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.