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.