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.