Successful Poop Collecting and More...

April 2, 2006
Happy Birthday, Mom (Pat)!

This has been a very rough day for us. Both of us are super tired and we’ve been struggling to watch the monkeys, but we’ve still managed to get one poop for the day (not as spectacular as the 3, but impressive when considering the state we were in). The only exciting thing today was that the M & H Café is getting a concrete floor. It is a small mud hut that only had dirt floors until now – progress marches on in Gede. We finally finished out the day, which finally ended this particular grueling 11 hour day. We are now looking forward to blissful sleep!

Mom (Pat), we wanted to call this evening, but the phone has been terribly busy. We can at least wish you Happy Birthday via email and try again tomorrow! Mom (Karen), thanks for calling tonight! It was great to get a chance to talk with you about non-safari related stuff!

April 1, 2006
APRIL FOOLS DAY! Monica’s idea was brilliant and simple…take the rest of our day off (1/2 day) today, but take it in the morning AND afternoon! We slept in 1 hr (it is amazing how sleeping in to 6:45am can be “sleeping in”) giving us 10 hours of wonderful sleep! The only problem with the sleep was that Monica woke up in the middle of the night itching her bites and thinking they were not mosquito bites, but rather the kind of worms you can find her that burrow into your skin. She remembers thinking in her dream that this must be the mefloquine making her paranoid, but the dream went on. Very weird.

We went to work and had a difficult time finding the monkeys. We finally found them and carried on with our day as usual. Actually, today went very well as we managed to collect 3 poops in only ½ day! This may not sound spectacular to non-poop collectors or to expert poop collectors, but it was great for us beginners! J We came back early to do some lounging in the sun and went swimming. Monica had her mask and snorkel and went for a fun swim. She saw a lot of interesting items…a Mr. Loaf Bread Bag, some blue plastic, and some seaweed! Obviously, she didn’t swim out to the coral reef or anything. We read a lot and went back to our rooms.

Monica told Lispa the business idea she had come up with for Lispa… “Lispa’s African Cookbook”. She is such a good cook, these recipes would surely sell. All of you would buy this for the low price of $3-$5, wouldn’t you…particularly if you knew that this money would enable her to do her 1-year Business Administration diploma? She is still in discussions with Lispa about this idea.

New guests came to Mwamba tonight. They are recent bible college graduates from Southern California who have been working at an orphanage in Kakamega for almost 1 year now! They seem very excited to do this even though they have no electricity, etc. There are here on a vacation. Stanley says that these are “true Americans” (we are not) because they had Moses drive them to Ocean Sports in search of sweets. Monica had to confess to Stanley that we have been sneaking in sweets and American food from time to time as well! We ended up going to bed at 11, but Monica didn’t get to sleep until well after midnight and then she didn’t sleep well at all!

March 31, 2006
Sleep last night was horrible! We finally rolled out quite late, thankful that this would be an off day. We ran into Leslie at breakfast; she apparently had slept pretty terribly as well. It did not help that the Big Mamas decided to pray and sing next door at 4am.

Our plan seemed simple enough for the day: sleep in, make a tasty breakfast, catch some sun, and go to Arabuko Sokoke forest in the afternoon. Breakfast worked out wonderfully: coconut with cheesy scrambled eggs (the cheese we left out was actually still good). Unfortunately, we watched the thunderheads roll across over the ocean. By 11, we knew that there would be no tanning on the beach, so we decided to head to Arabuko Sokoke Forest and stop by the café with the yummy burgers. When we reached the café, we found it closed (yes, on a Friday during lunchtime). We decided that we might be able to make it on the Clif Bar and Dr. Pepper we had packed, so we continued on to Arabuko Sokoke. We found the ticket office and discovered just how out-of-date our Rough Guide is: the fees have gone up from 0 to 750 KSh per person, and then you probably want a map or guide (400 KSh) so you don’t get lost in the forest that stretches from Gede to Malindi. Unfortunately, we had not brought that much and were unwilling to pay nearly $30 just for a couple of hours in the park. We also realized we were low on water, had regular white socks (hiking socks in the laundry), and had not had any lunch. We just decided to cut our losses and spend the 2nd half of our day at the ruins watching our monkeys.

We walked into the ruins in our shorts, something we’ve never done before. The guys at the gate at first did not recognize us with our pasty white legs showing. Then the monkeys looked at us like “what are you tourists doing here?” We gave in and zipped our pants legs back on, and everything was copacetic.

Our breakfast lasted us surprisingly long, but by the end of the day we were pretty hungry. We stopped at Turtle Bay for kaimati again. Thankfully, Lispa had cooked a wonderful matoke with a rich peanut sauce … tasty! After dinner we went to bed super early.

March 30, 2006
We had lunch at the M&H today, a little café right at the entrance to the ruins that all of the guides as well as Leslie frequent. We also witnessed a new stupid tourist trick: feed the monkeys double wrapped hard candy (still in the wrappers of course!). Today was happy hour again at Pole Pole, and Katie and Sara joined the regular crew. We had a good time and even got a photo of the most tasteless outfit: a lime green, see-through skirt that a mzungu woman was wearing, which was complete with very visible underwear. What was she thinking? Moses drove us all back afterwards, letting us avoid the scary boda bodas.

We arrived home to a chapatti dinner, though, it was like walking into a funeral. The place was dead quiet with the group of church women (Big Mamas) staying there. Scott had a good time conversing with a German who was staying here a couple of days in his tent. Michael is a tool operator for Mercedes in Germany.

March 29, 2006
We had some very odd dreams last night, but waking up was nice. We indulged in some of our western foods (coffee milk, Trix) and added in the kaimati. We also caught the morning matatu! At the ruins, we witnessed a nasty intergroup encounter between two of the groups outside of the study. In one of the groups we saw the fabled 3-legged monkey with no tail! We thought everyone had just been making up stories, but it was real and still alive. Yung Fu’s group was fighting with them, and afterwards the poor monkey was looking exhausted (bloodshot eyes, bags, and he could not walk for more than a few yards without going to sleep).

Scott ran into a tree thief in the southeast corner! The man had the gas face when Scott saw him with a tree in one hand and a saw in the other; he was as guilty looking as you get. Without the phone, though, he had to run up ½ km to the ruins to find someone, and by the time they had returned the thief had fled. Scott also saw his first adult snake in Gede, a green snake with a yellow belly struck and began swallowing a little red lizard right in front of him, as he tracked our monkeys through the forest. How cool is that?

Quote of the day: “Here is your 10 schillings back. He eats monkeys” [said by Scott after getting off the boda boda and having learned that his boda boda driver enjoys eating our research … no tip for him]

March 28, 2006
We tried to catch the morning matatu this morning only to see it speed by when we were maybe 50 yards from the road. Again, monkey-watching went well. We think we are making some great progress in habituating the little rascals. We ate the last pieces of our pizza from Malindi today for lunch. We walked out at 6 with Leslie and Patrick, and Patrick told us about his trip to Nairobi. Monica also convinced Patrick to get us some mabuyu, a candy made from baobob seeds (and which is rumored among the locals to cause women to be a bit more agreeable to their male pursuers). We took the matatu to Timboni, and Monica got a sly smirk from one of the women, who noticed her mabuyu (like “I know what that does.”) We had to get a tape player for our Swahili rap tape and ended up at Mike’s, who had a nice selection of walkmans (from such well known brands as Panasaeonic … not to be confused with Panasonic). We also got some photocopies of our new super accurate map with 50 meter gridlines and improved footpath accuracy. There was also kaimati at the kiosk at Turtle Bay again, and who can pass up the Kenyan equivalent to Dunkin Donuts Munchkins? The sunset was also spectacular, and dinner was great with green beans, potatoes, and stew, which was much better than the feared rice with broth. The only unfortunate part of the day was discovering we had left our cheese out for 24 hours, but we are going to eat it anyway and call it an experiment.

March 27, 2006
This was a rough morning. Staying up to chat last night left us with only 5 hours of sleep. At least we do not seem to be having any side effects from our mefloquine. We ate our tasty chapati leftovers for lunch. As always, monkey watching was uneventful (at least to write about … we get excited about it, though). We stopped at the supermarket after work for the guilty pleasure of getting cheese, crackers, and tasty, sweet, sugary cereal! We even got home in time for dinner, though, as you may have guessed our old friend rice with broth had returned … bleck.

Monica participated in the Swahili spiritual after dinner tonight. Beatrice tried to annunciate what she was saying so Monica could understand. The rain storm the other day proved that one of our pairs of binoculars was indeed not waterproof, so Scott spent part of the night cleaning and drying the inside parts before reassembling it the next morning.

March 26, 2006
Monkey watching started out rather well. We found our group pretty quickly and then it poured on us, which quickly cooled everything down and was quite refreshing! Scott also startled a white badger looking creature which raced right past Monica. After looking at our guide to African mammals, we think it is a type of mongoose.

We went to Malindi today for lunch and emails. Malindi is much more chill on Sundays. We cracked off 20 emails in 30 minutes. Then we had a great time at “I Love Pizza” where we got a family size pizza and listened to cheesy love songs (such greats as Rod Stewart, Bryan Adams, Aaron Neville, etc.) … but only the first 90 seconds of each song before going to the next. It sounded like they had their playlist from Amazon music’s preview feature, and we had fun serenading each other.

We went back to Gede for the second half of the day and stayed until pretty late (6:30) to see where the monkeys sleep at night. We also discovered that there are reasons why we leave earlier. It was dark by the time we were finally able to catch a matatu at Gede, and then we had to go by boda boda back home. You need a good, stiff drink to ride a boda boda at night (and a good, stiff tranquilizer if that boda boda is missing a light). Monica’s boda boda had no light, and they kept almost hitting pedestrians before the driver switched to the middle of the road … I guess it was better to chance the matatus? Monica had her Swiss Army card light out trying to warn oncoming traffic/pedestrians. Luckily, we arrived home alive and there was still chapati! It was very tasty as usual, and we were able to get some extra for lunches tomorrow.

We had a great discussion with Lawrence this evening and sat talking until after midnight. He was telling us about how the transition to requiring no fees for primary schooling in Kenya has led to a drastic rise in the number of students enrolled. Unfortunately, there has been no increase in funding, so classes have >100 students in a classroom. If parents want their children to stay competitive for being admitted to the costly secondary schools, they must send their children to private schools (or get their children tutors, which are almost as expensive and double the length of the children’s school day). The result is that many parents have a difficult time paying for their children’s schooling and must take out 6-month loans, with payments that usually exceed the monthly income of many Kenyans. This has been echoed by other Kenyans we’ve spoken with.

He was also telling us about the corruption in the government which prevents food aid or drought relief from reaching the people who need it. Coupled with our lively discussion the other day at dinner, it sounds like there are many instances where people redirect food aid to be sold in kiosks with the proceeds going to the African U.N. peacekeepers or to government officials.

March 25, 2006
Siku ya Kupunzika ni leo! It was nice to have a day off. We slept in and lazed around in bed writing emails, etc. We took some good high-resolution photos of our monkeys yesterday, so we downloaded those to storage and then hung out on the beach. I know … it’s a tough life J. Monica did get a bit burned and is now holding it over Scott’s head because he messed up the sunscreen application (now one of her arms is all sunburned!).

We had an extremely strange conversation about “pants” (the British for “underwear”) and discovered some unpleasant truths about the frequency of washing … Also, we are starting to get worried about Katie; we think the Larium might be seriously affecting her.

Also, Happy Birthday, Mr. Ty-bug!


March 24, 2006
It was a fairly uninteresting day except that we inaugurated our first official monkey watchers’ happy hour! After work us monkey watchers stopped off for a pint at the Pole Pole Bar for dinner and drinks. Katana, our favorite waiter, served us, and we made sure to strategically remove a 4th chair, so that we would not have any interesting characters joining us. Moses arrived later, and we treated him to a drink to help ease the pain of the previous days. We learned more about their court date and the assorted other eccentricities of the Kenyan legal system. We eventually were nice and buzzed and by that point thought that a nighttime boda boda ride wouldn’t be a bad idea! Monica had the boda boda guy with the broken bike who works terribly hard, but still got her there quite a long time after the first of us. We were worried a crazy matatu might have gotten her. We ran into Lawrence and Katie when we returned and had some random conversations about snow, orthodontics in the UK vs US, and washers and dryers (which Lawrence had never seen).