Nyanya

31 – I think I’ve miss counted somewhere.  Could it be?  We celebrated my birthday - tried and true - by heading up to Sampu camp for an evening with some friends.  And another repeat – we hiked up a steep incline to calculate how old I was getting, this time the escarpment.  At the top we enjoyed the view, some champagne, and my sweet new phone.  The Samsung C3510 – it’s pretty awesome - touch screen, fast web browsing.  After giving it to me, Paul was feeling a bit sad about his ordinary phone so he would like to point out that mine doesn’t have a flashlight on the end anymore and his is superior in that regard.  New things  – elephants  - there are now elephants in the study area.  I’ve always thought that people were going to tremendous efforts to make me think that there were elephants by planting dung and footprints, but on my birthday we drove up to a bull foraging 30 meters away from us.  Paul has since seen three other groups of elephants while he was out setting camera traps.  Everybody seems excited about the elephants - a Shompole scout along for the ride reported; “we are having a wonderful time.”  

I think 30 was the peak of my wasp phobia - I’m much more tolerant now.  Today I allowed three wasps to fight with each other right next to me and I didn’t even flinch – that’s progress.  Or maybe I’m just more subdued now because I haven’t had coffee in 22 days; or tea for that matter – although I’ve cheated a bit on that.  Tolerant of wasps, but intolerant of something I’m eating and a nutritionist in Nairobi has me on a new diet to figure out what it is.  Caffeine is always the first to go which is a very sad thing.  I’m allowed herbal tea and I drink that while longingly gazing at Paul’s pot of coffee he has all to himself.  I tried to tell him that he should be supportive and cut coffee out of his diet too, but he hardly entertains that even as a hypothetical.

On the community side of things - the women’s group has registered themselves as a CBO, community based organization, and we plan on helping them start their bursary program and other projects they are interested in.  We also purchased textbooks for primary schools on the two group ranches with fundraiser money from this fall.  For more details on these developments you can check out the research blog: southriftccr.blogspot.com.  Building has commenced in camp.  The Resource Centre is renewing its look with some proper buildings to service the researchers, community, and visiting guests.  The plan has been three years in the making and everybody is excited - kitchens, bathrooms, showers, open air meeting and dining halls, a women’s beadwork Banda; I plan on shadowing the contractor for the next 5 months and pointing out any California building codes he may be violating

On the carnivore side of things – the smell of dead animals lingers as we try to catch more hyenas.  The stakes haven’t been set yet, but I’ll be sure to let you know who catch what.   

Paul and I have made Kiswahili a priority since we are embarrassingly bad at it.  I blame the fact too many people speak English and I read in a Times magazine article that you start losing your ability to learn another language at 9 months of age.  But these are excuses and enough people down here casually saying, “huh, you come to Kenya and you don’t want to learn Swahili,” has bluntly suggested to us that we must learn.  Maybe you can learn with us.  Lesson 1: nyanya means both grandmother and tomato.