The Habituation Experience

9 April 2009

5:00 The alarm goes off, it’s still dark. There’s no electricity so I ready myself and pack my field bag by the light of my headlamp. As I prepare myself for a day in the forest I am full to the brim with excitement and overcome with giddiness.

Today is not an ordinary day in the field for me.

Today I woke up in Kibale National Park.

Today I will spend the day tracking chimpanzees.

Located in Western Uganda, Kibale National Park is said to have the highest diversity and density of primates in Africa and is home to 13 different species. It shouldn’t surprise anyone then that I made the two day trip, crossed a border, took a handful of overcrowded matatus, a bus full of roosters and obnoxious children, and one insane but immensely beautiful motorbike ride to get here from Kakamega. And if you know me well enough, it also shouldn’t come as a surprise that I am about to spend my vacation doing what I do everyday: following primates around the forest.

5:30 I clamber down the ladder, start to follow the path up to the main lodge and immediately wish I had paid more attention when they led us out here the previous evening.

Last night I slept in a tree house, a simple structure stuck out in the forest far from any surrounding buildings, raised up off the ground, over looking a place called the Elephant Wallow. “If you are lucky, the elephants might visit tonight,” we were informed by the man who escorted us the 800 some meters from the lodge down a narrow series of paths into the forest and our “room.” And lucky, I was. A herd of forest elephants visited the wallow in the middle of the night and I awoke to the sound of them noisily chewing on vegetation right outside my window.

Just stay to the right I keep telling myself. Eventually I pop out onto the road, not exactly where I want to be but I quickly get my bearings and head up the hill to the main lodge in search of coffee, overpriced bottled water, and an incredibly expensive packed lunch prepared by the kitchen staff.

6:00 I head down the hill to the forest guard’s headquarters and meet Ronald, my guide for the day. Back up the hill to the lodge for his packed lunch and off in search of chimps we go.

6:12 We come across elephant droppings on the trail. We are in a place that doesn’t look like it could accommodate something as massive as an elephant. How did it get in here? And more importantly, where is it now? 

6:24 We stop at a fruiting Ficus mucuso. Ronald informs me this is a favorite chimp food, but we find the tree overrun with redtail monkeys. He knows of another fig in fruit so we start off in that direction.

6:30 We stop. Ronald points. From the trail I can make out a large black figure at the top of the tree. My first wild chimpanzee. From this point on I am certain there is a permanent smile smeared across my face. We leave the trail and head up hill to the base of the tree. In front of me is an enormous fig and there are perhaps 20 chimps chowing down on the golf ball sized fruits that grow off its branches in clusters. Ronald points out a nest nearby; this is where they spent the night. Apparently, they didn’t want to waste any time searching for breakfast. We settle in, it’s evident they won’t be leaving this location for a very long time.

10:07 A female with a three-month-old infant leaves the tree and builds a day nest not far from where we are sitting. I am introduced to Kachweka (Half). She was named for a half finger on her left hand. Her and her infant settle into their nest, but clearly the little guy is more interested in what’s going on below than in resting, he keeps peaking his head over the edge to gawk at us.

11:14 Finally, they begin to leave the tree. Three meters from where I am seated, Ebilaya (Irish Potato), a 9-year-old male plops down on the hard soil. He scurries along to catch up with the others that have already descended and are moving away on all fours. Ebihimba (Beans), his mother carrying his 4-month-old sibling on her back, Ebitooke (Banana), his 13-year-old brother, and Bwana (Gentle), the highest-ranking male in this sub-group are amongst them.

They spend the next hour socializing and grooming on the ground in small parties. Ronald and I stay back on the trail to give them plenty of space, the females with young infants are visibly nervous and very aware of our presence.

12:17 Now you see them, now you don’t, the handful of individuals that were resting 25 meters in front of us have vanished. They are bulky creatures but they are also stealthy and agile and able to quietly disappear under the cover of dense undergrowth.

We circle around the immediate area and manage to locate a few feeding in a Celtis africana. The visibility is poor with shorter shrubbier trees blocking our view so Ronald and I take a seat on his spread out poncho and break into our packed lunches.

12:35 Totti, a 14-year-old male, named after the Italian footballer, is the first to come back down. A male chimpanzee can weigh 90-120 pounds, I’m not sure what Totti weighs in at but compared to the blue monkeys I’m accustomed to, he is absolutely enormous.  And here he is, sitting directly in front of me, no boundaries or barriers between us. I’m not sure what to do with myself, am I really face to face with a wild chimpanzee? I could reach out and touch him and he could do the same. For a few perfect seconds I completely lose track of myself, time stops, the forest falls away, and it’s just me and him, him and me. I am filled with awe, curiosity, exhilaration and twenty other emotions I don’t even know the words for. Seconds later, my moment with Totti is interrupted, and before we know what’s happening the females are on the ground and then everyone is gone.

12:48 This time we move straight toward the fig where we spent all morning. It looks empty, it sounds empty, and it feels empty. The place has a very different feeling than it did hours earlier, there’s no noise, no energy. A fig full of feeding primates is not a quiet place, with fruits and feces intermittently dropping from the treetop, and a variety of vocalizations radiating from the branches, it’s hard to hear anything else. But all is quiet here.

Just then and at the same time, Ronald and I see her, a lone female visibly in estrus feeding near the top. We settle in, Ronald is certain it’s only a matter of time before more arrive, they can’t stand to be away from this fig for long.

13:43 A chorus of pant hoots erupt. Pant hoots sound from every possible direction, front, back, up, down, side to side. It feels like we are completely surrounded by the vocalizations, enclosed in the middle of a chorus of calling chimpanzees. I have chills; it’s eerie and exhilarating at the same time.

The others are on their way back. Not long after and without further sound, three, four, five, ten come creeping out of the surrounding foliage and climb back up the twisted limbs of the fig where they will spend the afternoon.

16:46 Still in the fig and it’s evident many of them are about to burst. I am now sitting in a forest full of farting apes. All around us they are letting loose. Gone are the serious conversations of primate behavior Ronald and I began our day with, now we are doubled over in laughter at the sounds of primate flatulence.

18:01 They all move out of the fig at once but take off in opposite directions. We follow Kachweka with her 3-month-old in tow in the hopes that she will begin building her nest for the night. Kagasa (Enough) her 7-year-old daughter joins her and they continue feeding. Eventually, Kachweka with the infant riding ventrally moves away and Kagasa, apparently not wanting to be left behind, jumps on her mom’s back. The three of them disappear into the rapidly dimming light of the surrounding forest that way, with Kachweka carrying the two youngest of her offspring off to bed.

18:20 There is a commotion on the other side of the fig. More individuals have joined the group. The excitement is short lived and they quickly disperse to build nests and settle in for the night. Bwana is in front of us and he is bending, breaking, and weaving his nest out of twigs and foliage. He finishes and tucks right in. We leave them like that, curled up in their nests, prepared to spring up in the morning and spend another day gorging on ripe succulent figs.

Kenya-month 8 and 9

At the end of January we lost one of the older females from the TWN group. TWN is the smaller of the two groups that frequent the forest station and village, and they make almost daily stops at my house. I have been greeted many mornings by a yard full of monkeys. It’s pleasant to wake up to and one of the things I will miss most about living here.

Annie was 21 years old and she was a fixture around the village. Her and Kitty were like two little old lady monkeys, always seen meandering around together between the houses and along the road. She started acting strangely a couple weeks before her disappearance and spent more and more time away from the group, alone in the village, and occasionally with the company of Kitty. Suspicions flared, and rumors flew, this wouldn’t be the first time a monkey had been intentionally poisoned in the forest station, and by a forest guard of all people. Monkeys in the village are bothersome to people, I am sure I have mentioned before how they destroy food supplies that are left unattended. It is not so much of a challenge then to poison them; all you have to do is leave the affected food in an area both where a monkey will have access to and a place where they come searching for food, like your front stoop or the bushes beside your house. But we had nothing to go on other than the parallels between hers and the previous cases. The last time it happened one of the assistants heard the guilty guard boasting to a friend about using rat poison to off a monkey. He was quickly relocated.

Whereas a sick monkey in the forest would simply fall off our radar, hidden away by the dense vegetation, we were able to keep up with Annie and she was spotted around the village daily. Eventually, she did disappear. And then a few days later I found her body just off Mama Mutere, the main tourist trail that leads to the glade and lookout tower. I ran home for gloves, goggles, and a plastic bag and caused quite a stir in the village. Everyone knew she was sick and when they saw me they figured out very quickly what I had found. Erick assisted me and we did the best necropsy we could, but it wasn’t a pretty sight and I will just leave it at that. We buried her beneath the Ficus in front of my house. It is nice to have some closure for once, normally they just vanish and we are left to wonder.

A few weeks after that a younger female in the GN group began acting strangely similar. We would have never known Princess was sick if we hadn’t come across her stretched out, completely still one day just off the trail. We observed her for a couple hours but eventually had to move on. She fell behind the group, disappeared in the undergrowth and was never seen again. It doesn’t seem likely that she could have been poisoned, like we suspect Annie was, because this group doesn’t ransack the village, but we will never know the whole story. And I have to accept that.

Birthing season has finally come to a close. Bif gave birth to the last baby of the season a couple days ago (well, we suspect, there is the chance that someone is still pregnant and we just haven’t noticed). We had 25 births (but lost 3 so far), that’s half of the adult females in the five study groups. It seems like every other monkey is running around with a baby, and I guess every other adult female actually is.

I gave the assistants a survey for fun a while back and the worst mom award went to Pansy, hands down. She has no surviving offspring. The majority of her children never made it through infancy. She had one that lived for a few years but to no fault of her own, he was killed by a gaboon viper. Pansy gave birth this year and I finally saw her terrible parenting skills for myself. The first day she was seen with the infant I found her holding it away from her body, upside down by the tail, and looking at it like it was from outer space, while it was screaming at the top of its lungs. She did this multiple times. You can’t help but laugh at her. She seemed to get the hang of it after the first week, and her baby looked strong and healthy, but one day it was just gone. It amazes me what terrible moms they can be. Now Pansy is seen snatching up and suckling everyone else’s babies on a regular basis. And with nine infants in the group, many of whom are one month old now and frequently running around on their own, she has her pick.

Some of the monkeys are very good moms, if their baby makes one little peep, mom is there to comfort it in a snap. And they are growing quite fast, many are already wobbling around on their own legs, but for the most part they still stick with mom. I am not looking forward to the day that all of these infants are running together in a big baby gang, it will be impossible to keep track of who is who.

The month of February flew by. I met up with some German researchers and American and German volunteers in the forest and we made a few excursions to explore more of Western Kenya. The first trip was to Kitale and Saiwa Swamp National Park. Saiwa is the smallest park in Kenya and rarely visited. Unlike the majority of the parks here, vehicles are prohibited and one has to explore the park’s three-square kilometers on foot. It was created as a sanctuary for the sitatunga, a most unusual antelope with splayed and elongated hooves designed to help it successfully live in the swamp. And I think we managed to see one, but we are still not really sure.

Mount Elgon National Park followed. Elgon is termed the “loneliest park in Kenya,” and the only other group of trekkers we encountered consisted of three Germans we had met in the Kakamega Forest two days before. The mountain is an extinct volcano that straddles the Kenyan-Ugandan border and is famous for its caves and salt-mining elephants. One such cave, Kitum, is rumored to have been the location where two victims of Marburg Hemorrhagic Fever, a virus closely related to Ebola, contracted the deadly virus. We explored Kitum, Mackingeny, and Chepnyalil caves. We saw thousands of bats, avoided deadly viruses, but weren’t lucky enough to catch a glimpse of any illusive salt-mining elephants. Then we spent a day climbing to the top of Koitoboss peak at 4187 meters. We were required to hire an armed guard to accompany us through the park and ended up getting two for the price of one. On the hike one walked in front while the other brought up the back, and both carried enormous weapons. We must have resembled a procession of prisoners.

I also made a trip to visit one of the assistant’s compounds. Ernest lives 45 min by bike from the forest station. He makes that trip every single day to work and then has to follow the monkeys for 8 hours, I was exhausted after the bike trip there and it was mostly downhill! At his place I sampled matoke for the first time. Matoke is boiled green bananas, also known as plantains. For those of you who spent any time with me in Costa Rica you know how I like my plantains. Matoke was alright, but I will stick with patacones!  

15 Jan 2009

855 I leave the house after data entry; today is my Gs day again. Has it really been four days already?

910 I walk down Station Road and past Wilberforce’s house before I stop and grab my chest. Something is missing. Crap. My binocs, I can’t watch monkeys without those. I turn back and walk to the house. In the process I pass everyone I just said good morning to, they give me strange looks as I rush by, but that’s nothing new, people are always looking at me strangely. 

937 Finally out in the forest and equipped with all the necessary tools for a day of monkey chasing. The search for Gsa begins. Lately they have been impossibly hard to find. I usually end up spending the better part of my day aimlessly wandering around the forest. I search for a bit then decide I might as well head out to Gsb. 

1032 I find Gsb very quickly. The group has thankfully been free of drama for a while and I have run into forest guards patrolling the area twice since I spoke with the forester. Even so I still get a tight feeling in my chest when I someone isn’t seen, I don’t think that will ever go away. They will never be completely safe. 

NS1116 I begin a follow on Gigi and the whole group starts coming down to the ground. As the monkeys descend they nervously scan the terrain for danger but their eyes pass right over me, I pose no threat. I have never enjoyed feeling invisible more than at moments like these. I am standing amongst them but they don’t pay me any attention. Even when I get stabbed in the thigh by a thorny vine, then stung in the hand by the giant hairy caterpillar that was sitting on the vine, and start swearing loudly they continue to go about their business feeding insects and leaves near my feet. This group has been harassed so much that they fall silent and hide anytime a human being is present but here and now they are completely at ease. I can’t even begin to describe how it feels. 

1153 As I leave the group to continue my search for Gsa, I get a good look at Pody. She is huge. There will most certainly be another monkey in this group soon. 

1155 Walking down Bis Road towards Farm Road I come upon more random forest graffiti, I stop to examine it: “I guide my fellow Europeans who have settled in Kenya or those or were born in Kenya.”

1354 I have been everywhere. Well, everywhere the group isn’t anyway. Finally I hear Sawa pyow from the Cow Highway area. I run as fast as I can down Farm Road with the hopes of arriving before he is done vocalizing. No such luck so I start bushwhacking. 

Agnes' infantAgnes and her infant


1357 I nearly miss the group because they are so low and quiet. The first monkey I see is Agnes, and then I spot her newborn. He was born over a week ago but this is the first time I have had the chance to meet him; on my last Gs day this group was nowhere to be found. He is very active and adorably ugly. He has an incredibly large black unibrow; I have never seen anything like it. 

1411 I notice a commotion in a nearby vine tangle. There has to be at least six monkeys in there. I watch and wait for them to trickle out: Cybil, Ci, Andy, Chaos, Darwin, and finally Mushroom with the cause for all the excitement, another new baby. This is her first; she is now welcomed into adulthood and becomes a focal animal beginning immediately. Before I can even think about reaching in my backpack for my clipboard she runs off, trailed by a procession of juveniles all interested in the newest member of their group. 

1432 I start a follow on Puzzle. Puzzle is the one monkey in the group that isn’t at ease with my presence. If we make eye contact she runs off and disappears into the undergrowth. It is hard to follow a monkey’s every move without actually looking at them. Some days it takes four tries before I finally succeed. Today I manage it in one.Ficus sur fruits

1538 Mushroom and the baby show up again so I start a follow. It is going relatively well, everyone is feeding Ficus sur fruits, there are ten monkeys hanging onto the side of the tree feasting on clumps of ripe colorful figs...until Angel and Darwin start pestering her for a look at the baby. Mushroom clearly isn’t having it; I spend the last ten minutes of the follow chasing after her as she runs through the canopy pursued by those two. At least she is fairly easy to spot with that little guy riding along, clinging to her belly. Gsa feeding on Ficus sur

1604 Still bushwhacking and chasing after Mushroom when I finally come out onto Pac trail. At the same time a tourist comes walking down the trail. I never see tourists out here, much less without a guide; this is quite a surprise. I can only imagine how I appear, dirty, sweaty, standing in the middle of the forest with a clipboard, binocs and a watch that is beeping, directing all my attention up into the trees at nothing – nothing that he can see anyway, the monkeys are way up there, the majority of them hidden from view behind clumps of leaves. 
He approaches and stops near me. 
I begin by offering the best explanation I can, “I am following a monkey.”
He looks up into the canopy, looks back at me quizzically, and says, “there’s monkeys down there, you know,” and points down the trail. 
“Yeah, but I only study certain monkeys,” I inform him. 
He gives it one more chance and follows my gaze up to the tops of the trees, clearly doesn’t see anything and as my watch beeps again he heads off and continues walking down the trail. He is not the first and will definitely not be the last person to look at me strangely today. 

1625 It’s time to go home. As I leave the forest and hit Rondo Road there are quite a few people commuting on their bicycles. Every time I crash out of the forest onto the road I get the same reaction: they all turn and nearly fall off their bikes. It must be a quite thing to witness, the forest spitting out a young female mzungu in the middle of nowhere. I scurry across the road and can feel their eyes burning into me until I disappear on the other side and am swallowed up by the vegetation. From here I follow a small footpath to the Pump House trail that leads to the village and my house. 

Kenya-month 7

This month was marked by me declaring dead any monkey that disappeared for more than a couple days. Luckily, I was mostly wrong.

Kool wasn’t seen for 10 days. She’s a juvenile in Tws, the largest of the groups with 48 individuals, if the group stays in the forest it is hard to see them all, but after ten days of not being seen I declared her dead. The next day she showed up and of course, has been seen everyday since.

Half of Gsb went missing, three for only one day and Milo for two, but I don’t have the highest of hopes when it comes to this group. Once again, I am very happy to report that I was wrong. They have managed to hold on against the odds. I talked to the forester and showed him the evidence of poaching I found, he acted concerned but I am afraid nothing will actually be done and the monkeys and us are on our own still. He did seem really concerned when I told him pine and cypress were being illegally cut down nearly everyday, maybe that will force him to take some action – trees equal money.

Lindy unfortunately is gone. This I was expecting and it was really only a matter of time. Her mother, Lily, went missing back in September. Lindy was the smallest of the 2007 infants. Amani and Darwin, her age mates in the group, are still suckling occasionally and have grown quite a lot. Lindy was just half their size.

But with death comes new life: On Christmas day I was on baby patrol and checked on as many of the groups as I could. The assistants all had the day off so I was the only one out. By mid-morning I was on my second group and found the first infant of the season. Splash is now a second time mother. Her first born, Speedo, is two and was very interested in her new sibling. We don’t name the infants until they have reached one year of age but the assistants have already come up with a great one, Shikuku. It means ‘a great day’ in Luo and is typically used in reference to Christmas. I was leaning more towards Snorkel to go with the theme but under the circumstances...

In the last week there have been two more births. And more still to come.

Unfortunately the survival rate for infants is quite low. Last year there were 18 births but only 11 have lived to see their first birthday and receive names: Aqua, Chaos, Kwanza, Quest, Sema, Dragon, Demo, Mali, Pizza, Shimo, and Rein. I submitted the names Aqua and Chaos, but personally I think the best name of all is Shimo. It means latrine in Swahili. Shimo fell down a latrine hole during his first months of life while his mother was feeding on soil around the outhouse. The assistants acted fast with a plastic bag on a stick and brought the infant up safely where Spike, the careless mother, snatched up her poop covered baby and ran away.

Blue monkeys can be terrible mothers. I see them slapping and hitting their babies, we even saw Kamile open mouth threat her own child, and they drop the newborns to the ground quite often. Tux did just the other day. When the infants are first off on their own, trying out their new feet, they are still tiny and look identical. When they scream one would expect their mother to come running to comfort them or save them from danger, but I have stood below a wailing infant waiting for the mother to come with the hopes of identifying the tot and many times she just doesn’t show. As they become more independent, the poor infants run a marathon to catch up to mom with the hopes of nursing and she just casually walks away, an hour later the little guy has finally caught up again but mom runs off without giving them even the slightest bit of recognition. It is a miracle that any of them reach adulthood.

I have been hearing drumming in the forest behind my house lately. Drumming all the time. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, at first it coincided with the New Year and I figured people were just celebrating but then it carried on into the next week and still continues.

There is a large glade surrounded by forest on all sides and on one of the edges there is a lookout tower, it is unfinished but construction has ceased and I don’t think it will ever get any higher than it is now. Sometimes on my off days I go up there.

January 6^th I walk down Mama Mutere trail and as I am approaching the glade I began to hear the drumming, and as I leave the forest cover the drumming gets louder. From the lookout tower I see birds flying and swooping down on the north side of the glade but not much else – the one time I am out in the forest without my binoculars and I really want them. From my current position I can hear people singing along with the drumming, I can’t actually see them but can tell they aren’t far, probably just inside the trees on the edge of the glade. About an hour later, Winstone, one of the guides, with two visitors on a tour of the forest climbs up to the top of the lookout tower. He tells me they are drumming for termites. That’s it? Here I thought they were performing some important ritual. He inquires if his companions care to go out there to see the termites coming out and I ask to join.

Five young boys are seated on what used to be a termite mound; they have completely flattened it and have directed tunnels that were once underground into buckets to collect the termites. The vibrations from drumming are supposed to draw them out; the singing I gather is simply to entertain the boys as they drum. And it works, there are winged termites everywhere, all of the buckets are full, and the few that have managed to escape and fly away are becoming any easy meal for the numerous black kites swooping overhead. Winstone takes a handful from one of the buckets and shoves them in his mouth. Then all the boys do it and there are wings stuck to their checks. Next one of the tourists tries it. Then they all turn and look at me. How could I say no? Winstone had just told the tourists that I was one of them now, a Kenyan, after they asked how long I was here for, and all the Kenyans had just enjoyed a tasty termite snack. So I pick up one squirming termite and eat it. After I got over the fact that it was still alive it really wasn’t so bad, it tasted kind of nutty. 

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.