Kenya Trip - Day 7 (pm)

Dated: August 10th, 2010 (pm)

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


So charging didn't happen as planned . . . I mean, I got a little bit done but I'll be out by tomorrow . . . I'm a bit disgruntled by the lack of resources and information going on here but doing my best to stay positive cuz Hey, I'm in Africa =)

We compared and analyzed data from yesterday and found that most of our assumptions--that the largest ant colonies were nearest to the glades and that the ants in those colonies would be the most aggressive--were wrong.

Next, we went out in the field with Truman Young--a famous plant biologist and professor from UC Davis--who was basically the first researcher at Mpala. He took us to the research projects (after 1 flat tire) called KLEE. These were fenced-in areas meant to exclude one type of herbivore or another and determine the effects of a particular herbivore group's herbivory on black cotton plant life. I found what he was working on to be very current and interesting but he outright disreguarded Rubenstein's findings for no other reason, it seemed, than that they clashed with his own. Young's project suggest that cattle and wildlife cannot coexist without dire consequences inflicted upon both groups. I loved Rubenstein's findings so much that I wanted him to be the one in the right and this definitely influenced my view of Young--that, combined with the heat at the field site and his ceaseless spewing of facts and experimental data--definitely put his persona down in my mind. For sure, both researchers had an agenda, but I really wanted the one that favored wildlife and societal cooperation to be right.


On the way back to river camp for lunch, we saw a lioness in the black cotton amongst the tall grasses. B spotted her--I don't know how--but she was at least 150 yards from the road and too far for a picture.

We went to the MRC so R could lecture about pastoralist systems and their relation to cultural and political ecology and anthropology. It was a really good lecture I just wish I had had more background; it seemed really dense and there was a lot to wade through. The fact that it was pouring on the tin roof just made everything all that much harder to understand.


We played get-to-know-each-other games around the campfire until late. The days are picking up speed. It felt like the first days I was here were impossibly, exhaustingly long but today it seems like breakfast was just five minutes ago and I'm suddenly in bed again, writing in my journal by the light of my headlamp. I don't want this trip to ever end--I need to find someway to make the days longer!

Vocab word of the day:
"Pride Rock Fixation"-the need to associate everything you see in Africa with Disney's "The Lion King"; example: calling all red-billed hornbills "Zazu"

Kenya Trip - Day 7 (am)

Dated: August 10th, 2010

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


Something was crashing around in the bushes last night shortly after we went to bed last night--Jody was kind of freaking out and kept telling her (and myself) that it was a dikdik but then it started knocking down trees and we decided it was a hippopotamus. I tried to get some reading done while I was up but I was fading fast and quit at 11. Hippopotamus or no, I blacked out as soon as my head hit the pillow and woke up when my watch went off at 7am; I think the What's-Outside-the-Tent Game: Midnight Edition might be finally done.

Got up early to finally handwash my underwear and socks but for the first morning since we've been here, there was no water in the basin outside our tent! I guess it will have to wait til later--although not too much later since I'm on my last pair of underwear ;)

Right now we're on our way to the MRC (Mpala Research Center) for the first time to analyze yesterday's data and I'm hoping for a chance at email and camera charging (I'm on my last camera battery too!).

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.

Kenya Trip - Day 5 (pm)

Dated: August 8th, 2010

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

We went and climbed Mukenya, a mountain within Mpala's borders, today. On the drive there, C was leading, driving, and there was this large run-off bed and the long green Land Cruiser got stuck. The ascari car had no trouble getting through the bed. They got out shovels and started digging the car out--it took about 30 min but they finally got it free. They drove it across and then back to the original side and parked it there. So we walked the rest of the way.


The hike was pretty steep and took us up some pretty slippery rock. We had about 6 ascari with us looking out for animals--all of whom were having no problem climbing in sandals while we were struggling with hiking boots on.

The view from the top of the mountain was incredible--I felt like I could see all of Kenya--it was SO beautiful and clear. After goofing around and taking lots of pictures on the rocks at the top, we lunched under an outcropping. We had cheese, meat, tomato, cucumber or peanut butter sandwiches, mango juice, hard-boiled eggs, passion fruit, and potato chips. The hike back down was probably even steeper than the way up! I was very glad for the traction on the bottom of my hiking boots. A few people slipped, but my only injuries were from the acacia thorns I brushed through.


When we got back to river camp, we had a visit from one of the authors of one of the articles we had to read. Rob Pringle got his PhD from Stanford, his post-doc from Harvard, and just got a million-dollar signing bonus for agreeing to a professorship at Princeton University. "Wow" doesn't begin to describe this guy. His work on acacia tree-ant mutualism is legendary and he's been at Mpala for a very long time. The man himself looks like he could have been a hippie/surfer dude back in California--now, he's all long blond hair and cowboy boots and plaid. His research was definitely still a work in progress and he was very mum about a lot of his current work, but he was able to laugh and joke with us and tell us a lot more about Mpala in general.

Dinner was excellent tonight: green beans, pork, mashed potatoes, custard soup, cabbage, and lentils. I finished feeling perfectly contented. This trip has been awesome so far!!

After dinner, C explained our black cotton soil research project for tomorrow. The acacia drepanolobium trees in the black cotton ecosystem provide the ants with food and shelter in exchange for protection against herbivores, which the ants provide. Our goal is to compare the tree-ant mutualisms to the distances from the glade. I am the team leader for the group in charge of taking the measurements for all the trees we study. There's another team in charge of setting up transect and tagging all our tree subjects. There's a third team in charge of shaking the trees to agitate the ants. C guarantees that we will all get bitten by the ants. A lot. Fun, right? Can't wait.

R's daughter is in the hospital in Nanyuki (the nearest city to Mpala) for the night and we haven't seen R since we got here. The professor J has been very active tho--even tho he and his family are staying at the ranch house--he goes to all our hikes and ecological site explorations and comes to the discussions. On trail and site he's always like, "Oh this flower is in such-and-such family" and "That rock formed because of this pressure." He attempted to catch a lizard today but only got the end of its tail and was excited to show us how the tail flopped about wildly for about two minutes after it fell off. He also identified a type of eggplant that, if eaten, makes a person hallucinate vividly until the toxins in the fruit kills them. Interesting.


We were supposed to go to the research center today so we could check email and charge batteries but because Rob came to river camp, it didn't happen. I'm still hoping to go tomorrow--my video camera juice is at about a quarter. The batteries take some time to charge tho too so I'm hoping C or K get that and we get to do that tomorrow so I can continue taking fantastic pictures and video!

Jody and I turned in early tonight. I feel like we're missing group bonding time at the campfire but then again it seems like drinking by the campfire will be an every night thing and I could really use the sleep . . . zzzzzzzzz . . ..

Kenya Trip - Day 5 (am)

Dated: August 8th, 2010

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


Had a really good sleep last night--even though apparently Jody had a conversation with me at about midnight about her suspicions that there might be a hippopotamus grazing outside her window. I apparently told her it was just a dikdik and to go back to sleep. All I remember is my head hitting the pillow and the next thing is daylight and the sound of someone pouring water into the basins on our porch.

I tried the granola this morning. It was very good. I always look at what's laid out for breakfast and think that it's not much--orange slices, papaya, toast, hard-boiled eggs, and granola--but I always end up feeling full before I've even finished.

I left out some clothes on the dry bar outside the tent to be picked up to be laundered yesterday morning and they're still hanging out there. K told me that it was because I had put underwear out there as well; apparently, it is a cultural taboo to wash a woman's underwear with other clothes here, so it looks like I'll be washing my underwear myself.

Kenya Trip - Day 4 (pm)

Dated: August 7th, 2010 (pm)

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


R's daughter is sick from all the traveling so the professor J showed up. We did team-building with the graduate students also living at river camp, C, K, and W. The activities were the stereotypical electric fence (with the criss-crossed wires you have to stick your teammates through so that everyone can get to the other side) and the lava river (with firepit cushions as our safety rafts :).

We then went on a field trip to the red soil and black cotton soil ecosystems, both of which are present inside the conservancy. The red soil has much more biodiversity and we saw lots of giraffes and zebras there. When we got back to the cars, the drivers were like, "Weren't you afraid out there?" And we were like, why would we be afraid? And they were like, "Whenever you see zebras and giraffes in the same place, there's always lions." Just glad we had the ascari with us.

Next, we went to the black cotton soil. The soil there is made of a dark grey clay. There are only 5 species of grass, 2 types of trees, and 4 species of ants. C brought us to a clearing that had greener grass and no trees--a glade. He asked us what had happend here. C's research is about how bomas cause glades which later lead to differences in productivity--so our first guess was that a pastoralist (herder) had corralled his livestock here in a boma at some point and their defecation had brought about an increase in nutrients for that area, but he said no that wasn't it. There were a lot of holes in the ground and a few patches of grey soil. C eventually gave in a told us that there was a termite mound here at some point, and, much like cattle, the termites had brought extra nutrients to the area and deposited them in the clearing. They had also devoured all the trees within a given radius, much like the pastoralist who remove trees from their corralling areas to use as boma fences.


We have a lot of readings to do but I don't yet have a course pack so Jody is letting me borrow hers when she's done with it. The readings are all either about the black cotton soil ecosystem or the livestock-wildlife interactions in Laikipia Valley.

I saw an elephant today. Actually, we saw a lot of elephants today. They're kind of like squirrels are to Michigan here. I saw a squirrel today. Just one.


Dinner was fish, rice, beans, tomato soup, carrots and zucchini.

Jody and I have named the cricket living in our tent Bonner.

Kenya Trip - Day 4 (am)

Dated: August 7th, 2010 (am)

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

Apparently, there were elephants in the camp last night--Jody and I saw a fresh "patty" on our way to the bathroom at about 11:30pm. The ascari also chased off a hyena. I was awake what felt like most of the night playing the what's-outside-the-tent game. As another student put it this morning at breakfast, "Nature is loud."



Breakfast was toast, mini pancakes, papaya, orange slices, and oatmeal. The cook's name is John and he is very friendly. He brings out the food at 7 and takes our plates away when we are finished. We may not have electricity, but river camp is seeming pretty posh already :)

One student, C, and I bought a mystery fruit at the Nakumatt (Kenyan Walmart, sort of). It was in a bin labeled "Mangos" with a bunch of papayas, but it kind of looks like an impossibly big avocado (just look at it compared to the grocery bag and butter knife below). While waiting for the profs to make it down to camp, we took bets on the fruit and, with much ado, cut the thing open. It was an avocado. We made guacamole. It was awesome.