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.