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.
