephants here and it’s bewildering that such a large animal could stay so utterly elusive. The buffalo are the same way, though one night when we were having dinner at a watering hole, 40 of them walked right in front of us to have a drink. We were busy nibbling on chips and refried beans – a meal completely beige – when they snuck up and butted in front of us. Somehow they missed our presence at first because they all filed into the water and then instantly got spooked and all ran out.

Paul’s advisor and his family will be here for the next couple of weeks so look forward to the following blog entry detailing the numerous new collars we’ve put on and intense scientific breakthroughs. I, myself, plan on being amazed.

simba

Well it finally happened - it was bound to. Sooner or later an encounter would succumb to the torment of defeat. My defenses were lazy, my guard napping on the floor – habit brings us all down in the end. I was stung by a scorpion. It was no ordinary stinging either. I’m consistent with my alerted regard to rocks, logs, and piles of junk, but this, this was a well played moment for the scorpion. He sat nestled inside my swimming suit that was hanging up outside our tent. I gave it a half hearted shake when I took it down - flipped it over and untwisted it, but still he did not reveal himself. So I put it on. There was a thorn in my arm that I had started to remove when I felt another stabbing in my chest. Another thorn I hypothesized, but my investigations uncovered a scorpion as it dropped to the floor and suddenly the stinging intensified with the realization of its source.

We are now the proud recipients of a refrigerator and a couple of puppies - all inherited from a nearby camp across the river that folded. So far the refrigerator has provided us with amazing and interesting things called cold drinks. Don’t worry about the charcoal fridge - we are not fair weather fans. It still provides adequate cooling to extend the life of our vegetables while making room in the real deal for really cold drinks. I can’t smile enough at breakfast time while sipping on a glass of orange juice that does not taste like the fermenting sun. The puppies, Monster and Bucket – already named, not our call – have become excellent baboon chasers. So far we haven’t had a reoccurrence of the vervet monkeys in Nakuru and we’d like to keep it that way. The Maasai do not share the same sentiment for their dogs that we are accustomed to in America. We began to feel bad about taking them because in hindsight we both thought we saw an expression of sadness in the watchman’s face when we carried them away. So we brought them back retched with guilt and asked him if he really wanted to keep the dogs. He pretty much laughed in our face at the suggestion of him having affection for the animals – I guess we misread that one. Good thing too because Bucket and Monster didn’t seem too keen on the idea either. They ran away from every one left in the camp which led us to believe that there never was any love between them.

I will now lead everyone in a round of applause for Paul who has successfully collared another lion! My role was pivotal – I kept an eye out for the other lion who was roaring in the distance. I was also the photographer, but instead of showing you any of my fabulous work, I’m posting the picture where I gathered up all of my courage and squatted behind the sleeping giant. Logic is a very stubborn thing and it was really hard to convince myself that he was indeed sleeping. I had envisioned petting him before the incident took place, I think I may have touched one or two hairs in his mane, but the wind could quite possibly take the credit for that. Everything went smoothly and within a couple of hours he woke up, walked a little bit, and then laid back down. Lazy boy – we stayed with him until we were sure that the drugs had worn off and he kept us out until 4:30 in the morning when he finally felt like moving again. Three zebras walked right past him when he first woke up and he lifted his head to regard them casually. Sure, kick a man while he’s down.

watoto

Thirteen teen-age girls and their mothers were sitting in wooden desks that lined the sides of the room. They were dressed in traditional attire although I counted at least three pairs of pink crocks under the table. We were invited to a workshop on women’s rights at one of the primary schools in Shompole. Three of the thirteen girls sitting in front of us would be the first in this community to go to secondary school, high-school. We came with Njeri, a woman from Kenya Wildlife Services, who stood up in her full camouflage uniform and told the girls that women could do anything that men could do, and sometimes, even better. All true – she embellished my job description a bit though. She left out the whole girlfriend of a lion researcher and just told them that I studied lions. A white lie I suppose – the truth probably wouldn’t have been that impressive. Maybe the lie wasn’t even that impressive though because when she asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up, the list of intense careers ranged from surgeons, not just doctors, surgeons, to a pilot. Apparently my fake title and Njeri’s real life military-like uniform didn’t sway anyone’s opinion because protecting and/or studying the wildlife was not on anyone’s A-list. The primary objective of the meeting was to think of ways to convince the fathers that having an educated daughter was something to be proud of. As of now, getting the dowry of livestock when your daughter is married is what brings pride to a man. At Nixon’s wedding, with all of its contemporary ways, like equal consent in marriage, he still traditionally paid a dowry for his wife. 6 cows was a going rate he said. And if you brought the man a bad cow you had to go and bring him another. And you were not allowed to take back the rejected one! He had his cows thoroughly inspected for quality before he gave them away.
Education seemed to be the theme of the last two weeks. Paul went to another meeting in another community where some of his cameras have been getting broken to gain access to the batteries inside. Since they are motion-censored cameras, when you walk up to them with the intension of breaking them, with any luck you will move in the process and they will then take your picture. So armed with two color printed photos of the two culprits, Paul had a meeting with the leaders in the area to see what to do about the boys. One boy attended the meeting and just sat quietly in the corner under a tree. The discussion went on in Maasai within earshot of the boy and when it was over they came over to Paul and said, “Now what we want to do is cane them.” Paul’s eyes got as big as they possibly could as he tried to express that this was not what he had in mind. The leaders wanted to take this boy and go to the school where the other boy was and beat them both in front of all the other students so that everyone would learn from the experience. An efficient method I’m sure, but instead they held another meeting with men, women, and children from the area where the vandals struck. Paul sat back while the leaders explained the research and how it benefited the community through employment and information sharing. They then surprised Paul by really stressing that the researchers were invited guests so by hurting their project you are insulting the community as a whole. In the end, no one got caned.
Well we’ve driven to the edge of the rainbow. There were zebra and buffalo already feasting on the pot of gold when we arrived. At the time, it symbolized the great things that were to come since Dave Christianson had arrived, another researcher formally from Montana State. He must have been destined for more of a survivor man sort of trip though because instead of collaring a bunch of animals while he was here we were outsmarted by a hyena that strung us along on a five-day chase. Things went down hill at breakfast one morning when Dave said; “I can’t imagine a bad day in Africa.” So we haven’t gotten any more collars out plus the animals are now striking back. I was sitting on the roof of the truck doing transects, counting animals, and all of the sudden I felt a big pat on the back. I hadn’t particularly done anything great so I looked at Dave to ask why I was receiving this praise. Before I could say anything, he instead turned to me and asked, “Did that bird just hit you?”

nane

The days here have led me to believe that there are three levels of wildlife. There’s wildlife that we’ve taken out of the wild and that you find in zoos, there’s wildlife that we’ve habituated to our non-wild selves that you find in over-trafficked national parks, and then there’s wildlife that seeks to see no people hear no people and isn’t particularly fond of being sought out either. So we’ve stopped sitting by bait, asking for RSVP’s and resorted to trapping instead - or forced social engagements. It’s all about the set up. Paul sets and baits the traps and then I come in and arrange the scene - a tunnel of tree branches, leaves and twigs scattered about, and a nice smooth surface over the trigger. Another researcher in the area goes so far as to make a fake footprint over the trigger, which translates in hyena language to, “Perfect!” After arranging sticks into an obvious path of travel, I feel like I am designing again. It gives new meaning to the title of my degree, Environmental Design. What would Dr. Phillips think if he could see me now? And with that I started charging Paul $80 an hour for my services. So far we’ve caught a couple of spotted hyenas and a civet. If you’ve seen the Bucket List, the Asian Palm Civet is the animal that kopi luwak is made from, the world’s most expensive coffee. They extract it from the animal’s poop. Our civet, who’s poop remains intact, is harmless enough that you don’t need to dart it to get it out of the trap, but this particular one was mad enough that my initial response was, “We’re not doing this.” We walked up to it with a blanket and a flashlight and after several failed attempts at scaring us away, it crept into the bush as far as its leg would go and Paul was able to release it without any trouble. One of the hyenas was Pizza Hut and the other one was too small to collar. It didn’t even have all of its adult teeth, which is perhaps why it selected the site that was baited with nothing more than a pile of zebra intestines. I hope that this is the last comment I’ll have to make about maggot-infested carcasses, but we’ve upped the ante -we helped ourselves to an entire zebra. It was a sub-adult so not the largest of specimens, but heavy enough to require involved participation. It was another, “We’re not doing this” moment that was equally ignored. We put its head and behind in trash bags, folding the legs under to make the bag fit and hoisted it into the bed of the truck. Paul took the heavy end and I grabbed the legs, which left the trunk of the carcass hanging over the edge weighing us down. I then let go of the legs and got under the carcass and gave the final heave ho that got the job done. Yes me, I did that, anything for science. We let this zebra marinate in a layer of duck taped plastic bags for two days while it was raining too hard to go out. When we finally got a chance to dump the body, our maggot load had increased 10 fold. Our expectations were high – a whole carcass – a few hyenas showed up at a distance that suggested that the presence of the truck outweighed the tenderized meat. We attempted to pout and go home, but when we tried to start the car it was brought to our attention that the spotlight had drained the battery and the engine wouldn’t turn over. We spent the night in the truck.

The end of April took us to a Maasai wedding in Kitengela, where Paul did his internship six years ago. It was quite modern for the Maasai; the bride was wearing Maasai beads over her formal white dress. Nickson, the groom, was in a suit as well as all of his groomsmen and the bridesmaids were dressed in buttery yellow gowns. Nickson’s dad was wearing an oversized suit with the pant legs tucked into a pair of brown safari boots. The sight was amusing to me and I found it even more amusing later with the addition of a denim hat. We showed up to the church and were escorted to the front row as special guests; this made it rather hard to blend in, even in my Maasai attire. The ceremony was performed in Swahili with a series of preachers, varying in levels of animation. Every now and then they would throw us a few Amen’s to keep us alert. At the reception a couple of Muslim women had their husbands take pictures of them with me. They walked over and smiled, stood on either side of me, and motioned for a picture to be taken. They were either interested in having a picture with the white girl or the white girl wearing Maasai clothes, I’m not sure which. They seemed to be the only Muslim ladies there and me the only white one so perhaps they found comfort in our joint minority. And then Paul and I got cornered into a music video. I wish I were lying, but Nickson’s brother pleaded with us to shuffle around to this song with a bunch of kids dressed in uniform. They were making a CD and somehow thought that having a couple mzungu, white people, in the frame would be good for marketing. I’m pretty sure we looked ridiculous; the performance might actually set them back a bit.

saba

So there are these creatures called mole crickets – this is a two-part story. If you ever have the chance to be up close and personal with a mole cricket, the sound it makes resembles, not resembles, it truly is the sound your abode uses during a fire to get you up on your feet. So April 1st, being April Fools Day, Paul and I made up this story about a mole cricket outside our tent, waking us up in the night, and when we went outside to investigate we found a half buried plastic container next to it. Inside the container was 10,000 shillings, about 125 dollars. Our story was bought and a laugh was had, but the weird thing about it was that three days later there was a mole cricket outside our tent – the power of suggestion. We’ve since dug up all the earth around it to no avail.

The drought has been the demise of many animals and we see carcasses partially eaten all over. It’s become a fixture of the environment to see a dead zebra or wildebeest, but we recently were given word about a dead lion. A male, he died a few days prior to our getting there. Kenya Wildlife Services thinks he is the same male that was previously injured by two others - at that time they darted him and treated his wounds. He was already missing a couple teeth and claws and KWS confiscated the rest. His eyes were also missing and he was in the process of being fed on by fly larva. I’ve grown numb to the sight of deceased animals being consumed by maggots, what will always be shocking to me though is that the hyenas still think this is good meat. Even at this stage in his decay, the lion’s size was quite impressive. Paul took his measurements as if we were getting ready to put a collar on him and some visitors we had with us at the time, who were not as accustom to the maggots, unloaded about 50 hand wipes on Paul, the Shompole scouts, and the KWS ranger when they were done. The rainy season has finally started though. We went out looking for Mwanzo, the collared lion, last night and our visit was cut short by no less than one million bugs. Windows down and roof hatch open, I looked over at Paul and his knees were covered with a blanket of insects. We thought about shutting the roof hatch at that point, but we would have dumped a bucket’s worth of beetles on top of our heads. With that, I took off my Spot lighter’s hat and offered to drive. My bush tolerance has gone up, I’m happy to say. Though I still have an aversion to the wasp.

Market day is always a very happy day for the Maasai; if you want to leave too early people would rather walk home later than take the free ride. I was driving the car back on one of those days we left when it was acceptable to leave and we gave a ride to a group of women. About ten people piled into the bed of the truck and when we dropped them off they took turns shaking my hand. I understood the thank yous and answered appropriately to that, but there was some more chatter and one woman danced up to me and patted me on the back. Michael was in the back as well and he turned to me and asked if I knew what they were excited about. I said no, and he told me that they were excited that a woman was driving the car. There are proud women everywhere. I’ve been helping the press club type up some articles that they wrote in hopes of starting a school magazine. Most of the stories were poems and opinion pieces and there were quite a few from girls speaking out for their rights. One of them even warned the boys to watch out because women would soon be taking over the world. Men, consider yourselves forewarned. Feminism - it’s even in the bush.

fisi na simba

631THK – in case this was anyone’s Missouri license plate, we’ve found it on the back of a mini bus here in Kenya. Not in place of the Kenyan identification, in addition, off to the side. I’ve also seen one bearing the Mizzou Tigers logo. I wonder if such references could be made to all the 50 states and if I’m just recognizing those of my own. 30 has been good so far. We finished the charcoal fridge. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that we are enjoying ice cold beverages now, but they don’t maintain the temperature of a camp fire either. We also got the tents patched up that the monkeys destroyed. Only 500 shillings – like 6 and a half dollars – to get a couple sweet war wounds. I am going to write North face and tell them how their superior tent poles withstood the monkey bounce house activity and how the bargain brand collapsed in despair.


Paul collared a hyena. I took pictures and a few measurements. Touched one – checking that off the list. We set traps this time since we weren’t having any luck getting them to come to our free standing bait. Even at that, some of the hyena’s found a way to step around the trap and steal the bait. In counter pursuit, Paul began staking the bait down. We stayed at a camp nearby to check the traps periodically throughout the night and to our glee, night number 2 produced a hyena. We’ve named her Pizza Hut. Ask not why, but rather why not? Okay why; some friends of ours are having a baby, to which the womb name Showbiz has been given. Instead of naming the hyena in direct overlap with the incubating lad, we decided to honor his life with a parallel. Showbiz Pizza, Pizza Hut will look after you from afar. Perhaps Pizza Hut’s serious, representative name can just be Hut or P.H – for those scientists that think it’s reasonable to name an animal with numeric code, but unreasonable to name one after an American fast food chain. We’ve switched our focus to lions since then. There’s a group hanging out by the river we’ve been camping at. Samantha’s boyfriend, Johann, came down with his little Jack Russell, Diesel, for the weekend and a morning of searching for the lions ended at this little overlook we’ve named leopard’s landing. Paul and Johann stepped out of the car and Paul was explaining to Johann how this name came to be - all the leopard tracks we saw when we first discovered it and how the group of lions we’ve been searching for have been in the area as well – when Diesel jumped out of the car and ran over to the edge of the bushes and growled. The growl was returned with a parallel sentiment, but with a tune that well out ranked any tune in “the jungle” they would say. So I guessed that we found the lions. We all guessed that and both boys and dog leaped back into the car. I’m thankful that there still is a dog, the lions sent out there warning to Diesel and then we saw them run away behind us. Quite the pup to stare a lion straight in the face and express annoyance with it being there. I suppose that there are those amongst us that will read this with utmost concern for the boys, but the dog was really the only affordable meal - the boys were barely past the car’s exterior.

In conclusion, it happens to be Mustache March in Bozeman – Paul is competing from afar. He’s been growing rogue for the last 3 weeks and just carved out a nice little mustache for the final week. I’m including a picture so everyone can benefit from the sight. We hope to have many community meetings during its stay.

tano

Visitors. We picked Kim up from the airport and took her to three malls and a few meetings her first few days in Kenya. Merely to take some face saving photos for her family and show how safe things are in this country. On the other hand – the amenities I speak of are a pleasant break from the excessive heat of Olkirimatian for Paul and I and we threatened to spend her whole vacation going to movies and Naukamatt – the Kenyan version of Wal-mart. In contrast we did camp 80 yards away from a pride of lions one evening. That discovery in the morning led to us dragging Josh to the very same spot his second day in Kenya for a collaring attempt. The lions never came that close again, but we found them in the area on a few night game drives. While we were out looking for the lions we came across a few giraffes and barely stopped the car to see. How quickly one gets numb to the surroundings and we needed Kim’s excitement to remind us of the luster. We spent the first two weeks in camp and a women’s group meeting and some unexpected Swedish students prompted the slaughtering of two goats. No participation was made on our part, although Josh offered up his newly purchased maasai machete for the butchering. Kim, Josh, and I then set up Paul’s cameras with Michael while Paul had a meeting. Our salaries for the day’s work are still being discussed.
We hiked Mt. Shompole the day before my birthday - my 30th birthday. Not a bad accomplishment to close out a decade. I was feeling good about this on the way up, but an old knee injury nagged me on the way down and I sank into a reality I’ve never liked to admit – maintenance. We never made it to the top peak – our guide lost the trail - it hadn’t been hiked in a long while and would have required us to dip down into an overgrown valley before going up again. It seemed like more than a one-day adventure at that junction. The next morning there was “sneakery” going on and I wasn’t privy to the overnight surprise birthday party planned for me at a lodging camp in the conservation area. We had a lovely morning following baboons around with Joel, the resource camp baboon habituator while Paul was out doing some work and later had a goat and chapatti feast with Michael and Patrick. On the way home, Sam faked a call from some guys at Sampu camp saying someone was sick and needed a lift to the main road. I guess I should have wondered why he only needed to go to the road, but I wasn’t being very analytical that day. Earlier I found a few bottles of champagne in the kitchen tent and asked what they were for and Sam said wild dogs. Wild dogs had been spotted in the area, but with even half a thought I could have wondered how she had known that they were going to be spotted and why hadn’t the celebration taken place yet? But, as stated, I wasn’t being very clever. I spent most of the day doing the math and making sure that I was indeed 30. The views at Sampu camp are incredible - you can sit in the kitchen tent and look out into a watering hole at the animals that come to take a drink. The lodging tents even have in tent plumbing. We had a lovely meal of goat curry and a homemade carrot cake by the neighboring hyena camp’s cook - and then a dance party.
The next morning we drove to Nakuru national park where we fell out of love with vervet monkeys. An early morning game drive gave them time to use our empty tents as a bounce house and destroy them. There wasn’t any food in the tents, just sleeping bags. We came back at 9:00 in the morning to one tent completely down and holes in the other one. The monkeys were bouncing on the tent still standing and a few more were sitting in my sleeping bag which had been pulled out. Oh – and to further the insult, they pooped and peed on everything – and stole Kim’s travel pillow. I was driving back to camp when we made this discovery and I off roaded to ground zero and blared on the horn, which mildly annoyed the monkeys. Paul jumped out and took off after some of the trespassers and Josh took a few moments to whip out his camera and get one good picture in before joining the fight. To make the situation worse we still had to camp that night. We drove to the Suswa caves and pitched our rain flies over bent poles duck taped back together. It wasn’t an enclosure, more like a canopy, and we wet wiped the poop off our sleeping bags and hoped scorpions wouldn’t come and attack us in the night. The caves are part of Soralo’s community projects and they were incredible. (Soralo is the organization responsible for the creation of the resource camp where we are based) The caves had just been mapped out last year and they are working on making them more of a tourist attraction. Two of the caves were filled with a million bats and we were walking on about a thousand years of bat guano. I enjoyed the bat free caves a little bit more - due mainly to the ability to breathe in them.
We weaned Kim and Josh off of bush life with a few days at the coast. Local fishermen came to sell us fresh fish and coconuts every morning and it proved to be a very relaxing goodbye to Kenya. I’d like to thank Kim and Josh for being such great guests. I’d also like to thank Bill Lydon for his autograph. Upon arrival Kim presented us with a signed picture of the San Diego bungalow crew. Top left hand corner was Bill Lydon in his best doctor’s scribble. Underneath it he wrote – I was told to sign it, then they made fun of me for not writing a note, so this is my note. Awesome – you couldn’t even try to replicate friends like ours.

nne

Planted safely back in the wilderness, I’ve been briefly introduced to bush politics. We went to Paul’s yearly research meeting with the leaders of the community; the chief – appointed by the government, the chairman - elected by the people of the group ranch, and the various researchers and research assistants in the area. The meeting was conducted in Maasai and English, though word for word translation didn’t match up to me. The leaders would talk amongst themselves for several minutes and the version we got sounded more like Tyson verses Spinks 1988. There are two group ranches that Paul does research in and he has a research assistant from both communities. Each group ranch also has a conservation area with no bomas – houses – and that is only used for grazing during times of drought. Our camp is in Okiramatian’s group ranch (the north) and Shompole’s group ranch is to the south. Shompole also has a lodge, for those that can afford its fees, in their conservation area and it is marketed as a place where your encounters will only be of the local variety. So its proprietor doesn’t like the researchers much and thinks they are getting in the way of this egotistical dream. While the community may not agree with this sentiment, the money the lodge brings in is hard to ignore and this man has earned himself the title, a complicated friend. I think the meeting lasted about three hours and I was introduced at the end along with an ACC – African Conservation Centre - intern, Rebecca, who will be staying with us for the next five months. It was clearly annunciated that neither she nor I had our own research agenda so there would be no talk of us sneaking into this system without paying for the privilege of being here. After my introduction one of the community leaders joked, “so I heard she is studying giraffes.” We’ve actually been seeing a lot of giraffes lately, but I try not to look at them too closely.
The hyenas are another story. We’ve been seeing them, but they tend to stay just out of reach. We followed a group for five hours the other night and just when we inched up close enough to dart, she stood up, yawned, and walked further away. Our last two attempts have ended at five in the morning and I got us stuck in the dirt twice. It’s sort of like driving in snow; since it hasn’t rained in awhile (circa April 2008), some stretches of the road are just inches of dry and dusty soil. As if to give us a consolation gift, we found one of the den’s last night and saw a mother pick up a pretty new cub. This saved her from our further advances.
Paul had two blackboards locally made with some money that was raised for the schools. We delivered them to one of the nursery schools nearby - a one-room school -house of 26 students, 8 of them boys. The teacher said that the boys pushed for this school so they could hang out with all of the ladies. When we arrived, the children danced and sang us a welcome song. If I ever find a fast internet connection, I’ll post the video of the dance because it was the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. Some of the parents came too and I received a pair of Maasai earrings as a thank you gift. The mama first tried to give them to Rebecca, but she doesn’t have pierced ears. Paul whispered to me that I should just say my ears are pierced and accept the gift. Luckily, while my ears are irritated by metal and I don’t wear earrings anymore, they are indeed pierced because when I made this confirmation she didn’t just hand me the ear rings, but proceeded to stick them in my ears herself. What a terrible mess that little white lie would have gotten me into. After Rebecca and I had received our jeweled gifts another one of the mamas looked down at the necklaces she was wearing and must have thought, what the hell, this one looks masculine enough, and with that, Paul received a gift too. At the end, the school chairman got up and thanked us in Maasai; the translation I found most amusing. In the true spirit of human discontentment he said, “ just like we say to God when he has brought us rain, Thank you God for your gift, but now, what else can you do for us.”

tatu

We went to a circumcision ceremony for Michael’s son. We arrived more on the ceremony side of things, the boy who got circumcised was already resting in one of the mud and stick huts, trying to forget the morning’s pain no doubt. His father was distinguishable amongst the crowd wearing a blue shuka (wrap) and his head was cleanly shaven and painted red with ochre. He wasn’t allowed to leave the premises so we were escorted in and out through a liaison. We happened to be hosting the veterinarian who is assisting Paul with his project at the time. His friend came down with him and she and I were asked to join the mama’s as they danced into the boma (house) bearing gifts. The dancing consisted of a head and shoulder shake to flash the various beads you were wearing around your neck. The minute we joined the procession though, we heard laughter coming from the group of boys wearing black shukas behind us and we felt to vulnerable to do much shaking and resorted to good old fashion walking, smiling brightly whenever one of the other women would look back at us to see what we were doing. Being city folk, our guests were just as foreign to this Maasai tradition as we were and once inside, we walked around with our appointed tour guide and he explained it all - who was who, what colors and beads meant what. The boys that were wearing the black shuka’s were newly circumcised and they were there to dance and chant in support of the new recruit. Traditionally, these boys will now spend two years out in the bush becoming men, but I think this varies today depending on whether or not they are in school.
Now we are on Nairobi time though. Movies and sushi – a little boutique restaurant where the water was so cold it hurt our teeth. I even discovered my sweatshirt again. We are refueling on food and well… fuel, and gathering some supplies to make camp more accommodating. We are taking it upon ourselves to build a charcoal fridge. It won’t give us ice, but we have aspirations of having a cool soda once and awhile and maybe eating fresh fruit and vegetables on days three and four instead of just one and two. Milk and eggs are magic here. That’s the most I can make of it. Their shelf life does not require refrigeration. A certain type of milk anyway, called Long Life, has been boiled into oblivion and comes in a juice carton that stays fresh until you open it. Eggs aren’t refrigerated either. Not even in Nairobi. They are fresher they say. The only difference that I can see is that they have a thicker skin that makes it really hard to puncture without puncturing the yolk as well. We picked up this book called the Wilderness Guardian that teaches you how to do everything from constructing a sand filter for our water supply to building a bridge. We’ll see how the charcoal fridge goes first and then assess the need and or ability to tackle such a thing as a bridge. Nairobi is bittersweet – the travel is exhausting, but the amenities are forgiving. I’ve learned how to drive in the bush, manual stick shift from the American passenger seat, but I refuse to attempt it in the city. Perhaps if I had grown up in England the chaotic system of round abouts would make sense, but there are no rules and aggressiveness is a must. There is no turn to wait for. The task has no end and eventually you just have to go and hope that nobody hits you. The police don’t come equipped with cars here and every so often there is a nail bar in the middle of the street that you have to weave around so when you slow down they can look into your car and see if they need to stop you. They are at the mercy of you actually pulling over, although there will be another cop down the road waiting for you if you don’t. Speed bumps are in surplus as well, though they don’t feel the need to paint them any differently so every once in awhile we get a jolting announcement of their presence.
Anyway, I hope you are all well. We have been getting pieces of American news lately and it’s always interesting to hear it from the BBC’s perspective. We found out that Joe the Plumber was reporting from the Gaza Strip and that Blagojevich compared himself to Gandhi and Nelson Mandela - always a pleasure.

If you like these stories, get ready for paulsjokesfromthebush.blogspot.com – it’s not up and running yet, but he has a lot of one liners that haven’t made it into the blog yet so he’s thinking of starting his own.

fisi

A dust devil nearly blew us away a few days ago. It came on all of the sudden and took down our shower and a tree. The following day it rained. It was more like showers than good and honest rain, but some holy men sacrificed a couple of goats to make it happen. Michael explained to us that holy men here were wealthy men with around 10 children. I asked if a man had to be wealthy to be holy and he said that you also needed to be a really good man, meaning you haven’t killed anyone or gotten into any fights.
So we hacked up a dead zebra. There’s really no nicer way to say it. I thought better of making it the opening comment and gave you a nice little story about sacrificial worship instead. My role in the hacking was sitting in the car with the windows rolled up taking pictures. Paul has this wonderful habit of parking downwind of whatever decaying carcass he’s investigating. Some high school students walked by and caught him field dressing this zebra. “Research - Do you like science?” Paul asked them. They just smiled awkwardly and repeated the word research. “It’s all part of science.” He concluded to fill the void. They didn’t say too much, just stared and watched Paul separate one zebra hind leg with a panga (machete) and put it into a bucket. They didn’t ask, but in case you are wondering – this zebra that once was provides bait for the hyenas. We’ve been out four nights now, luring them with this scent, and getting closer every time. I think tonight will be the night. Night drives are spooky with all the eyes that you see. Paul is really good at differentiating between them without even looking through the binoculars. I’ll spot a cluster of eyes way off in the distance and without even stopping the car he will tell me that those are Impala or Bat Eared Fox. Most of the drive sightings are of Grant’s gazelle’s or hares and this group of six giraffes that we always seem to be surprising. We once found a baby Grant’s gazelle in the hiding spot its mom had left it in and I quickly took the spot light off of it so that its secret was safe with us. When we are driving through the thick salvadora bush, we like to play the game, ‘How much would I have to pay you to get out of the car and walk around for awhile’. This is a lion and hyena haven so I don’t think either of us has ever put a price on it, fantastical as it may be. Speaking of games though, we were out setting up cameras yesterday and Paul was dry skipping rocks across the dusty ground. He picked up a rock and hit it like a baseball and then asked his assistants if they knew what baseball was. Michael said that he didn’t, but he knew that the whites have a lot of games.
Since no one in the area really has a car, we’ve become a special treat for people who catch us driving down the road. Amref (African Medical Relief Foundation) – flying doctors – caught us the other day and asked us to give this guy a ride back to Olkiramatian – which is where our camp is. He had to come with us to set up a few more camera sites before we were heading back and as we were stopped at one of them, Paul asked him for the phone number of someone at Amref. This led to the guy reaching in his pocket and realizing that he had left his phone in the truck he had just come from. Panicked, he asked what he should do, then said something in Swahili to Patrick and Michael and took off running. We asked them what he was doing and they said he was running the two miles to the water hole where he knew the guys were washing the truck. He said he would just find us on the road on our way back. Unlikely we thought, but sure enough, we finished our sites and were driving back to camp and saw the man, shirt opened drinking a jug of water, waiting for us. “So about that number” was the first thing he said to Paul when he got back in the car.
So yesterday was inauguration day. Kenya is proud of the shared blood between us. We meant to listen to Obama’s speech on the radio, but then got sidetracked when we realized that an Impala had been killed and half eaten by a leopard the previous night right on the edge of camp. I can now add the relocation of large animal carcasses to my resume. We one, two, three, swung the animal by it’s legs over the bramble thorn bush wall that delineates our camp boundaries so that it would be on the outside rather than in. Then we packed our radio and some coffee in the truck and parked 15 yards away hoping to catch a glimpse of the leopard coming back for seconds or better yet, a hyena coming in for the leftovers. Neither of these things happened, but we sat there until 4 o’clock in the morning determined not to miss anything. I’d love to upload some images to accompany my words, maybe not of the dead animals, but Paul has those too if anyone is interested. Every time I even think about pictures the internet connection laughs at me. I spent five minutes the other day trying to upload this lovely picture of Paul’s and my feet with an Energizer packet lying next to us. Afterwards I had to laugh when I thought about the possibility of that being the only picture that made it. What a disappointment that would have been for all of you. I will keep trying though, with more important pictures of course. At the end of the month we will be going to Nairobi for a few days so maybe then.

Until then………………………………….

mwanzo

And so the story goes – well we are here, but I guess that is pretty apparent. These first few weeks have been busy and I haven’t found much time to start this blog that I’ve projected to create - this universal letter stating our safety and adventure. I’m powered by the sun now – sitting in our kitchen canopy, learning the difference between wasp buzz and the buzz of harmless insects. This huge wasp keeps terrorizing me, flaunting his stinger. He wants something in the kitchen tent though can’t seem to slow down enough to get through the small hole at the bottom. When we first got here I was averaging a scorpion sighting a night and one solofuse pretending to be a scorpion, I’m sure of it – though I haven’t seen any in a while. And there are these creatures called ant lions that dig little hurricane looking holes and then sit and wait for ants to fall into them. I first noticed one digging his trap at the edge of our tent canvas - amazing really, though I’ve yet to see a successful catch. Other than that, our most plentiful creature around camp seems to be the baboon. They aren’t like park baboons though so they don’t steal our food or trash our tents. They make the most noise, and the most variety of noises. I accused Paul of just saying, “It’s a baboon,” every time he doesn’t really know what animal to attribute to the sound. Our camp is right next to a river and you can tell when there is probably a leopard around because they send their warnings up and down through the trees. We can use the river to cool down during the day because there are no crocs or hippos. I’ve been given no reason for this other than, there just aren’t, when I ask why. I guess you just learn to trust those that know better than you.
I hope everyone had a wonderful New Year’s Eve. We tried to send a few text messages out from our phones. We are 11 hours ahead of San Diego time - 9 St. Louis. We spent ours at the Castle Forest Lodge at the base of Mt. Kenya. A guide hiked with us about 5 miles through the forest to a primitive little cabin. At the bottom there are full service cabins and tent options for lodging. And horses! It used to be an old British government official’s weekend retreat. Paul’s mom said that the place reminded her of the ‘Sound of Music’ and I have to say that I agree. It hailed that first afternoon as we were having lunch and waiting to start our hike. We had to make fires to keep warm at night – though I can’t imagine it anymore, sitting here 6 hours south in a heat that leaves me craving nothing but water. And you get warm water at that though I’ve been told twice now that cold water is bad for you so perhaps I should get used to it - something about being a shock to your system.
Camp has been slow going and we’ve already had to make one more trip back to Nairobi to get things forgotten. It’s about a three hour trip with patches of good highway. Our main necessity for the trip this time was liquid nitrogen. We went out looking for mwanzo – Paul’s collared lion – last Wednesday night and found her and three other lions feasting. We didn’t see the kill, but watched them for about an hour and then two of the lions pooped right in front of us - a pretty big deal for Paul since he could positively identify one of the samples as that of his collared lion. Retrieving the excrement was quite amusing – the truck is too high to just reach down and grab it so while Paul was mustering up the courage to actually step out of the car to get it Michael, one of his local assistants, just hopped off the roof walked over and got it for him. Paul toughened up for the second pick though – which was mwanzo’s poop so it only seemed fitting. The lions didn’t seem to mind us much, but it was a little surreal, sitting 15 feet away from them while they were eating.
So far my days have been spent out in the field with Paul or back at camp organizing. Organizing is a most treasured past time of mine; something that I’m sure most of you are well aware of. We set up a camp computer for the guys to use – a student at Montana State offered up his old one. I’ve started to give computer lessons to our camp manager, Albert. The day we sat down with it was his second time using one so he is very excited about it. He is also trying to develop my role in camp a bit and hopefully I will be able to link up with the schools and help with where he would like to see things go with that. I’m a bit of an anomaly here since I don’t have my own research agenda. The community has been most welcoming although many of the women I meet think I am Samantha, the other researcher down here. Samantha has blonde hair so I defer from that that if you don’t have differing hair colors in your own culture you must not pick up on it. It’s usually a funny encounter because Samantha is Kenyan and speaks Swahili well. Her Maasai nickname is nongishu, which means cow lover, and they usually come up to me saying “Nongishu, blah blah blah blah” – and when I look confused they look at me again and realize their mistake. I told her that I might be giving her a bad name in town, snubbing people that may not ever realize that I’m not her. Paul’s Maasai nickname is osupat, meaning polite one. We can take a poll here if you like to see if we are all in agreement. Apparently the story is that three separate individuals came up with the same name for him. Joel, a Maasai baboon researcher here told me that he already knows what mine will be, but he has to wait and get confirmation once everyone has met me. Sidenote - Cows are very important here so you must know that Samantha’s nickname is very endearing.
Well this is where I will say goodbye for now. Hopefully this message finds itself online soon. This place has put a cold turkey stop to my aimless internet activity. No more checking my inbox every five minutes or starting 3 gchat instant messages simultaneously. No more facebook and the daily show – it’s all so sad – and yet all so wonderful.