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.

March Kenya Trip 3: The part where it all ended

My trip to Kenya in March ended all too quickly for me. I was having such a good time that the last few days really snuck up on me. The first few days we stayed at Ol Pejeta it seemed like we had forever to go in Kenya, and even after we'd been there fore a few days it seemed like the time was passing really slowly and we would get to stay forever. It probably didn't help that Brenda and I kept joking that we would just stay forever and forget all about our obligations back in the States.  We liked Kenya a lot.

Plains zebra (Equus quagga) were all over the plains at Ol Pejeta.  They were pretty exciting to see at first, but after a while they became a lot less exciting.  It didn't help that for some reason I kept calling them giraffe.  I got confused.  They, more than any other animals, spent their time lazing around and napping on the roads, soaking up the sun.  Almost all of them were also pretty chubby.  There were also plenty of little foals around, although there was this funny observer effect where we would think we had seen such a small adorably baby zebra until the next day (or twenty minutes later) when we would see one that was somehow even smaller!  I think the smallest one we saw wasn't much smaller than the one pictured above, who was napping on the side of the road one day as we were trolling for giraffe with Kim.  Mostly, sleepy zebra got up pretty quickly when they heard the car coming or heard their herd scampering off, but this little guy stayed asleep.  We were actually pretty worried about him when all three of us, Kim, Brenda, and I were leaning out the car window snapping pictures of him and still he wasn't moving.  We thought that he might be sick or near death and would make a quick snack for a predator.

Turns out he was just snoozin' really hard and as soon as he woke up and saw us staring at him intently it took him only a few seconds to jump up and gallop away.  He ran away so quickly and suddenly that he startled the rest of his herd and they all ran off for a little distance, until they realized that there wasn't really any danger.

Another curious thing that Brenda and I discovered, independent of Kim's education, is that Impala (Aepyceros melampus) make a really startling grunting-growling sound when they are fighting.  We discovered this one day when walking around the chimpanzee enclosure with one of the chimp caregivers, John.  As we walked through a rather thick section of brush we heard growling and both Brenda and I turned quickly, only to find John laughing at us as he told us that it was just impala.  They have a  resource-defense polygyny mating system, meaning that males defend a resource -- the females -- from other males.  The males with their harems can be pretty aggressive towards their females and we got a couple of chances to watch males aggressively chase females back into their harem.  One of the neat things about driving around with behavior nerds is that you get to stop to watch interesting or funny behaviors and nobody complains about what you're doing.  

One one of our last mornings driving with Kim we encountered a female Grant's gazelle (Nanger granti) that had just given birth.  I don't know if Grant's are usually found in herds or not, but it seems like they would be, given that they're a gazelle species.  Females are always safer in herds.  When we drove up all we could see a huge male warthog nuzzling at a package on the ground, and after we had (accidentally) driven the warthog off we could tell that the ground package was a newborn.  So newborn that the baby was still encased in the embryonic sac and was still wet.  The warthog was guarding the newborn against its mother, or so it seemed, and it wasn't until we got quite close that the hog actually ran off.  The mother then stood around vigilantly watching her surroundings, practically ignoring her newborn.  I kept accusing her of being a bad mother, but she was in a pretty vulnerable position, out in the open, right next to one of the roads.  I suspected that the warthog was attracted by the smells of the birth and was then eating the placenta and embryonic sac.  I don't think even that big of a male would have been able to kill the baby, although maybe he could have crushed its spinal cord if he tried hard enough, or kept the mother away for long enough that the baby starved to death.  Regardless, it was very interesting to see this kind of behavior when most of the people at Ol Pejeta, Kenyan born and bred, had never heard of or seen that behavior before.

We also saw a family of elephants a couple of times, once at a watering hole and once just crossing the road. I was pretty bummed that I didn't get to see them splashing water around anywhere at all, I think that would have been super awesome.  But we did get to see this cute little guy foraging on the side of the road for quite a while.  According to Kim, young elephants are usually pretty skittish from cars.  This group was seen near the research centre a bunch of times, so maybe they were more used to people driving by them and staring at them.

Our last day in Kenya we went into Nanyuki around 10:30 to do some curio shopping and go to Trout Tree restaurant for lunch.  Trout Tree was pretty awesome, the restaurant is actually in this gigantic tree.  I wasn't sure how they managed to do it until we got there, when we drove down a really steep ravine and I saw that the restaurant was supported in part by the tree and in part by the ravine.  The food there was delicious, they had a trout chowder (which I didn't order but did steal some of Kim's) that was delicious, all smoky and creamy with fresh smoked trout in it.  We also ordered a smoked trout appetizer that was really great; a whole small trout (maybe 8-9" long), served with dark wheat bread and horseradish, lemon, and arugula.  Yummmm.  For lunch I had a whole grilled trout and it was amazing.  So yum.

And the best part about the restaurant?  There were black and white colobus (Colobus guereza) so close I could practically touch them!  They are a habituated troup and were in a tree out front of the restaurant when we arrived there, about seven of them, hanging out, yawning, sprawling, being adorable.  They also jumped onto the roof of the restaurant, just a tarp, while we were eating and got chased off by the restaurant staff.  Apparently mangabeys often come down there too, but weren't there that day.

That afternoon we had a long, warm drive back to Nairobi in our express matatu, and got to wait in the airport for about six hours before our flight.  Brenda and I did some airport shopping, and then got onto our flight home.  Our flights home were really long, and Brenda and I got really cranky.  Really, really cranky.  We were hating humanity by the end of that trip.

That pretty much concludes the stories from my first trip to Kenya.  If I forgot anything I'll try to shove it in here somewhere so it makes sense.