Location: Ewaso Nyiro River Camp, Mpala Wildlife Conservancy, Laikipia Valley
Discussed the interview methods and experiments from yesterday. We got in groups to talk about it and we discussed our interview with W. We were supposed to write about it also. It was awkward because the other groups who had C and K wrote bios about their subjects, and our piece was mostly just about how awkward W was during the interview.
Then we discussed the "participant observation" from yesterday at the soccer game. Then we tried to the feed the chameleon grasshoppers which didn't go over well. Right before lunch, someone brought up email again and tensions rose over when we were going to get a chance to contact our parents. All the students are eager to just send their parents a quick email to let them know that we're ok, and the grad students sent one when we initially landed but it's been a week since then. It seemed pretty reasonable but then we got ripped up oneside and down the other for being too attached to technology--you know, because it's not like we all gave up our cellphones, laptops, and iPods for this trip. Jerk. He knows who he is. I'm over it. I just hope the grad students bother to answer my mom when she emails them--I don't want her to worry--we are in fricking Africa after all.
We sat around for several hours while the profs went to hang out with their families and the grad students went to the MRC. Undergrads found ways to entertain ourselves though. We played around in the river bed (hippos and crocodiles be damned!) and played with our chameleon friend.
In the evening, Nicholas, the secretary of the group ranch to the North called Il Motiok and the research assistant to Dan Rubenstein's student Stephanie, cam to talk with us. The people of Il Motiok are very poor. Stephanie's research is trying to figure out what these people are eating and how they are surviving. She is also trying to introduce a way of surviving that will move these people away from keeping livestock in large numbers as a substitute for money, food, and education. The hardest part, Nicholas says, is that herding is far easier than farming. The group ranch has a collection of bandas--an ecotourism lodge--but it has been run, until quite recently, by some very corrupt individuals. With Nicholas and his friends now elected and in power in the group ranch, Nicholas hopes to spread the bandas' wealth so that the whole community benefits. Nicholas also had some powerful words to say about women and their right to own property and assets, speak in village council, and be people in their own right. It was quite awesome coming from someone in a society that has traditionally traded cattle for women.
Nicholas also talked about the bad drought that happened last year that dried up the Ewaso Nyiro (the same river that runs through camp supplies the group ranch with its water also) and drove many pastoralists in his village to move to Mt. Kenya, far away. Many cattle died, he said, and many more were sold for far far below their worth just before they died (for $50 instead of $300 to wealthy ranchers with access to water and grass who could fatten them up and sell them for much much more). It was all very very sad but Nicholas himself seemed very proud of the progress made and very optimistic about the future.
Dinner was delicious--lamb and vegetables and beans and rice. C had some good ideas about study abroad in Costa Rica over dinner--gotta remember to look those up when I get home!
Fire circle was after dinner. Grad students showed up with beer--specifically a local favorite called Tusker. Didn't drink but good fun.
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