The days around here seem to drag on but the weeks and
months come and go quickly. More than twelve months have passed since I arrived
in Kenya, I have been living in the forest for over a year. At one point my
stint in Kenya seemed endless, never-ending. And now my time here is almost up,
just three more weeks to go.
At the end of
May I made the long journey to Nairobi to work out my visa renewal. I found a
way to extend my trip a few days in order to visit the southern coast and timed
it all out so I could meet up with my replacements, Barry and Cerian, as they
arrived from the UK and escort them back to the forest.
The trip
starts out smoothly as my friend Sabina and I leave Kakamega on the night
bus at seven and finally arrive in downtown Nairobi around 4:30 the next
morning. After sleeping as long as we can in the uncomfortable upright seats we
finally hit the streets of Nairobi at 6:30 am in search of coffee and
breakfast. Luckily, Sabina is quite familiar with downtown Nairobi as she
spent a couple months volunteering there. I can bushwhack my way from the tea
fields, through all the “M” trails, and up and down the “Pac” trails but I am
completely lost in the city. Not to mention overwhelmed by the noise, smells,
traffic, and people everywhere. After a shockingly expensive – by forest
standards anyway – but delicious breakfast and the meeting about my visa we
make our way by matatu over to the National Museum and meet up with a friend
from the ornithology department. Onesmis was in Kakamega earlier this year
working with a German graduate student and I came to know him over many visits
and birthday parties – including my own – at their camp in the northern part of
the forest. After a behind the scenes tour of the museum and a peek into the room
that holds over 30,000 bird specimens we say goodbye and make our way towards
the Nairobi railway station.
The train to
Mombasa is scheduled to leave at 7 pm so we arrive early and expectant but end
up waiting in the crowded station restaurant for hours and watch with jealousy
as other passengers board the train heading in the opposite
direction bound for Kisumu. It is nearly nine before our own train arrives
and we are allowed to board the “Jambo Kenya Deluxe” with service to Mombasa.
We settle in, eat dinner with the other second- and first-class passengers, and
pass out with exhaustion from the previous 24 hours worth of travel.
In the
morning we wake up somewhere in the middle of Tsavo East, one of the largest
national parks in Kenya. As Sabina and I watch the sunrise over the arid
landscape our train comes to a quick stop. Being the third car from last we
have absolutely no idea what is happening at the front. The train is stopped
for sometime before I finally decide to head up to the dining car and investigate.
Five cars up from our sleeper, the trip through the narrow hallways was
annoying to make when the train was in motion but a bit easier with the train
at a standstill. As soon as I poke my head in the car I am greeted by one of
the servers from the night before, “good morning Miss, our train hit an
elephant.” Excuse me? That caught me completely off guard. I had read in the
guidebook that the train is commonly delayed by elephants on the tracks and had
kind of chuckled at the thought; I didn’t realize trains actually hit them!
Clearly, my
speechlessness convinces him I am skeptical of the previous statement. “Go out
and have a look for yourself,” and with that he gestures towards the open door
beyond the kitchen and my eyes suspiciously follow. There appears to be tons of
people milling around out there. So I step out. And sure enough, there is an
elephant-sized object lodged between the embankment and one of the train cars.
From afar is could be something as simple as a giant boulder but under closer
inspection it is an elephant, tusks and all. I don’t know what to think. People
are using the body as a stepping-stone to get in and out of the train car. The
whole situation is too absurd and ridiculous to comprehend at 7 o’clock in the
morning. It definitely helps that the animal is in an unrecognizable state; it
is rolled up into a ball, thankfully with the head on the inside.
We spend the
next few hours waiting around for Kenya Wildlife Service to arrive. In the
meantime even more people manage to arrive by bike, on foot, or by lorry to our
seemingly isolated location. And they are all armed with machetes and plastic
bags: everyone wants to take home an elephant steak. When KWS finally
shows they give the go ahead and the dismembering begins. It doesn’t take long
and after much carnage, lots of arguing over who gets what cut, and a few
unsuccessful attempts the train finally starts moving and we are on our way to
the coast once again.
Our
blood-spattered train finally pulls into the station at Mombassa around 6
pm, eight hours later than scheduled. Our short vacation to the beach is now
even shorter than planned and we rush out of Mombasa towards Diani Beach via
the ferry. After couple days on the white expansive beaches of Diani we head
further south and spend a night on Wasini Island. Then back up to Mombasa in
search of some good Swahili food, a view of the famous tusks, a visit to Fort
Jesus and our trip to the coast is over.
Back in the
forest, life is completely different. While I was away at the coast the field
site was taken over by graduate students from New York. Then I came back with
my two replacements in tow and now there are seven of us. It is nice to have
company and even nicer that I don’t have to cook for myself every night but my
space has been completely invaded. I got booted out of the bedroom and now
sleep in the kitchen/office/communal living area. And next week my boss returns
for the first time since last year. My final few weeks in the forest will be
hectic ones training and turning things over to my replacements as well as
going over a year’s worth of details and monkey gossip with my boss. When my
time is up I will be sad to leave to this place I have called home for the last
year and it will be hard to say goodbye to the monkeys I have spent so much
time with but I will be ready. The other day we were out in the field and I
said, more as a statement than an actual question, “why am I so exhausted?” And
one of the students simply replied, “um, probably because you have been running
the monkey project for a year.”
