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.
