Happy '06 to everyone! Now, it's time for us to get serious about preparing for Kenya. We first wanted to tell everyone how a couple of urbanites from the frozen tundra of Boston came to the decision to go to Kenya for half of a year.
First, I cannot take much credit for this, as Monica has been the one twisting my arm for years on this. It is easy to be drawn into one's research, and it definitely happened to me while I was finishing my Ph.D. on discrete element modeling (
see our site). Luckily, she finally convinced me that, yes, taking a long vacation to Africa would be both good for me and would not destroy my ability to find a position when we return.
We started seriously looking for a place to go about a year ago. We considered the
Colobus Trust at Diani Beach, which focuses on conservation work to preserve colobus monkeys. Since Monica is more interested in observing primate behavior, it just was not the right fit, though they make a wicked
colo-bridge (monkey overpasses).
Instead, we found another opportunity that was much more in line with Monica's interests through a posting on
Primate Info Net, which is a great resource for anyone interested in monkey-watching with a purpose.
Steffen Foerster, a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at Columbia University, was looking for volunteers to help him with his thesis work to study the behavioral differences between
Cercopithecus mitis monkeys near a dense human population (Gede ruins) and those at a relatively remote site (Kakamega). The idea is that there may be differences that are attributable mainly to the stress induced by the proximity of the monkey population to humans. The project is a continuation of work by Steffen's advisor,
Dr. Marina Cords. For more information on on-going projects at Kakamega, you can look at the
KEEP site.
Monica and I are not sure we could handle a truly remote site for 5-1/2 months. I have never spent any time in a developing country, and Monica has only spent a summer at
La Suerte in Costa Rica. Still, we are always up for a good adventure, and we were happy to learn that we would be going to the Gede ruins site near
Watamu on the Indian Ocean between Malindi and Mombasa in Kenya. Unlike Kakamega, we have access to actual filtered/boiled water and reliable electricity!
So now that we have a site and know what we are doing, we are embarking on the long project of packing up our apartment and gathering our supplies to take with us. We plan to keep updating this as we continue to figure out what we are getting into.
