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.

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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

Angela Angela!

It occurs to me that in three weeks of blogging I’ve told very few chimp stories.  This is somewhat strange because I talk incessantly about monkeys at home, and plenty of awesome things happens at chimps while I’m here.

Baby Angela!!

Part of the reason I haven’t been telling stories is the “surprise” that was waiting for me at chimps when I first arrived.  Meet Angela, second born daughter of Mwanzo who was the first accidental baby in the Sweetwaters sanctuary.  Angela was a well kept secret (at least from the internet) for a while as the caregivers wanted to wait until she was definitely strong enough to survive and they could get some good photos of her.  The fascinating thing about Angela’s birth is that Mwanzo has an older daughter, Ajabu, who is just about three.  Most chimps have an interbirth interval of 6-7 years because they typically don’t wean their offspring until 4-5.  Ajabu was completely weaned before Angela was born and Mwanzo was pushing her to become independent in the weeks preceding the birth.  However, Mwanzo was almost definitely breastfeeding when Angela was conceived, which defies the hypothesis that breastfeeding females can’t conceive.

Ajabu tries to get some lovin' from Mwanzo, with Angela

Ajabu is the only chimp who has taken offense at the presence of her younger sister. Most of the time she’s fine, but every once in a while, especially when it’s around naptime, she gets quite cranky that she isn’t allowed to nurse while she goes to sleep.  To her credit, Mwanzo does a great job of dealing with Ajabu when she wants to start nursing.  Usually Mwanzo starts to play with Ajabu to distract her, and after a few minutes Ajabu often gives up.  When Ajabu is being really determined, Mwanzo occasionally lets her get just a few minutes of nursing before pushing her away, or even carries her around for a bit to calm her down.  Ajabu has tried numerous tactics to stay on Mwanzo, most recently including basically trying to pull Angela off of Mwanzo’s back before being rejected, but for the most part is happy to ride around on one of the many other willing backs available in the group.

Ezo playing with Angela

Everyone else wants a piece of the baby, including some of the big males.  If you think baby chimps are cute, just imagine how cute it is when a fully grown male is trying to get the baby to interact with him.  Two adults have tried pretty hard to get baby Angela on their good side.  One was Cheetah, a good friend of Mwanzo’s and Ajabu’s main allo-mother these days, who couldn’t get Mwanzo to let her touch the baby directly, so instead played with Angela a little with her foot.  Ezo, the beta male in the group, had a different tactic and was alternating between grooming Mwanzo and grooming the baby.  He would lie down next to Mwanzo and groom her within view of Angela, and every once in a while Angela would reach out a hand and try to play with him a bit too.

Roi

A couple of days ago it was pretty warm in the afternoon, and George and Roi independently decided that it was time to take a little swim in the water trough.  Roi was adorable, rolling around and splashing, encouraging his group-mates to play with him.  Romeo was the only one who took the bait, and splashed around with Roi for a little bit before screaming, splashing Roi right in the face, and running off.  Roi took it all in stride and kept playing with himself.

George also decided to go swimming, but halfway through his swim decided that the cool bath would be a nice place to masturbate.  Working with primates has made me pretty good at taking these things in stride, but visitors are often confused by primate socio-sexual behavior (mounting in a sexual and non sexual way, anal-genital inspection) and their willingness to do things in public that we never would (say, masturbating).  I’ve explained to plenty of visitors that when a chimp mounts little Ajabu it is less like child molesting and more like a strong huge, but sometimes I still feel awkward watching chimps in their private moments. I usually choose to observe someone else at that point.

I had thought that I was basically a boring but frequent visitor in the chimps’ eyes, as all but the most human-oriented will completely ignore me. This does change around lunch time, when I suddenly become pretty popular, or at least an object of some interest. I have tried to keep it this way, because I don’t want my presence to change the chimps’ behaviors; I don’t want them to think of me as a source of food and then beg me for food instead of paying attention to their social relationships.  Today though, the young chimps were getting pretty riled up as the bananas came out.  Niyonkuru and Uruhara, the alpha and beta respectively, were in particularly fine form today and were swaggering around all piloerect.  Kisa, a low-ish ranking male (it’s hard to not be low ranking out of 5 males), gets very nervous around Niyon when he’s posturing.  He displays all the right submissive behaviors, but Niyon makes him very nervous regardless.  Today while Niyon and Uru were posturing Kisa ran over to me and presented his hand to me, a submissive behavior (one that I think of as being given to equals as opposed to someone higher in rank).  He did this twice and grimaced at him, and I presented my hand back to him to try and comfort him, but obviously there was nothing that I could directly do.

Angela!

Bureaucracy and the Bush

Ever since the start of this Africa thing -- the whole wanting to do research in African sanctuaries instead of just the primate centre – I’ve insisted that my research isn’t really field work, it’s just captive work on an awesome continent.  In the last week or so, though, I’ve realized that I really do get to enjoy some of the glories of field work.  Simultaneously, I’ve encountered the joys of bureaucracy which are made so much more… interesting by being in a developing nation.

Bureaucracy

Getting my permits has been a curious and confusing adventure.  I’ve been told multiple times that IPR can just fix my permits right up for me, and they have seemed to imply the same thing.  Yet every time I turn around something has gone wrong.  In my latest adventure to Nairobi, I called IPR to check on the status of my permits and tell them that I was going to visit the National Council office.  I was told no no, don’t do that, the permits will be ready by the end of the week.  I visited the office anyway.

Upon arriving in the office, I was told that my application hadn’t been paid for and therefore wasn’t processed.  Nay, not only had it not been paid for, after pulling out my file the kindly dude behind the counter determined that my application form hadn’t actually even been turned in.  All of the supporting materials were there (proposal, passport copy, etc.), just no fee, and no actual application.  Awesome.

Two young bulls sparring in the marsh. This picture represents my battle with bureaucracy.

Kim’s trip to Nairobi was as fraught with danger as mine.  We turned up early to a meeting with Kim’s contact at the University of Nairobi who was helping her acquire her work permits.  Unfortunately, we were informed, that if only we had arrived ten minutes earlier (we were already 20 minutes early) that we would have met the guy who actually checks on the permits.  If we came back at two, we were told, we would get to meet him in person.  Excellent, a three hour delay.

After half a trip to Karen and back because of miscommunication between IPR and myself, an hour of sitting on a cement ledge in the bottom of Utalii house, and a rather stuffed elevator ride Kim and I found ourselves back in the office that processes research permits, this time with all of my application materials and the fee.  Only, the conversion from the US dollars that I had paid IPR in to Kenyan shillings that my application fee was being paid in wasn’t quite right and I ended up shelling out an extra 4000 bob.  It was worth it to get the application done Right Then, and I hope to be compensated, but still.  Fortunately, my application is now complete.  And will be ready in two weeks.  Or so they say.

Kim’s adventures in Nairobi did culminate in her receiving her work permits.  Evidently they had been ready since May but the notification hadn’t been sent to the University of Nairobi.  Since Kim’s contacts at the University of Nairobi didn’t actually know her name, they hadn’t been checking directly on her permits either.  Applause all around. 

Being slapped like an elephant is kinda what my adventures in Nairobi felt like.

The Bush

I find the bushy parts of my adventures much more fun.  This section will be sub-divided into the different glories that I get to deal with.

Mud

As I mentioned in my last post, it’s been pouring here.  Quite out of season, and quite a deluge, the rains come every few days and turn all the roads the encounter to slush.  The rain falls in these really weird, small patches.  So while it might be sprinkling lightly at research, chimps could be receiving a full on downpour.

The mud has meant that on at least one occasion I was surfing through to the chimp night house.  That was two days after the rain even, and there were a cople of spots where I thought I might not make it out.  I took Kim’s advice to heart a just kept my foot on the gas without gunning it, and made it through the mud slow and steady.  A week later, my roads to the chimp house were impassable: Kim had headed out that morning and told me it was a solid swamp out there and she did not advise taking that road.  So I quickly determined that it would be another day at Young Chimps for me.  Shortly after that I drove off to pull Kim out of the mud, another experience I would be hard pressed to find at the primate center.

Purple grenadier

The rain also made the river swell at the dam by chimps, so I was forced to drive from the young chimp house to the observation platform.  This was after falling in one morning, so I wasn't particularly displeased by this turn of events, but it did make me feel like a bit of a baby (especially when I saw the river while walking my route and realized that I really could have crossed it on foot).

The Sun

I don't burn easily, and I love my freckles, but the strong UVs here in Kenya are promising to make me swarthy and wrinkly.  I don't really want this, but I Hate Sunscreen.  I know it's good for you, I know that you should use it every day, but it's just gross.  It smells bad, and I recently discovers that when it's on my hands it strips the ink from the outside of my pen.  You know the graphics that are often printed on the outside of pens?  All of my UC Davis pens say, at best, C Davis now.  And my hands and pants are covered in blue ink.

And while I'm bitching about pens, I will point out that I draw on my clothing constantly.  I'm not a neat person, we all know this, but I would expect myself to be able to get through a day without covering myself in ink.  I can't. It's impossible.

Back to the sun.  I wear a hat every day, and make sure I put the screen on at least once.  I made the mistake of forgetting my sunscreen AND hat one day and boy did I get a glorious farmers' tan that day.  In a fit of vanity I one day tried to reverse my farmers' tan by rolling up my sleeves over my shoulder and only putting sunscreen up to my previously-established tan line.  This ended in burnt shoulders and no effect on my upper arm, so now I have swarthy shoulders, a pale patch, and then farmer arms.  Awesome.

Sacred ibis

Weird Animal Noises
I am one hundred percent not used to the noises the animals in Kenya make.  That's not entirely true. I am quite used to the noises we hear around research -- various birds, zebra, impala, lions, hyenas, the tree scratching on the roof, water dripping in the showers -- but that familiarity does not seem to translate itself to the field.  Whenever I am walking the perimeter of chimps and I hear the grunting of some fighting impala I jump and look around me for my warning species (baboons and chimps).  If baboons are still around, I know I'm probably safe.  If the chimps are rolling their eyes at me, I know I'm probably safe.

Yesterday though, I was walking through the tourist walkway of chimps before any tourists go there.  It was warm and humid and I was tired, and then I heard the weirdest growly-rumbly sound I've ever heard in my life.  I would have thought it was an elephant if I hadn't been in an elephant-proof area so my mind immediately went to the worst case scenario: there was a leopard growling behind me.  I turned: no leopard.  And the chimps around me seemed incredibly unconcerned.  So I continued my walk and data collection and I heard the sound again.  I froze, and then I heard a huge splash and a set of enormous ripples started winding their way down the river.  Two hippos had just moved off of the bank (not the bank I was on) and into the river and I watched them swim/moonwalk by.  I heard the grunting noise again, and quickly scampered back to a corner of the enclosure that is pretty clear and, in my estimation, safe (it's a corner so probably not the best place to hide, but I was scared).  Francis, one of the chimp caregivers, turned up shortly and told me that it was just a hippo.  Probably the dominant male of the group just making some dominant male noises.

Tree hyrax

My own forgetfulness

I'm a pretty forgetful person, which I usually combat with routine.  I have a great memory for people and events, but the number of times I've made coffee and left it on the kitchen table when I walk out the door does not bear thinking about.  At least once a week I forget to bring extra batteries with me to chimps and have to drive back to research to get them so I can actually collect my data.  (This is not helped by the fact that I bought heinous off-brand batteries and at least two in every pack seem not to work.)  I've also lost my voice recorder for three days (those were three interesting days of all-occurrences data collection), my watch (in the same place as my voice recorder, as previously discussed), my stopwatch, my lunch, my pens, my data sheets.  I'm basically a huge noob.

Despite all of this complaining, I'm loving everything about Kenya.  All of these issues are just little adventures for me, and I don't mind taking them.  I love that on my way home from work I can see elephants fighting in the marsh, or take a quick detour and go see lions or cheetahs.  I like the quiet evenings which are filled with data entry (another bane of the field and the reason the position "intern" was invented) and reading and good friends and movies.  And of course I loooove my chimps.

Babies, babies, everywhere!

So far, one of my favourite things about Kenya has been the number of baby animals there always are here.  Because there is not much seasonality, there isn't really a baby "season" here, more of a birthing peak around the rainy season (because it means so much more food).  It's a typical girly thing to say, but baby animals just make everything better.  And they're always cute.  Think about it.  Baby giraffe? Cute. Baby chimp? Cute.  Baby warthog? Cuuuute.  (Baby jackal, baby zebra, baby baboon, baby lion... the list goes on.)  And though I don't drive around a whole lot on the plains, what little driving I get to, I almost always see babies.

One of my least favourite things about Kenya has been the mud.  I'm not opposed to rain and mud in general, but since I have to drive in it, it has become much less favourable.  Furthermore, a couple of the roads I have to use pretty much daily turn to slush after a good rain, and I'm always at least the second car through there, which means I get to deal with other people churning it up for me.  The car I'm driving is all wheel drive, but that doesn't mean my stomach doesn't flutter when I'm driving on the roads listening to the sounds of mud hitting the undercarriage and slipping and sliding all over the place.  Sure, it can be fun, if you know that you're not going to hit anything and I'm not the one driving.  Plus I'm not honestly sure what I am supposed to do if I do get stuck...  On the upside, I love the thunder and lightning we get with the rain, and last night it gave us a pretty wicked sunset.

I've done a bit of adventuring around here this week as well.  A couple of days ago we had some visitors from the Zoological Society of London, and I accompanied them to the chimp feeding that evening.  The chimp night house is very nice and newly renovated, the only problem is that for me to stay out of the grasping hands of chimps I have to walk a very narrow drain down the center of two aisles of rooms.  On Tuesday evening, one of the younger chimps, Victoria, managed to get her entire arm out of the room she was in and I turned around to see her hand just a few inches from my face.  I think she was just begging for more bananas, but I was pretty startled to see her hand so close to me.  After feeding, we got a tip off that there were some lions on Morani.  I had no idea where Morani was, or what it even was (I assumed it was a plain), but we followed some signs, took a brief detour to the Sweetwaters Tented Camp, and made our way there.  We didn't see any lions at first, just Max the white rhino, a kori bustard and some impala at a water hole, but as we were leaving a whole bunch of tourist buses tipped us off to the presence of lions.  It was the same female and two youngsters I'd seen last week, and they casually made their way across the road and down another road.  We followed them, because that road was our way home, and eventually they ducked back onto a plain.  I managed to make it all the way back to research without the assistance of my GPS, which I was pretty proud of, since my exploring here is pretty severely limited to driving to chimps and back.

It seems that in getting used to my research, I've also become quite forgetful.  Yesterday I left my car door open for at least twenty minutes at chimps, until one of the caregivers asked if I was planning on closing it at all.  I sheepishly told him I was trying to catch a baboon.  I had also lost my watch and voice recorder until I found them yesterday in my shower bag, which was in my car... why was my shower bag in my car, you might ask?  Evidently I had just thrown it in there with my backpack and all the rest of my observation materials yesterday in my rush to get out of the research centre.  Then, when walking from the young chimp house to the observation platform, I promptly fell in the river at the stepping stones.  I didn't fall in all the way, I just took the first stepping stone jump poorly and when I realized I was going to slip stepped down into the river.  Stephen blamed it on my shoes, which I also blame (they were caked in mud), but I've made that jump so many times recently that I should have been able to do it.  The rest of the day went all right, though, but the morning was a bit frustrating.

The chimps have also been quite frustrated recently, not with mud but with baboons and warthogs.  On both sides of the river live baboon troops, and they are quite happy to scavenge the chimps' leavings after meals.  You would think that the 20-food electric fence would stop them, but a few clever adult males have figured out ways to get around that particular problem.  In each chimp group, males have figured out how to get up on top of the night house (using the stairs at old chimps and a tree and pipe at young) and then the quickly run across the roof and take the 20 foot drop down into the enclosure.  (Curiously, the baboons will not do this if you take a photo of them while they're making their way across the roof... in that case they will just drop off the roof onto the outside of the enclosure.)  Mostly they stay away from the chimps, but one morning the chimps had been given sweet potatoes for their breakfast.  It seems that sweet potatoes were just too delicious to ignore, and three big male baboons made their way into the enclosure for a bit of a snack.  Shortly about 12 warthogs also emerged from the bush to enjoy what the chimps were dropping also.  Only neither the baboons nor the warthogs were going for what the chimps were dropping, they were literally stealing sweet potatoes out of the chimps' laps!

This photo is in no way relevant to these paragraphs. I just put it in 

here 'cause it's cute and it breaks up the monotony of text.

Of course, this enraged a few of the chimps and they quickly chased their thieving friends away.  This worked for the baboons who ran away quite quickly from even the smallest of the chimps, but the warthogs were completely unphased.  Even when some of the very large females started screaming and slapping the ground in front of the warthogs, they just skittered off a few feet and then moved right back in for more potato.  Breakfast was punctuated by the sounds of screaming chimps and solid slaps as the adults finally resorted to full on attacks of the warthogs.  The hogs were afraid of only one chimp: Jane.  Jane is one of the youngest chimps in the young group, and was fostered onto Akela when she was just three.  Earlier this year Jane decided that the warthogs would be her new friends and apparently "adopted" a young baby warthog.  This adoption wasn't really mutual, as Jane simply grabbed the warthog one day despite his parents' objections.  She would then run around with him, and when he got too big to actually hold would drag him around by the leg.  This play seems to have given the warthogs a healthy fear of Jane, and even the adults will scatter when she comes barreling through.

So while everyone else was eating breakfast, Jane was defending their honor.  She chased warthogs and baboons alike, scattering them with somersaults and a rambling run.  The baboons quickly realised, however, that Jane was more bark than bite, and after she had chased them around the shade platform a few times they stopped running from her and started talking back.  Jane was not impressed by this, and when the baboons chased her she quickly ran also.  This didn't deter her from continuing to charge them, but when one baboon didn't run from her charge Jane actually barreled right into him and they both rolled off the shade platform.  Jane screamed and screamed as the two of them grappled -- the big male baboons have quite large canines, though I don't think he was trying to bite Jane at all, and she weighs at least as much as he does -- and her screams brought Chippie and Kisa to her aid.  The baboons have a healthy fear of Kisa as he is one of the largest males in the group, and every once in a while he and Niyonkuru will get so fed up with the baboons that they attack them in earnest.  I believe they've killed at least one, and recently the two of them ganged up and threw a baboon into the electric fence.  Jane was released easily, and sulked for a bit before deciding that she should probably just finish her breakfast instead of chasing off invaders.  The chimps left shortly, and the baboons and warthogs were left to scavenge in peace.

Ali Kaka throws Victoria up in the air while they play

Finally, an addendum:

This morning, while I was writing up this blog I got a call from Kim. She needed me to come pull her out of the mud on Marura dam.  So I jumped in my car and whizzed right up there (fortunately I knew where Marura dam was because it was right by Morani, the plain I had previously determined the location of) and found her knee-deep in a ford. Elsa, her mitsubishi, was stuck and slowly sinking deeper into the ford.  We tied the two cars together and I pretty quickly got her out of there.  It was an excellent adventure, but made me realize a few things:

- Elsa will not be able to pull my car out if I get stuck (darn), which means I will have to call control and get an official truck to help me

- I need rope, and gumboots

- I would never have tried to cross that ford

Zombies are a first world problem

If you’ve spent any significant amount of time with me or, say, happened to take me to see Sean of the Dead, you will know that I am terrified of zombies.  This terror is completely unwarranted, I know, but it has still led me to create numerous escape and refuge plans in case there ever is a zombie invasion in Davis (mostly they involve the primate center).  Since being in Kenya though, the threat of zombies is really diminished, and I have other things to worry about.  Like lions roaring less than a kilometer away from our research center (probably over a kill), or the lion perched on top of the quarry about 500 meters away from the path I use to do my chimp observations.  Kim hasn’t been helping the situation, she’s been jumpy as a newborn lamb at every little noise lately.  Mostly, it’s the water dripping in the shower or the tree brushing the tin roof, but every once in a while there’s the crunch of gravel when a waterbuck walks by, or the weird sound of a zebra getting nervous and alarm barking at, well, anything (I have to remind myself that zebras are like horses, and therefore pretty dumb when it comes to fear), and the other night we heard a zebra galloping down the road that goes to the airstrip.  So walking from my banda to the bathrooms to brush my teeth at night has been an interesting adventure, filled with quick sprints to my door to avoid whatever may be lurking in the dark.

Ultimately, the research center is actually really safe.  We’re one corner of a square that includes the main offices (which are always manned), Ol Pejeta House (a really nice and expensive hotel), and the staff camp, all of which are pretty much always occupied.  Additionally, there’s an electric fence around the entire compound that gets put up at night to prevent the larger of our potential visitors (elephants, rhinos, etc.) from visiting, and Gorbachov the blind elephant has been translocated to a new area.  When it’s swarming with people while Earthwatch is here, and when I will be living in my tent, I will be doubly safe, as most predators have no interest in going near a camp filled with rowdy Americans on vacation.

It’s actually a little hard to remember that I’m in Kenya, doing field work, which I’ve been looking forward to all year.  My life very quickly took on a routine that involves walking, sweating, and writing down things about chimps.  The quiet of the research center, punctuated only by little birds and the generator at Ol Pejeta House, has been a bustle of activity as it is being renovated in an attempt to fix it up before the first Earthwatch group gets here.  The young chimp house is also a bustle of activity, as a new house is being built for them and any future chimps that might arrive at the sanctuary.  Construction in Kenya doesn’t seem to be too much different from construction in the US though: it moves painfully slowly and is never ready when you need it to be.

Last Sunday we had to chance to watch an elephant darting and translocation.  Alli has the best luck ever in Kenya and she’s seen lions five or six times, cheetahs almost the same number of times, as well as a bat eared fox, patas monkeys, and the rest.  I take Sundays off because they are really busy for the chimp caregivers, and I don’t want to ask them to take time out of their day to follow me around, so I get to stick around the research centre and do data entry or go out with Kim hunting for giraffe.  We were just leaving the Kamok petrol station when we saw a plane, a ginormous truck, and a couple of the elephant trackers hanging out with a large elephant on the airstrip.  The KWS vets darted Gorbachov on foot and after running around frenetically for about 15 minutes he just dropped like a stone.  He took about two drunk steps before that happened – his right hind went wide and then came back under him, and then he collapsed on the forehand.

After he was down the KWS vets sawed off his tusks using a chainsaw, then applied a moisturizer-ish thing to prevent them from cracking.  They took some samples, and we got to touch him, but mostly the point of this job was moving him to a new area.  He’s been quite the pest lately, breaking out of his new confines in search of greener pastures, which is why they took his tusks off.  I pulled a tick off his ear which was alarmingly large, and then killed it because it was gross, and blood spattered all over my shoe.  Getting him onto the truck was quite the ordeal, but the KWS vets were surprisingly tender with him, gently laying one of his ears flat under his body so it wouldn’t be folded over under his weight, and carefully strapping him down so he wouldn’t fall off the truck, all while holding open his trunk so he could breathe.  I imagine that is the last we will see of Gorbachov for quite some time, as he’s been moved to a fenced in area far on the edge of the conservancy, for both his safety and that of others.

This week I have also had the great joy of dealing with car issues, when the rental car wouldn’t start one morning.  It turns out the entire battery had to be replaced, which was awesome.  It lost me a day of data collection, but I did get to go out with Kim and Alli later that afternoon and we finally saw LIONS!  They were adorable, two cubs lying with their mother.  The lioness was quite far from them, and apparently has been making them stay away from her lately, but the cubs were all over one another, licking and nuzzling and yawning and all kinds of awesome.  We’ve also seen a ton of giraffe, including a couple licking the ground, although I couldn’t tell you why.  When I encountered these fellows I was driving along a road and they didn’t scatter the way giraffe usually do when someone drives up, so I was about 15 feet from one of them as he stared in my windshield.  Being used to nasty roos, I was quite wary of his potential to destroy the front of my car, but after staring at us a bit he eventually walked off.

Alley pours dirt on Ajabu

My days with the chimps have been awesome.  Data collection is movcing along nicely, and by that I mean that I could plausibly use some of the data I’ve collected in the last week.  It hasn’t taken me long at all to learn to recognize the chimps, most of them are pretty distinctive, and even I’ve been surprised with my progress.  They are so much more playful than their zoo-housed counterparts, probably because they have a few youngsters amongst them (3-, 6-, and 7-year-olds) who are constantly active and playing.  Ajabu, the youngest at 3, is a typical child: whenever her mother and grandmother lie down for a nap you can see her sitting there, bored with them, and wondering who she can pester to play with her.  Everyone loves to play with Ajabu, and she happily roughhouses with even the biggest males.

Victoria is one of the most playful chimps everrrr

In the other group of chimps, Jane has been happily chasing baboons and warthogs around.  In the mornings, the warthogs and baboons come up to the chimps’ breakfast area and start harassing them to share their breakfast.  Most of the chimps move away from the warthogs, but the hogs are quite brave and will walk right up to a chimp to try to sneak food out of their lap.  This has resulted in a few screams and attacks on the warthogs, as simple threats and displays don’t seem to do anything.  The baboons are even bolder, and Jane chased them around for quite a while until they realized that she wasn’t actually going to hit them.  Then they chased her back, and when one of them managed to grab her she screamed so loudly that at least three other chimps left their breakfasts and came to her rescue.  I’ve been told that the chimps really dislike the baboons, and when truly fed up with them two of the high ranking males have thrown baboons into the electric fence.

Today is a Sunday, so I get to go out with Kim again and hopefully get to take advantage of the last of Alli’s good luck.