The adventure begins again

After travelling for about 35 hours, I’m finally back in Kenya.  And the thing the struck me the most when I got here was how normal it immediately felt.  Which is strange, because I spent the last few weeks before leaving for this trip filled with doubt that I wanted to come back.  I grew a lot of roots in the 10 months between when I left Kenya and when I returned, and it was hard to pull those up, even if it is just temporary.

But let’s back up a bit and get to the reason that I’m here.

This July marks the beginning of the collection of the data for my dissertation.  I will spend the next five months watching chimps, collecting their poop, observing the poop closely, and even arranging to have some of it shipped back to California.  It seems like the poop will monopolize my time, but it really won’t: there are just many more small tasks to do with poop.  After I have spent five months in Kenya, I will return to California for a little while and wait for the rainy season to come to a close in Zambia and then head out there – probably in the beginning of March.  I will spend five months in Zambia doing the same thing – watching chimps, playing with poop – and then I’ll twirl my hands a little bit and ta-dah! my dissertation will be ready for publication.

Or something like that.

I left for Kenya on the 4^th of July – not a good date for a girl trying to become an American citizen – and arrived here on the 6^th. After saying goodbye to my parents at the airport, I flew from San Francisco to Heathrow with a set of twins wailing a few rows behind me the entire flight. And I don’t just mean crying, I mean screaming at the top of their lungs. For nine hours.  I am evidently capable of greatness, and slept for a good amount of that time (so it is plausible the twins screamed only for 4 hours).  It seems to me, however, that any child that screams for that long should pass out from exhaustion at some point.  Alas, it was not to be. At Heathrow I endured a 10 hour layover by buying myself a day pass to a lounge where free wifi, food, and beverages were available.  (I would highly recommend this for long layovers. The pass was expensive, but if you have membership to one of the clubs at the airport, such as the Star Alliance or British Airways etc., you get a much cheaper rate. I will do that in the future, I think.)  Then another nine hours from Heathrow to Nairobi, after being delayed on the tarmac for an hour.  Upon arrival in Nairobi I whipped through immigration and then waited ages for my bags to come out before getting through customs equally quickly.

Luckily, I had made contact with another American travelling from Nairobi to Ol Pejeta before I flew out, so was picked up by Brian, a faculty member at an Illinois university, and Taranji, our driver very shortly.  The drive to Ol Pejeta was remarkably eventful, given that I have driven that way four times now with no hitches.

First, we were pulled over by the police in Nairobi because Taranji wasn’t wearing his seat belt.  Tough luck for Taranji, who was given a ticket.  Even tougher luck for Brian and I as we sat for a half hour, a captive audience, in a minivan on the edge of a roundabout in the middle of Nairobi with all of our expensive gear and equipment surrounding us… we quickly locked the doors and closed all the windows.  After the three hour drive to Nanyuki, Brian and I grabbed a quick lunch at Trout Tree Restaurant, where we saw black and white colobus (Colobus guereza) and tree hyraxes (species; most closely related to elephants!).  On our way into Nanyuki proper, Brian and I were once again pulled over by the police – this time for the “unusual” front license plates on Brian’s rental car.  Kenyan cops are experts at spotting anything that might get them a bribe from a mile off – including the crack in the windshield of our car – and since neither of us owned the car or was planning on handing over the cash, we waited for another half hour or so while the rental agency sent someone back to clear up the mess.

Finally, after a few errands in Nanyuki, we made it in to Ol Pejeta, at a not-entirely-our-planned-arrival-time of 4:30.  I said a few hellos to the people around that I knew from last year – Catherine and Anthony, Research Center staff, Nathan, George, Angela, and Kevin in the offices – and then went out to help Jenny exchange her old GPS units for new at the cattle bomas and on to a sundowner with Blair.

Now that I’m here, I do feel very settled already.  I think a big part of that is that I have a task to do every day: watch chimps, play with poo.  Though it may seem menial, it’s something I know how to do, and do pretty well.  So despite being concerned before getting here, I’m pretty excited.  Because tomorrow?  Tomorrow, I get to see the hairy black friends that I’ve missed all year long.