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.

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

March Kenya Trip 2: The middle-ish

I tried to start the recap of the March Kenya trip with a day-by-day blow-by-blow, but as you can see that didn't really work out.  All the days have kinda blurred together at this point so I just know when things happened by other markers, like the weather, or what we were doing that day (chimps or safari), or who was visiting the research centre.

For a few days some Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) vets were visiting, they had to knock down a lioness for treatment as well as sedate some elephants to repair their GPS collars.  The visiting vets stay at the research centre and more than doubled our numbers while they were there.  Matthew, the head vet, also had a lot to say about the black market animal trade and poachers.  He was very vehement about them, and told us some pretty horrible stories about animals he had encountered with snares caught somewhere on their body which he then had to remove.  George, the Ol Pejeta vet, also hates poachers, with a seemingly irrational passion.  However, they basically oppose everything these wildlife vets do, so I guess it's not all that irrational.

The chimp sanctuary at Ol Pejeta is pretty spectacular.  They have a 20 foot electric fence that serves both to keep chimps in and predators out.  Inside the enclosure live warthogs, bushbuck, mongoose, all the birds that choose to go in and out, as well as all the small mammals that I am sure have no problem navigating the fences.  I saw some little mammals but they were far away so I was unable to identify them, plus I didn't have a mammal ID book.  Never fear, I've brought one this time.

The chimps live in two groups, and they seem pretty happy with their social lives.  The smaller group is called "Young chimps" although they're not actually younger, just newer to the sanctuary (both groups came from a Jane Goodall Institute Sanctuary in Burundi when civil war broke out and it was no longer safe to keep the chimps there).  Both of the night houses available to the chimps are really nice, although young group's night house has bars on the ceiling so hammocks can be hung from there.  They really loved it, playing and rolling around when they came in for dinner.

In contrast, old group is much larger and their evening ritual is a bit more raucous.  With 22 chimps to bring in, give dinner, and get into their sleeping groups, you can imagine the noise that is created.  The big boys all like to let everyone know when they arrive and that makes everyone start pant-hooting again... in the concrete-walled night house, it echoes quite a bit.  For breakfast and dinner all the chimps get fresh fruit and vegetables and a corn-meal paste called ugali.  They love their ugali, and everyone got even more excited when the caregivers brought out the big plate of steaming ugali towards the end of dinner.  (I think this is akin to asking children to eat all their vegetables first before getting their dessert.)  One big male, Poco, was particularly excited for his ugali, but despised the corn he kept being given.  His eyesight is not very good due to some clouding on his retina so each time a caregiver would walk over towards him with an ear of corn Poco would get very excited, I think he thought it was ugali.  Then, when he had the corn in his hands and realised it wasn't ugali, it would throw it on the ground.  Fortunately, the boy eating with him seemed to really like corn and devoured what Poco didn't eat.

After spending a few days with the chimps -- all day, from breakfast until bedtime -- we went back out to help Kim collect her data.  Driving around with Kim is especially fun because of the opportunity to see so many cool things.  One afternoon we saw some warthogs and jackals in what appeared to be an altercation, and as we drove up everyone scattered.  It seemed that the warthogs had tried to steal the jackals' dinner, a dead Thomson's Gazelle, and one of the young warthogs was still holding a Tommy leg as he retreated!  The presence of our car really made the warthogs back off and allowed the jackals to reclaim their meal.  When we told George, the vet, and some of the chimp caregivers about this they hardly believed us, and wanted photo evidence to know that it was true.  I suspect that meat is not a large part of the warthog diet but in the dry season, as when we were there, when grazing is scarce they might rely on scavenging a bit more than they would otherwise.

We also got to see the above hyena den a few times.  There were at least three youngesters and the same red-headed female watching them each time we visited.  On our third visit we saw a few other hyenas walking up and got to see the youngsters greet the newcomer.  The newcomer must not have been very high ranking as the red-headed female didn't even bother to get up to greet him.  She just touched his nose when he came up and stayed in her den.

By far the coolest thing we saw was not when we were out driving with Kim, but when we followed the Italian documentarian one night as he and a ranger radiotracked the lions.  As we were going past the Northern White Rhino enclosure we encountered a female cheetah with four cubs, all devouring a Tommy.  The cubs were adorable, all growly and ravenous, and one of them kept overeating and having to go to the side and burp/vomit a little (I don't know if cheetahs can actually burp).  We stayed there for about forty minutes watching them, and Blair kindly lent me her 70-300 lens to take some close up photos with.  We were really lucky to see these guys, and the mother was lucky that no other big cats came up to scavenge.  I have been told that other cheetahs, but especially lions, will kill cheetah cubs as an easy meal when scavenging their kills.  Kim and Blair kept an eye on this female after I left and now she only has two cubs left, a pretty common outcome for female cheetahs, but if she keeps those two alive until adulthood she will have done a great job.

I also got to go on a pretty incredible flight with Capt. Peter Lempatu, a bush pilot staying at Ol Pejeta.  He works for the Kenya Rangeland Trust (I could be totally wrong about that), and took each of us at the research center up in his two-seater plane for a quick trip.  The flight was incredible, although I didn't think it was quite as cool as Kim did -- she was ecstatic and couldn't stop talking about flying for days.  We got to see the entirety of Ol Pejeta from the air which was super awesome, flying the entire perimeter.  I was pretty surprised how well we could see animals from the air, they weren't little brown smudges as I had expected, but pretty easy to distinguish from one another.  We flew right up until sunset, and as we pulled in to the landing we buzzed Kim, Brenda, and Blair, who were having a sundowner (drinks and watching the sun set) at the end of the airstrip.

It was April Fools' day as well, so when Kim, Brenda, and Blair were late to dinner Peter and I decided to play a little trick on them.  We hid their food in the oven and other places in the kitchen and got the cooks to go along with our plan.  When Kim, Blair, and Brenda, came back we were already eating and claimed that we thought they were having nyamachoma (barbecue) on their sundowner, despite the obvious absurdity of this.  Brenda and Blair caught on pretty quickly -- the oven has a clear door and Blair's dinner used to be kept warm in there when she knew she was coming back late -- but Kim insisted on figuring out what was going on and it was hilaaaaaaaaarious.  It really was awesome.  Then we gave them their food and we all ate.

No more for now, I finished this from Dubai, although originally it was finished in the SF airport.