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.