Aug 2008

Yesterday afternoon I went to the rhino data lab where Thomas, who manages the ranch, explained to use the basics of their rhino conservation program. They have 20 adult black rhinos and some babies and 2 adult white rhinos. The white rhinos are not indigenous and not endangered. The staff notch the ears of each adult black rhino so that they can ID individuals and keep track of them. The goal of Kenya Wildlife Services is to have 6% population growth per year. Here, they track the rhinos and if they don't see them for 4 days, they go looking for them. So far, they have reached their target population growth, but it's only been a few years since they started.

Afterwards, I thought we'd see the lions, but no such luck. Thomas did take us to see their tracking dogs, though, and gave us a demonstration, which was great. They have bloodhounds and 75% blood/ 25% fox hounds for tracking. If they find a poacher on the ranch, they shoot to kill.

The director general from the National Museums of Kenya was here yesterday, having come up with Emmanuel, Habiba, and Purity. We had lamb for dinner, which was so good, and chocolate for dessert, which is exactly what I wanted.

After supper, Lucy and I saw bushbabies in the tree behind my tent. The sky was so clear last night and the moon rose late, so the stars were amazing. I put on my glasses to look at them, which makes for a much better view. I think I could see patches of the Milky Way, too.

Today is our last day here. Students have the morning to finish assignments and we mark them in the afternoon. I will try to do some cleaning and packing tonight since we have to get up at 5 am tomorrow to leave by 7 Sounds like the driving days to Koobi Fora will be long. It's supposed to be very hot there day and night. I'm not looking forward to that; I've been enjoying the cold nights here. It makes it so much easier to sleep.

Yesterday afternoon I went on the rhino game drive. The taphonomy assignment team saw some of them in the morning, so we went back to the same area. The two rangers with us got out of the vehicle and showed us how they tracked the rhinos, using footprints, trampled and eaten vegetation, and feces. Although they were only a few minutes ahead of us, according to the rangers, we didn't see them. We saw another trio fo rangers monitoring the area for the rhinos. One of them was at the top of an 25 meter tree! They joined us for a few minutes and we returned to the vehicle. I'm kind of glad we didn't see any rhinos while we were out on foot. The rangers said we'd been fine, but I was still really wary of encountering them without a vehicle nearby. Though we saw no rhinos, we saw buffalo, including one that had to move off of the road for us, Grant's gazelle, impala, secretary birds, and zebra, including a wounded zebra which the rangers said would be picked off by the lions soon.

In camp at night, we saw bushbabies in the trees. As it was cloudy, we also saw lights from the other camp or village.

Today's the last day of assignments here, thankfully. The footprint assignment is dull, especially having done it twice already. Jack says the staff who haven't seen the rhino lab yet get to do so today. We'll see! It would be nice.

Yesterday morning I was sick, so I stayed in camp. I outlined in my human osteology field manual where the biometric measurements for my project need to be taken on my participants, then I spent most of the day reading.

Last night, we saw lights on the horizon, which freaked some poeple out. I suspect it was another camp or the village where the rangers and their families live. I think we just haven't see it before because it hasn't been cloudy at night up until now and the moon has been out and very bright.

Yesterday afternoon, April took some pictures of buffalo for me on the game drive. It's really hard to call them buffalo and not bison, after so many years living and working in Alberta. I will probably go out on the game drive this afternoon, since I'm feeling better.

My flashlight is missing, either lost or stolen. Sarita had some brandy stolen from her tent the night before, so I suspect my maglight was taken. My headlamp, which Andrew Du gave me, has a faulty connection and Robe is going to try and fix it for me. Emmanuel, one of Jack's grad students, is bringing me another one from Nairobi when he comes up. In the meantime, Sarita lent me her spare.

I slept very well last night for the first time since we arrived. It was great! It was colder this morning than it has been yet. Most of the people here think it's too cold, but this is what I used to for camping. I'm worried about what the heat at Ileret will do for me. At the same time, it will be nice to get up there and be doing something. I feel like I have nothing to do here and the time is going by slowly.

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.

Today we drove from Nairobi to Mugie Ranch- only about 500km (or less) but which took about 8 hours. The roads here are terrible, but at least there are roads! Kenya is so chaotic - the drivers drive everywhere, and there are people and livestock everywhere. It's difficult to process; I'm used to North American boundaries between road and sidewalk, but here, they don't really exist.

Nairobi is a strange city. Everything is dusty, I mean, even dustier than Alberta, which is saying something. No one is bothered to do things quickly (like service in the hotel restaurant) and we experienced roving blackouts. The hotel had broken window latches, broken lights, a complete lack of hot water (despite hot water taps) and uncomfortable beds. And it was cold. And, of course, they jacked up the room prices for us. I'm not sure why we stayed there, since on my last night in Nairobi at the end of the field school, I stayed in a place that was $10 more and had everything this place didn't.

And Nairobi was cold! I expected it to be hot, but it was cool and overcast the whole time. It was winter there, of course, but I wasn't expecting an equatorial winter to be so chilly. About 10 C at night.

The drive was tiring - it's very bumpy in the back of the Landrover and you constantly have to brace yourself. No seatbelts in these vehicles except for the two front seats. But seeing the Rift Valley was amazing. It reminded me very much of the Rocky Mountain Trench that separates the Rockies and the Columbias. We saw a lot of wildlife, like zebras, baboons (on the side of the road), giraffes, antelops, ostriches, dik-diks and buffalo.

It's dark at 6:30, which is crazy. We crossed the equator earlier today, so the days and night are about 12 hours each. It's hard to deal with for a Canadian. I still expect it to stay light until 10 pm. It's too early for night - we haven't even had supper!

We have showers here and I'd love to take advantage of them, but it's too dark. All I could get at the hotel this morning was freezing cold water. This annoys me - it's a hotel and we pay to stay there (and pay too much according to the prices that were listed in Susanna's Lonely Planet Kenya guide). The night before I head to Europe, I think I'll stay at an airport hotel. (I ended up staying at a better hotel, but not an airport one, because apparently the hotels near the airport aren't safe. But the Boulevard hotel did have hot water, which was great at the end of a 7 week field season!)