One Snare Trap at a Time

22 December 2008

Today starts out like any other day.

6:00 The alarm goes off, I get up, get ready, pack a lunch, make coffee, eat breakfast, quick check my email.

7:21 The assistants show up more or less on time. I show them the Christmas tree my mom left; they are quick to point out that Santa looks like he is wearing gumboots. Then they want their picture taken with it. We have a good laugh and the whole thing puts me in really high spirits.

I go back to my coffee and enter yesterday’s data for the next hour and a half. There is quite a lot considering we only had three people working. Erick did 8 follows, Charles had 9, and I did 11 – it was one of my best days data wise, I was with the group for 7 hours and collected 5.5 hours of actual data.

9:00 I leave the house, it’s my turn to go to Gs, the farthest and least favorite group of everyone. This is the group that split recently presumably due to pressure from poaching so there is double the searching. I have already decided to go straight to Gsb unless I pass Gsa on Farm Road. I don’t so I do.

9:58 I turn off Bis Road and enter the cypress and pine plantation that Gsb has claimed as their new home, ironically located closer to the village where the poachers come from.

10:01 I spot something, I stop, my heart starts beating faster. It is always unnerving to find evidence of other people in the forest, I know they are here, I run into them more than I would like. But this, this wasn’t left here, this was constructed, it has a purpose. It finally registers; this is a trap, a snare trap meant to catch a monkey. I have come across skeletons of other traps that sit forgotten in the forest undergrowth. But this one is new and baited. Someone put a lot of time, planning, and effort into its construction. And it is actually quite impressive.

In front of me are about 15 spears stuck into the ground so they form a teepee a meter high with an opening. There are a couple of maize cobs and many loose kernels inside. Around the teepee maize stalks with ears still attached are positioned more or less in a circle, drawing the victim to the center.

I know there is a wire and I pull one of the stalks out and apply pressure near the opening, the wire snaps and flies up so fast I can’t even react. Any chance of my heartbeat slowing down is lost at this point.

There is no doubt in my mind they would have caught a monkey if I hadn’t found this first. Now I am just angry and I happily set about the task of destroying everything. I collect all the maize cobs - later I will laugh when I open my bag and it is full of maize and then will give it to Charles for his chickens, but for now I don’t want the monkeys attracted to this area and I don’t want them to develop a taste for maize, because I assume they, unlike the other groups, have never actually encountered it, as their territory is nowhere near a field. I take down the wire and I go in search of the group.

10:37 I stop again. Something shiny and a sapling cut off at my knee catch my eye. A wire. Another trap, this one for something walking along the trail. A person? A monkey watcher? Me? I am suddenly frightened and feel like my every move is being watched. I disassemble it and take the wire.

11:08 Another wire on the trail. Now I am on the south side of the plantation, I made a circle and am returning to the southwest corner where I entered. I am starting to freak out, no monkeys, three traps.

11:26 I hear them before I see them, the snap snap snap of twigs being broken: young boys collecting firewood. I make sure they see me before I approach, I don’t want them to run off and I frequently have that effect on people I encounter in the forest. Through the oldest of the boys’ broken English and my minimal Swahili we manage to communicate. I show him the wires I have collected.

“Julie puts those for monkeys and gazelles,” he informs me.

I am confused because I have never seen nor heard of any gazelle in the forest.

“Wapi?” I ask.

He points northwest and tells me the name of a village I will forget five minutes after our conversation. I feel like I should lecture him about how wrong this is but he beats me to it and tells me how bad he thinks it is. I wonder if he is a regular at the environmental ed’s Saturday program. It doesn’t matter where he learned it, he gets it, and I start to feel better.

11:31 As I am walking away, it dawns on me what he means by gazelles. We are supposed to have duikers here; small solitary antelope that hide in dense brush. The wire traps are for them not me, now I just feel like an idiot, but if I had been running down the trail monkey gazing I probably would have gotten caught around the ankle and fallen flat on my face regardless of the trapper’s intentions.

12:09 Still no sign of the group, I give up. As I am about to take a step out of the protective cover of trees onto the hot dusty stretch of Bis Road I hear people on the road so I let them pass. And out of the corner of my eye I see movement and there is Pody. Then Buzz, Soft, Bilbo, and BB. I can’t believe it. BB is my highest priority for the midday so I start a follow on her. Then Milo shows his face.

12:47 Done with BB and no sign of the other two. I finally see Gigi on the edge of the group, she is my next priority so I begin a follow on her and nine minutes into it NS appears. Roll call is complete, all the monkeys are accounted for, Gsb lives to see another day. To the people hunting them these are just monkeys but to me they are individuals, they have unique personalities, family ties, and friendships amongst themselves, not to mention we have collected countless hours of data on them. I am overcome with the urge to sweep them up in a protective embrace and hold them there forever.

14:10 My day is nearly over, I haven’t had time to eat my lunch and I still have yet to locate Gsa, the larger of the two groups. I leave Gsb farther north in the cypress than I have ever been with them and I head down Bis Road, meet up with Farm Road and start searching when I enter Gsa territory. Nothing in the Bis plantation, the Exotic Forest is empty, can’t see anything in the Grevilia plantation. Gsa should be easier to find simply because they are bigger but their territory is enormous. I go up Cow Highway to Trail 4 and Trail 1, still nothing so I loop around and come back down Farm Road to search the Pac trails.

15:53 I take a shortcut trail from Pac to Pac+1 and find the trail ends at a felled tree. I crash out to Rondo Road. Some graffiti on a stump catches my eye.

“I don’t write just anyhowly. Also, I’m not a racist.” I don’t know what to make of it.

Suddenly I am aware of a lorry slowing down as it nears me.

“Polepole,” the driver says through the rolled down window, him and his companion flash me a smile.

I just nod and wave. It occurs to me they are slowing down as they pass to prevent covering me with a cloud of dust. Nice, but utterly useless at this point, I am sweaty, smelly, and already covered from head to toe with a layer of filth. I manage to locate Pac+1 relatively quickly considering how overgrown the trailhead has become and continue my search.

15:36 A grunt on Cow Highway and Trail 4 causes me to look up and there is Andy. Where was she when I passed this intersection an hour ago? Since I didn’t take a lunch break my day should end at four and it is quickly approaching, I begin frantically searching for a priority and adding individuals to my roll call. The only females I can find are Jig and Angle and they are both on my not list for the pm.

16:04 I can’t leave yet, I have only seen a handful of the group and still have no follows. I see movement off the trail, then I spot Agnes so I promptly start a follow. She forces me to bushwhack and I quickly loose track of Trail 4, but I see Agro, Cider, and Chaos in the process.

16:40 I am not as far off the trail as I thought. My roll call is nowhere near complete but I am beat, physically and emotionally exhausted, it’s time to go home. As I walk down Station Road back towards the village I think about the events of this morning, it feels like it happened days ago. I am a mix of emotions over it, excited to show the assistants what I found, slightly embarrassed I was starting to think the poachers were out to get me, and ready to plead my case to the forester: we need guards patrolling that area more often than they do...which is never. Now I have evidence to prove it.

Kenya-month 6

Finally the day came, November 8^th. My mom, Mo and Jackie had arrived in Nairobi the night before and I left first thing in the morning to make the 10-hour trip by matatu.

My first matatu was so full I didn’t think they could fit me in, but they did - standing half bent over with a stranger’s rear end in my face, that’s how I rode for the first hour. After that my matatu rides were as comfortable as one can get in a matatu. And by early evening I was in Nairobi pounding on the gate at the guesthouse. I could hear my mom searching for someone to let me in and then Mo’s laughter. Those last five minutes waiting at the gate felt like they lasted forever, then finally familiar faces and I was smothered with hugs and it felt great.

Sunday we spent in Nairobi visiting the Giraffe Centre, David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust elephant and rhino orphanage, and the Karen Blixen Museum.

First thing Monday we left for our seven-day camping safari. The whole first day we bumped along on our way to Samburu and Buffalo Springs National Reserves. We arrived at dusk and were welcomed by an enormous bull elephant. We spent two nights in Samburu and saw many of the more rare and localized species including reticulated giraffes, Grevy’s zebras, gerenuks - gazelles that feed standing on their hind legs, and oryx.

Wednesday we spent another full day driving and by the time we made it to Lake Baringo, in the Rift Valley, the sun was already setting. We pitched our tents not far from the lakeshore, the same lakeshore the hippos use as nightly feeding grounds. As soon as we got into our tents for the night the hippos started conversing loudly. There were no actual hippo sightings on shore but they sounded close, really really close.

Then it was off to Lake Bogoria and Lake Nakuru. Both are famous for the tens to sometimes hundreds of thousands of flamingos that frequent their waters. Bogoria is a small, rarely visited, saline lake with erupting hot springs. Nakuru is a soda lake located just outside Kenya’s fourth largest city by the same name. Of all the places visited, Nakuru was my favorite. The assortment of animals congregating at the lake’s edge was spectacular: white rhino, zebra, waterbuck, pelicans, flamingos, marabou storks, spotted hyenas, and cape buffalo. Not to mention the baboons on the cliffs above the lake.

After that we headed for our final destination, the Masai Mara National Reserve. And another full day of driving, this time on slightly better roads. The Masai Mara is considered the best animal reserve in all of Kenya. Before entering the reserve we were presented with an amazing sight, a group of more than 40 Maasai giraffes migrating in a seemingly endless line of legs and necks.

Here we saw our first lions - although we heard some in Samburu - adding to our list the fourth and final of the “Big Five” we would see. The “Big Five” is a phrase that was coined by big-game hunters and refers to the most dangerous and hardest of the African animals to hunt: lion, elephant, cape buffalo, rhinoceros, and leopard. The leopard was the only specimen lacking from our own “big-game hunt.”

My roommate had gone on a safari with the same company a couple months earlier and she complained they never stopped for the baboons. I know that the primates are not what draw people to Kenya, and compared with the larger more impressive animals out there I really can’t argue, but primates are what brought me here. We did stop for the baboons as often as we saw them, probably because of me - making people appreciate monkeys, that’s what I do best.

Next on our tour of Kenya was the Lamu Archipelago. Famous for its Swahili culture, laid-back atmosphere, and donkeys, the islands are located off the coast near the Somalian border. Jackie and I went to witness a sea turtle hatching on Manda Island; between two nests we saw 208 hatchlings. It was incredible. Also included on our list of things to do while there was nothing, and I think we accomplished that quite successfully, along with a lot of shopping.

Then it was back to Western Kenya. In Kisumu we rented a car and I drove the sixty some kilometers back to Kakamega, dodging potholes and avoiding crazy matatu drivers along the way.

It didn’t take long for word to spread in the Isecheno forest station that I was back in the forest with my guests. Ernest got word of our arrival while out on Gn group and had to run over and tell Alicia on Tws. Children I have never seen before showed up at our house for prizes and continued to congregate in the yard throughout the week.

We had a huge party for my mom’s birthday and Alicia’s going away; it was so big we needed to use both houses. The entire table was covered with our feast and I thought they would never eat it all, but I was wrong. We had mandazi, chapati, githeri, baghia, pumpkin leaves, and of course birthday cake. At the end of it all we took lots of photos and many thanks were said. As I drove the assistants home in the rental car that night they all commented on my driving skills (they were easily impressed as none of them have ever driven before), what they didn’t seem to notice was with the absence of other cars on the road I had reverted to driving on the right side.

Over the course of the trip Mo and Jackie became my other moms. And it was hard to say goodbye to my three moms when I left them in Kisumu, but I had a forest full of monkeys to return to. And things around here have changed a bit with their visit, the kids now show up every other day to play with the matchbox cars they left or ask for balloons or to just hang out. With my roommate Alicia gone now I am alone in the house, but it has been very hard to feel lonely with all of the kids running around.

Besides their visit, the big excitement in the forest lately has been the arrest of a local man for poaching snakes. He has been catching venomous snakes and sending them to the coast where presumably the venom is being extracted and used in witchcraft or exported illegally. This man is nothing but trouble and we celebrated when he was taken away. The snake that did him in was a monstrous gaboon viper. This snake was thicker than my leg, it is hard to imagine that these creatures exist in the forest and make the act of bushwhacking suddenly seem terrifying. This snake met an untimely end when it escaped from the poacher’s compound and wound up near the feet of an unsuspecting woman on her way to the latrine. The villagers said it was so big they couldn’t beat it to death so they torched it. The charred snake was haphazardly thrown into the forest near the tea field. Charles escorted me to see this beast and we met a large procession of people coming from the village to do the very same thing. I later heard Kenyan Wildlife Service went out and picked it up to use as evidence. It is a shame that such a great component of the forest here was lost, but hopefully because of it this man will be put away for a long time.

The dry season is in full swing around here, it is hot, and the monkeys are thirsty. Today I caught some drinking from unusual sources around my house. I heard a pitter patter on the roof and then a drip drip drip. I looked out the window and saw a hand on the gutter. Abe found some water in the gutter left over from the last rain. Some unidentified individuals were seen dipping their hands into a small opening on one of the tanks at the house next door, one more reason to boil water before drinking it! And Pop, a lone male, took a long drink out of my dirty laundry water. I tried to stop him but in the end he scared me more than I could scare him so I left him to enjoy his soapy water in peace. 

Kenya-month 4

We lost two females from two different groups this month. I have no idea what happened, they just disappeared. Our study revolves around the adult females, including these two, Derby and Lily. Years of data have been collected on them and now they are gone without any explanations. But that is typical when you study free-living animals and you can’t interview your research subjects, no one can tell us the last time Lily was in the group, or what happened just before Derby disappeared. And anyone who has studied primates knows that you become attached to them, no matter what you do. I know it probably doesn’t make that much of a difference to Dude, Derby’s youngest son, that she is no longer in the group, maybe he will be groomed less for now but eventually he will get too big and have to leave the group anyway. It does make me a little sad to think that he just lost his mom though (but I am quite attached to the little guy, he is just so cute).

I have my suspicions about what happened to Lily, but Derby I have no idea. It is not unusual for her to disappear for days at a time. For those of you who know Ripley (the capuchin), she reminds me a little of her, she is very strange, very wary of people, but she has the best kids. Derby had a new infant this year and back in June she disappeared for about a week. When she reappeared the infant was gone and she wasn’t using one of her legs. No one has any idea what happened to her then. So now she is gone again, and she has been missing since September 24^th. I can accept that these monkeys are inevitably going to die, and if it was due to predation, an illness or injury that is what is supposed to happen, but it is the not knowing that gets to me!

I suspect that Lily was poached. She was in the G-south group that is constantly harassed by poachers. She was last seen on the 20^th of September. I was out with the group the day after that and ran into a young boy carrying a machete and hiding something round and soft looking up his shirt. As soon as he saw me, he turned and disappeared into the forest.

This is so much harder to accept and incredibly frustrating! In a way it feels like it is my fault, I should have been there to protect them, but I know it’s not, I can’t be there all the time. I have talked to the forester about poaching in the area, the assistants have talked to the forester, and the managers before me have talked to the forester but nothing has been done. All they need to do is send a guard out there every now and then; if people start to see them out there maybe they will move on. But that isn’t really a solution either, because the hunters will just move on to other monkey groups and hunt them. So many of the tree poachers and hunters I run into out there are young children who are taught to do this by their older siblings or parents. They too will teach their children to cut down trees and hunt monkeys and it will keep going on until there is nothing left. KEEP, the environmental ed program, is doing what they can to educate young people about the forest and I think they are doing some great things but I am afraid I am not very hopeful for the future.

This group now has officially split into two, sometimes three parties and I think a big part of the reason is pressure from being hunted. Part of the group has sought out new territory. Now, this new male, Sawa, has displaced Milo, who has been in charge since earlier this year. Milo disappeared, no one ever saw a fight, we just found the group one day and Sawa was in charge. Those three same females plus two more went missing as well. Last week they were found even farther away and Milo was with them. The area they are now in is even closer to the village where all the hunters come from and yesterday four men and two dogs were seen in the vicinity. I am very worried.

That’s enough depressing news for now.

The monkeys around the village are as naughty as ever. Quack, a juvenile male, reached into my backpack the other day and stole a bag of cookies. Funny thing is, he didn’t even get to enjoy them, they were stolen from him by Durham, and then stolen from him by Purple, the largest of the juvenile males.

There is really nothing fruiting in the forest at the moment and the monkeys have all been eating leaves and fighting over a few fruiting figs. In the middle of the forest station there is a tree nursery and people collect seeds from all over the forest and lay them out to dry in large troughs. These troughs have lids and any holes are plugged with rocks and pieces of wood, but they are not monkey proof. The other day the group was in the nursery and they removed these rocks and pieces of wood, and Quack found a loose screw on the lid and completely removed it. They sat there and devoured the collected seeds.

My friend Prisca convinced me again that I needed to have my hair braided and found someone to come to the house and do it on my off day. Three painful hours later my entire head was covered with braids. All the Kenyan women in the village told me I looked very smart, I wasn’t so sure about it until I went into town on the following off day and everyone at the market gave me discounts. I only kept the braids in for about a week and it took just as long to take them out as it did to have it done. They are already planning for me to have it done again and although the discounts at the market are nice I think I might skip out on it.

There won’t be an update from me for next month as I will be on safari with my mom, Mo, and Jackie! I am really looking forward to seeing some more of Kenya. 

Kenya-month 3

This last month has gone by unbelievably fast. I have been so busy I haven’t been able to sit down and write an update until now.

I have finally finished learning all four groups, finishing with the largest earlier this month. This last group lives in the forest around the forest station and spends a great deal of their time ransacking the village. They have absolutely no fear of humans and associate them with food. People actually complain to us when the monkeys steal their food. They don’t seem to understand that by throwing their leftovers in the bushes for the monkeys to fight over they are inviting them to steal from them. It was no surprise to me when one of the juvenile males came after me for food I had in my hand. He jumped right up and grabbed my hands, trying to steal a bag from me. It really scared me. A couple days later he came after Alicia for an empty plastic shopping bag. Bad Scully. I just hope he was only coming after us because we are familiar to him, if he attacks someone in the village like that it will all be over for him.

I accidentally presented for grooming to another juvenile male in the same group. Bagi, Gandalf, and Quack found a giant beetle in dining hall at the tourist cabins. The dining hall is a big round open structure and the monkeys are always hanging out there. I peeked my head over the wall to watch and see what they were doing with the beetle and I guess with the way I positioned myself, Bagi thought I wanted to be groomed. And he did, but only for about two seconds and he quickly got bored with my shirt.

At the beginning of the month we were in the vicinity when a colobus infanticide occurred. I was able to retrieve the body immediately after and we brought it back to the house in a plastic shopping bag to do a necropsy. I later learned that everyone thought I had a giant snake in the bag when I walked through the village towards my house. They all probably think I am insane. We had to do the examination outside on the table we reserve for dead things. We moved the dog skeleton and various other skulls and bones to the ground and set up. When I came out of the house with a face-mask and gloves the neighbor boy just laughed. But I think I thoroughly frightened all the neighbors when started cutting. I hope they have more respect for me now knowing that I am armed with scalpels.

One of the study groups (the one constantly being harassed by poachers) seems to be splitting. Three of the females disappeared for almost two weeks. My first thought was that they had been poached, but one of the assistants heard from someone that there were monkeys hanging out at a nearby stream. His informant told him that there were people wanting to hunt them. I, not knowing where this stream was, decided to go and check it out for myself. Well, somehow I completely missed it and ended up far away in an extensive grassland. I heard some strange noises, went to check it out, and was faced with the biggest hairiest creature I have ever seen. It took a while to register that it was just a baboon but for a few seconds I began to wonder if I had just met the Kenyan version of Bigfoot. I knew there were baboons in the surrounding forest but have never heard nor seen them while out with the study groups. The two species don’t seem to coexist together, in this area anyway. The blue monkeys actually alarm and run from baboons.

Since my attempt at locating the females was unsuccessful, I sent some of the assistants out to do it. Within a couple hours they had found the three females plus two of their offspring and Sawa (a male but not the resident) at the stream. It is unheard of for female blue monkeys to disperse. After a week of visiting them at the stream and finding it impossible to follow them unless they cooperated and stayed visible high on the bank, they came back to the group...for a whole half a day.

Once again, those same females have left the group and Sawa seems to have persuaded more females to follow him to parts of the forest we have never been. Crazy things are happening with this group, the last time I was out with them they were in four separate parties and a group of unhabituated juveniles was associating with one of the subgroups. But there is never a dull day when you are out with them!

I ran into some jackals while out with G-north group last week. I guess they have never been seen in that area of the forest before so it is pretty exciting. This is the group that hangs out on the edge of the forest where it meets the tea field. There are always dogs coming from the village across the tea to harass the monkeys so when the blues, colobus, and redtails all started alarming I wasn’t expecting anything but. I was pleasantly surprised to see a jackal run out and pause in the corridor between the tea and forest, I think he was about as surprised to see me and quickly disappeared under the tea.

Alicia got her hair braided a couple weeks ago. One of our friends got her neighbor who was in town visiting her parents to come and do it. They convinced me that I should get my hair braided as well and we set up a time for her to come back on my next off day. She never came and I got word that she had gone home, back to her husband. Later we learned that she had in fact gone home but told her husband she was leaving him because she didn’t need him anymore and could make her own money here, braiding our hair forever, and came back. Alicia only paid her about $7 to braid her hair and I would have paid the same, there are only two of us here and we don’t really need our hair braided very often. In the end she went back to her husband and I never got my hair braided, I really didn’t even want it done in the first place.

The problems we cause and don’t even realize it.

Alicia went on vacation this week so I am alone in the house and getting a feel for what things will be like after she leaves in November. It is very very quiet, but I have a large library of DVD’s left by the last field manager to keep me company.

I talked to the postmaster about our lack of mail from the US (and other parts of the world) and he was actually pretty concerned. What is the point of paying for a P.O. box if we don’t get mail? He had me write a letter on the spot and said he would do what he could. 

Kenya-month 2

I took over the manager position about a week and a half ago. Everything is going reasonably well except for the occasional assistant who shows up an hour late. I am just scrambling to learn my remaining two groups with the hopes that things will soon settle into a routine. I have almost finished one of them but they seem to be dividing into two parties at the moment and it has become almost impossible to find them.

While I was out with one of the groups in the rain recently I came upon two poachers hunting monkeys. They must think that when it rains we are not out there. I was really glad that day I was. I had actually only found the group about 20 min before. On the road I saw a man with a sharpened stick aiming for the top of a tree. He didn’t hear me approach because of the rain but when he saw me two men and two dogs took off running. I was filled with such anger when I saw them, I wanted so bad to chase after them, but that wouldn’t have done any good. I did report it to the forester who assured me they will be patrolling that area more often and gave me his cell phone number to call incase I run into more poachers or dogs. I find it very hard to believe him.

To hunt the monkeys they trap one in the top of a tree and start throwing pointed sticks at it until it tries to move away, when it does so it comes down low and then the dogs go after it. The monkey would be ok if is just stayed up high in the tree but they get so worked up that they try to flee. In the last year about 10 monkeys in this group have gone missing. Some of the assistants have encountered poachers, Erick even told me he grappled with one, but they are still managing to take monkeys. I am sure one of the main reasons is that these monkeys are habituated and easily approachable by humans. They do seem to differentiate between monkey watchers and non-monkey watchers though, as well as different sex and age classes. They are usually not alarmed by women collecting firewood but hide from children and grown men.

While out with this same group I discovered some caves. All of the other assistants had noticed them before but no one has been curious (or crazy?) enough to actually go in them. From above you can’t see how deep they are but once you get down and take a look they aren’t too deep. The first one I ventured into was about a meter deep and had bricks all the way up the back. My first thought was buried treasure, maybe pirates of Kakamega? But it seems that it may have been a chimney of sorts. Above the bricks there is a perfect square hole. When I mentioned that there were bricks in the cave all of the assistants perked up, I still can’t believe that I was the first one to look down there. I convinced one of the assistants to check out another cave with me. This one was deeper, maybe 4 or 5 meters, and had bricks at the back of it too. But it looked like the bricks had been covered up at one point. It is all still a mystery to me, but now I have somewhere to take cover from the rain.

One of the grad students and I made a trip to Kisumu last week to visit Hippo Point and shop at the biggest grocery store around. Marina had a flight out of the Kisumu airport in the morning so she hired a taxi and we rode along. After we dropped her off the taxi driver took us out to Hippo Point, which sticks out into Lake Victoria. He had absolutely no idea where he was going and we ended up picking up a lady heading that way who directed us. We found some guys with boats on the shore for tours to see the hippos and other wildlife. They tried to charge us an outrageous amount and we eventually talked them down to something reasonable (after I walked away a couple times).

I was quite impressed by our guide, Titus. He showed us the hippos as promised, many species of birds, including numerous kingfishers, as well as a Nile monitor lizard. There were supposed to be 16 hippos in the group, although I have no idea how many I actually saw floating there in the water. The group is very habituated and we were able to get pretty close in the boat. They basically just sat there, but were very impressive nonetheless.

After that we attempted to find the craft market but it had moved since Lonely Planet published the guide to Kenya. We kept walking around a parking lot looking at our map. Finally someone informed us that the market had moved to make space for the university parking lot a couple years ago! The market is now located in an area with much less traffic and many of the vendors told us that they get a lot less business than they did before. This market was much different than the food market, where you are lucky if you can talk someone down 5 shillings. Here they say, this is what I would ask for it, what would you ask for it? A lot of the vendors sold things that were completely made out of recycled materials but the majority was soapstone carvings.

After that we went to MegaCity Nakumatt for luxuries like broccoli, cream cheese, and limes. And then made the long trip back to the forest station in a matatu followed by an hour on a boda.

At the forest station all of the poles and wires have been but up but the electricity hasn’t been installed yet. The majority of the cut trees have all been sold and the smaller ones burned for cooking. And the monkeys are now using the wires to travel across the village. I am not looking forward to the day power is finally brought here. 

Oh and I named my first monkey: Pickle. I spent three days with one of the groups and everyone told me the male was one named Sawa. Sawa means ok in Swahili. Well, everything wasn’t so sawa. I still have yet to meet Sawa. And now Pickle is hanging around with his ladies. 

Kenya-month 1

It has been awhile since my last update and I haven’t been really good at responding to emails (sorry!). I have been busy training and getting ready to start managing the field site, which I will officially do at the end of this month. I finished learning my first two groups (so I am about half way done) and hopefully will start to collect actual data soon.

I have been spending a lot of time with the G North group on the edge of the forest where it meets the tea fields. The alpha male of the group, PH, runs across the tea to the village and steals two or more ears of maize everyday. The people in the village get very angry and understandably so, but they do nothing more than yell at us about it, calling them our monkeys, telling us we should do something about it, and threatening to kill them. What they don’t understand is that killing one monkey who steals maize isn’t going to solve the problem, it will for a little while but it won’t be long before another one starts stealing crops again. In other parts of the forest there are huts next to the maize fields where someone sits and guards their crops, but that doesn’t seem to be something this village is willing to invest time doing.

A couple weeks ago we were out with GN and heard screams from across the tea and not wanting to miss the action or catching PH red handed, we turned to see an entire family come racing out and start looking for something. One of the boys reached down and pulled up a dead chicken. Watching the edge of the tea we saw a giant mongoose come running out. That was a relief; PH killing chickens would not go over so well.

A colobus monkey was killed in that same village the other day. Someone saw it happen and told someone, who told one of the assistants, who told us they claimed the monkey was raiding their crops. Colobus are not known to be crop raiders and there is a eucalyptus tree in the village that they like to feed on, which doesn’t hurt anyone. I don’t think the people differentiate between the species (except for taste and supposedly colobus don’t taste very good) and saw it in the village and thought it was a threat, probably because every time they see PH he is shoving one ear of maize under his arm and one in his mouth.

It is illegal but nothing can be done with out actual proof. It makes me angry but the other day I did actually scare off some young boys with dogs who were trying to hunt monkeys just by being me. There was a group of about 7 boys probably around 15-20 years old with three dogs and as soon as they saw me they took off running, I guess I am scary (see kids crying below for more evidence).

A couple of the other people on the project and I went on an adventure to another part of the Kakamega forest a couple weeks ago. We went in search of DeBrazza’s monkeys, which we never did see. Our guide showed up late and drunk and told us we were too late to see them. Oh well, but we did see quite a few olive baboons, an African paradise flycatcher, and some crowned cranes and he took us on a bushwhacking adventure thorough the forest. It was hard to tell if he knew where he was going or if he just kept losing the trails. We ended our hike at a waterfall on a river that runs between the forest and a nearby village. Within ten minutes news of our presence must have spread throughout the entire village because every child in the area showed up on the other side of the river to see the mzungu.

Mzungu translates as European but I gather it is simply used as non-African. Walking down the road or riding on a boda boda (bicycle taxi) people always yell, “hello mzungu, how are you?” I think ‘how are you’ is the first phrase that everyone learns and even when you answer and ask back all they say is thank you. The other day I had a young boy chase my boda down, when I looked over he said, “hello mzungu, I love you.” People get really excited, it is so strange. I think am developing a complex and will probably be depressed when I leave Kenya and no one jumps up and down and wants to know how I am when I pass by. There are some children that are scared of me though; I made a boy run off screaming and crying the other day in the forest station. Many parents tell their kids that if they are bad a mzungu will come and eat them. There is this family with a few little girls along the road we walk on to get to the monkeys; we call them the jambo girls because every time you pass by they yell jambo at least 3 times. Last year they used to run screaming whenever they saw a white person so this is a great improvement.

The other thing that I find amusing is that everyone is obsessed with Obama. There are at least two songs on the radio about him, the chorus simply goes, Barak Obama, Barak Obama. I have seen campaign posters plastered on cars as well. I was having a conversation with one of the Kenyan assistants about my skin tone and how I can’t stand in the sun for too long, we hadn’t even talked about Obama all day, but he thought for a while and came up with this out of nowhere: Obama is an African mzungu and he can survive anywhere.

Many of you already know this but I am actually writing this email from Wisconsin. My grandfather passed away recently and I made the decision to come home for the service and spend time with my family. I will only be here for about a week and then will make the long journey back to Kakamega. My journey back to the States was very long and once again it took me much longer than planned to make the trip between Kakmega and Nairobi.

I ended up having to change vehicles 7 times! I left at 6 am and missed my first matatu. Luckily there is another one that comes in the am and goes into Kakamega town so I jumped on that one and got off about halfway in a town called Shinyalu. The same man is always taking our money for the ride and I told him I missed the earlier matatu so he got off with me and found me a boda boda and even bargained with the guy for me! While I was on the boda boda we actually passed the matatu that I missed earlier and it was broken down/stuck in the mud on the side of the road, so in the end I beat it anyway. As soon as we got to the highway a matatu heading for Kisumu pulled up and I jumped on. About halfway there everyone else got off and I was the only one left, so the driver ended up paying another vehicle to take me. I got kicked out of my comfortable seat in the front and shoved in the back of a matatu that had ‘drive it like you stole it’ written on the back and a picture of Jennifer Lopez stuck to the wall with Cinderella written next to it. A little before 10 am I got into Kisumu and was approached by at least ten different people all wanting to know where I was going and why I didn’t want to take their matatu. Finally someone helped me find the company that I was looking for and I booked a ticket to Nairobi. The vehicle was bigger and more comfortable than the typical matatu and was supposed to go directly to Nairobi in about 6 hours. A couple hours into the trip we got a flat tire. It only took about 30 min to change and then we were on our way again, but once we got to Nakuru we drove downtown to the booking office because the driver wanted to change vehicles. On the way there he ended up getting our vehicle stuck up against a large truck but people showed up out of nowhere and helped, so it was only a minor setback but pretty embarrassing. When we pulled up to the office the driver got out, left the vehicle running, didn’t tell us anything and just disappeared. About an hour later another much smaller vehicle finally showed up (we couldn’t actually all fit in it and one guy got left behind, I felt so bad because he was the one that did most of the work changing the tire!) and took us to Nairobi. We finally arrived at about 6:15 pm and I had to be at the airport by 7:30. The guy that was sitting next to me ended up taking me to find a taxi and even bargained with the guy for me. In the end I made it there exhausted, and starving with enough time to drink my first Tusker. 

Kenya-week one

I have sort of settled in to my new home. I have only been here for a couple of days so I am still trying to figure everything out, not to mention learn 150 monkeys!

I mentioned in an earlier email that I had to do some official business in Nairobi on my first day. I got up in the morning and went to see a man at the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology to get clearance to do research in Kenya. When I got to the offices I found out that he wasn't there and someone sent me to his very intimidating boss who made it clear that he was the one who made the final decision on whether I got research clearance or NOT (emphasis on the not) and then he took all of my paperwork and told me to go enjoy Nairobi and come back at noon. I left there feeling nauseous, (probably partly from the anti-malarials) went back to my hotel, crawled back into bed and tried not to think about what would happen if he decided not to give me clearance. But when I went back the boss was gone and the man I was supposed to meet with was back and he gave me what I needed no questions asked (after I paid a fee, of course). After that I had to meet with a man who was going to help expedite the process of getting my student visa. I paid him another larger fee, handed off my passport, and now am waiting to get it back with my new visa, which will make me a resident of Kenya for the year (and I just found out that means I get resident rates on certain things).

Friday morning we left for Kakamega. We had a really long journey and our bus got into a minor accident along the way, so instead of being a 8 hour ride it was close to 10. Our bus ran into a small car on the road and after the impact it felt like we were going to tip right over! Very scary but no one was injured (except the car) and we all got off the bus and stood around for a while waiting for the cops. We finally got into town around 7:30 did some speed grocery shopping and then headed off for the forest.

Our house is pretty small - Alicia, the undergrad assistant, and I are sharing a room and Marina sleeps in the kitchen/living area. There is a similar house next door and there are three grad students living there right now. One of them is leaving in 3 weeks and the other 2 are staying until August.

I went out to meet G North group (one of four groups) for the first time on Saturday and have been out three times so far. The first monkey I met was named Dude, and I saw him about 20 times yesterday and I think I am already in love. There are about 40 monkeys in this group and they all stay really spread out. There are quite a few that I haven't even seen yet. I have started to learn a few of the females, there are 13, and few of the juveniles, especially Dude who seems to be everywhere I am. There are also black and white colobus monkeys in the forest as well as redtailed monkeys. They are both beautiful, but I have heard the colobus are not very intellegent. I am thinking they are comparable to howlers and about as loud - they start calling before the sun comes up right above our house.

Yesterday the monkeys were great and got down on the ground for most of the morning. We hung out by the station road and then went over to Wilberforce's house. He started the environmental ed program called KEEP in the area and right now is working with one of the grad students. Apparently the monkeys hang out at his house a lot. And yesterday they started to eat his house, I think they were just picking at the clay and eating bits to get the minerals. It was quite a sight. Monkeys sticking their hands in holes, licking the walls, and climbing all over the house.

I think I am finally recovered from jet lag and am starting to get used to things. We are in town right now. We got up early and took the Matatu in and had some breakfast - there is a place with really good samosas - and after this we are going to the market to do some shopping. I have to cook group dinner in a few days!

Kenya-day 1

I made it to Kenya safe and sound!

My flight from Detroit to Amsterdam was a very long one. I wasn't able to sleep much on that flight and when I got into Amsterdam I was looking forward to a short layover so I could sleep on the next one, but shortly found out that my flight was delayed. I walked all over the airport and did some shopping, I only ended up buying a package of stroopwafflen (mom you knew I couldn't resist) and a very expensive bottle of juice. While waiting to board my flight I met a young man from Kenya who is going to college in New York and our conversation started off by him telling me he was on his way back to Kisumu for his father's funeral. He was a very sweet guy but that was a depressing conversation.

Finally, an hour later then scheduled we were able to board the plane and I fell asleep before we even took off. I think I slept through most of the 8 hour flight except for the 10 min I woke up to eat and fill out my declaration and visa cards.

The flight got in at about 8:20 last night and I got my visa, my bags, changed some money, and entered Kenya where I found my ride waiting for me with a sign that said "Terminal Hotel, Collin Mitchell." I figured that had to be me.

The hotel I stayed at is nothing to write home about and maybe I will get into that later but now I have to go take care of my "day of officialdom" in Nairobi!