Day one and two in the field

We have just started our Directed Research (DR) projects. I am in the Wildlife Management DR where we are looking at the ecological and economic viability of wildlife sanctuaries. These are areas that either groups of people or individuals own and have been set aside to protect wildlife and attract tourists. They are not National Parks because the people own and manage the sanctuaries to generate income, and they are allowed to graze and/or water their livestock inside the sanctuary during the dry season. It would make a lot of sense if people ecologically assessed areas to see which habitats have high concentrations of wildlife or which areas need to be set aside so that they are not over grazed, and then made them into wildlife sanctuaries. But there are not the resources to do this for the sanctuaries, so they just get set up wherever people think might be a good place and can set aside the land. So our job/project/thing we are interested in is what is the ecological viability of the sanctuaries. Within that broad question we are looking at the densities of wildlife within the sanctuaries, the densities of livestock, and the way these are spatially overlapping and if they are competing for space.   To do this we go into the field and do walking transects (1 km long) where we gather GPS points of all of the species and numbers of wildlife and livestock we see. Yesterday (our first day) we began by mapping one of the sanctuaries because we are the first people to be allowed to do any research there. All of the other sanctuaries that we are working in have already been mapped by previous students, so we will only take animal GPS points in those ones. Today (day two) my group walked four transects and gathered GPS points for every animal we came across. This included lots of Grant’s and Thomson’s gazelles, impalas, zebras, wildebeest, and warthogs, as well as, one giraffe, a group of elephants, and three buffalo (the elephant and buffalo were super scary, but really exciting as well). The coolest part of this whole project is that at the end we get to share our results and suggestions for the future with all of the community members in the area. These people really want to know what we have to say and they come back every year listen to our presentations.

Aside from all of this we also drive around through areas that have no roads for the most part and when they do have roads they are in such poor condition that you are better off not driving on them… as we found out. We finished our very first day of field work and were heading home when we went crashing into a puddle that was a bit more than a puddle and our professor said “I think I made a blunder” as our wheels spun and mud flew everywhere. We were at a 45 degree angle with the back wheel in a giant hole. We ended up hooking up our land rover to another land rover with a cable that they have (just for this purpose I guess) attached to the front of the car. We pulled the car out after about twenty minutes of working on it and ripped off the hook on the back of the other car, but at least we got it out! It was an incredibly amusing event all in all, and definitely warranted an afternoon nap.  

Off to a third day of fieldwork! More adventures to come,

Sara

Amboseli National Park

Mountain Struck

This morning I woke up and my jaw hit the ground out side my banda. This is why... 

Every day I think that Mt. Kilimanjaro can't get any more impressive, but then it snows.

This is the second natural event to be noted in the last twenty four hours. Yesterday around 5:30 golden sunlight was bathing our whole camp and then it started to pour. You could see rain coming down in streaks like someone was pouring buckets of water out of the sky. We saw the rainbow up above us and were marveling at it when it came down from the sky and ended right in the middle of the soccer field in our camp. I could see where is touched the ground. We all just stood laughing and asking each other if it was really there until it finally dissipated and the rain moved on. I could make some corny comment about how we must be in the pot of gold, but I think its pretty obvious that this was quite an event.
Got to go to class and start our Directed Research Projects. We just finnished our other classes and took exams, so we are getting closer and closer to the end of this adventure.
In awe,
Sara

I wrote this a week ago but we didn't have internet and then we went on expedition (quintessential east africa!), so here it is.

Kenya
This camp continues to amaze me and make me appreciate daily life every day. I was telling my dad that its hard to be stressed in a place where the light plays off of the yellow bark acacias every evening and our class room is a giant open-air wooden structure. We do have cause to be stressed right now as we have had the busiest week and a bit of our semester yet. I must say I am wiped out, but it’s been great. I have totally enjoyed the learning we have been doing about this area. Its fun to see what’s different here in Kenya in terms of the area we are located in, the culture of the area, the subtle differences in the way people behave here and so on. In Kenya life is a bit more business-like. People are more on time and things happen more according to schedule which on one hand is nice and on the other hand is a bit of a bummer. Breakfast actually happens at 7:30 not at 7:36 or 7:40 or 7:48, but actually at 7:30:00. It seems that this general attitude permeates through the culture at least where we are.
This attitude is interesting because Tanzania was a mandate not a colony, and a mandate decrees that the country in governance must benefit the native people (as opposed to a colony where you can come in and do whatever you want), and because of these requirements the British didn’t really settle Tanzania. They didn’t take the time to establish themselves or set up infrastructure or promote their language. This means that today Tanzania doesn’t have very good facilities and infrastructure and their percent of population living below the poverty line is higher, but that their culture is more intact and their language is officially Swahili and their whole attitude is less “western”. In Kenya (a colony of the British govt) the British settled in for a longer stay and with that came infrastructure, the English language, and a “western attitude”. Here in Kenya things happen on time and people aren’t as skilled at just being. Its interesting because I spent the last two months learning how to be and relax and know that things weren’t going to happen when they said they would on paper. Now that I am flexible in that way, it's hard to be flexible to a new system that is on time and more business-like. Funny that works.

Halloween
I really didn’t know you could have a Halloween party in Kenya but I guess when there is a concentration of 28 young Americans and a wonderful pseudo mom (Molly our Student Affairs Manager here in Kenya) you can do anything. We had a full out Halloween party with jack-o-lantern carving, and bobbing for apples, and everyone had a costume and we even performed fun dances for each other and the had a dance party. I was really quite stunned and had a total blast!

Kimana market
We live outside (about a ten min drive) of Kimana a small town that is more established than Rhotia and has small shops and a market every Tuesday. We went to the market last Tuesday. What a world full of color. The Maasai here in Kenya are more colorful in the things they wear, the jewelry they make and they way they present themselves and interact. The Maasai are the main tribe here in Kimana and it really makes a huge difference in the culture of this area. In the market there are always three Maasai mamas following you out dangling beaded jewelry in your face and saying “200 only 200, very cheap……….”. On some occasions it’s enough to drive a person crazy, but on others it can be fun and interesting to interact with them and look at their jewelry and learn how to say no in affective ways. I had a wonderful time looking at clothing that was selling for 100 KSH an item (the equivalent to $1.35), picking out bead colors so that we can learn to make bracelets from the mamas, buying a pair of bright blue shoes, and admiring the hilarious array of Obama t-shirts and yellow satin ruffley skirts.

Amboseli
When we left for Amboseli we were supposed to have a traveling lecture through different parts of the park by stopping places and standing out of the hatches of the land rovers and having our professor give his lecture, but it was pouring down rain. It’s interesting how either the heavy absence of rain or the overwhelming deluge of it is always a factor of life in East Africa. So instead we sat in our cars peering out of our cloudy windows and received our lecture over the walky-talky system in the land rovers. It was thoroughly entertaining. By the end of our lecture the rain had started to taper off and so we by the afternoon we were able to game drive out of the park standing out of the hatches. Amboseli is a very small park that is basically a dry season source of water for many animals, elephants especially. As it is the beginning of the wet season the animals are moving out of the park so there is less to see, but there were still tons of elephants everywhere. We watched a young male who was in musth (ready to mate), and was very aggressive towards one larger male in particular. The younger male kept instigating fights with the older male and getting beaten. He was obviously frustrated, so when we tried to drive away he came charging at us trumpeting and shaking his head making his ears flap. After we got away, we drove through the swampy grass lands and were blessed with the most spectacular cloud show I have even seen… the golden light, the puffy cotton candy clouds, the stringy soft clouds, and sky reflecting off of the water in the swamps, the green green grass, the birds soaring and calling above our heads. I have rarely felt so wrapped up in each aspect of the world. And just to put the cherry on the ice cream we got to see a cheetah as Mt. Kili was poking out of the clouds and the sun was setting.

Sending my love,
Sara