Kenya Trip - Day 6

Dated: August 9th, 2010

Location: Ewaso Nyiro River Camp, Mpala Wildlife Conservancy, Laikipia Valley

Slept pretty well thru the night but woke up at about 5:30am and it was eerily silent. I was sure there was something--a predator, a lion--that was stalking outside the tent, making all the birds, bugs, and monkeys go silent. C assured me at breakfast that most animals are either diurnal or nocturnal and that at dawn, about 5:30, many of those animals are going to bed or just getting up so it tends to be pretty quiet. It was still creepy.

We went on our first field project today in the black cotton soil ecosystem. My team was responsible for recording the height, circumference, shape, branchiness, and number of gauls on each tree within a 3m wide x 100m long transect. We planned on having 4 transects, but we ended up not having enough time so we only did 2 and didn't really even finish those.

Acacia drepanolobium

Ant domatia on acacia drepanolobium

At lunch, I had a nice chat with the professor J's wife, also J, about film. She-J used to be a producer for Discovery Channel. The professor J is really excited about the video I am shooting on this trip and potential it has for expanding the program. He has a lot of ideas; I hope I can deliver.

We had a guest lecturer Dan Rubenstein from Princeton University come and talk to us about his work with sustainable pastoralism and Grevy's zebras. His lecture was one of the best I've ever heard! He was amazing! His research concerns convincing pastoral peoples to value their wildlife reminded me a lot of Freakonomics--playing off the idea that people respond to incentives. His program involved paying scouts in one village to observe the zebras and not chase them off. He did an experiment and found that cattle and zebras consume different grasses so they should be compatible. The scouts ended up really changing their attitudes towards the animals.

Plains zebra

Grevy's zebra

Dan says there's still a lot of work to be done on the existing problems with the social structure. One story Dan told was about a community chair named Rhonda who owned a lot of cattle. Villagers told Dan that Rhonda received much of his wealth through corrupt means like bribes. Dan attended Rhonda's wedding to his third wife (as in he currently has 2--polygamy is common in Masai communities). After the wedding, Rhonda pulled Dan aside (they had known each other for several years) and asked if Dan would pay for Rhonda's son to go to secondary school (about $2,000 in Kenya). Dan said no. Rhonda, shocked, said, "Why, Dan? You are a rich man!" And Dan said, "Rhonda, you are a rich man! You just gave 10 cattle for a third wife--that's $3,000!" Rhonda, apparently, was genuinely shocked by this revelation. Dan used this example to explain how most Kenyan pastoralists don't look at their cattle and see dollar signs so to speak; cattle are used to obtain wives for themselves and their sons and education is not factored in. And as much as a good thought as it might seem, the religious and aid organizations' scholarships don't help this situation much.

Dinner was great, as usual, and afterward C recapped Dan's lecture and explained the Tragedy of the Commons, whereby everyone grazes as many cattle as he can on as much land as he can reach, because if he doesn't, someone else will.

I'm really happy here. I can't quite describe it. All of my worries and fears are so far away and I don't just mean 5,000 miles. Everything just feels so right--like right here right now things are coming together--fitting together like nothing else I've ever experience in my life.