June 19, 2008

Second full day at the Mugie camp. Yesterday in the morning we had lectures and I gave a very short presentation on bipedalism. After lunch, the students went on a nature walk with some of the park rangers and I slept. Later on, the staff went out of various sites that were used for student activities during the following few days. The Landrover I was in died immediately after leaving the camp (which is protected by an electric fence, so we were about 100m outside the fence). Rob, our logistics guy, was able to fix it and we caught up with Jack and his Landrover crew an hour later. I wasn't originally going to go, but there was an extra spot. Boring, though. Much driving around just to look at animal tracks. I had a really interesting conversation, though, with one of the wardens about how they use dogs, bloodhoods and mixed foxhound/bloodhounds, to track poachers in the ranch. Since Mugie is a black rhino sanctuary, it's important that they be able to keep poachers off their land. The entire ranch is surrounded by electric fences that can be monitored from the main offices.

We stayed out until after dark to find a baboon troops sleeping place. We got back around 8pm - too long a day for me while doing not much of anything. April gave me some Taco Bell hot sauce to help with my sinuses and I started taking the rest of the amoxycyclin I got in the Netherlands. I had this nasty sinus infection that just wasn't going away on its own. Normally I wouldn't take antibiotics for what I thought was a cold, but since it wasn't getting any better then disappeared within two days of me taking the antibiotics, I think it was a genuine infection, not just a nasty cold. The glands in my neck felt like freaking grapefruits, and I'm glad I had the meds or I'd have been sicker for longer. Yuck.

The change in altitude is affecting my stomach - it makes me queasy after I eat and I don't eat too much. The food is fine, but somehow not appetizing. I keep thinking about tacos, which is April's fault because she brought the hot sauce from Taco Bell.

Today in the morning we did our first assignment with the undergrads. They were divided into four groups and each group did one assignment per day. Our assignment involved identifying animal tracks at three different watering holes. Really, this assignment should have taken about an hour, but we had about 4 hours to kill in the morning, so we spent a lot time just walking around looking at tracks. It was not very well thought out, and the 2 minute lecture for the actual assignment part, so the students were often very lost. It was poorly done and not that instructional, and I think a lot of the students were just bored. By the end of the four days, I was very bored with it. There's only so much walking around looking at buffalo tracks that a person can take.

In the afternoon, we had two downpours. The second one interrupted a lecture on lion conversation efforts in Kenya and public education. That was interesting, though, and the rain will probably be the last I see for awhile.

In the evening, I had my head shaved by one of the South African grad students. I'd always wanted to do it, just to see what it looked like, and it seemed like a good place since I didn't have to worry about my appearance much out there. Plus it meant much less worry about hair washing. The unfortunate part, of course, was the lack of mirrors, so I didn't get to see it very much, but it still felt really neat.