Julia

There are some chimps who are especially, for lack of a better word, chimpy.  Despite being raised by and living amongst humans, they seem unaffected by our presence, even the presence of those individuals who care for them day after day.  Of course, that means that they really couldn’t give a hoot about me, the lowly researcher who is curiously obsessed with collecting their feces.

Julia is one of these chimps.  She’s always been an independent girl, and according to the caregivers she decided when it was time for her to move from a human house into the sanctuary by climbing high into a eucalyptus tree one evening, building a nest, and refusing to come down until morning.  (Edward, another fairly chimpy chimp joined her in this activity and moved to the sanctuary that very morning with her.)  Integrating Julia was a walk in the park, as she knew how to be submissive and respectful to every other chimp in the group, and she easily took her place amongst the other females.  Now Julia has a firm place in her family, and is never confused by humans: she knows that chimps are her family and we’re just the servants. She especially loves to steal Angela away from Mwanzo for some quality cuddle time, and is one of the few chimps that Angela will climb onto the back of for a ride.

Julia carrying Angela

This morning I had a hilarious interaction with Julia while I was observing the chimps in the night house, looking for poop.  Julia was carefully licking spilled juice off of the bars of the sleeping rooms, and despite my standing directly in front of her, she was completely ignoring me.  To get her attention I gently blew a puff of air in her face.  Immediately Julia pulled away from the bars and scrunched up her eyes, then looked at me with such disgust and annoyance, as if to say “how dare you, lowly human.”  I immediately felt chagrined and crouched down and grunted my apology, during which Julia seemed to see me for the first time (well, possibly the second after I blew air right into her face) and forgave me enough to offer her shoulder for me to groom.

Julia always looks a little bit scowly for some reason, 

but she's really a very sweet girl.

Since then, she’s completely ceased to acknowledge me once again.

--------------------------------------

Blogging update:  Hi friends!  For those of you trying to follow my travels through this blog, it's probably pretty hard since I've not updated it in more than a month.  I've got a couple of back-logged posts I'm going to try to get up this week, and hopefully will resume blogging somewhat more regularly shortly.  Apologies!

Chimps: Nawapenda

There have been quite a few changes at Ol Pej since I left last year, some at chimps and some at research.  We have a new cook at research, Eric, who makes us some pretty amazing meals.  He really loves through food evidently, and is definitely going to cut into the research-weight-loss-plan that we all tend to get on out here.  There have also been mosquito nets mounted above our beds, which, if you had asked me a year ago, I would have said were completely unnecessary: I wasn’t bitten more than ten times in three months.  This year, however, there seems to be an absolute plague of the biggest mosquitoes I’ve ever seen in my life, I’m constantly smashing them as they rest on the walls in the mornings, and I’m really glad we have nets.  Gorbachev, the blind elephant, is also back to research.  He was relocated last year (I wrote about that here) to a fenced area in the northern part of the conservancy, as he was becoming incredibly destructive around the research center, staff camp, and Ol Pejeta house.  He seems to have broken out once more, despite having his tusks cut down, and is now back to his old habits of wandering around control and visiting us.  I’ve encountered him several times on foot, and after the initial heart-attack of seeing a huge bull elephant and wondering where you’re going to run to if he charges, it’s pretty cool to get to see him so up close and personal as he goes about his daily business.

The research center skulls, an Oryx, Steenbok, and Impala, with Magic Mike, the unicorn beanie baby given to me by Madelynn and Alana (my riding trainer).  Expect to see Magic Mike around, as I plan to take pictures with him all over the place.

At chimps, the new house for the young chimps is completely finished and it is beautiful.  There are twelve spacious rooms for the chimps to sleep in at night, a full bathroom, a clinic, and hopefully sometime in the future: a lab space!  Currently there’s no electricity to the house though, so we can’t move the lab in there just yet, but it will be wonderful when we can.  Also, my old nemesis, the weir! the weir! aka the river crossing, is no longer something I have to face daily.  Since January the river has been much too high for even the experienced-stepping-stone-jumping keepers, and one of the stepping stones got washed away, to boot.  So now there's a gap that's basically unjumpable, and too much water flowing for it to be safe to try to jump or wade across.  This is actually somewhat annoying, because I wanted to get a picture of me conquering the river crossing, and I also now need to drive all the way around to the bridge when I want to get data on the young chimps by the river.  I can't hate that I have no opportunity to crash to my death at the bottom of those rocks any longer though...

My old nemesis, the weir.

Many of the chimps have changed too, especially the young ones.  There’s Angela, of course, who is about twice as big as she was last year, though still quite small.  Ajabu has started walking everywhere on her own, which is a huge change from last year when she would primarily ride on Cheetah, Victoria, or Julia’s backs, and only hitches a ride when she is feeling excessively lazy.  Vicki has also grown quite a bit, and is now almost the same size as Julia, one of her age-mates.  This is only remarkable because Vicki has always been a fairly small chimp – her growth was stunted by the bullets that were lodged in her skull when she was brought to Sweetwaters, and the several operations she had to have to remove them all (poor baby). 

Vicki has gotten quite smart in the last year though.  She has always been a very submissive chimp, willing to give up her food to pretty much anyone.  Even Ajabu can take bananas from her in the night-house and often the guys have to peel bananas for Victoria and stuff them directly into her mouth to make sure she gets her fair share (or keep her separated during feeding time, which is only sometimes feasible as she likes to be with Alley, her foster-mother).  Last year she would often have large portions of her lunch stolen by Oscar, the alpha.  Vicki is so submissive that she wouldn’t even take food if Oscar was looking at her, and if he so much as stepped towards her she would run off screaming.  Just last week though, I saw Oscar do exactly this when Vicki was thrown her bananas at lunch: he stood up and took a swaggering step towards her.  Vicki glanced at him and didn’t move, so Oscar moved towards her a bit more.  She ran off then, but as she was running she pulled one banana off of the bunch of four that she was holding and placed it behind her, right in Oscar’s path.  Oscar was distracted by the banana that Victoria left on the ground, and she managed to keep the rest of her lunch.  I was very proud.

Oscar snuggling with Angela.  The biggest chimp and the smallest!  It's unlikely that Oscar is Angie's dad, since they look nothing alike, but he does love to cuddle her and he's always so gentle.

Another big change is Niyonkuru, the alpha of the young chimps group.  Last year, Niyon was a very aggressive and dominant chimp: he would display immediately after coming out of the night house, often throwing rocks, sticks, or dirt around and charging everybody out of his way.  All of the female chimps, and most of the males, would be politely subordinate to him at all times, almost as if to circumvent his unpredictable temper.  This year, Niyon seems to have settled down a bit and is more relaxed over all.  Possibly this is because he is getting older, he is at least 20, and the prime age for chimps is 15-20 or so.  Though they can live much longer, especially in captivity, age is tough on chimps: they can accrue a lot of injuries, especially males who have been in a lot of fights, their teeth start to fall out from the lack of consistent brushing and flossing, and all of the rough-and-tumble play (falls from trees, wrestling, fights with baboons) can really catch up with them.  Additionally, Niyon has started to be challenged by some of the younger males.  Cumbo and William are really becoming fond of the idea that they might not have to be subordinate to him forever, and have been displaying and challenging Niyon more often.  Just a few days ago I heard two chimps screaming off in the bush, and shortly afterwards Niyon and Akela came hustling out of there – not quite running but definitely not walking – screaming, grimacing, and looking behind them.  Following was a very piloerect Cumbo who was swaggering in a half-display and walking them up the fenceline.  Interestingly, Cumbo was also grimacing and screaming/whimpering a bit, which made me think that he wasn’t feeling quite as brave as he was trying to let on.

Chimps have a much harder time controlling their vocalizations than humans do, and many of the vocalizations they make are completely involuntary.  A good example of this are food grunts – chimps seem physically unable to control their appreciation of good food, and will happily grunt and event hoot sometimes when they are eating.  Jane Goodall wrote about this in “In the Shadow of Man,” when one of the younger males at her field site (I think Figan maybe?) would cover his mouth to muffle his excited grunts and hoots when he was given extra bananas after the dominant males left the provisioning area.  The first few times they tried to give him extra, his vocalizations called the dominant males back and his new bananas were swiftly confiscated, but he was unable to completely control his excitement and had to find another way to make himself be quieter, so he physically limited his noise production with his hands.

Unrelated to chimps: Sunrise in the marsh

I am not sure whether Niyon is mellowing out because he is being challenged more often – you would think that an increase in challenges would increase his aggression – or if he is being challenged more because he has mellowed.  Either way, it will make for an interesting five months of data collection if an alpha turnover really is to happen, and I’m excited to watch it.

The lion-tracking that I mentioned last week was pretty fun, if not particularly fruitful.  I followed in Elsa (Kim’s car) with Youngin and one of the current volunteers while Duma took the Oxford students (did I mention that there are four Oxford MBAs here right now doing a project on property size, land use, and productivity right now? They will be here until the end of August, and next week we’re going to the Mara to see the wildebeest migration!) in an Ol Pejeta truck.  We tracked for about two hours, driving all over the East side, before we picked up a signal close to Sweetwaters Tented Camp.  We then moved about fifty meters back into the bush from the road, driving very slowly around all the Euclea and carefully keeping an eye out for suspicious grass (an indication that there might be an aardvark hole there), and finally saw them: a male and a female quietly napping in a small clearing.  They both looked up when we arrived, but neither moved, and the male especially was keen to resume his napping.  Duma suggested that they were probably alone together because the female was fertile and they were “courting.”  The female did move over to the male a few times and nuzzle him, but he wasn’t buying what she was selling, so eventually she just moved off towards the road, probably to start hunting for the evening.  Since I was driving I really didn’t get any good pictures, but I did see six lions a few days later, and got much better pictures then.

A young male lion I found at the quarry

Next up, poop club! I didn’t mention it at all here, but I’ve been collecting fecal samples for my project and that’s been making me keep looong hours.  It’s a whole blog entry of its own though, so get excited!

Wild Kenya

My third-first (the third time I've had a first week) week in Kenya has been pretty wonderful.

The first excellent thing was visiting the chimps. I rolled in on a Saturday morning during visitors hours, because I had errands to run in the morning. (The first few days of my trips to Kenya are inevitably filled with many errands that need my attention NOW, not later, but NOW.)  The chimps were hiding from me, and I was pretty miffed about that, honestly.  I walked back to the old chimp house to see if I could find any other chimps there, and while there were none from the big group, the smaller group of chimps was there.  Romeo recognized me immediately, and started to pant grunt, pat his chest, and play with me.  That removed any ill feelings I might have had immediately: there is no better feeling than knowing some old friends still remember you.  Romeo and I chased one another up and down the fence for a while, and after that I headed back to research to finish up the various protocol, email, credit-card, and requirement loose-ends I had left in the US.

Superb starling

I spent the next few days working on-and-off at chimps figuring out some of the kinks and getting fluent with my data collection system.  Oh yes, my data collection system.  I’m all digital now, did you know?  Thanks to Natalie, my wonderful sister, I’ve got an app hard-coded for two Lenovo tablets that I use to collect data with.  This sure beats the data entry system of last year: paper and pen, then hours on the computer in the evenings.  Considering that I’ll have a couple of hours of lab work to catch up with each night after I start collecting fecal samples, not having to do paper-to-computer data entry is so wonderful.  I still use a voice recorder for times when the action is too quick for me to get it all down in time, or I need to be watching carefully.  This is usually just at chimp meal times, so I only have about 30-40 minutes per day of voice recordings that I need to transcribe. 

Cheetah snuggling with Angie

The chimps are as entertaining as ever, although the young chimps have been proving hard to find lately. They moved to a wonderful, big, and brand new night house recently, and it has really changed their daily schedule.  Last year, they would spend at least four hours a day at their night house lazing around, napping, grooming, and giving me lots of data. Now they will spend some time at the new night house, some at the old night house, and a rather large amount of it… away. In the bush, somewhere, but that’s no good for my project!  They have just moved in though, so hopefully they settle into a new routine quickly and will come back to give me lots of data.

At the old chimp house, Angela, the baby, is as adorable as ever, though she has grown up quite a bit in the last year. She is very popular with the females, but it seems that most of the males are as yet a little reluctant to play with her. Perhaps because she is still quite small (sitting down she is less than a foot tall, and probably only about 18” in total length, and I would guess she only weighs about 15 pounds), and compared to the males’ 120-170 pounds, that’s quite small still.  Mwanzo is letting her adventure around quite a bit though, so Angela gets to roam free. Eva, a 10-ish year old female, is very, very fond of her, and often carries her around. Angela seems to trust Eva quite a bit: one day when they were playing on the shade structure, Angela wanted to climb in a tree that was a bit far away for her to jump to. Eva put one leg on the shad structure and one on the tree, and let Angela use her as a bridge to climb into the tree.  Eva also loves to play aeroplane with Angie, and I got this sweet picture of them together.

On Friday, Blair, Jenny, Youngin (three Princeton students, the first two of which I was with in Kenya last year) and I went to town to get supplies for my lab work and one of Blair’s experiments. There we met up with Eric, one of the cooks from the research center, who is currently on his “off” (short leave from work) and staying with his family. He had previously invited us to his family’s house which we were happy to visit, and found incredibly beautiful.  His family is a very Australian-style house on decently sized property where they keep some chickens, goats, a couple of cows, a sheep, and rabbits, and a small shamba (garden).  The animals graze around the property and across the road they have another property: one where they have a bigger shamba.  They grow lots of maize in the shamba, as well as beans (of all types), oranges, avocados, mangoes, papaya (unfortunately only a male tree lives there right now), kale (sukuma in swahili), and onions, carrots, garlic, beets, and any vegetable they would like. Eric told us that he and his neighbors are happy to share their produce with one another, so if one of them is growing something that the other doesn’t have, they can just forage in the other’s garden.

We also met Eric’s parents, two sisters, and hundred year old grandmother. One. Hundred. Years. 100. I kid you not. That lady had the strongest grip of any woman I’d ever met, and works in her garden daily.  Eric’s mother and sisters served us a delicious lunch of chicken, peas, and mukimo (a Kikuyu dish of potatoes, maize, greens, and sometimes beans and/or peas mashed together), and chapatti. They kept refilling our dishes and cups too, which had all of us groaning with fullness.

After lunch, Eric and his uncle John, as well as his two sister, Esperanza and Kate, and us all went on a walk down to the nearby Nanyuki river.  The river was quite shallow and very beautiful, with vegetation all around it and plenty of rocks for us to jump on and between.  After playing around at the river for a while, we walked over to a quarry and played in the water there too.  On the way we went by a school and a church, and plenty of livestock and cute skinny dogs guarding peoples’ houses. Unfortunately the rain caught us on the way back from the quarry and we got relatively soaked before we took shelter in a tea house.  In the teahouse, Youngin taught me how to play checkers and trounced me thoroughly, twice.  It doesn’t seem like a very riveting game, though.

A young elephant on Oryx plain. We found her in a herd of at least 15, with a couple of little babies to boot.

This afternoon I have plenty of grant writing to do and will probably go lion tracking around three.  These loose ends suck to tie up, but it must be done!

Gorbachev, the resident blind elephant, cleverly navigating a steep riverbank.

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.

Zambia!

It’s been three weeks, or ish, since I got back from Zambia.  I had hoped to keep this blog more updated than I have, but it’s okay; I’ll fill you all in on what has happened eventually.  Let’s start with my intracontinental/international trip.

My trip to Zambia started on a Sunday morning when I drove myself down to Nairobi.  I was very proud of myself for being able to make it all the way to Joyce’s house without much fuss, although I did have to make two freeway U-turns.  I missed the only freeway exit I needed to Ruiru and ended up back on the freeway, so I literally just turned off onto the dirt between the two sides of the freeway and went back the other way.  After I had gone past my exit again I made a second U-turn and tried the exit again, fortunately making it into Ruiru properly this time.

The flight to Zambia was early the next morning, and I was at the airport by 6:30 AM.  I waited in line to check into my flight for nearly an hour, and then again in a line at customs for about twenty minutes.  While in line at customs I witnessed some airport officials try to take a woman in a wheel chair up the escalator, which ended terribly: the official had tried to back onto the escalator with the wheelchair, and the woman slid out of the wheelchair and onto the escalator.  Fortunately, the escalator was stopped immediately, but the poor woman looked pretty traumatized by the whole event.  The one entertaining part of this event was that the “down” side of the escalator was started before the “up” side was, and people from the customs lines started trying to climb up the backwards-moving escalator, despite stairs being less than 50 metres away around the corner.

Kenya Airways treated me very well, and I had some breakfast on the flight.  Upon arrival in Zambia I easily bought myself a visa and made my way through immigration and to the parking lot.  I was picked up by a driver from Chimfunshi and we quickly got going up to Chingola, which is the largest big town near Chimfunshi.  The drive was about an hour and a half and I pretty much slept through it; I was exhausted from my adventuring.  In Chingola I was met by Mark, a Gonzaga professor with whom I’d been communicating, and we ate some lunch with Innocent, the manager of Chimfunshi.  After another hour-and-a-bit long and dusty car ride we arrived at the sanctuary.

The education centre at Chimfunshi

I was shocked upon arrival by the size of the research centre.  They have about seven buildings that are used just for housing of researchers and other education-based programs.  Each building has two rooms that have two beds each, and a long room in the back with about 17 more beds (eight double bunks and maybe one or two singles in there).  I was put in house 5 in one of the double rooms, fortunately empty as there was no dresser so I laid my clothes out on the other bed.  It was less than an hour at that point until dinner, so I hung around and took advantage of some of the free wireless internet (!!) that Chimfunshi has arranged for their education centre and caught up with the fam and the boy.  That evening, and each following evening, there was a lovely bonfire that the researchers and volunteers sat around to chat in the evening.  I didn’t last for long though, after all of my travels, and I retired early.

My pad at the research centre, house 5

The next morning I woke up at 5:00 AM to go on dawn patrol with Mark.  Dawn patrol entails walking to the chimp enclosures with the goal of arriving at the largest enclosure by the time the sun breaks the treeline.  We made it that morning, although it was a close one.  On dawn patrol I had the opportunity to talk with Mark and Jenny, a vet student who has visited Chimfunshi several times, about sanctuaries, the problems that often plague them, and the differences between Sweetwaters and Chimfunshi.

The sunrise was beautiful, and I loved watching the chimps so early in the morning.  Chimfunshi has a totally different feel that Sweetwaters.  The environment is totally different from anything I’ve seen in Africa yet: lots of tall, sturdy looking grasses in a fairly open woodland.  There are enormous ant hills all over the place – gigantic mounds of dirt that are constructed by some kind of ant or termite (nobody could give me a firm answer on which).  There are also more traditional termite mounds: the tall, cylindrical-ish spires that you think of when you think about termites in Africa.  The soil is so fine there that the dust permeates everything, but apparently it drains pretty well and the place doesn’t turn into a slushy mess come the rainy season.  There are a lot of fig trees in there as well, which is good because they are a main food source for chimps in their natural environment.

After watching the sunrise from the roof of enclosure 1 we walked down to enclosure 2 and checked on the chimps there. To our surprise there had been a huge fire and large parts of the enclosure had all of the grass completely burned.  I was worried that some of the chimps might have suffered from smoke inhalation or gotten sick, but unfortunately there wasn’t really a good way to check on that at the time (especially since neither I nor Mark can ID all the chimps in 2).  At around 11:30 the chimps came in for lunch and were given nchima (ugali) and fresh vegetables (cauliflower, broccoli, potatoes, oranges, cabbage) and after they had been in for two hours some “snacks” were spread around the enclosure for them to forage upon returning outside.  They were given either bush oranges – a large, gourd-like fruit with lots of seeds inside – or small, red fruits with a hard husk.  Both of these fruits were awesome enrichment: they required tons of handling time to open and lots of creativity, lasted a long time, and the chimps can come back to them many times to keep eating them or using the gourd husks to scoop up water.

Some of the semi-burned area on the way to the danbo

After lunch the chimps dispersed again and we walked around the enclosure to go look for them.  Behind the chimp enclosures is a huge field with waist-high grass that looked like it went on forever.  Apparently if we followed the road and the danbo (a small creek that is connected to the river in a couple of places, and acts as overflow for the river) for long enough we would get to the Zambezi river, which is pretty awesome frankly.  We returned to the chimp enclosures after a while and, in the afternoon, played with a couple of the indoor chimps with paints and crayons for enrichment.  Around four the volunteers were picked up by the truck, and I caught a ride back with them, and started helping Sally and Marina (two other scientists at the sanctuary) make dinner.

Me in the field by the danbo

The next few days passed very similarly: dawn patrols, relaxing lunch times, lots of photo-taking, walking, dinner, fireside talks.  Discussed my research ideas, and played around with the idea of getting a health check going at the sanctuary. One evening we had a movie night for all the chimp staff, their families, and children, and played Ratatouille, much to everyone’s great appreciation.  At the end of the evening we had shana-shana (a dance, I think?) which was very, very entertaining.  The staff sang traditional Zambian songs and danced, including a dance/chant where the children were lined up, boys on one side and girls on the other, to dance rather provocatively with one another (we would have been asked to separate at my Australian school) in lone pairs, in what appeared to be some kind of grinding chicken.  We were encouraged to dance, which I really enjoyed, especially when I got to bust out my Saturday Night Fever moves and small Zambian children, who as a whole dance better than I anyway, and frighten away all the kids.

All in all, Zambia was a really excellent, successful trip.  Hopefully I will get to return many times, not just for research.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Things have been changing at chimps, and I’m not entirely certain if it’s something that I’m just noticing because I’ve been here for a few weeks, or because things are really shifting around over here.

Angela's eight teeth

For one, Angela is growing.  Obviously that was going to happen, but I’ve never had a chance to watch a chimp grow up before, and she’s so adorably human-like that I can’t help but compare her progress to that of a human baby.  At three months old now she has eight teeth (or did the last time I took a photo), all of which are just erupting from her gumline.  She is also focusing on things now, instead of just looking around or past them.  With this new-found proper eyesight, she has become fascinated by the colourful fruits and vegetables that Mwanzo eats and is often reaching for them, although she never eats any of the food that she manages to touch.  Ajabu has moved from jealousy or disinterest in the baby to intense desire of the baby, and can often be seen trying to pull Angela from her mother’s back.  She hasn’t yet succeeded as Mwanzo always holds Angela close during these attempts, but I am sure she will soon.

Angela, Mwanzo, and Sultana

Angela has also been trying to move around on her own a lot more, standing up when her mother is lying down and crawling away from her ventrum while she’s awake.  More of the chimps have been allowed to touch her, and while I’m not sure if Angela enjoys their attentions, the other chimps certainly appreciate being able to touch the precious baby.  Fortunately for Ajabu, this hasn’t seemed to detract from her popularity (well, except with Mwanzo), and she is still carried around by nearly anyone she wants.

Ajabu and Victoria playing

Ajabu has discovered a newfound power: the power of her mother and grandmother.  Since I’ve been at Sweetwaters I’ve seen Ajabu play with almost every member of the old chimps group, and sometimes when she’s playing with the big males things can get pretty rough.  Despite this I’ve never heard her vocalize other than the panting laughter that chimps make during play, and if things get too rough for her she usually just runs over to Mwanzo or Sultana for comfort.  The other day she was playing with George when George got a bit overzealous, and instead of just running away from him I heard Ajabu make a scream-threat at him.  Sultana was there in an instant and both she and Mwanzo proceeded to chase George for about ten seconds, while Ajabu followed.  I don’t think George or Ajabu truly understood what had happened, because as soon as Sultana and Mwanzo ended their chase Ajabu resumed playing with George.  George, in his annoyance, immediately slapped Ajabu which resulted in more threat-screams, and George was chased once again.

Ajabu not being a big girl and riding on Cheetah's back

In addition to discovering her maternal support, Ajabu has also been walking around more lately.  The other day she walked all the way from the night house to the platform, about half a kilometer, all by herself.  She started out walking following her mother and after she was rejected from her mother’s back a couple of times tried Edward.  She walked with one hand slung over Edward’s back for a few strides and then grabbed on and clambered up so she was riding on him, but after a few metres Edward pitched one of his hips down and slid Ajabu off.  She tried this again a couple of times, and each time ended with Edward rejecting her. I’ve never actually seen Edward carry Ajabu before, so I’m not sure if she just made a poor choice of mount or if he decided that she’s old enough and heavy enough to be walking on her own.  She walked the rest of the way quite happily though, no tantrums to be seen or heard, and happily chomped on peanuts after arriving at the platform.

 Shamefully, this is one of my only pictures of Jane or Joy.  Joy hates it whenever I get the camera out and point it at her, and Jane likes to tease me by throwing avocado seeds at me to send me running for the hills.

 On the other side of the river, I’ve been noticing some changes with Jane and Joy.  Jane is the youngest girl in the group, having been fostered onto Akela when she was two and a half, and has always been an independent youngster (or so I am told).  Her main playmate is Joy who is only a year older than Jane, and the two of them spend almost all their time together.  I have noticed recently that Joy seems to be putting some distance between them, whether intentionally or inadvertently I am not sure.  Joy’s mother is Tess, the fattest and laziest chimp in all of Sweetwaters, and I have noticed that Joy is starting to take after her more and more.  When the other chimps in the young group are napping post-lunch, Jane is often rolling around in the grass playing with herself or some toy she has found.  Joy used to join her for part of that playtime, but now she seems to be hanging back with the other chimps and napping instead.  And when Joy and Jane would usually be found climbing trees together and shaking the branches happily, I am now seeing just Jane in the upper reaches of the murera (yellow fever trees) while Joy sits below with her mother and friends.

 Joy still joins Jane in some of her playing, but it seems to me that the closeness that I saw between them earlier in the summer is dwindling.  Jane is still firmly rooted in childhood, and from what I know of her personality may stay a playful, mischievous chimp forever, but Joy seems to be moving towards a more adult activity budget: a little less play and a little more grooming.

As for myself, I no longer despise birding.  I’m actually having a lot of fun identifying and taking photos of all the cute birds I find in the walkway.  I’m not sure I’ll ever share John Wingfield’s passion and pass over seals for birds, but at least the colourful ones I think are pretty all-right for now.  I’ve also noticed that I am building my stamina for observations.  When I first got to Kenya, a day that lasted from 8-2 was really long for me, by 12:30 I was staring at my watch wondering when I would get to go home.  Now 2 PM rolls around and I usually stick around for a while longer, either to chat with the guys or collect more data.  It’s good to know that I can last more than six hours out there, but it does mean reapplying my sunscreen, which you all know I despise.

TIA

This is Africa.

Sometimes I feel that I’m not experiencing the right amount of appreciation that I’m actually here: actually in Kenya, doing research on chimps, and being pretty independent about it to boot.  Every once in a while I’ll be walking along one of my routes and remember, oh yeah this isn’t California, or I’ll be sitting having lunch with the chimps and remember that I don’t get to do this back at home, but in general I just get into my data collection groove.

My daily routine is pretty monotonous, but a lot of fun.  I wake up in the morning (feeling like P-diddy) and eat a quick or leisurely, depending on if it’s an early day or a late day.  Early days start around 7:30, though I try to get to the young chimp house before then.  I watch the chimps eat their breakfast (or find their breakfast if it has been distributed in the enclosure) and write write write for my data collection.  Around 8:30 we head towards the visitor’s platform for the caregivers to greet visitors and take them on tours, and for me to look like a dorky researcher with all my gear hanging off me and walk around by myself.  Because there is a sign at the entrance to the visitor’s area that says “DO NOT WALK WITHOUT A GUIDE.” People are constantly amazed that I am walking around alone, although all the dorky gear does make me stick out as someone more experienced than a simple tourist.

\

Cinnamon breasted bee-eaters in the walkway at chimps. 

When I’m with the old chimps I usually just walk the fenceline through the forest looking for chimps as they relax or play on the outskirts of their enclosure.  On young chimps days I walk the scenic route through the forest-walk, as the young chimps’ enclosure borders the river so I have to look for them along the river.  Because of the way the walkway twists and turns through the forest, I only have about five places that I can really get a good look at the chimps.  On any given day I usually spend a part of this time birding, as chimps are often not to be found but there are always birds around me.  I’ve actually seen more than 100 species of bird since arriving at Ol Pejeta five weeks ago, the vast majority of them in this walkway.  Whenever I find a group of chimps I stop and observe them for around ten minutes, then continue on my merry way to find more chimps.

Found these cubs when I went lion radio-tracking with Duma and some Earthwatchers.

On young chimps days I get to conquer my old nemesis: the stepping stones.  This is the way all the caregivers cross the river, and I’ve only fallen in once all year: Stephen and I both blame that fall on my shoes (I was wearing my Keen rip-offs instead of my usual sneakers).  After going through the walkway I head back to the night house and walk to the New New Nighthouse to check for chimps along that fenceline.  Usually there are none, although occasionally someone follows me over to the nighhouse to see what I am up to.  On old chimps days I also walk back to the night house, and then convince the person guarding the night house to come with me for a walk to the Southernmost corner of the enclosure, where I can usually find at least one chimp (sometimes all of them are there!).  This walk is about a kilometer each way, so I consider it part of my daily exercise routine, and sometimes even if I know none of the chimps are down there (I’ve seen them all go off to the northern enclosure) I still insist on going for the walk.  It’s a good opportunity for exercise and a great time to chat with the caregiver who accompanies me.  I really enjoy talking to all the caregivers, most of them are intelligent, curious about wildlife in the US and are happy to give me their opinions on chimp sanctuaries in general, silly tourists, or teach me a little Swahili while we walk.

Snoozing black rhino on Scott's plain 

In the afternoons I repeat the exercise – walking to the platform and then past the night house to the outer-most-reaches of the chimp enclosure – regardless of which group I am studying.  On early days I often skip this, as I will have been at chimps from breakfast until after lunch.  On late days I stick around and collect data until the chimps get dinner, unless I have something else pressing to do, and when I’m at the old house will give the guys a ride back to their living quarters.  Occasionally I am invited to take tea with someone after this, which is flattering and really enjoyable for me.  Sometimes we lack for things to talk about, but I’m pretty comfortable with the guys at this point so we usually do all-right in amiable silence.

My routine is broken rarely, only by Sundays, which I take off to catch up on data entry and see a bit more of the conservancy (helps me learn my way around as well as see more animals!) and days in which for some reason I can’t come to chimps.  There has only been one of these days, when a lioness managed to get herself trapped in the visitor area of chimps and refused to leave despite being chased by cars for half the day.  She was eventually convinced to leave by some armed askaris on foot after spending another night in there, but her presence meant that I wasn’t going to be hanging out at chimps for at least a day.  Lions around chimps are actually a somewhat-common occurrence, and the guys seem completely unphased by their presence.  As long as the lions aren’t just hanging out and move along on their merry way, they are happy to open chimps to visitors.  I yield to their superior bushcraft and knowledge of the behaviors of lions and accept that I’m safe (but keep a watchful eye anyway).

Cheetah mama and baby on Sidai plain 

The other day there were also about 25 elephants hanging out around the entrance to chimps.  I am a chicken, so elephants scare the crap out of me.  I have no desire to be charged and have my car flipped or impaled by ivory, so I act very cautiously.  These elephants were basically completely unconcerned by me and, once again, the chimp guys were unconcerned by them.  I also saw wild dogs at the chimp enclosure!  This is my only one-up on Kim as she gets to do all the fun stuff and see all the good animals, but wild dogs at Ol Pejeta are rare and awesome.  I saw them at the entrance to chimps one morning and pretty much immediately followed them on a private access road towards the old chimp house, and caught them in the open as they crossed a road that leads back towards Sweetwaters.  It was so awesome.

Life here has settled into a pretty awesome routine.  Sometimes things go wrong, more often I figure them out, and most days what needs to get done gets done. Sometimes it doesn’t but we don’t worry about it too much. TIA

The moon rising over Mt Kenya with a cattle dip in the foreground