Dated: August 14th, 2010
Location: Ewaso Nyiro River Camp, Mpala Wildlife Conservancy, Laikipia Valley
We are now halfway through our time here in Africa. It's crazy how time has flown. The other day, someone figured out that it costs the Graham Institute $.03 a second for each of us to be here. That's crazy, too.
The professor J's lecture was very interesting, if depressing. It was supposed to be about disease ecology but for some reason it ended up being about how extinction dooms an unfathomable percent of the species of the world. It was really depressing to hear how many frog species have gone extinct from the chrytid fungus--I thought of the Blue Jeans frog at Raña Roja Beach in Panama and wondered if it might still be there, even though only 2 years have passed since I was last there.
I got to charge almost 3 batteries during the lecture (courtesy of a broken projector). After the lecture, we went to say hi to C and K's friend, a researcher named Andrea who is studying parasite loads in Grant's gazelles (apparently they have parasite numbers that would kill most other species but no one knows why). We got to watch her take the feces from its raw form to a microscope slide so we could see the parasite eggs. It was very cool and complicated but it looked like Andrea had a pretty sweet deal, working with such cool animals, not to mention playing with poop all day. She seemed less than enthused though. K did mention that Andrea's been working in Africa with monkeys for a long time--maybe she finds non-primates boring.
After lunch, W talked about his research which has involved talking to people in various capacities in and around the ranch, trying to gain a comprehensive picture of the social structure here and trying to put together an ethnography of Mpala. He talked a lot about Nicholas' village of Il Motiok.
He mentioned that at the beginning of the summer, he and K heard about a leopard that was killing cattle. The group ranch did as they are required by Kenyan law and called KWS (Kenya Wildlife Service) to capture and relocate the animal. It took KWS 6 days to get out there and in those six days, 12 cattle and 5 dogs were killed. KWS threw a dead dog in a cage for bait and caught the leopard. KWS was going to relocate it but the animal was dead the next morning. Initially, it was thought that the leopard had been killed by the cage but as the villagers were skinning the animal (all the skins go to a vault in Nairobi to prevent them from entering the black market), they discovered that the animal had actually been stabbed several times by a spear. There was an outcry in the village--they see this as a potentially hurting their relations with Mpala--but many proclaimed that they were happy that the leopard was dead. I found this, along with another story about a man losing 2 of his 3 cattle to a lion just a few weeks ago to a single lion attack. It was very sad, considering that these cattle are the entire livelihood of many of the people of Il Motiok, but it got me thinking about Laurie Marker (of the Cheetah Conservation Fund) and her work with lion-chasing dog packs given (like micro-financing) to villagers to protect their herds. I started thinking that this would be cool project to see if it could work here.
After R's colonialism and disease ecology lectures (we learned about Q fever and how it will affect our ability to see a cattle dip (kills all the ticks on the cattle; without it all the ranch's cattle would die)), I started asking about this potential project. R was surprised--she said she thought for sure I would be doing a multimedia project. It's funny though--in any other academic situation, I would be looking for any way to turn my final exam into a video project but now I feel like I'd do anything to make this a solidly, unartful and academic one.
We had a huge campfire/party with lots of people from all over Mpala and I got to run my idea by a lot of different people. One person was able to tell me offhand that having one untrained dog barking in the boma reduces predation already by 35%. This is a pretty impressive statistic I'd definitely have to find some solid support for that when I get back home before the conference. I was also told that domestic dogs attract African wild dogs and this could be a problem considering that wild dogs are one of the biggest predators of livestock and I know that these livestock dogs are effective against big cats, but I don't know how they react to the canine variety of predator.
While I mulled this over, someone brought out marshmellows, chocolate, and graham crackers. I was so excited for s'mores but we had to find our own roasting utensils in the bush--and let me tell you, finding a marshmellow stick in Africa is hard because every single tree and bush is covered in thorns! I was excited to eat chocolate and marshmellow for the first time in 2 weeks, but my stomach kind of balked; everything tasted extra sugar and my belly was like "Refined sugar? What?" Regardless, I managed to scarf down 2 even though I was sure I'd get through 4. Call me crazy, but maybe this will cut down on my "sugar whiplash" when I get home.
If the $.03/second is true, than this journal entry (written from 10:35pm to 11:13pm., lasting approximately 38 min) cost $68.40. Crazy.
