The bustling megalopolis* of the Laikipia district, Nanyuki, has 1 paved road, about 100 green grocers and hardware stores, one place that sells fried camel hump, and a population of 30,000, 29,000 of whom are curio merchants who want me to buy more of their ebony** carved animals and bootleg DVDs. There is also an awesome ragamuffin*** puppeteer with a hat that looks like he stuck his head up a teddy bear who can sing "Coward of the County" and "Billie Jean" surprisingly well. They sell sandals made from old tires (I got my pair in Baringo, but Josephine bought a pair in Nanyuki. I think the ones from Baringo are superior, but what can you do?) and delicious fresh mangoes for 20 /= (about a quarter).
I've gotten so many gifts and souvenirs in Nanyuki that I am probably going to need another suitcase****. However, the best purchase I made in Nanyuki was a fantastic DVD from Dubai that has The Watchmen, Frost/Nixon, Valkyrie in several languages, and Dragonball Evolution. I was approached by the DVD salesman while I was purposely sitting in the car refusing to get out and look around because I had already spent the last of my Kenyan currency on some final presents, and then a bunch of other stuff that I got pressured into buying. But I've wanted to watch Watchmen since last year, and when I saw it in his big pile of DVD collections (which also include one DVD with every Jim Carrey movie ever made, and biopic called "Life of Bama") I couldn't resist. I had actually spent all of the money I had on hand, but I managed to get the movie in exchange for a Pilot pen and a semi-functioning watch that Sam had given***** me at the beginning of the semester. So now Sam and I are proud co-owners of our very own Nanyuki Special. And that thing is pure gold. Not because of the quality of the in-theater cinematography, or the fact that if you insert the DVD into many computers, it generates a dialog box that has no text, just a bunch of question marks. No, the Nanyuki Watchmen DVD is great because of the subtitles. The movie is in English, most of the time, but inexplicably cuts to Russian about 3/4 through. This is when we turned on the English subtitles. They simply stated (Russian) at the bottom of the screen. About 5 minutes later it cut back to English, and so did the subtitles. Except, only sort of. It was more like the sort of narration you might expect from a half-deaf guy who speaks English about as well as I speak Spanish******. All of the names were given wrong. Not just maybe-their-translation-had-different-names wrong. Totally, utterly wrong. At one point they called Lorie "Jasmine." They referred to Rorschach as "Roll sha" once, which was about as close as it got. Most of the dialog was absurdly summarized, but occasionally they would throw in a hilarious mistranslation: when one character is not impressed with another's "schoolboy heroics," the subtitles boldly declare "You think you a primary school. Not." Then there are points where the subtitles outright lie. They construct relationships between characters that have no logical or contextual basis. They falsify motives, misread actions, and sometimes just put the opposite of what is said. All in all, it is a masterpiece of Engrish, and a horrendous disservice to Alan Moore, Zack Snyder, and anyone who enjoys movies, really. I hope to show it to anyone who has any interest in it.
*the auto-correct feature of blogger says that is a word. Apple dictionary agrees. Me, I'm not so sure, but I'll throw it in there.
**acacia wood and shoe polish
***probably homeless and addicted to stuff
****yes, I got you something. I assure you, if you read this blog, I got you something.
*****ahem, lent.
******If you've heard me sing "Song of the Cucumber" before, you know what I mean
Friday, April 17, 2009
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Chimps
ed. note-- written during Dan's course, while staying at Sweetwaters-Ol Pejeta ranch which is in the same (large-scale) neighborhood as Mpala
I have a tendency to anthropomorphize most of the animals that I see or study. I empathize with ants, nature's successful communists*, and lizards, who live the life I want to lead when I am 90, but it is particularly easy with mammals, because they really are like humans. According to other mammals, at least, mammalia includes some of the most intelligent species, like dolphins and elephants. Whenever we run across a herd of elephants, a certain train of thought automatically runs through my mind: How many steps away from civilization are these creatures? Do they need any new parts, or can they make do with their trunks and all they need is a bright new idea? If they had already established civilization, would we know about it?
So, I was really excited to see the chimp sanctuary at Ol Pejeta, because in my mind, chimps are basically humans that don't get it yet. They have just about everything we have, anatomically, albeit their pelvis needs some adjustment for permanent bipedalism. They even have tools and all that. Seeing the chimps would be like going back in time and seeing wild humans. And of course, that idea leads to all sorts of crazy fantasies about learning to work with chimps and holding workshops to show them how to farm and how to build houses for themselves and how to manage theater productions.
Unfortunately, given the time constraints and the barrier of a giant electric fence, none of those workshops got off the ground. Also, actually seeing them blew my notion of chimps, or at least these chimps, being receptive proto-people. Apart from the two males who did a team-effort rock siege of our Land Rover, the chimps we saw didn't seem to have much ambition. A few of them were lying on the ground, and would turn over occasionally, and quite a few were picking leaves off of acacias and eating them. One was sitting on the ground hugging itself and rocking back and forth, in typical crazy-person fashion, which gave the impression less of this as a blossoming community of chimp creativity and progress, but more of an outdoor asylum for those animals not fit to be members of society. To be fair, though, if you looked in on a group of people stuck in a cage in the middle of the woods, they would probably be doing just about the same things. And, really, when you think about it, trying to get chimps to be more like humans would probably be bad for humans and chimps.
*from whose example we can conclude that communism would have worked if only everyone was related, and female, and only one member of the nation reproduced
I have a tendency to anthropomorphize most of the animals that I see or study. I empathize with ants, nature's successful communists*, and lizards, who live the life I want to lead when I am 90, but it is particularly easy with mammals, because they really are like humans. According to other mammals, at least, mammalia includes some of the most intelligent species, like dolphins and elephants. Whenever we run across a herd of elephants, a certain train of thought automatically runs through my mind: How many steps away from civilization are these creatures? Do they need any new parts, or can they make do with their trunks and all they need is a bright new idea? If they had already established civilization, would we know about it?
So, I was really excited to see the chimp sanctuary at Ol Pejeta, because in my mind, chimps are basically humans that don't get it yet. They have just about everything we have, anatomically, albeit their pelvis needs some adjustment for permanent bipedalism. They even have tools and all that. Seeing the chimps would be like going back in time and seeing wild humans. And of course, that idea leads to all sorts of crazy fantasies about learning to work with chimps and holding workshops to show them how to farm and how to build houses for themselves and how to manage theater productions.
Unfortunately, given the time constraints and the barrier of a giant electric fence, none of those workshops got off the ground. Also, actually seeing them blew my notion of chimps, or at least these chimps, being receptive proto-people. Apart from the two males who did a team-effort rock siege of our Land Rover, the chimps we saw didn't seem to have much ambition. A few of them were lying on the ground, and would turn over occasionally, and quite a few were picking leaves off of acacias and eating them. One was sitting on the ground hugging itself and rocking back and forth, in typical crazy-person fashion, which gave the impression less of this as a blossoming community of chimp creativity and progress, but more of an outdoor asylum for those animals not fit to be members of society. To be fair, though, if you looked in on a group of people stuck in a cage in the middle of the woods, they would probably be doing just about the same things. And, really, when you think about it, trying to get chimps to be more like humans would probably be bad for humans and chimps.
*from whose example we can conclude that communism would have worked if only everyone was related, and female, and only one member of the nation reproduced
Friday, April 3, 2009
Internet... more like out-ternet. Or something clever.
The line I've been fed about our internet connection here is that when it rains in Turino, Italy, we lose our internet connection. If this is the case, someone over in Turino had better go looking for some Gopherwood and build an ark. But, after a few days of constantly hitting refresh on my inbox to see if the fickle minor deity in charge of turning on the internet for Africa had gotten out of bed yet, it finally worked! And I did a little victory dance in front of a few Masters' students from Leeds that I had never met before. So now I am able to email my funding application, which is due in three hours and I should have done ages ago, and write to you, internet.
So, we sort of finished MAE 436 today, insofar as now the course is over. We still have homework and projects to turn in, though. Funny the way that happens. And you know what that means... 1 more course! And it is going to be wonderful for a whole host of reasons:
So, we sort of finished MAE 436 today, insofar as now the course is over. We still have homework and projects to turn in, though. Funny the way that happens. And you know what that means... 1 more course! And it is going to be wonderful for a whole host of reasons:
- It is being taught by Kelly Caylor and Trenton something, who I want to be best friends with forever because they are awesome ( I haven't run this by them yet... we'll just let things run their course and we'll be making friendship bracelets for each other in no time)
- Kelly and Trenton have tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of really cool measuring equipment that they're letting us play with! Like a Laikor, which measures the photosynthesis rate of leaves while they are still on the plant. And a tiny laser that measures isotope ratios in the air. And a Unicorn Machine, where you point it at any ungulate and it becomes a unicorned version of that animal!
- It is called Ecohydrology, which sounds cool
- It's about plants, which means that we can go over and touch all of the things that we are studying, and they won't run away or burn our retinas like the bloody tin foil reflectors for our solar ovens
- Did I mention how cool Kelly and Trenton are?
- We get to go home afterwards
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Today's blog: A Short Story
Once upon a time there was a tiny tiger with too many teeth. Then one day he lost all of his teeth, and so a bunch of engineers invented screws with laser microtexturing that fit right into the gums and had zirconium teeth coated with enamel so they were very strong and not cytotoxic and they looked just like his old teeth, only better and more expensive. Then he spent a lot too many hours trying to get wire mesh to fit inside of a poorly constructed solar oven. He was very grumpy. But then he finished writing his funding application, and so he expected to be much happier, but surprisingly, he still was pretty grumpy. It was the worst kind of surprise.
This was basically my day, but without the tiger.
This was basically my day, but without the tiger.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Carpenting
Sam, Jo and I spent about seven hours today acquiring materials for and building wooden solar ovens. We had no kit, and no instructions or guidelines other than some basic passive solar theory. The only electric-powered tool we had was a drill. It was tough. Things were fun, and then they were frustrating, and then everyone was swearing every 30 seconds or so, and then we actually started feeling a sense of accomplishment, and then things got silly, and now I'm pretty sure that I could sell a garden gnome I made myself for maybe §40, if you know what I mean. Joseph, a cool young Maasai man and our "field assistant" for MAE 436 (although we spend no time in the field for this course), showed up to help us out (although our prof was absent for the entirety of the construction). Around the sixth hour, he began improvising some lovely little ditties that I greatly appreciated, both because they mentioned African wildlife and conveyed a sense of violence.
The lyrics of the first, Big Lion, were as follows:
Right-o, then, I have a thesis funding report to be nursing along. By which I mean, I am going to sleep now.
The lyrics of the first, Big Lion, were as follows:
Big lion, in that bush, but I will hit him with my big stick.His later work included a variation of Big Lion:
(repeat ad nauseum)
Big lion, in that bush, and when he sees us we run like deer.After Josephine pointed out that acting like a deer is not the best way to make yourself insusceptible to lion attacks, it reached its final form:
Big lion, in that bush, and we will run like lighteningAlthough we made it through many refrains of Big Lion, and a few of Big Elephant, my favorite was the hyena song:
(giggle at the absurdity of running like lightening,
which I suppose isn't done in Kenya, at least not idiomatically)
Hyena with one short leg and lots of sharp teeth. One bite, one kilo of donkey.This was only sung a few times, and was usually followed by an admonition to be very afraid of hyenas. Even if they inexplicably have one short leg.
Right-o, then, I have a thesis funding report to be nursing along. By which I mean, I am going to sleep now.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Catcher in the Cynadon
ed. note: Written while staying at Lewa, a reserve about an hour North of Mpala.
The courses I've had in Kenya are very, very different from the courses I've had at Princeton, but there are still parts that are similar: reading scientific papers, taking notes and discussing them; spending late nights scrambling to finish all of the assignments; wondering why it is again that I never make time to clean my room. And, similarly, the field research I've done here, although it's in Africa and there are giraffes watching me work, is in some respects like the lab work I've done on campus. There are all the routine observations that need to be made, doing the same thing the same way each time, and carefully recording everything. Serious science has to be this way; standardizing sampling methods and taking thorough field notes are crucial to actually getting results. It is a pleasure to be able to look up from my work and just see African plains, but it is still more work than play.
Today, though, we got to help with a preliminary study to scope out the area for grasshopper species, and that was different. After we had finished counting and identifying dung piles in the usual areas, we had to walk in a straight line and count how many grasshoppers jumped out at us. Once we had relayed our numbers back to Fiona, who would do the studies if the area was right and the funding came through, we were free to catch samples. This was definitely not work: crunching through grass up to our waists, looking for a promising specimen to be unnerved enough by our presence to leave his hiding place and fly up in the air. Carefully watching him land, creeping forward, then pouncing clumsily towards him. Hands cupping gingerly, and in my case, fighting back squeamishness as I pulled the 3-inch bug off of the grass stem, pinched its hindquarters firmly between my fingers, and brought back my prize to be put in a plastic baggie along with some dozen of its friends and relations. Often enough there was no prize, the locust would scuttle off before I grabbed it, but that was alright; it didn't have to be recorded for later statistical analysis of how much time it took me to find a large grasshopper, or to determine whether I was significantly bad at doing it. Just shrug it off and go for a new one. It reminded me of when I would go out and dig up worms to look at, or catch buckets of tadpoles to raise, playing with nature for curiosity's sake-- why I like biology in the first place.
The courses I've had in Kenya are very, very different from the courses I've had at Princeton, but there are still parts that are similar: reading scientific papers, taking notes and discussing them; spending late nights scrambling to finish all of the assignments; wondering why it is again that I never make time to clean my room. And, similarly, the field research I've done here, although it's in Africa and there are giraffes watching me work, is in some respects like the lab work I've done on campus. There are all the routine observations that need to be made, doing the same thing the same way each time, and carefully recording everything. Serious science has to be this way; standardizing sampling methods and taking thorough field notes are crucial to actually getting results. It is a pleasure to be able to look up from my work and just see African plains, but it is still more work than play.
Today, though, we got to help with a preliminary study to scope out the area for grasshopper species, and that was different. After we had finished counting and identifying dung piles in the usual areas, we had to walk in a straight line and count how many grasshoppers jumped out at us. Once we had relayed our numbers back to Fiona, who would do the studies if the area was right and the funding came through, we were free to catch samples. This was definitely not work: crunching through grass up to our waists, looking for a promising specimen to be unnerved enough by our presence to leave his hiding place and fly up in the air. Carefully watching him land, creeping forward, then pouncing clumsily towards him. Hands cupping gingerly, and in my case, fighting back squeamishness as I pulled the 3-inch bug off of the grass stem, pinched its hindquarters firmly between my fingers, and brought back my prize to be put in a plastic baggie along with some dozen of its friends and relations. Often enough there was no prize, the locust would scuttle off before I grabbed it, but that was alright; it didn't have to be recorded for later statistical analysis of how much time it took me to find a large grasshopper, or to determine whether I was significantly bad at doing it. Just shrug it off and go for a new one. It reminded me of when I would go out and dig up worms to look at, or catch buckets of tadpoles to raise, playing with nature for curiosity's sake-- why I like biology in the first place.
Lazy Sunday
Didn't do terribly much today. The highlight of today might have been the pizza we had at lunch. Mpala's kitchen staff has a unique and often entertaining set of descriptors for the food they serve. Sometimes they are in Swahili, like Ndengu (mung bean stew, delicious), chapati (also delicious), or kienyeji (a mixture of all of the leftover food from the last three days. Seriously, it's just all stirred up together and served like a stew. Sub-delicious). There are also regular English entrees, which on occasion make sense. Today, it was "pizza veg meat." The pizza veg was pretty good, and the pizza meat was fantastic. I think it had sliced hot dogs in it. Occasionally, the syntax or spelling is such that you can only conclude that we are being served hilarity for dinner. Rubbeb crable was one of the best-named desserts, I think (we are pretty sure that it was Rhubarb crumble, but perhaps it was a rubber cable. Or, maybe it was just rubbeb crable). The brand of ice cream they have here, "Ooh! Ice Cream," might be the most fun to announce, though. I do love things with exclamation points! The world would be better with more exclamation points!
!!
One thing I did do today was remember that I have a few backlogged blog entries left from the mammals course. I'll put those up as well.
!-Sarah
!!
One thing I did do today was remember that I have a few backlogged blog entries left from the mammals course. I'll put those up as well.
!-Sarah
Saturday, March 28, 2009
The New Deal
Ok, so, I've definitely learned one thing from keeping a blog: I am no good at keeping a blog. Don't take it personally, internet, that I haven't updated in a long time-- its not that I don't care about you. I also took my first shower in a week yesterday. I've been all kinds of remiss.
But I've made a resolution: I will write one paragraph each day on this blog. I mean, at least then I'll put something out everyday that will give you some idea of what's going on here. Hopefully, quality will follow quantity. And hopefully the fates will not conspire to keep me away from this goal. And by "the fates," I mean waiting to load a video of "Boogie Boogie Hedgehog" until the internet fails for the night.
(that hedgehog scrunching up his face eating a carrot is just as adorable in Africa)
I think I might count this for my paragraph for the day, since I've still got a thesis funding application to write. Because I just can't get enough of the sweet sweet Kenya, but I've had more than enough of the sweet sweet airfares to Africa. But, there will be more, I promise you that.
p.s. pictures soon.
But I've made a resolution: I will write one paragraph each day on this blog. I mean, at least then I'll put something out everyday that will give you some idea of what's going on here. Hopefully, quality will follow quantity. And hopefully the fates will not conspire to keep me away from this goal. And by "the fates," I mean waiting to load a video of "Boogie Boogie Hedgehog" until the internet fails for the night.
(that hedgehog scrunching up his face eating a carrot is just as adorable in Africa)
I think I might count this for my paragraph for the day, since I've still got a thesis funding application to write. Because I just can't get enough of the sweet sweet Kenya, but I've had more than enough of the sweet sweet airfares to Africa. But, there will be more, I promise you that.
p.s. pictures soon.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
AAAAAAHHH (or linkety-link-link pretend I wrote stuff)
Time for excuses... I haven't had real internet connection in about 4 weeks, and I haven't updated in a more than 4 weeks and that is no good. I have been back at Mpala for 3 days now and I haven't posted anything yet, but in my defense, I've been kept quite busy making power points (I'm getting pretty awesome at making powerpoints) and crashing through bushes trying to gather data about dik diks for a final project. The most information I've gotten is that dik diks have a wonderful ability to look at you from 50m away with a withering glance that says, "I hope you're being ironic, because if you think that a big lumbering ape like you is getting close enough to see what I'm doing, that's just pathetic", and bound away like they've got trampoline shoes. But it's all ok, because I switched from an observational approach to experimental; I destroyed all of their latrines, and switched out the scent-marked sticks in one of their territories with sticks from two other territories. And tomorrow morning we'll see who's the big lumbering ape... well, still me, because I used my opposable ape thumbs to shovel dirt all over your middens and move your furniture around. Although it's not as hilarious as what Sam did. (Any readers from Sam's blog, ask him what he did.)
Anyway, I can direct you to two things I wrote were posted on the interblags for me, both of which include a picture of me holding Sondai, the late great baby ostrich.
Mom, can I get an ostrich?
Ok, so, in two days I will be halfway done with my semester here, and I will also have my first real day off since Feb. 22. And then I will put up those things I said I would write, that I've sort-of worked on. A little. And also about 1200 photos of beautiful things and not-so-beautiful things, and a CRAZY SNAKE THAT FELL FROM THE GRASS THATCH ROOF IN A DEATH COIL AROUND A MOUSE ONTO A TABLE A FOOT AWAY FROM ME.
Get excited.
Anyway, I can direct you to two things I wrote were posted on the interblags for me, both of which include a picture of me holding Sondai, the late great baby ostrich.
Mom, can I get an ostrich?
Ok, so, in two days I will be halfway done with my semester here, and I will also have my first real day off since Feb. 22. And then I will put up those things I said I would write, that I've sort-of worked on. A little. And also about 1200 photos of beautiful things and not-so-beautiful things, and a CRAZY SNAKE THAT FELL FROM THE GRASS THATCH ROOF IN A DEATH COIL AROUND A MOUSE ONTO A TABLE A FOOT AWAY FROM ME.
Get excited.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Last Bastion of Colonialism
There are some interesting elements of land-ownership in the Laikipia district. In Nanyuki (the closest town, probably a 15-minute drive on paved roads but a 1.5 hour drive on the roads that exist) and the surrounding areas, it's just about what I expect from a modern developing country: locally-owned stores, houses and small farms. Along the edges are grazing commons where people herd their cows, goats, sheep, and dairy camels (I want to try camel milk before I leave). But smack-dab in the middle of the district are a bunch of ranches owned by white folks from foreign countries. Now, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, especially for the wildlife; if the owners of the land have an outside source of income, like research or tourism, and don't need to make a living off of their cattle, they won't be grazing the land to death. It just has an odd feel of some sort of modern colonialism. We had our first direct contact with this when we went to talk to the ranch manager, Mike.
We visited Mike to get his opinion on some of the short studies we were thinking of doing for our first course here. Mike is a white Kenyan gentleman, whose family has lived in the area for generations, and has an old cattleman's intimate knowledge of the land. Of course, what first set the mood for the meeting was not Mike, but the ranch house. While pretty much all of the landscape is dry, patchy grass, shrubby trees, and dust of various colors, as we pulled up the long driveway to the ranch house we passed rows of blooming bougainvillea and parked our car under the shade of a 30-foot tall tree, which, in our absence, gently dropped tiny blossoms through the sunroof onto the canvas seats. There was a green lawn, and a garden of well-watered tropical flowers. We met Mike, and it was hard to know what to make of him. He had a British accent, so of course he demanded respect, and he invited us to sit on the veranda and chat. He lit a cigarette, took one puff, and then let it burn down like incense between his two fingers as he talked. He called in Swahili to a servant, who brought out a platter with a full tea service. It was like we had been spliced into a scene from an old movie.
In the last three weeks I've seen even more of this outside of Laikipia: after camping out by a river and spending a night in an... interesting hotel (more about that later), we stayed on an estate owned by Lord and Lady Delamere and were treated to the aristocratic hospitality of the ranch manager and his wife. In the last year they've been making major efforts to turn the land from a private ranch to a conservancy that takes community needs into account, but it's a very new project. Mike, too, expressed concern for the needs of the community around the ranch, talking about his upcoming project to build a system to catch rain from the roof of the school so the children would have access to drinking water there. It's definitely not old school, land-grabbing, culture-enforcing, white-man's-burden colonialism, but still-- they are wealthy white people who manage extensive fenced areas, and they've got that long British drawl and serve tea all the time.
One of my pet hobbies here is deciding how animals seem like people I know, but I have a sort of reversed feeling for Mike. He is weathered and tough, somewhat intimidating but really pretty tame, and he reminds me of a rhino. And like a rhino, he seems like a relic of Africa's past that nearly became extinct, but is being brought back, slightly altered, by conservation.
We visited Mike to get his opinion on some of the short studies we were thinking of doing for our first course here. Mike is a white Kenyan gentleman, whose family has lived in the area for generations, and has an old cattleman's intimate knowledge of the land. Of course, what first set the mood for the meeting was not Mike, but the ranch house. While pretty much all of the landscape is dry, patchy grass, shrubby trees, and dust of various colors, as we pulled up the long driveway to the ranch house we passed rows of blooming bougainvillea and parked our car under the shade of a 30-foot tall tree, which, in our absence, gently dropped tiny blossoms through the sunroof onto the canvas seats. There was a green lawn, and a garden of well-watered tropical flowers. We met Mike, and it was hard to know what to make of him. He had a British accent, so of course he demanded respect, and he invited us to sit on the veranda and chat. He lit a cigarette, took one puff, and then let it burn down like incense between his two fingers as he talked. He called in Swahili to a servant, who brought out a platter with a full tea service. It was like we had been spliced into a scene from an old movie.
In the last three weeks I've seen even more of this outside of Laikipia: after camping out by a river and spending a night in an... interesting hotel (more about that later), we stayed on an estate owned by Lord and Lady Delamere and were treated to the aristocratic hospitality of the ranch manager and his wife. In the last year they've been making major efforts to turn the land from a private ranch to a conservancy that takes community needs into account, but it's a very new project. Mike, too, expressed concern for the needs of the community around the ranch, talking about his upcoming project to build a system to catch rain from the roof of the school so the children would have access to drinking water there. It's definitely not old school, land-grabbing, culture-enforcing, white-man's-burden colonialism, but still-- they are wealthy white people who manage extensive fenced areas, and they've got that long British drawl and serve tea all the time.
One of my pet hobbies here is deciding how animals seem like people I know, but I have a sort of reversed feeling for Mike. He is weathered and tough, somewhat intimidating but really pretty tame, and he reminds me of a rhino. And like a rhino, he seems like a relic of Africa's past that nearly became extinct, but is being brought back, slightly altered, by conservation.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Spoilers
So, for the last few days I've been in an awkward position, blog-wise. I saw SO many things that I wanted to talk about in so little time, that when I sat down to write about it I felt I couldn't really do justice to any one topic or experience, and in trying to summarize everything I started writing a "What I did over Summer break"-type essay, which was boring for me to write, so I knew it would be boring for people to read. So I didn't get around to writing it, and I would have ideas for compact, manageable posts that I would write once I got this one post out of the way, but it wouldn't get out of the way... anyhow, I've finally just put out That One Post, and I now offer promises of things to come.
Subjects/titles of next 7 posts:
Subjects/titles of next 7 posts:
- Last Bastion of Colonialism
- In Which the Honeymoon is Over and I am Seeking an Annulment
- What I Am Actually Doing Here
- Sundowners
- Ndofu
- Sarah Knows Her $#!%
- Starstruck
First Few Days
Monday was the first day we actually stepped out into the African savannah. Corinna, the instructor for our first course, drove us around the southwest end of what now seems to me to be the very large Mpala territory. The places we stopped gave us a good feel for the different microclimates and plant/animal communities
We went down to Hippo Pool, where there was a colony of penguins, and we saw one get eaten by a leopard seal. Actually, there was a big group of hippos, and nobody got eaten. Of all the animals I've seen, I think the hippos have the most attractive lifestyle. They spend all day taking a relaxing soak in the water, they get up at night to eat a bit, and if anyone tries to disturb this pattern, the hippos maul the hell out of them. Around the pool were tall Yellow Fever trees. Although the Yellow Fever tree grows in other places, it only reaches a shrub height of about 7 feet, similar to most other trees, because savannah trees are caringly pruned by giraffes, elephants, and any other browser that can get its teeth beyond the fierce barrier of thorns on its branches. Elephants sometimes get so involved in their topiary design that they knock the trees completely over, and then, artistically frustrated, abandon their project. At Hippo Pool, either because there is enough water for them to shoot up quickly, or because elephants won't graze down trees next to the water because they're harder to reach, or maybe the hippos chase everything else away, there are really tall trees right by the water. In one of the trees we saw a family of baboons, and there were also a bunch of birds whose names I don't quite remember. A little ways away from the river's edge was a big clearing where just about every savannah ungulate at some point went to graze, or at least to relieve their bowels. I'm beginning to see why so many field studies involve fecal samples: the stuff is everywhere, just asking to be analyzed. We also saw a warthog in the clearing. There was no meerkat or baby lion by his side.
We went to an old boma site, an open glade that is particularly fertile because herders used to keep their cattle there at night, and the cattle trampled down the area and thoroughly fertilized it during their stay. We drove up a hill to a high, very flat plateau which was covered in a mix of grass and shrubby acacia trees. The road we drove on at the top of the plateau was actually an airstrip, and was about as wide as a four-lane highway. From the airstrip we saw some very sleek antelope and some larger hartebeest grazing a good distance away. This is becoming a bit of a laundry list of sites with different soil and plant compositions which host certain typical animals. I'm not going to give summaries of all of them now, but if they are actually interesting you can count on hearing about them later. One last sighting from Monday: we caught a glimpse of elephants through a lot of bushes, but not enough for it to count as a real elephant encounter.
Tuesday we spent more time looking at sites that were definitely not ideal places to look for wildlife. We drove along a road that is used by community members to drive their cattle from one side of Mpala to the other, which also took us to the drier northern half of Mpala land. The roadsides grew increasingly barren, turning from overgrazed grassy patches to larger and larger stretches of bare dust. Euphorbia-- a tall, succulent tree, the African analog of cactus-- began to take the place of acacia scrubs. There were some insects and evidence of dik diks there (they create middens, which are designated pooping areas, which are pretty clear evidence of dik dik presence), and plenty of evidence for cows, but it didn't seem anything like a thriving savannah habitat.
My impression of the land on Monday was strikingly different from that on Tuesday: on Monday it seemed idyllic and on Tuesday it was bleak. Now having seen even more of the park and having re-visited some of the areas we saw Monday, I'm not sure if it was really the differences in the landscape itself that created those impressions, or the way I looked at the landscape. On Monday, it was wild savannah territory, where we could see Real Wild Animals, and if it was dusty, that was because it was the dry season, and if there were buildings or livestock, well, that was all a part of savannah life, and they really don't do much to the Wild Animals. Then, on Tuesday, it was ugly, degraded land where cattle ruin everything. There is truth and error in both of those outlooks (as we've discussed extensively in class), but anyway you see it, the area is certainly an interesting place with a lot going on, for better or for worse.
We went down to Hippo Pool, where there was a colony of penguins, and we saw one get eaten by a leopard seal. Actually, there was a big group of hippos, and nobody got eaten. Of all the animals I've seen, I think the hippos have the most attractive lifestyle. They spend all day taking a relaxing soak in the water, they get up at night to eat a bit, and if anyone tries to disturb this pattern, the hippos maul the hell out of them. Around the pool were tall Yellow Fever trees. Although the Yellow Fever tree grows in other places, it only reaches a shrub height of about 7 feet, similar to most other trees, because savannah trees are caringly pruned by giraffes, elephants, and any other browser that can get its teeth beyond the fierce barrier of thorns on its branches. Elephants sometimes get so involved in their topiary design that they knock the trees completely over, and then, artistically frustrated, abandon their project. At Hippo Pool, either because there is enough water for them to shoot up quickly, or because elephants won't graze down trees next to the water because they're harder to reach, or maybe the hippos chase everything else away, there are really tall trees right by the water. In one of the trees we saw a family of baboons, and there were also a bunch of birds whose names I don't quite remember. A little ways away from the river's edge was a big clearing where just about every savannah ungulate at some point went to graze, or at least to relieve their bowels. I'm beginning to see why so many field studies involve fecal samples: the stuff is everywhere, just asking to be analyzed. We also saw a warthog in the clearing. There was no meerkat or baby lion by his side.
We went to an old boma site, an open glade that is particularly fertile because herders used to keep their cattle there at night, and the cattle trampled down the area and thoroughly fertilized it during their stay. We drove up a hill to a high, very flat plateau which was covered in a mix of grass and shrubby acacia trees. The road we drove on at the top of the plateau was actually an airstrip, and was about as wide as a four-lane highway. From the airstrip we saw some very sleek antelope and some larger hartebeest grazing a good distance away. This is becoming a bit of a laundry list of sites with different soil and plant compositions which host certain typical animals. I'm not going to give summaries of all of them now, but if they are actually interesting you can count on hearing about them later. One last sighting from Monday: we caught a glimpse of elephants through a lot of bushes, but not enough for it to count as a real elephant encounter.
Tuesday we spent more time looking at sites that were definitely not ideal places to look for wildlife. We drove along a road that is used by community members to drive their cattle from one side of Mpala to the other, which also took us to the drier northern half of Mpala land. The roadsides grew increasingly barren, turning from overgrazed grassy patches to larger and larger stretches of bare dust. Euphorbia-- a tall, succulent tree, the African analog of cactus-- began to take the place of acacia scrubs. There were some insects and evidence of dik diks there (they create middens, which are designated pooping areas, which are pretty clear evidence of dik dik presence), and plenty of evidence for cows, but it didn't seem anything like a thriving savannah habitat.
My impression of the land on Monday was strikingly different from that on Tuesday: on Monday it seemed idyllic and on Tuesday it was bleak. Now having seen even more of the park and having re-visited some of the areas we saw Monday, I'm not sure if it was really the differences in the landscape itself that created those impressions, or the way I looked at the landscape. On Monday, it was wild savannah territory, where we could see Real Wild Animals, and if it was dusty, that was because it was the dry season, and if there were buildings or livestock, well, that was all a part of savannah life, and they really don't do much to the Wild Animals. Then, on Tuesday, it was ugly, degraded land where cattle ruin everything. There is truth and error in both of those outlooks (as we've discussed extensively in class), but anyway you see it, the area is certainly an interesting place with a lot going on, for better or for worse.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Long description of a long distance travelled
ed. note: this is post-dated. I started writing after getting into Mpala, but I was tired and fell asleep before finishing it.
We drove from Nairobi to Mpala today. Most of the length of the drive was through fairly populated areas, and in many ways that landscape seemed familiar. Along the highway were the sorts of buildings you might find on a back road in San Martin, a very small town near Morgan Hill: lots of fruit stands (here, selling fresh mangoes and bananas. I had a delicious mango for breakfast this morning, although I didn't get it from a stand) and old wooden buildings (although in CA they would usually be abandoned farm/orchard buildings, and here they are stores and churches and restaurants and homes, which are clearly not abandoned). The plants and the soil near Nairobi reminded me of Hawaii, in a vague way. The landscape was tropical, but clearly home to lots of people, and vehicles. The hand-painted signs on stores and the markets made from improvised materials was a lot like Mexico, as were the large number of people travelling around by foot. After about an hour of driving, we were out of the urban/suburban area. While there was a lot of agriculture in Nairobi and the surrounding area- plots of corn and banana trees were tucked into most of the available space, and there were large fields of coffee along the roadside- this land was more used for grazing. At one point it seemed that the terrain was pretty much indistinguishable from some parts of California: lots of rolling hills and some flat fields covered in brown grass, sometimes crossed by fences or railroads.
While there were definitely aspects of scenery in these areas that were distinctly African, like the signs in Swahili or the ubiquitous ads for Safaricom, the number one Kenyan phone service, these parts of the drive did not seem that foreign to me, or if it was foreign, a sort of usual type of foreign. Once we entered Nanyuki, however, and left the highway for dirt roads, things did start to change.
For one thing, we started seeing weird animals. Well, first the landscape was different. You could see more shrubs in the far-away grasslands, and more of the sort of plants you would associate with the Lion King rather than a nearby abandoned field. Then we saw zebras. It was like noticing cows on a nearby hill from your car, but they were striped. And they were zebras.
As we kept driving, the shrub cover moved in closer to the road, and you could imagine travel photos looking like the view from the comvee up the dirt road. For the most part, the only animals we could see were cattle and goats, but it seemed much more conceivable that there might be a giraffe. And then Josephine saw a giraffe. I squealed like a 15-year-old being introduced to [insert male pop-star here. Or the twilight guy]. I didn't get any pictures, since we were in a moving vehicle, but there was definitely a giraffe.
Pretty soon we entered into wholesale savannah. There were acacias and big rock formations, and an electric fence to keep the rhinos in (or out, depending on whether you're an optimist or pessimist). We saw a herd of impala, a few antelope, two cape buffalo, and one dik dik, which is a ridiculously cute, amusingly small deer (deer-chibi, if you will) that I will probably mention frequently. The drive from Nanyuki to Mpala was long, since we were on very bumpy dirt roads, but it was in no way boring. We all had our faces up against the windows, taking in the scenery and searching the landscape for other animals. Well, I did, but as a consequence I can't really speak for Sam or Jo. Our driver was very friendly and accomodating, stopping for us to gawk at the pretty commonplace impala and antelope, and telling us about the landmarks we passed.
Mpala research center was everything I hoped for, and more. As soon as we got there they fed us. The area is open, and the buildings blend in well with the surrounding vegetation. While Nairobi was permeated with the unpleasant hydrocarbon smell of exhaust and burning charcoal, Mpala just smells like the outdoors. Our housing accommodations are lovely. Josephine and I share a 7-person suite, and Sam has one all to himself. There are indoor toilets and mosquito nets and the keys are the old-fashioned rod-and-flaps-of-metal type that they use in cartoon prisons. I finally feel legitimately excited to start my semester here, not just an excited mix of anxiety, uncertainty, confusion, doubt and disbelief.
We drove from Nairobi to Mpala today. Most of the length of the drive was through fairly populated areas, and in many ways that landscape seemed familiar. Along the highway were the sorts of buildings you might find on a back road in San Martin, a very small town near Morgan Hill: lots of fruit stands (here, selling fresh mangoes and bananas. I had a delicious mango for breakfast this morning, although I didn't get it from a stand) and old wooden buildings (although in CA they would usually be abandoned farm/orchard buildings, and here they are stores and churches and restaurants and homes, which are clearly not abandoned). The plants and the soil near Nairobi reminded me of Hawaii, in a vague way. The landscape was tropical, but clearly home to lots of people, and vehicles. The hand-painted signs on stores and the markets made from improvised materials was a lot like Mexico, as were the large number of people travelling around by foot. After about an hour of driving, we were out of the urban/suburban area. While there was a lot of agriculture in Nairobi and the surrounding area- plots of corn and banana trees were tucked into most of the available space, and there were large fields of coffee along the roadside- this land was more used for grazing. At one point it seemed that the terrain was pretty much indistinguishable from some parts of California: lots of rolling hills and some flat fields covered in brown grass, sometimes crossed by fences or railroads.
While there were definitely aspects of scenery in these areas that were distinctly African, like the signs in Swahili or the ubiquitous ads for Safaricom, the number one Kenyan phone service, these parts of the drive did not seem that foreign to me, or if it was foreign, a sort of usual type of foreign. Once we entered Nanyuki, however, and left the highway for dirt roads, things did start to change.
For one thing, we started seeing weird animals. Well, first the landscape was different. You could see more shrubs in the far-away grasslands, and more of the sort of plants you would associate with the Lion King rather than a nearby abandoned field. Then we saw zebras. It was like noticing cows on a nearby hill from your car, but they were striped. And they were zebras.
As we kept driving, the shrub cover moved in closer to the road, and you could imagine travel photos looking like the view from the comvee up the dirt road. For the most part, the only animals we could see were cattle and goats, but it seemed much more conceivable that there might be a giraffe. And then Josephine saw a giraffe. I squealed like a 15-year-old being introduced to [insert male pop-star here. Or the twilight guy]. I didn't get any pictures, since we were in a moving vehicle, but there was definitely a giraffe.
Pretty soon we entered into wholesale savannah. There were acacias and big rock formations, and an electric fence to keep the rhinos in (or out, depending on whether you're an optimist or pessimist). We saw a herd of impala, a few antelope, two cape buffalo, and one dik dik, which is a ridiculously cute, amusingly small deer (deer-chibi, if you will) that I will probably mention frequently. The drive from Nanyuki to Mpala was long, since we were on very bumpy dirt roads, but it was in no way boring. We all had our faces up against the windows, taking in the scenery and searching the landscape for other animals. Well, I did, but as a consequence I can't really speak for Sam or Jo. Our driver was very friendly and accomodating, stopping for us to gawk at the pretty commonplace impala and antelope, and telling us about the landmarks we passed.
Mpala research center was everything I hoped for, and more. As soon as we got there they fed us. The area is open, and the buildings blend in well with the surrounding vegetation. While Nairobi was permeated with the unpleasant hydrocarbon smell of exhaust and burning charcoal, Mpala just smells like the outdoors. Our housing accommodations are lovely. Josephine and I share a 7-person suite, and Sam has one all to himself. There are indoor toilets and mosquito nets and the keys are the old-fashioned rod-and-flaps-of-metal type that they use in cartoon prisons. I finally feel legitimately excited to start my semester here, not just an excited mix of anxiety, uncertainty, confusion, doubt and disbelief.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Travel Accounts
In the last 24 hours, which seems like 32 hours because of the time changes, I've been through 3 airports, flew over hundreds of miles of ocean, hundreds of miles of desert, and hundreds of miles of who knows what else (well, I could be a bio geek and say some of what else: temperate deciduous forest, chapparel, savannah, desert riparian zone, tropical grassland).
I saw probably tens of thousands of people (and one cat), and overheard 3 identifiable languages that are not English (German, French, Swahili. There was also a Scottish stewardess on the plane who had a very heavy brogue and was mocked constantly by the other stewardess). I was chatted up (briefly, thankfully) by 1 drunk air passenger with 0 hairs on his head but 2 very thick muttonchops, who was going to Tanzania but had gotten 0 shots. Also, I accidentally took candy from 1 stranger (the guy who sat in front of me offered pieces of gum to everyone around, and I took it before I realized that what I just did was a cardinal sin).
I checked 46 kg of luggage, saw 5 in-flight movies, lost 0 items, and only freaked out because I thought I had lost my passport once.
Tomorrow, I'll be on a 3-hour drive up to the research center, and then we actually start learning stuff!
I put up new photos- they were taken from my (business class! I lucked out!) window seat on the plane ride from London to Nairobi. I tended to favor shots of coasts because it was easier to tell where we were (I was also helped by the cool little journey tracker screen BA has on the backs of all the chairs.
The first is off the coast of France, the second might be Paris, the third is the Alps, the fourth some island off the coast of Italy, the fifth is the first sight of Africa, and the last four are all just shots over the Sahara. The polka-dots are circles of irrigated land. It got dark before I could get any shots of non-Saharan Africa, but I did include a picture of the sunset.
Now, I'm going to sleep.
I saw probably tens of thousands of people (and one cat), and overheard 3 identifiable languages that are not English (German, French, Swahili. There was also a Scottish stewardess on the plane who had a very heavy brogue and was mocked constantly by the other stewardess). I was chatted up (briefly, thankfully) by 1 drunk air passenger with 0 hairs on his head but 2 very thick muttonchops, who was going to Tanzania but had gotten 0 shots. Also, I accidentally took candy from 1 stranger (the guy who sat in front of me offered pieces of gum to everyone around, and I took it before I realized that what I just did was a cardinal sin).
I checked 46 kg of luggage, saw 5 in-flight movies, lost 0 items, and only freaked out because I thought I had lost my passport once.
Tomorrow, I'll be on a 3-hour drive up to the research center, and then we actually start learning stuff!
I put up new photos- they were taken from my (business class! I lucked out!) window seat on the plane ride from London to Nairobi. I tended to favor shots of coasts because it was easier to tell where we were (I was also helped by the cool little journey tracker screen BA has on the backs of all the chairs.
The first is off the coast of France, the second might be Paris, the third is the Alps, the fourth some island off the coast of Italy, the fifth is the first sight of Africa, and the last four are all just shots over the Sahara. The polka-dots are circles of irrigated land. It got dark before I could get any shots of non-Saharan Africa, but I did include a picture of the sunset.
Now, I'm going to sleep.
Monday, January 26, 2009
So You're Running Away to Africa...
...will you be blogging about it?
It's a travel blog. I'll try to post photo albums weekly, and publish entries more frequently than that. We'll see how that goes... 'nuff said.
Right now I am not traveling, I am still on campus hurriedly preparing to leave, which is to say, sleeping a lot and watching all of the internet TV I can before I lose the amazingly high-speed University wireless. I'm also reviewing the Swahili I learned last year (off the top of my head, I can only remember how to say I come from California and I like to go to the Wawa), and getting really excited about the crazy animals in my Behavior Guide to African Mammals. Civit? Tree Hyrax? Aardwolf? Awesome!
I'll be flying out on Friday, and may update around Sunday. Until then, I won't really have anything substantial to say about anything other than New Jersey weather or British Airways, and that's not what you all come here for.
It's a travel blog. I'll try to post photo albums weekly, and publish entries more frequently than that. We'll see how that goes... 'nuff said.
Right now I am not traveling, I am still on campus hurriedly preparing to leave, which is to say, sleeping a lot and watching all of the internet TV I can before I lose the amazingly high-speed University wireless. I'm also reviewing the Swahili I learned last year (off the top of my head, I can only remember how to say I come from California and I like to go to the Wawa), and getting really excited about the crazy animals in my Behavior Guide to African Mammals. Civit? Tree Hyrax? Aardwolf? Awesome!
I'll be flying out on Friday, and may update around Sunday. Until then, I won't really have anything substantial to say about anything other than New Jersey weather or British Airways, and that's not what you all come here for.
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