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.  

put your troubles in a little pile

Kenya will sort them out for you.

This last week in Nairobi has been great; I've made new friends, gotten to travel around the city a bit and have "young people" fun, as well as rest, relax, and get some work done.

I spent Tuesday around the house with Joyce, and we made dinner together for the family, all of which would be joining us that evening.  After seeing Alli off in the morning I was a bit sad that I wasn't going to get up to Ol Pejeta too, but managed to console myself cooking rabbit and a quick cake with Joyce.  Dinner was great fun, I've definitely learned a lot by listening to NPR and being aware of the world around me, so I was able to contribute to the conversation more than occasionally.  Kiuri tried to explain his philosophy of why he doesn't eat eggs, which has to do with trauma and the prevention of a potential life which I didn't quite understand, but made a valiant effort.

Wednesday was an excellent yet unproductive day.  After having breakfast with Kiuri after his morning yoga, I hung out in my room and read for quite a while. I kept promising myself that at the end of that chapter I would put my book down and get to work, but never did that happen. Around 12:30 Kiuri showed up asking if I wanted to get some lunch in Westlands, and I happily accompanied him.  We went to a local buffet restaurant where I was served all together too much food -- mokemo, a green-banana dish that I love, and a variety of lentils and beans, chapati, and soukuma.  We chatted while I ate happily with my hands, and talked about Kenyan culture, which I am always happy to learn about.  Kiuri also educated me on the subject of Nollywood, the Nigerian film industry, which was playing above us on television.  The film moved incredibly slowly, Kiuri claims it moves in real time, but has never really watched all of one.

After lunch Kiuri and I ran some errands in Westlands including heading to a print shop that also makes tee-shirt prints, and then somewhere he could get some real blueprints made.  We discussed the many intricacies of matatu culture and driving, including the high-paced lives of the Matatu Touts.  These men are the ones that hang onto the side of each matatu and try to convince you to ride that particular matatu on that particular line. The differences matatus boast are entertainment systems -- some even have dvd players in the back in addition to cds -- interior decor, and of course the personality of the tout.  Furthermore, the touts are treated like rock stars in their local communities, and often are inextricable with the drug scene.  Matatus, despite my original expectations, are owned by many different cartels (Kiuri's word, not necessarily what I would have chosen) and many different matatus will run on the same line, thus requiring the touts to convince willing or unwilling passengers to get onto the matatu.  It's a crazy business, and we watched some Matatus Behaving Badly outside the printshop as we waiting.

After arriving back to Joyce's I was promptly picked up by Keni, a friend of Kiuri's who is closer to my age and knows a lot of younger people around the city.  I ran some quick errands with him, including picking up some wine for his sister's birthday (Nana of previous lore), and dropping said bottle off at his house. He has a family cat, Socks, who had five two-week-old kittens for me to be enamored of.  Pretty incredibly adorable, and Socks was very tolerant of us picking up the babies and playing with them.  The kittens were not so impressed.  Then we headed to Zen Garden, a nearby restaurant and gardens, for some cocktails and pizza.  Keni told me about his masters thesis on the world food crisis, and I was pretty enthralled.  There are a lot of aspects of many agricultural businesses that I knew nothing about, and considering my background in agriculture and ranching, should probably educate myself on.

From Zen Gardens we headed to Abyssinia, an Ethiopian restaurant for more wine.  We were shortly joined by a huge group of American tourists who were loud and very entertaining for us.  I felt that I was superior to their general tourism by being a researcher, and Keni agreed that I was at least superior in that I was hanging out with a Kenyan.  After Abyssinia we met two friends of his at a bistro for some dinner, both of them French women who work in very similar positions at different branches/versions of world banks.  We had a great time discussing French wine tasters' unnecessarily fussy tastes, our jobs in general, and some mind bender/con artist-ish guy named Darren Brown, who Keni swears can subliminally message people into anything.  We weren't so sure, but were promised links.

Thursday was another relaxing day as I did some laundry, finished up some cleaning and errands, and got ready to leave Friday morning.

This morning dawned clear and bright, and I woke up early but relaxed in bed until around 8 before getting up.  Everything was packed already, so I simply had some breakfast and a chat with Kiuri again, and got ready to go.  I was picked up by my driver, Evans, at 10:00 and we shortly had the car loaded with my tent, cot, and bags and were on the road.  The drive to Ol Pejeta was beautiful, as usual, and not as long as I had expected; we arrived in just three short hours.  Kim met us at the Nakumatt shortly with Alli and Jenny and we headed into town to get some groceries for me to contribute to our general food and run errands.  Jenny headed to a hardware store (chains she wanted and chained she got, I don't work there any more), Kim got her spare tire fixed from a puncture, and I practiced driving on the right -- aka the LEFT -- side of the road.  I only got left behind a few times, and even then I could navigate fairly well.  We stopped at some curio shops that Kim frequently goes to, and Alli got a giraffe sculpture and some antelope.  I picked up two pair of earrings and a beautiful zebra kanga (kind of a skirt-like-thing that women here wear) and nothing else. I promised the various store owners there that I would be back and there for many months so they needn't be pushy, but there were a few things I was interested in buying.  I will have to figure out the best way to bargain and play my hands right so I can get the best deals while there (although I didn't get at all ripped off on my earrings today; 250 /- for 2 pair, less than $5).

After around three hours of errands we headed back to Ol Pej and Jenny led the way while I drove. Kim drove much faster and ahead.  At the gate, I was happily shown through as the research coordinator had warned the gate staff of my arrival.  We got to the research center and after putting my things in my room I sat down for a cup of tea and was happily greeted by David!  David is one of the supervisors of the chimp sanctuary and was Brenda's and my main guide when we were in Sweetwaters last time.  He is incredibly friendly, knowledgeable, and generally happy.  It really lifted my spirits that he was happy to see me, as I was a little sad that I was leaving Nairobi where I had had so much fun.  Not that I wasn't happy to be in Ol Pejeta again, just that I had a few lingering fears about my work here (will it work? will they hate me? will I fall in the river and get chomped by hippos? will a chimp drag me into an electric fence?).  I asked David if he had any updates for me about the chimps, and he told me that there was a surprise.  I asked what it was, but he was pretty close-lipped.  Then he sneakily discussed this something in Swahili with Kim, mocked me for my lack of Swahili (telling me that I would have to learn more!), wouldn't tell me any more, and departed smiling.  I will see him tomorrow, though.

George arrived with some other Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) vets later, and was also quite happy to see me.  He thanked me for the computer, and stayed for dinner.  We had some great discussion about the chimps and their health checks and naming in Kenya.  It was great to see the fun, non-working side of George.

Alli, Kim, and I had good talks late into the evening, and here I am, updating you now.

So basically, Ol Pejeta is awesome and I am glad I am here again.  Once again, no pictures: I was driving today, and could hardly be expected to take pictures as well!  Additionally my internet works quite well, and that makes me really happy, because it means I can keep updating and adding pictures.

Getting on the road today and up to my field site has done wonders for my mental state, and I'm no longer totally worried about my permits or progress or potential failure or that I might not see any animals other than chimps and how that would really be a bit sad.  Thank you, Kenya, for that peace of mind.

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.