Primates Watching Primates

From the Roof of Africa to the Exhaust Fumes of Nairobi

2006-08-01T00:30:00.000-05:00

July 10
We woke up to see the sunrise and to have tasty mango pancakes that Jacob made for us. After this yummy breakfast, Monica went into Gede while I ran some necessary errands. We got a taxi with Branson and headed to Villa Veronica to make a reservation for us, then to the cobbler near Turtle Bay to have sandals and belts made. Finally, we caught a matatu to Gede just in time to meet Monica at Gede Primary School. On the way, I talked with a guy who explained Taarab music to me. We met Monica and toured the school and saw the students with whom Karen and Nancy had worked for the past week. Despite that the school seemed well-run and they did a lot with what they had, it is always depressing to visit such places. It was getting late, but before we could leave to catch lunch, it started pouring rain. We were finally able to leave (well, at least Monica, Jim, and I, which prompted Karen and Nancy to leave as well). We caught lunch at Mama Alice’s café where we all shared chapatti na maharagwe. We all went into Gede Ruins and went to the corner, where they were able to meet our monkeys. Nancy got to meet Nancy (the monkey)! It was fun!

We helped the Earth Watch volunteers all afternoon while the rest took a tour of the ruins. We left with them around 5:30 and after a not-so-quick stop at Unis’ shop we left Gede to meet Salim and Patrick for dinner at Plot 15. We were a bit late, but Monica had gone ahead to meet Patrick and Salim when they arrived. Dinner was excellent (chapatti, samaki, etc.), and we were even able to get Jacob to join us! He said it was the first time any guests had ever asked him to join them at the table. After dinner, Monica and I escorted Salim and Patrick back to Turtle Bay – a mistake. No matatu came, and the taxi drivers saw us with Salim and Patrick and knew it was gouge the wazungu time! Oh, well, they ended up with a ride. We walked back to Plot 15, vented about this for a bit, and then went to bed.

July 9
It was an early morning for Monica and me. We dressed and walked down the beach to Turtle Bay with Karen to grab some mandazi and catch a matatu to Gede. We brought some orange/passion juice with us and chatted while we walked. It turned out to be a good monkey-watching morning. Because it was Sunday, no one was around, and we got to the office before we saw anyone. Steffen was VERY happy to see us (he even gave me a big hug). Yesterday, Laura had told us that it took them 2 hours to find Maurice’s group and then they lost them again within an hour even though Steffen was with them to help track the group. We went with Laura and 3 Earth Watch volunteers (Andrew, Allison, and Barbara), and I spotted our group at the outer wall headed north; it took all of 5 minutes :). We started trying to get the volunteers and monkeys used to each other, but Maurice and company wanted to keep a healthy distance from the newcomers. It also did not help that the Earth Watch volunteers did not know how to move through the forest and sounded like a herd of elephants barreling through nor that our monkeys were moving fast to kick another group out of their territory (and then back to the mashamba to raid the mahindi again). The corn lady, a poor, 80+ year old woman whose job was to sit all day in the hot sun warding off the encroaching monkeys, even stood at the fence yelling in English “I know you’re out there; why do you let the monkeys steal our corn?”. On reflection, it’s like a group of people with clipboards writing down the behavior of a gang of teenagers bashing in your car with baseball bats while you watched; the corn is their livelihood, and we feel a bit bad just recording the monkeys’ behavior as they steal a family’s livelihood. The farmers have even started to imitate our hoots while we followed the monkeys back north again. Andrew and Allison seemed to get the hang of watching the monkeys and started to take scan sample data later in the morning. By 10, we had even gotten 3 fecal samples! Despite our success, it is not the same when there are so many people in the forest; It destroys the peace and tranquility that we were used to and enjoyed.

We went to lunch and met up with Nancy, Jim, and Karen at the Three Spears in Gede. We walked up to the Mobil Mart Café for a small feast of hamburgers, chips, meat pies, and ugali. It was off to Malindi via matatu after lunch and then to Seaview Resort via tuk tuk. Jim got to experience all of the forms of Kenyan transportation today: bodas, matatu, and tuk tuk! At Seaview, the horses were available, and after 30 minutes the horses were tacked and ready to go. Monica got her favorite horse, Minimax; Nancy had Rafiki; Thomas had Arianna; Jim had Eco; Karen had Butterscotch; and I had Pippo, my favorite. We rode along the beach and wove through a grove a cassarina trees before walking back out to the beach over a series of sand dunes. We even saw a flock of flamingos standing at the edge of tide. We watched them sweep off the beach and out low across the water, as we approached them. It was time to return, and the weather from where we had come from was looking ugly. We left single file at a fast trot. All of a sudden we heard a shriek and saw Nancy falling to the ground. She was all right but had been bucked off by Rafiki! Nancy and I switched horses, and we did not bother to adjust the stirrups on Rafiki. He knew it, and kept trying to move fast and rip the reins from my hands. I stopped and Thomas helped to readjust. It worked, and Rafiki calmed down. What a friend (or Rafiki in Swahili) he was! Monica galloped ahead and rode with Jim and Thomas while I walked with Nancy and Karen. As we entered the path back to Seaview, I saw an African couple embracing in the bushes. Karen had seen them too, and later we agreed that they were in shagging position. We had a great time!

Malindi is pretty dead on Sundays, but we were able to get some ice cream at a little store near Uhuru Park. We quickly looked at a curio shop that a guy opened for us then caught a matatu to Watamu. Jacob again presented us with an incredible meal: huge 8” prawns! After dinner, Laura, Leslie, and Susan dropped in for some ridiculously alcoholic dawas (my bad). Susan got schloshed quickly, and everyone else was on their way. We posed for photos with our Maasai weapons, and Monica showed off trip photos. Close to midnight everyone left to return to Mwamba.

July 8
The morning began at 6:30. We got ready and split up to run errands. Monica went to the internet café while I went to breakfast. On the way, I ran into Francis, who was helping another group of British students. He mentioned that we had a transfer to the airport for us that Karen and Nancy had purchased for us. How nice to mention it to us … we would never have known if I had not happened to run into him! I grabbed Jim, who ran down to catch Francis to ask him some questions before he escaped. He’s slippery. Jim and I met for breakfast; Monica came a bit later. Jim and I went to the bookstore and Nakumatt before returning to the hotel to bring our bags down. In the mean time, Monica went to buy Larium, which turned out to be much cheaper at the chemist across the street from the Oakwood Hotel than it was in the states (40KSh per tablet!). We wish we had known; we would have bought ALL of our Larium there! Monica had also texted Ben who was going to meet us at our hotel on his way to the Naivasha matatu, but was running late. Unfortunately, even though he was almost to our hotel, our driver was waiting for us. Thus, it was off to the airport, Ben or no Ben; Monica had also picked up ice cream at Nakumatt that we enjoyed thoroughly as we drove to the airport.

We went through x-ray machine #1 at the door to the terminal and checked in luggage at the counter. Monica wanted to gate check our gift bag. Right before we went through x-ray machine #2, I realized we were about to attempt to carry a veritable arms cache for an African tribe in our carry-on luggage (a Maasai sword, 2 spears, a dagger, 2 rungus, and a Swiss army knife). That probably would not be ok with the airport security, so we went back to check it in – no problem!

We watched TV in the waiting room. At first it was Christian African music videos, but then it changed over to a cheesy show called “Cornerstone Café” (aka “Cheesystone Café”). It was very amusing and was best described as a Sesame Street for foreign adults. The show is apparently produced by Voice of America and consists of a cast of characters in a café with short educational vignettes (e.g., poorly animated Einstein teaching American English lessons, such as usage of passive voice; a set of interviews with recent immigrants about America’s many, many virtues; and an informational piece about how you can get advanced care in hospitals but you must have health insurance). The actors smile continuously and seem to be the epitome of relaxed contentment. Even when the older café owner has to go into the hospital for heart surgery and has to fill out his insurance forms, he was very happy and laughed off how he had no idea how to fill out the billions of forms they had handed him. What great propaganda :)!

We boarded the flight to Malindi on time and spent the flight reading “Msafari” (“Traveler” in English) magazine, from which we took the recipe for “Dawa” cocktails, a mixture of sugar, honey, vodka, and crushed ice. We landed only an hour later (by bus, this would have required an 8-hour then 2-1/2 hour ride probably spread over 2 days!). We grudgingly took a 1500KSh taxi from the airport to Plot 15 in Watamu. What a place to finally settle in! Because Mida Manor had had no power, we were able to stay in the guest house at Plot 15 for the same price, and it was beautiful (and, more importantly, right on the beach! And even MORE importantly than that, had a washing machine!!!!). We surprised Karen and Nancy and traded stories about our adventures since we split at the Tanzanian border. We headed to the beach to play in the heavy surf of the Indian Ocean. We returned, all showered and got organized, then called Branson to take us to the supermarket. A quick negotiation to 400KSh and we were on our way (we somehow piled all 5 of us into his taxi)! Who did we run into? Monkey watchers! We had a quick chat with Laura and Leslie then picked up some beer, wine, vodka, and ingredients for pancakes :), very healthy! We returned, and soon Marion and Rhea arrived; they were two Dutch woman with whom Karen and Nancy had been working at Kupenda and who had also been staying at Mwamba. Jacob presented us with a wonderful feast of snapper in a coconut curry sauce (samaki wa nazi), rice, and vegetables. They were very fun to talk with! Eventually, the talk turned too adult (house plans), and me and Monica fell asleep on the couch.

July 7
It was wonderful to sleep in a bed again, and despite a pack of baying dogs, we slept very soundly. We each groaned at the stiffness in our muscles, but by morning that was mostly gone. We got up and ate breakfast; Monica had been REALLY craving pancakes, but no luck. We met with Jim and the doctors came. After breakfast, we decided to go into Moshi by foot to do some internet stuff. The guide book showed that Moshi was less than a kilometer from the Key’s Hotel, so we thought it would be fun. It turned out to be a long walk with the familiar stares from the locals. We were confused why it was taking so long, and we asked twice which way to Moshi, which confirmed that we were going the correct direction. An hour later we arrived at the post office … definitely not the 400m we had expected. The post office internet was closed, though, the sign outside indicated it should have opened 1-1/2 hours before we had arrived). A man at the post office directed us ¼ way around the roundabout to a café. Again, no luck, but another man directed us a few doors down. Success! We checked email and shifted photos to our Nano to give us a second backup of our priceless photos and left. This time we decided to go by taxi. The taxi took us to the Key’s Hotel, and we realized our mistake … the guide book had said Moshi was 400m from the Key’s Hotel NOT the Key’s Hotel Annex. We had the taxi turn around and deliver us to the Key’s Hotel Annex. We tipped him well, which made for a very happy cab driver :). We arrived at 10:15, and our 11am shuttle was already there, loaded, and waiting on us to leave. We quickly grabbed our things, settled our hotel bill, and boarded the bus. We waved goodbye to the doctors, as we pulled out of the hotel.

At a stop in Moshi we bought a Swahili newspaper, and Jim got a batik at Arusha, as we changed buses for the trip to Nairobi. The drive was uneventful as was the border crossing – just a form at either side to fill out and not even an extra visa fee on the Kenyan side. On the Kenyan side, we were again accosted by hawkers; we saw all of the people from a week ago and they recognized us (we definitely hung out there too long). As we were about to leave, Monica saw Elizabeth, the nice Maasai woman who she had talked with the week before. Monica handed her 200KSh as a gift, to which she replied “Give me 50 more!” … so much for the nice person she had talked with the past week. On the way to Nairobi, we were stopped at a Kenyan police checkpoint, and the police spotted the cracked windshield of our shuttle. The driver got out of the car, and the police officer and the driver went around to the back of the bus for a “discussion”. When they returned, the police was all smiles and the windshield was forgotten about (methinks a little money changed hands). We reached Jomo Kenyatta International Airport at around 6:30, and it was a quick stop. We thought we might even make it to our hotel by 7, in time to meet Ben and Saruni. That hope was soon crushed with a jackhammer when we hit a nasty gridlock just outside of the airport. Then the annoying “missile lock” buzzer started to go off (the driver seemed not to know what it meant or how to turn it off). It did not help that “I Will Survive” (a crappy knockoff of the Aretha version) was playing for the billionth time. The smell of exhaust and diesel was heavy. Monica subconsciously opened the window to get some “fresh air” only to realize a second later that it just let in more exhaust. The woman in front of us had passed out. Things were not going well.

After about 20 minutes, we turned into a gas station, let off a passenger, and headed out the back way to take a shortcut’ish. We hit another line of stopped traffic. The buzzer went off again. We inched along and finally started gaining some ground. By 7:30 we had arrived at another stop to let off a passenger. They started taking down our luggage. Our initial alarm at thinking we were going to be dropped off in an unknown part of Nairobi was assuaged when they started taking our luggage into the bus. Though the woman in front of us had passed out a while ago, we just realized it when we stopped. The woman’s husband said it was “just” an acute migraine brought on by the exhaust fumes and long travel. Our next stop was to take the unconscious woman and her husband to the Boulevard Hotel. Luckily, he was able to carry his wife off; she looked quite rough, and we were reminded that things could be worse. It was 8 by the time we left the Boulevard, and Ben was supposed to meet us at the Oakwood at 7:30. 20 minutes later we arrived at the hotel and basically had to bail out of the bus with all of our luggage since there was no parking. We quickly checked in, dropped off our bags, and met Ben and Saruni before leaving for Trattoria, an Italian restaurant rumored to have pizza. We had been anticipating this meal all day, and the long, annoying ride had left me hungry and irritable, so I was ready to sit down.

Arriving at the Trattoria, we could not figure out who would seat us. The waiter was a bit snotty. When Jim asked him how many the antipasti serves, the reply was “We do not share here!” Ben and especially Saruni looked very uncomfortable. I ordered a pizza and tried to order a spinach salad, but they did not have spinach. When the waiter tried to explain they could make the salad with a different leafy vegetable, I said it was unacceptable … take that snooty waiter :). Ben gave us a wicked cool bag of gifts! Despite the snooty waiter, the pizzas were good. The conversation was strange; at one point we were telling about seeing black and white colobus monkeys on Kilimanjaro, and Saruni interjects “I have a colobus monkey pelt that I wear on my head [when I dance at the manyatta]”. Poor Monica didn’t like the talk of monkey pelts. After dinner, we headed back to the hotel, gave Ben the books, and said goodbye to him. The pizzas had been good, but weeks of little dairy had left our stomachs unhappy. We stayed up to watch a movie (A Few Good Men); how fun to see a movie again!

July 6
We woke up feeling a bit better than we had when we went to sleep. Despite having gone to sleep at around 8 yesterday, we could easily have slept through breakfast at 7:30. Monica was quite cold and her stomach still was not happy. Breakfast was oatmeal, fruit, sausage, and eggs (like usual). After breakfast we had to deal with the tipping thing. Unfortunately, we had talked with everyone before and were under the impression that all of this would be taken care of at the hotel when we returned, but here we were trying to figure out if we had enough to pay everyone. We were quite annoyed that no one had told us we needed cash on the mountain; we had left everything in the hotel safe and felt annoyed that we had no choice in the tip we gave. We packed our things, turned the money over to William, and started down.

The walk was more pleasant today. We walked down through the lush cloud forest. Our eyes were out for monkeys. At one point Renata and William stopped so that Renata could wrap her knee. We had been asking our guides if they had seen monkeys all morning, and 30 minutes after we saw Renata stop, we asked again. They said they had seen monkeys when Renata had stopped. We were very annoyed that no one had mentioned it to us earlier! We kept watching and even asked the porters coming up if they had seen any ahead … yes, 15 minutes ahead! 10 minutes later I heard a rustling in the trees to our right, and we watched a group of blue monkeys play in the trees above us. They are bigger than the Sykes monkeys we had been studying and have puffy, cute, fuzzy cheeks.

We were nearing the Mweka Gate when we heard the croaking of black and white colobus monkeys (like the vocalization of howler monkeys) to our left in response to the territorial chirps of a group of blue monkeys. We still could not see any colobus monkeys, though. Finally, about 20 minutes from the gate, I heard a branch break to my right and looked around to see a fuzzy white tail move along a branch … a black and white colobus monkey at last! They were so cute! We watched them for several minutes before moving on, but a couple of minutes later there was a group chilling in the trees to our left. We took another long break to observe their behavior :). Yea!

We continued on to the gate, signed out, and bought a couple of patches to commemorate our climb. A hawker had a t-shirt that we wanted, but we had no money. We finally realized we had gotten 5000 TSh in change earlier, and had the van stop. We could not find the money, but Renata loaned it to us, and Monica got a very cool shirt for about $4. Monica found our money less than a minute later and paid Renata back. We arrived at our hotel about an hour later and went through the ritual of buying the guides drinks, giving our guides tips, and being presented with our certificates for reaching the summit of Kilimanjaro. When the ceremony was over everyone got up to leave; I palmed an extra tip and passed it to Moses, and Jim and I both thanked him for being such a great guide.

We quickly realized, though, that we would not have enough cash to pay for our equipment rental, though! They were good enough to take me to the bank where (after waiting for an eternity to get to the counter) I was able to change over enough money to US$ to pay for our stuff. They returned me to the Key’s Hotel Annex. I found Monica and Jim at the restaurant freshly showered and clothed and sitting in front of a small feast of hamburger, club sandwich, and beer. They were nice enough to share, but first I went to the room to shower. The hotel staff took my terribly disgusting boots to clean them (they returned later sparkling clean and looking better than they had in years, and it was all for 2 US$!). When I got in the room, I could not resist trying our iPod again, so I set it up just perfectly with power fed from an outlet and pushed the power button. It worked! It was a minor miracle! After a luxuriously long shower and shave, I was exiting the room when Monica came in to see whether I had drowned. I came down and gorged myself on the remains of their food and washed it all down with a Kilimanjaro Beer! It was heavenly!

After eating, Monica and I went to the pool while I left the newly revived iPod to download our camera. We hung out writing postcards before going to dinner. At dinner, I seemed to be the only one hungry: I ended up consuming a steak, cake with ice cream, a ½ liter of water, a beer, and 2 shots of rum while conversing in German, English, and Swahili (sometimes the wrong language with people), which was infinitely amusing to Jim and Monica. After some fun discussions about Kilimanjaro, German beer (everyone has an opinion on which is the best), Ethiopia, and the final resting place of the Ark of the Covenant (Bundeslager auf Deutsch), we parted and went to bed.

July 5
The “day” started just before midnight this morning. We had had little sleep. Monica’s stomach was rebelling, though, I was doing relatively well. I ate a few biscuits while Monica just sat and put her boots and gaiters on; she did not eat anything. We all got into our cold weather gear, turned on our headlamps, and lined up single file in the enveloping darkness. We started out at midnight. It was very dark except for an orange crescent moon near the horizon, a few stars, and the pale glow of our headlamps.

We walked for about 10 minutes before stopping for a rest; Monica vomited. The guides were concerned, but she felt better and kept going. We continued another 30 minutes before resting again. The sky was crystal clear with the crescent moon illuminating the floor of clouds sitting over 2000 feet below us. We watched shooting stars across an immobile blanket of stars. Monica was feeling ok, but an hour later she vomited again. The guides were becoming more concerned, but we kept going. I strained to breathe without getting winded, but it was difficult. Monica somehow handled it without much difficulty.

We stopped again, and Monica was feeling very nauseous again, but she held it back. The guides cautioned that she was risking life by continuing. She refused to turn back. The stars in the sky disappeared, and all we could see were a faint trail of lights from hikers’ headlamps: one far below us and one far above, both hanging delicately in space – other hikers facing the same desolation. We continued up the steep slope, fighting to keep stepping and to prevent ourselves from slipping down the scree slope. My headlamp had started to became just a faint glow, barely enough to see the feet walking in front of me, despite a fresh set of batteries inserted just before we started out.

The time became lost in the labor of taking each additional step and trying to get enough oxygen from the thin atmosphere. At some point, we could make out a ghostly white snow cap sitting above us. We stopped for a rest; Jim saw me and said “the way you look makes me feel better” :). At some point, the sky started lightening, and I got a new wind. Maybe my body had finally adjusted to the low oxygen, or the ability to see my surroundings (and where I was stepping), and the climbing became much easier. It was about 5:45 when we reached the first traces of snow. We watched the sky erupt in shades of pink and then orange, as the sun rose between the peaks of Kibo and Mawenzi. Moses said we were almost to Stella Point and pointed to a place just above the first mantle of snow. I looked and said “I can do that”; Jim responded “Well pardon my French, I’ll be God-damned.” We reached Stella Point on the crater rim by 7:15 and were all very happy! Everyone else collapsed into a pile while I leapt up onto the ledge to see the glacier lying down the slope of the crater (and to relieve myself). When I came back a few minutes later, we took a group photo.

William and Marga started back down with Monica in tow. When they began descending
Monica asked “Why are we going this way? Is this the way to the peak?”
William: “No. We are going back down”
Monica: ‘But I just got here. Is anyone going to the peak?”
William: “No, it is too late”
Monica: “But I want to see a glacier! I’m going to see a glacier.”
At which point, Monica turned around and found Jim and Scott with Moses and Dennis (the other guide) at Stella Point. The decision was unanimous: we would try to make it to Uhuru Peak. If we did not make it, at least we could stay at the crater a bit longer and enjoy the beautiful glaciers. We set off at a slow pace: pole pole. The climb to Uhuru Peak is gradual; though, the thin air still made progress difficult. Around 8:15, we made it to Uhuru Peak! We were very happy and took a bunch of photos of us before turning around.

The walk back down was REALLY easy, and we reached Stella Point in only 10-15 minutes! Then the fun started! The scree that had vexed us so much on the way up was transformed into a gray ski slope! For about 1-1/2 hours we flew down the slope, using our hiking poles as ski poles: downhill, moguls, slalom … it was all there! We knew our knees would pay for it, but we thought it was so much fun, and so did Moses, who was laughing not only at how fun it was but also at us. Jim thought the whole thing was some version of hell. Dennis accompanied him down while the 3 of us “skied” down the slope. Barafu Camp just seemed to hang in the same place no matter how far we went. For the last 20-30 minutes, the slope was not steep enough to ski, and we were tiring of the journey. The constant shock of hitting the ground had made both of our heads feel as though someone were trying to break through them with a jackhammer.

When we walked into camp, Monica made a mad dash for the impenetrable choo, an outhouse down a loose, cleaved shale slope. Jim had caught up as Monica returned. Several minutes later, we walked into our camp, and we collapsed in our tents. Monica and I were completely exhausted, and we had really exerted our muscles. Lunch was ready presently, and we could not nap long (5 minutes). Lunch was chicken soup and eggy chips! It was very good! We went back to sleep some more, but we noticed the porters were picking up our camp. We started throwing our things in our backpacks and saw Marga, William, and Renata leave for Mweka Camp. No rest for the weary. Monica, Jim, Moses, a few porters, and I were the only ones left at camp.

We both had headaches, our stomachs were a bit off, and our joints and muscles were filing protests with the appropriate authorities to try to block us from progressing further. It was not a good way to start a 4-hour hike to Mweka Camp. A swift wind blew towards Mawenzi while the sun beat through the mountain air. Despite feeling quite tired and having the headache work crew trying to drill through our skulls, it was an enjoyable walk. Monica, Jim, and I talked while Moses hung back about 100 yards (why? We don’t know – maybe he’d had enough of us?). The land sloped gently down towards the cloud ceiling along a wide ridge line. We started in high desert with little flora. Gradually, we began to see flowers, then joined by small bushes, then by large bushes, and then small coniferous trees. Some time after we started the landscape was filled with small trees! Two hours into our journey, we walked into High Camp, halfway to our destination. We took a break; Monica and I sat on a shaded bench with heads propped on our poles and wishing we were done. We started off again. The path was studded with large rocks and sloped downward at a fairly steep grade. At some point, we reached a part of the path that looked like a fairly nice road, which lasted all of a couple hundred meters before turning back into the boulder studded path we’d been on; maybe it was a test track where they airdrop cars? We talked with Moses a lot in Swahili and found out a lot about his family. We finally reached Mweka Camp, signed in, and bought ourselves and Jim a coke and Moses a Kilimanjaro beer.

The guys in the shop were highly amused that we knew some Swahili and wrote a bunch of words down for us. We chatted for a while, as we drank and then left for our campsite. Monica was feeling rough, and she crashed as soon as we’d made our beds. We had zucchini soup, chapatti, chicken, and curried rice with peas. The chapatti was very good: soft and cooked with onion. Monica just had some soup and chapatti before she returned to the tent because she was feeling sick and feverish. We all went to bed early after agreeing to discuss the tipping of the guides and porters tomorrow.

Snows of Kilimanjaro

2006-07-26T20:41:00.000-05:00

July 4
Last night was a great night for both of us. We were feeling good, so we did not need the Diamox and therefore no frequent trips to the bathroom in the freezing cold. Hurray! The Larium, though, gave us some really vivid dreams. Scott’s involved floating Cabbage Patch Kids that he thought were his neighbors’ children until the neighbors thanked him for finding their Cabbage Patch Kids.

My dreams involved relaying our progress on Kilimanjaro to a plastic clown toy which repeated the message when you pulled a cord on its back. The report was given to an elderly couple who were mysteriously murdered, and Mariah Carey was blamed for it :). She was hiding from the people who were coming to take her away, but they found her sister instead, who was taken away in a van, her hair turned white from fear.

In the morning, we were packing to the smell of pancakes or waffles. We were starving! I’m not sure if we imagined it, because breakfast turned out to be the same mushy oatmeal and cold toast :(. We were devastated. The day’s climb started at 9am with an uphill climb (not too steep this morning, though). Nothing is growing at this altitude, and the landscape looks Martian. We passed the time by talking about the first season of “Lost” followed by some lengthy discussions with Moses in Swahili.

We arrived at Barafu Camp just 2 hr and 45 min later. “Barafu” means “ice” in Swahili … not a good omen. This camp was very different from the others. It is set in a huge rock outcropping. The clouds had rolled in, , but after lunch and a nap the clouds cleared revealing a gorgeous view of Moshi and Mawenzi, one of the other two peaks of Kilimanjaro (we are heading to Kibo). After getting a few photos, we wanted to download everything to our iPod to make sure our card was empty for the final ascent up to the crater. We were VERY glad we had been rationing our photos, because the iPod would not start! It just made this sick “ka-chick, ka-chick, ka-chick” sound like the hard drive could not locate the right track. The screen just showed an unhappy iPod and said to visit the iPod web site for technical support. There would be no downloading of the photos to the iPod today. We debated whether we should even bring the camera; if our photos on the iPod were compromised the only copy of any gorilla photos would be on our memory card. We finally decided to take the chance and bring the camera along with us but would take precautions like keeping it under my coat and inserting a hand warmer in the outer camera case to help keep the temperature reasonable.

Tonight will be the final ascent to Uhuru Peak (“Uhuru” means “freedom” in Swahili … how appropriate for today! Happy Independence Day!). Our gear is finalized. Monica is wearing a balaclava and stocking cap on her head; lined mittens with an extra North Face liner glove; a nylon undershirt, a quick dry T-shirt, long sleeve quick dry shirt, polar fleece, and winter jacket; long john pants, gray cotton pants, gray quick dry convertible pants, and rain pants; and gaiters, boots, and heavy hiking socks. I wore a similar set of clothing with the addition of an extra pair of liner socks. With our headlamps, toe warmers in our boots, and our CamelBaks underneath our coats, our outfit was complete. It was time for dinner: mushroom soup and spaghetti. Between us all, we cleaned the plate quickly! We retired to our tents for a short night.

July 3
Last night was crazy again. Monica had to wake up thrice to go to the restroom (Diamox again!) and is terribly jealous that I can just walk over to the grass when I need to go instead of trekking all the way to the outhouses in the freezing cold. We also finally decided to use our toe warmers last night, which was heavenly, but after 3 hours the heat was gone and the feet got cold. My night was fairly horrible. I woke up several times: one time nauseous, another blisteringly hot, once with a crippling headache, and one other time freezing. The Larium dreams did not help, nor did the fact that my rented sleeping bag’s (funk bag) zipper broke in the night. At least I had 11 hours to get some sleep. The morning was rough, too (the doctors later said that my lips were blue), and Monica was very cold when she woke up. Neither of us ate much breakfast. The lack of appetite was a bit disturbing. Once we were moving, we both felt MUCH better. The “breakfast hill” above Barranco is not nearly as bad to climb at it looks, and we were over it before we knew it! The views were gorgeous! We could soon see the tents of Karanga Camp in the valley below us. We were excited that we were so close … we thought. Unfortunately, we soon realized that a deep valley (Karanga Valley) lay between us and our goal. The descent (mteremko) was steep, but we all managed with no major accidents. We crossed a stream at the bottom and started the ascent (mlima). Monica’s lack of appetite in the morning caught up with her, and she was starving as we started up. We were both bundled up when we started, and Monica had only removed 1 of her 6 layers by the time we had topped the breakfast hill, but by the time we reached the volcanic escarpment near the top of the valley, she was down to only 1 layer. After a quick rest, we continued to camp – a welcomed sight! We both collapsed on a rock and let our bodies rest a little. They soon announced lunch, so we dragged ourselves up. A feast of chicken, broiled peppers, and vegetable-filled pies greeted us … heavenly! We devoured them (Scott ate twice his portion when Jim did not want his food), and we retired afterwards to our tent. We threw open the flaps of our tent and had a wonderful nap in the mid-afternoon sun. We woke up later and took stock of our hand./toe warmers (30 toe warmers and 12 hand warmers). We went to visit Jim and saw his formidable array of cold weather gear; we felt inadequate . A porter came at 5:15 to announce dinner. Jim was not hungry and skipped dinner; his stomach is hurting. This is not good.

Dinner was as wonderful as lunch, though, we were still both full from lunch. The potato and vegetable stew they brought us was mouth-watering. I don’t know if it was just that I was finally hungry or the cook pulled out the stops, but it was very tasty and salty. We left dinner pleasantly full, and we stopped by Jim’s tent to see the cold weather gear actually modeled! We went to our tent and decided to test out our stuff, too. It seems very warm, and we are hopeful that it will get us to Uhuru Peak. We like it so much we’re wearing it to sleep tonight!

July 2
This morning we felt fine. I was so glad that my headache was gone. We packed, ate a good breakfast of oatmeal (not as good as the porridge) and toast followed by eggs that all but 2 of us were quick enough to say we did not want. Jim ate barely anything and was feeling nauseous. Scott set himself up for a similar fate by eating the egg.

We started off around 8:30 and soon realized that though it was relatively flat, it was rocky and desolate and would be a long day. Scott and Jim were really dragging, and Scott complained of not being able to get enough air. I’m not sure if I’m just used to getting little air or what, but I didn’t have much trouble. The landscape was much like what I would expect the moon to be like. It was not that interesting except that it was so different.

We made it to Lava Tower junction in 4-1/2 hours and stopped for lunch. The ravens visited again, as did a few very tiny birds. Lunch was a hard-boiled egg, pineapple juice, orange banana, and a deep fried bread sandwich (tasted like Yorkshire pudding). We took turns visiting the choo (bathroom), took a vote on whether to go to Lava Tower or bypass it, and ended up agreeing on Lava Tower, as it was at 4600m and supposed to help with acclimatization. The going was much easier than we expected, and everyone was feeling much better after lunch. The view reminded me of Frodo and Sam’s journey up Mount Doom in the “Lord of the Rings”. The Lava Tower itself was quite impressive. It was an almost sheer cliff of rock rising about 100m from the slope of the mountain and was striking against the backdrop of the glaciers atop Kilimanjaro. We saw people on top of the tower and worried that we would also have to climb it, but we just needed to get to the base. We later discovered that the group at the top had been the crazy Lebanese group (who was carrying most of their own stuff themselves).

We took the opportunity for a group photo at the base of the Lava Tower then headed for Barranco Camp (a 2 hour journey). We had a massive downhill part, followed by a steep uphill hike. It was another downhill part after that, but the time passed quickly because Moses spent most of the time trying to teach me new Swahili words. He is a good teacher.

Finally, we could see the camp, and we entered this absolutely beautiful valley with the long-awaited Lobelia and Senecio trees spread out throughout the rocky expanse below us – the Barranco Valley. A small stream flowed through and off to the left was a steep, shear slope up to the top of Kilimanjaro. It was amazing! Even though the rest of our group was going quickly so as to get to camp ASAP, Scott and I slowed down to enjoy the scenery and take some perfect photos, since the sun was just right! We got to camp at around 4:30 and used the warm water the porters had cooked to “wash up”. Scott even washed his hair. Tea came next with hot chocolate, burnt/unsalted popcorn (much worse than the last batch), and biscuits. The sun had been very strong, but as soon as it disappeared behind the mountain, it grew very cold very fast. Scott had just settled down to nap when it was dinnertime. Once again Scott and Jim were not hungry (not good). We had pasta with sauce and a white pie (cabbage wrapped vegetable pie that I did not like). The soup that started dinner off was quite good, (zucchini soup). We took our Larium after the doctors told us how terrible it is to take it at high altitude. We took Diamox along with it to ease any problems.

It was too cold to do anything after dinner, so at 6:45 we decided to go to sleep. Today was not bad, but it is getting harder and colder day by day. Tomorrow is an acclimatization day, which we hope will recharge us. We have made it to 4600m and should be proud of ourselves!

July 1
Scott and I slept relatively well last night even though it was very cold. I just slept with the covers up over my head. I only had to get up to use the restroom once in the night. We woke around 6:30 and packed up our things. Breakfast was quite good, consisting of a wheat porridge (slightly sweet and very good), tea, bread, avocado, mango, and eggs with sausage, tomato, and cucumber. It was an amazing amount of food, and we could barely touch it.

We got started around 8:30 and by this time the sun was shining. It was going to be a beautiful and warmer day. The trail started out steep and stayed that way for most of the day’s journey. Even with this I found the going just as easy as yesterday. So far so good. The scenery changed several times, and we had some fabulous views of the mountains jutting above the clouds. It was beautiful! The terrain became rocky with brush and occasionally some lobelia and small flowers. We were all in a good mood, and I was enjoying William and Moses talking together in Swahili. I think I’m catching some words now. We stopped for lunch in a small valley. This consisted of chicken, a vegetable sandwich, a hard-boiled egg, biscuits, orange, banana, muffin, and juice. We both were full and ended up giving our chicken to Moses and William. We also had several visitors at lunch: large, white-necked ravens. They wanted our lunch and Renata’s in particular. She kept talking with one in German, telling them that it was not their food, yet every now and then she would feed it. It was very amusing to watch! The sun was blazing, and I put on my 3rd layer of sunscreen (you never how strong the sun is up here). It felt so nice, so I laid down on the rocks and basked in the sun until it was time to continue on.

We started around 1pm, and I spent most of the time talking with Moses in Swahili. I think he’s finally realized that I do know some Swahili…if one talks slowly. About 2 hours after lunch, we arrived at Shira Camp! We also noticed another group who had decided to hike without shirts. We kept joking about how they would become “Wazungo Choma” (barbecued Europeans).

At camp, we used the nice weather to its full advantage and washed hair. Today’s tea time was hot chocolate, mini scones, and peanuts. I was not hungry or thirsty, but we’ve been told to keep eating and drinking in order to prevent altitude sickness. Scott had a headache, so he had some tea and then left to rest. I decided to experiment with my hair and create two French-braided pig tails. Now I will look even younger! Scott got up, and we walked around the camp until the cold wind eventually forced us to find shelter. We snapped some quick photos and met with Jim, who was also freezing. We retreated to Jim’s tent and discussed how strange/crappy we felt and decided to ask the doctors what they thought about us taking our Diamox (it’s so nice to have doctors with us). The consensus seemed to be “Yes”, as it is a prophylaxis as well. We took some and went to dinner, a tasty layout of cucumber soup and chapatti, follwed by fish, rice, sauce, and green beans. We ended dinner with some chai, and we decided we were still not feeling well so we took some more Diamox (we had only taken ½ of the recommended dose before) and tried to fall asleep. My head was hurting me so badly by this time that getting into my sleeping bag was a production! I managed to get to sleep fairly quickly but had to get up every 3 hours (almost exactly) to go to the bathroom – an unfortunate side effect of the Diamox.

June 30
Kilimanjaro is waiting for us. I’ve awoken pretty early getting the previous day’s journal entries. Today was “pole pole”. We didn’t end up leaving the hotel before ten. We made a few steps before reaching the Machame Gate, and then there was an hour or so before we were ready to begin.

There are five of us hikers: our guide, William, and approximately 15 porters! They were busy shuffling luggage and handing out box lunches. We got started around noon about twenty to 30 minutes before the orders. I began by walking by “normal” (this is what I thought was a slow) pace. I quickly realized that I was walking much faster than the two German ladies who have done this before. Their names are Margaret and Renata. But Margaret has done this once before and Renata has gone eight times! She is 66 yrs old! It was very difficult for me to walk THAT slowly so I had to spend all my concentration on that. We were going PAINFULLY slow, yet I was told that we would be grateful in the end. After William had to physically pull me back so I would not go so fast, I decided to stay behind the ladies.

The forest was AMAZING! It was just how I pictured it would be, very lush and moist with lots of ferns, and moss on the trees. During the first two hours, I was frustrated, not because of the hike, but because I can’t seem to understand Tanzanian Swahili at all! They speak faster than in Kenya and with a different dialect or inflection. It just made me feel so dumb! Scott said he had the same problem, yet he seemed able to easily carry on a conversation with both William in Swahili and the German ladies in German. I felt so inadequate! This put me in a bad mood for quite some time, but at some point the mood lightened and the last 3-4 hours were great!

After a few short breaks, we arrived at camp around 6pm. The hike today had been very easy, albeit a bit colder than I had anticipated, and we could detect the air getting thinner. We also had a few pleasant surprises. We discovered they have outhouses every few hours (who knew!) and the trail is very wide and open (I pictured something much different since having a guide is required).

Machame Camp consisted of a metal hut where you sign a guest book, several toilets (outhouses), and about 10 tents, which were already prepared for us when we arrived! After we picked a tent and started getting settled in, we were told that “tea” was ready and found biscuits and wonderfully salty popcorn with a selection of tea or hot chocolate! Dinner was still to come! The five of us chatted and the German ladies explained what we had in store for us in the way of food. Dinner is generally potatoes, vegetables, soup, and meat; teatime is always before this, boxed lunches are our lunch, and breakfast is toast, porridge, eggs, sausage, and fruit! I’m not going to be able to handle this! Apparently, they bring enough food for each person to have 4000 calories/day! I can’t even eat half that! They also told us of a time last year when they were on the mountain and the largest storm since 1955 hit the area. The tents were flooded, there was hail, etc and they had to evacuate the mountain. Crazy! Crazier still is that they decided to come back!

Dinner was very good, although no one was hungry. We had very yummy leek soup with bread and butter, followed by goat, potatoes, and cabbage. Just as we were finishing up, William and Moses (I didn’t recognize him in his winter clothes) came in. They began speaking to us in Swahili. I was finally starting to understand some phrases, but Scott’s Swahili brain had gone to bed already and all he could muster were some confused looks. Now he knew how I had felt all day!

At some point, something was said (I can’t remember what) that prompted William to start preaching about God. He kept going on and on and much of it wasn’t making sense. Everyone (including Moses) was looking uncomfortable as he prattled on. Scott just kept looking at him, not knowing what to do. Finally, he finished and they both left. How strange! Then it was off to bed. It was sure to be a cold night!

"Ouch, Those Were my Genitals" and Other Safari Stories

2006-07-15T04:06:00.000-05:00

June 29
We woke up and overheard a conversation between Karen and the staff outside. There was a big elephant poop under her window, and, apparently, the sound we heard last night was from an elephant searching for water! How cool! After a long search for Monica's hairbrush (she was sure the elephant had stolen it and we would notice the one elephant out there with excellent hair), we went for a quick breakfast. The drive to the border was relatively quick, and we off-loaded all of our things in front of the van. After filling out and filing our exit forms, we hung out and waited for the SafeRide van to take Karen and Nancy to Nairobi. For an hour, we somehow fought off the barrage of hawkers (mostly older Maasai women) who were just
about falling over each other to sell us bracelets and necklaces. Some of them waned us to raid the things we brought from the US, and one guy was especially persistant at wanting to buy Monica's hiking boots. He tried everthing from offering to trade sandals, to asking to promote him, to saying he needed them because he had no shoes
(though he was wearing brand new boots; of course, they were his "brother's"). The SafeRide van finally came and we saw them off. Jim, Monica, and I were left to fight off more hawkers. Monica met one very nice young Maasai girl, Elizabeth, who was roughly the same age as me and just stood around and chatted with her. She even gave Monica a free bracelet!

I left to grab some immigration forms from the border, lodging the offers of changing money at good rates if I wouold just follow them to their back-alley offices. After a few inquiries in Swahili, I found the office and returned with the forms. We were finally tired of fending off hawkers, so Samuel said he would watch our things and we went to look at the stores. That got old very quickly as there were only a few and they were all the same. Jim asked on of the hawkers if he could try to sell his box of wooded animals. He said yes! Jim went up to one of the vans full of waszungu and asked a poor teenage British girl if she would like the animals for $10. She was shocked and was completely unprepared for an mzungo hawker. She still politely refused and shut her window. It was quite funny! Our shuttle finally arrived and we left for Tanzania with very little clue about what were were doing other than to get to Moshi and find "Pagali". The border crossing was nice, and the driver took care of our passports. Since we have a short wait, Jim and I snuck off the bus and across the border to get much-needed biscuits to snack on.

On the road, we saw a giraffe, and boy did we see it! Nancy would have been happy as this giraffe, was so close we nearly avoided running into it. It just decided to run across the road and two vehicles were approaching from different directions! After this exciting event, not much else happened. I slept while Monica chatted with a Kilimanjaro tour guide (not ours) who was just returning from Germany where he had had the opportunity to go to several of the World Cup games. I woke up in Arusha (I also woke up a few other times when the very cute little boy next to me kept grabbing my arm and smiling), and we alighted. While Monica and Jim found a bathroom in the Mount Meru Hotel, I made sure we got all of our bags. We were supposed to transfer to another bus to Moshi, but it looked full. We managed to get the last 3 "flip-down" aisle seats. The bus was packed! All of us got into converstation: Jim with the Australian girl in front of us, Monica with the Kenyan and Zambians behind us and I met William and his wife next to me. They were returning to Zambia after visiting missions for the Church of Christ in Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, and Kenya. William was from a family of 8, though both of his parents had passed away, leaving him, the eldest to watch over the family, though, his siblings are all adults. He does a little farming and had left his 3 children at home under the care of his sisters. He spoke English and Tong'aa, a Bantu language. He said that Rwanda seemed to be healing, though, some people still mistrusted outsiders. Burundi was much different where tension is high and people do not want to speak with foreigners. It is not as friendly as Rwanda. We talked about what we grow in the US and what they eat in Zambia (mostly maize-based foods like ugali along with vegetables, etc). It was a great way to pass the time on our journey to Moshi.

When we arrived in Moshi, we were assailed by a couple of hawkers (one safari hawker was very persistant) and two people tried to say we were to go with them. Since Pagali's name was on our envelope, we decided he must be the one, and we went to the Key's Hotel Annex, a nice place a little away from the town center. We met William, our guide, there, and they gave us a nice briefing. Monica and Jim took care of the supply details with William while I went with Pagali and his driver to get money. We talked a bit in Swahili, and he was very surprised that I was a doctor. I found Monica and Jim up on the bacony staring at the clouds…but it wasn't a cloud. It was the peak of Kilimanjaro jutting up above the clouds. Dinner was quite good (and very cheap at about $12 for all of us including drinks). We sat around and plotted our course in the Kili book's map before going to our rooms to shower, pack, and go to sleep.

June 28
We woke up for breakfast and then headed off on a game drive. We saw a cute little vervet monkey, a warthog, LOTS of gnus, and then went to a hilltop that overlooks the park. The view was gorgeous and we got some good family photos at the top. We drove back to Amboseli Lodge and met a son of the chief of the Maasai manyatta we would be visiting. We drove to the mayatta and talked with Lanash as other vans of wazungu pulled up. We were welcomed by dances from the men and women (both Jim and I joined the men dancing) and then heard their prayer before going into the mayatta. They performed the jumping dance (don't know the real name for it) and took us into one of their homes to see how they live.

The roof is made of wood, goat hide, grass, and cow dung. The rains wash away the cow dung/grass which must be reapplied. There are two rooms—one room for the small children and one for the parents. There was also an area for the fire for cooking. Outside of the manyatta, we got to see them make fire. They make it by crushing elephant dung over a piece of wood; people take turns twisting another stick into the first. The resulting ash starts the fire! We learned some
interesting things about Maasai culture too.*

After visiting the dwellings, we went outside the manyatta to look at their curios. We picked up several things and went away to the "bargaining area". We bargained on the individual items (a longer process than Samuel would have liked). We paid a bit more since we knew where it went. Scott went aside with our guide's brother and after a hard bargain, he got his sword and another gift for his $7 Walgreens watch and some additional shillings.

On our afternoon game drive, we saw zebra, blue heron, a secretary bird, an eagle, and we got the classic photo of elephants in front of Kilimanjaro. We had dinner and then discovered that the Maasai walking through the night before, indicated a show was about to start behind the bar area in a different room of the lodge. We watched the show together (me, Monica, Karen, and Nancy) before going to bed.

The night was trying. Some time in the night, we heard a brushing of something BIG at our window. We were a bit unnerved, realizing that the window was open and the only thing holding back whatever was outside, was a flimsy screen. I got the flashlight from Monica's bag and my newly acquired Maasai sword and crept to the window. I stood there for a few minutes sweeping my flashlight to make sure nothing would rip my arm off, then quickly closed the window and went back to bed (with my sword, of course). Though Monica went to sleep almost immediately, I kept hearing brushing against the side of the cabin. It finally went
away, and I fell back to sleep.

June 27
This morning we left Nakuru for Amboseli. We have never before been so scared for our lives. It started with normal Kenyan traffic/roads with vehicles headed straight for you, before veering off while all the vehicles swerve to avoid potholes and islands of asphalt. Monica felt car sick from the moment we started driving and had decided to lie down in the back. Every 5 minutes or so, she would hear screams from the rest of us and she became airborn 2-3 times due to the bumps!

We had a brief reprieve when we stopped in Naivasha to drop off some gifts for Ben at the KWS Training Institute. Shortly after Naivasha came, a thick fog which reduced visibility to a few car lengths. We saw a few flipped trucks and tractor trailers on the side of the road, abscured by the consuming fog. Despite no visibility, we drove the same as if there were no fog. One time, we attempted to pass a truck and almost rammed someone head-on! It was close. When we finally got out of the fog, we were close to Nairobi. Then came the second near miss. As we entered Nairobi, we narrowly missed hitting a matatu and small car (there was screeching of tires, etc. and the matatu even pulled off the road…very frightening). Thankfully, we stopped in Nairobi to pick up Karen's luggage at the SafeRide office and to get our instructions/tickets for getting to Kilimanjaro. This really consisted of: "Here is an envelope of money with a person's name on it and some bus tickets from the border; Samuel will drop you off at the border." Monica and I took the opportunity to run across the street to the Stanley Book Shop to pick up a couple of Rough Guide Swahili pocket dictionaries. After what seemed like forever, we finally went down to the van, which was being driven by another driver around the block. We spent several minutes circling and waiting for Samuel. Finally, he came after me and Jim went to get him; we had spent an hour for our "quick stop" in Nairobi.

We drove on to Amboseli, eating biscuits, crackers, and energy bars as we drove. We reached Amboseli about 5 hrs after we left Nairobi (~5pm), and we decided to do a game drive on our way to the lodge instead of getting "lunch". We saw a lot of elephants, an eagle (that perched right next to our van), and a hippo. We reached the lodge a little before 6, checked in, and settled in our rooms. The view of Kilimanjaro is amazing even if the lodge was not. Dinner was more underwhelming than the last lodge, and we realized how spoiled we were in Masai Mara. We asked for chai masala as our drink and the waitress just did not get it. We finally got regular tea and hot milk. During dinner, a line of Maasai warriors marched in and then marched right out again. We had gotten excited thinking there would be a show or something, so Scott had reached to get his camera. Unfortunately, he didn't have time, for they were already gone. We thought this must be the budget show, and we all burst out laughing. After dinner, we stopped by the shop and then made our way to bed.

June 26
We woke up early and started off for Nakuru. It was a crazy drive. Through the maps showed "major" roads, they are little more than patches of asphalt peeking above a bed of packed gravel. At least there was not much traffic. As we drove, we swerved madly to avoid the raised islands of tarmac, sometimes veering off onto dirt frontage
roads. Into the rift valley, we ran out of even gravel road and drove down a steep, red dirt road with deep, eroded gashes carved by rivulets of water. We finally stopped for a "bush" break, which everyone (except Monica, who was stil traumatized by her Uganda experience) took advantage of. When we finally reached Nakuru, we were very happy to be nearing the end. When we got through the gate, we raced for the lodge. Samuel was fixated on lunch, though, the rest of us could not think of food. We sped past all sorts of wildlife without stopping: rhinos, flamingos, etc.

Nakuru lodge is set on a hill overlooking Lake Nakuru. Keekorok had been a plush resort that reminded us of our honeymoon, but this lodge was much more mediocre, nice, but didn't compare to the first place. At Keekorok, the staff had been warm and friendly and actually seemed happy to be there, but at Nakuru, this was not the case. The lunch we raced to catch was underwhelming, but at least we could watch the baboons off the veranda in the back. The game drive in the afternoon showed us flamingos, warthogs, some tree-climbing lions, and rhinos, though, by the time we saw the lions and rhinos, it was raining pretty hard. We still managed to get very close to the rhinos and had a good time despite the rain. We arrived back for another underwhelming meal. The food is wearing on both Monica and me, and our stomachs are starting to rebel. After dinner, though, they had a show…acrobat contortionists! It was a lot like the show we saw months ago at the Comeback Club. Nancy, Jim, and Karen were highly amused! After the show, we went to see if we could spot any night time wildlife, but it was pitch black, so we went to bed.

June 25, 2006
We got a wonderful night of sleep and woke up early. We found Samuel out front at 6:30 and started off. We saw herds of zebra, topi, and gazelle (usually together). There were reports of a cheetah, but no luck. We came upon 3 white-headed vultures picking at the carcass of a buffalo with a pair of jackals standing off. We saw another few lions surveying the savannah and drove to within 15 meters of them before we returned to the lodge for another feast of a buffet meal. We took showers (which could not seem to regulate—it was either very cold or scalding, though we finally got is somewhat under control). There was a lot of journal and blog writing. No one was interested in lunch, so we showed off our collection of gifts to bring home and our gorilla certificates before heading out to walk the boardwalk and see some hippos in the daylight. Its so different in the light. We watched the hippos frolic for awhile. Scott went back to the room to download photos while I went to the pool with Nancy. I said "Jambo" to a guy at the pool (staff) and after the response said, "Habari ya kushinda?". The staff guy was more surprised than most that I knew some Swahili! He proceeded to talk to me in Swahili asking me how long I had been in Kenya, where I learned Swahili who my relatives were, how long I was staying, etc. Scott meanwhile decided that it could not hurt to "look" at the lunch selection, so he went to the dining room and ran into Jim who had the same idea. Eventually, all 4 of us ended up eating plates of dessert before setting out to pick up my mom. We arrived at the air strip, an assemble of 4 simple structures: office, "waiting room" (complete with a checker board and bottle caps and a dilapidated roof), a "duty free shop" (maybe serious, maybe someone's idea of a joke?), and a bathroom. Samuel, our dirver had learned that Karen had boarded at 2:45 but it had not come by 3:15 (though another Air Kenya flight touched down in the
meantime). By 3:45 we were worried, and then finally around 4:30 it arrived! Off stepped my tearful mother! She had had a very terrible two days! We heard all about her misfortunes, not the least of which was that all of her luggage was missing! The craziness had started in Heathrow when she missed her connecting flight despite a valiant effort to get across the airport at the last second with no airport personnel or signs in sight. By the time she reached British Airways
desk the flight had just departed. American put her up in a hotel and she left on the same flight the next day (there were no other options for her). Her bags, unfortunately, did NOT make it! When she reached Nairobi, she was told her bags were lost and she had only her carry on. Things did not get better. She was driven to Safe Rides office to meet with Francis, who "held her hostage" until she paid him for extra hotel and plane ticket charges. He would not even provide her
with a receipt; he just wanted the cash. This was not easy for my mom since she had just arrived in the county, didn't have any shillings, and was not yet familiar with the conversion rate. By this time, she was in tears and was feeling pretty well screwed. She had also taken a taxi to the airport and back again (who charged her about double the proper rate) to check on her bags since calls from Oakwood had failed to reach anyone, but her bags were still lost somewhere between Chicago and Nairobi! She was escorted by Francis to ATMs until she got him the money and then the driver took her to the airport to catch her flight to Masai Mara on a VERY TINY plane!! At the airport she was told her tickets were for not today, but for tomorrow…Francis had booked the wrong date! She was in tears again and they finally let her on. Then the pilot announced there would be a few stops before landing in Masai Mara. When she finally reached us, she was quite frazzled!! Luckily, we were on our way to a fun game drive.

Our first stop was a hillside to see a lone male elephant. We continued on to see a pride of lions and a herd of buffalo, 2 leopards, and several birds (i.e. Egyptian goose, Ostrich, Guinea fowl, etc). At 6pm, we came back to the lodge. We watched the sun set and a few superb starlings joined us. We decided to look at the hippos. We brought my mom back to our room to show her some things and see if any of my clothes worked for her. She wore one of my kangas (the "mgonjwa hawalizwi dawa" one) to dinner. Scott and I were very glad to see the traditional Kenyan food of chapati and curried lentils in the buffet! They also served us chai massala. We had some tasty chocolate balls for dessert (after seeing the buffalo, Scott has been fixated on small spherical foods), which were super rich and then we went to bed. The Larium dreams weren't bad, but Scott had one where he was at a technology trade show where they were introducing Disney World: Kawaida Towers (Kawaida means usual in Swahili).

June 24, 2006
Today was an early day. Scott had finished his database project and tested his work around 3:30 this morning –about the same time that the dance clubs near the Oakwood Hotel stopped blasting their music. This also let me sleep, since I had been waking up every 20 minutes to find out whether Scott would be going to sleep soon. We woke up 3 hours later, packed our luggage, and met Nancy and Jim for breakfast at the hotel. Breakfast was tasty and western with eggs, sausage, cereal, juice, and all sorts of other things. Samuel had told us the night before that Francis would meet us at 7am, but 7:15 came and went. Finally, at 8am, Samuel showed up to collect us. By this time, we had been able to discuss with reception Karen's situation of being stranded in London and needing a room tonight. However, we had not yet done our internet stuff, since we had been waiting for Samuel, so after hauling all of our bags into the elevator and out to the safari van, Scott went to Burger Dome (fast food, burgers, ice cream, and …internet?) to upload the blog entries I had finished this morning and sent off the database to Steffen. After some problems finding a working 3 ½" floppy drive, we finished all of our computer work and all in a record of 15 minutes! By 8:35, we had all finally boarded the van and left for the Saferide office (just a block or so from the Nakumatt and where we were staying) to finalize our tirp details with Francis. The experience of seeing Francis was a bit odd. He was supposed to meet us an hour before, yet we were meeting with him late. He didn't spend any time making small talk, he immediately wanted our
money. Friendliness was not his strong suit.

Nancy and Jim watched the alien landscape of Nairobi fly by, a landscape we had become familiar with. The modern buildings contasting with the sheet metal covered shanties and makuti-roofed mud huts is a stark change from the homogeneity and order of Western cities. Then, there are the roads. Once we had turned off of the Nakuru-Nairobi road onto the road headed west to Narok, the roads got really bad. Jim and Nancy kept looking on in horror as we would swerve across the road from one side to the other in order to avoid potholes, while at the same time dodging oncoming buses and matatus. We discovered that driving in Kenya means being on the road only ¼ of the time; much of the time was spent driving on the shoulder of the road! They forgot the landscape and were probably fixed on the road, wondering which of the buses or trucks coming at us would hit and end our lives, but we were fine and Scott and I we not terribly disturbed.

Somewhere between Naivasha and Narok, we stopped to stretch our legs. Jim was quite happy to get out! We spent awhile there looking at crafts. When I entered, I made what could be considered a mistake by speaking in Swahili and letting them know I have been living here. A salesperson there would not give me an initial price for anything. He also saw my flip flops and knew that I would know how much they cost. He asked me and I told him "mia tano (500)" and he smiled and said yes, I was correct. Scott had a good chat with the same guy, Ken, who had been working as a salesperson for a supplier at food products to Uchumi, a supermarket chain in Kenya that had just gone bankrupt. After some hard bargaining (I'm beginning to like this bargaining thing), we bought a knife (Kalenjin), and Nancy and Jim bought a hippo and goblet made of ebony. We continued on to Narok, Ben's family's home, and on towards Masai Mara. At the gate, we stopped to get park passes and were mobbed by Maasai women with drilled ears and wearing their traditional dress trying to sell beads and bracelets. They were as aggressive as the peanut guys at the matatu stage in Mombasa! We ended up arriving at our lodge, Kekorok, around 3:30. It was MUCH nicer than any of us had expected (and based on what I had heard, I knew it would be nice! It was a fancy resort, and we were met with passion juice and washcloths while to porters unloaded our luggage (no small feat!) . We quickly checked in and ran off to the dinig room for a quick lunch (though big) and then went to our rooms to get our bags unloaded before meeting Samuel at 4:30 for our first game drive. We started the drive off right by seeing an elephant right outside of the lodge. This was our first indication that this was going to be good. Next, we went straight for the "hard to see animals" and saw a leopard (well…three leopards) hanging out in a small grave of trees. We forgot our disappointment from before when we had sped past herds of zebra and giraffe to rush to get to Kekorok. It was incredible! The only downside was having to jostle between about a dozen other safari vans, but I can't complain! The leopards were SO BEAUTIFUL! They were just sleeping up in the trees and didn't seem phased by us as all! Next, we drove off and found a herd of buffalo. Samuel spotted a couple of other vans about ½ km away and we realized they were watching lions! We sped off (with several other vans) to get a closer look. The lions were walking right next to some of the vans. They were observing the savanna, and the pride zeroed in on its victim, a young buffalo wandering from the herd. We sped off after they stalked off through the tall grass. As we drove, Scott spotted the lions pouncing with 1 grabbing the buffalo's muzzle in its jaws meanwhile turning the buffalo's head in order to suffocate it (apparently this is the way they always kill buffalo rather than going for the jugular). Three other lions grabbed its hind quarters. We arrived as the 4 lions were bringing the buffalo down and watched as they began first eating its genitals (sorry for the graphic description) and then ripping at its belly. Meanwhile other lions were walking right next to our van! We finally left when the sun started to set and the setting got too gruesome, but we were all very excited that we'd seen lions in the hunt. On the way back to the lodge, we saw a beautiful sunset. As we went to our rooms, we heard hippos close by. We went to investigate and found the boardwalk, a long, illuminated, elevated walkway across marshes behind the lodge. At one end was a very cool bar on stilts overlooking a waterhole with approximately 9 hippos. As darkness set in, we watched the hippos, chatted, and drank a Malibu and passion juice. Jim returned with 2 glasses of fine Irish Whiskey. We finally made it to dinner, a feast of buffet-style food, where we saw a "Jambo, Bwana" birthday procession of the staff and a traditional Maasai dance. We sampled all of the desserts and then finally went to bed. What a wonderful day!

June 23, 2006
We woke up a bit late to start our day. We quickly got ready and tried to order the total disorder in our room. The really spicy tilapia and potaoes Scott had last night did not make his stomach feel great. We had a fairly light breakfast, packed our things, and called Alfred, the taxi driver to pick us up. He arrived on time this time and we told him we would pay 300; he countered that we paid him 500 last time. We balked and said that was a mistake we would not repeat. He acquiesced, and we left for the Oakwood. When we arrived, we gave him 300 and he said it was not enough. We told him he would get no more and left; we were quite annoyed. Check-in at Oakwood went smoothly. We dropped off our bags and left to do a little shopping at Nairobi Sports House where we FINALLY found some Kenyan soccer jerseys, and Scott received a comment that his hair looked like Bill Clinton's (not sure where that came from). We then headed off to the sketchy side of town to catch a matatu to Naivasha. We finally realized that we did not know where the Naivasha stage was (we were close but there were SO MANY matatus around), so we stopped to ask a traffic cop. He looked at us like we were crazy (probably wondering
how we were still alive in that part of town), and he pointed us to the "collapsed building" (that made headlines last year). We finally got there and saw the Naivasha matatus across the street. After being approached by a manamba (who we thought was a sketchy guy trying to get us into a sketchy situation, but after asking a matatu driver, we decided to follow the manamba), who directed us to the ticket office…fancy. We we borded the matatu, we were frisked and searched with metal detector wands. They've had problems with hijackings by passengers toting pistols. The driver said he would drop us off at KWS, and we left about 15
minutes later. The ride was fine, the view beautiful, and the music good. Scott finished designing his computer program while we rode. At one point, an very old lady got out of the matatu when it was her stop. There was a large bag (likely 50+ lbs) that was hers and the man next to me was having trouble getting off the matatu. He handed it to this woman who shlepped it onto her back and began walking who knows how far to get home. Scott and I were very impressed! When we
got to KWS, the driver missed our stop, but we were quick and ended up stopping only a couple dozen meters past the entrance.

The guard at the gate was very nice and she made us comfortable in the guard office while we waited for Ben. We had a good time people watching until Ben showed up and took us up to the campus. On the way, we saw zebra crossing the road! The campus is fairly new and very nice; it was paid for by World Bank money. We were given the grand tour and met several of the other students. By the time we were headed to Naivasha, I had somehow gotten sunburned…jua kali as I felt like I had only seen the sun for 15 minutes! Our first stop was Ben's apartment where he bestowed upon us chains of cool Maasai beads (which he showed us how to put on and wear), some jingly head/neck pieces, and a rungu (club used for killing antelope). It was very cool! We showed photos of gorilla and chimps from Bwindi, then went to Naivasha town center to get lunch. We ended up at the Silver Hotel (the first place we tried was mysteriously closed), and we ordered chapati mayai with chips and a big fanta. No chapati…failed again! We had an egg sandwich and fruit salad instead. After luch, we caust a car to the KWS Lake Naivasha place next to the KWS Annex. Ben is a great tour guide and he told us how the Acacia trees only grow whee the water table is high and that at around 7, the place is filled with hyenas who have learned that the area is protected. We met the people who run that area, talked for a bit in Swahili, and paid 200ksh to go to the lake (actually Ben was very nice and treated).

We walked past Dik-Diks, zebra, diraffes, and all sorts of other wildlife. It was amazingly close! We walked towards the lake and saw a lot of birds. Along the way, we got Ben to tell us how he ended up being sponsored to attend KWS by Bob Drewes.

We had a great time talking, watching the wildlife, and identifying the poop we saw on the ground (dik-dik, buffalo, zebra, and even hippo and giraffe!). On the way out of the park, a group of children came running towards us, ran in front of us a few meters, turned towards us, and kept walking backwards just staring at us. Very weird, but not surprising! We left pretty late to get back to Nairobi and we conviced Ben to come with us. When we got to Nairobi, we headed for the airport buses and waited for Ben's friend, Saruni (really a somewhat distant Maasai cousin), to join us. We finally found him after about an hour, boarded the #34 City Hopper bus and left for the airport to collect Nancy and Jim. I had received a call earlier when in the KWS park standing next to a giraffe (what a bizarre feeling) from my mom letting me know her flight to Londo from Chicago had been delayed due to rain so she was now trapped in London waiting for the same flight the next day; she would have to join us a day late somehow.

Saruni and Ben ran into Allan (one of Saruni's co-workers, who was writing to pick up guests for a safari) and Maria Natashaa, one of Saruni's friends who works in one of the travel agencies on the second floor for the airport. They were a lot of fun and definitely made the time go by fast. Natashaa was especially funny. She wanted us to find her a large, wealthy Texan for her to marry (only someone serious; she's not looking for a boyfriend). We started to worry that Safe Ride would not arrive, since it was 30 minutes after their flight had landed and on driver! Finally, we spotted him and talked with him while Scott watched out. It was great to see them, and we talked about Nairobi and Kenya while we drove to the Oakwood. Ben and Saruni had come with us and kep helping to load and unload our luggage! We told them this wasn't their job, but they are just too nice! We finally said goodbye to them at 10:30 and tried to find dinner. We had no luck at the Oakwood, and we had a security guard take us across the street to the Stanley…no luck. We just decided to go to bed. I texted Ben to make sure he got home ok since they had been very close to the time of missing all matatus for the night. A few minutes after I texted him, he called with the shortest call ever: "Am at home in bed…bye." or something like this. I went to sleep while Scott stayed up and worked on his database project. He needed to email it to Steffen by tomorrow morning. Thus, he stayed up a LONG TIME…until 3:30am. Even the bumping night clubs had stopped blasting music by that time! It would be a short night, since the alarm was set for 6am.

June 22, 2006
Today we woke up around 6:30 after hearing the rooster over and over again. Yes, even in the suburbs of Nairobi there was a rooster! Wendy and Randy were up anyway since they had to go to school. Patience was still asleep though (I forgot to mention Patience earlier, which is quite easy to do as she was so shy we simply never saw her. She is Jonathan’s daughter, who is headed to Sweden soon.) We kept seeing a head of Wendy or Randy peak over the sheet separating our section of the room from everyone else. We wanted to see Wendy and Randy off to school so we got up around 7:15.

We were reprimanded by both Ken and Beatrice for being up so early, but when we explained that we had slept well but wanted to catch a last glimpse of their darling children, they both forgave us and broke into smiles. Wendy and Randy looked so cute in their school uniforms, I couldn’t resist taking one final picture of them. Beatrice brought out some tea, mandazi, bread and butter, and some perfectly salted popcorn for breakfast. It was a wonderful breakfast! Soon after the kids left for school, Ken also left for work leaving the two of us with Beatrice and Lydia. We got to talking about funny quirks about families and really seemed to open up with one another. They are such a nice family!

Around 10:30, we said we should get going and we going to go pack. But before we could do so, Albert, Ken’s brother, came for a visit. It was a bit difficult to strike a conversation with him and we needed to get going, so we took this opportunity to sneak off. We came back to chat for a few minutes before saying goodbye. Before we knew it, Beatrice informed us that Lydia insisted we stay for lunch. Since it was almost lunchtime and we didn’t have anything pressing to do, who could argue? How could we have known it would be 3 hours before lunch! Beatrice has us watch the movie “Diary of a Mad Black Woman”, which was surprisingly very good, full of dark drama, cheese, Christianity, and thug humor (it was a bit like a combination of “How Stella Got her Grove Back” and “Big Momma’s House”)!

Next, Beatrice said she would negotiate a cab price for us, and if we were to do so they would charge us double. I figured she had just left the apartment to get better cell phone reception when she called them, but when I didn’t see her for over an hour, Albert explained that she had walked 1km to the cab place to talk to them directly! She didn’t want us to come with her because she knew (as did we) that they would try to charge us double if they knew they were driving wazungo. When she finally returned, lunch was on the table and we had 2 new guests. (We still don’t know who they were). We ate pilau with lentils (yummy) and Fanta and waited for the cab to come. We gathered our bags and said goodbyes. (Beatrice had managed to get us a ride for 800ksh, down from 1500ksh!

The ride back was uneventful, but fast. We settled back into our rooms, did some laundry, and repacking. Scott worked on Steffen’s project while and read and wrote in our journal. Next around 7pm, we headed to dinner with our journal and work in hand, knowing it would take approximately 3 years to get our food. We were not disappointed. It was 8:30pm by the time we got our food. In the meantime, we watched the USA vs. Ghana world cup match. Once dinner was over, Scott went back to work and I decided to get some sleep. We also prepared to move into the Oakwood Hotel the next morning. Tomorrow should be fun as we plan to go to Lake Naivasha and visit Ben!

June 21, 2006
Today we slept in (as much as we could) and immediately finished up the laundry. We needed to ensure it had enough time to dry before our next move. We showered, and headed to breakfast at the hotel. I was about to get my food when I saw a familiar face. It was Tab Rasmussen, one of my favorite anthropology professors at Wash U here in Nairobi!! Better yet, he recognized me and I got to meet his wife Jen. We had a nice brief chat (although I was still a bit shocked about the whole thing) and we went our separate ways. He and his wife will be in Nairobi for about 3 weeks doing work at the National Museum nearby. They are then on to Ethiopia (and Egypt) for more research.

We ate breakfast and headed to see the sights. We walked the 3-5 km from our hotel to the city center. It wasn’t bad. There were plenty of other walkers, although we were clearly the only wazungo. It was an improvement though, as we only got the “out-of-the-corner-of-the-eye stares”, not the “open-mouthed-surround stare”.

Once in the city center, we realized just how easy it was to get around. It was very easy to find everything we were looking for and we got some fast emailing done for only 1ksh/minute. We will likely be back there! We checked out the “Oakwood Hotel” and found out they didn’t have our reservation. We corrected this, arranged for an early check-in and saw a room. The excitement happened minutes later when Scott came down the stairs and proceeded to go down “the hall”. Unfortunately, “the hall” he was going to walk down was really a mirror (he had missed the turn for the exit) and ran right into the wall! It was very funny! He first had a dazed and confused look, then a “I didn’t do anything…no one saw that” look on his face. It was great!

We finished up our shopping to the best of our abilities (we couldn’t manage to find any Kenyan jerseys o any kind—they only carry Germany, Brazil, England, Sweden, etc., go figure) and then got a text message from Beatrice. She was with Lispa and said we would all do lunch. We met at our usual spot (albeit they were a bit late) and went to “Seasons”, a place that had fish and traditional Kenyan foods…food we had been missing for several days. Scott and I had smoked Tilapia (in full fish form) with chapati and mchicha. We also tried Beatrice’s “brown ugali” (not great) and gee, basically melted butter (they don’t have regular butter here, only Blue Band.) We had a good meal and a nice chat. We even got to see soccer “in the old days” where everyone had BIG hair and SHORT TIGHT shorts! Very funny! I also shared the story of Scott and the mirror.

We left and headed to help find Lispa some bus tickets. She is headed to Kampala tonight for several days. After deciding upon “Busscar”, she bought the tickets and we bade each other goodbye. She was off to see Tsofa and Patrick and we were going back to Beatrice’s place to get our luggage.

We caught a #145 matatu, but had to switch as a police situation of some sort arose. We then caught a #45 and I chatted with Beatrice the whole time while Scott snoozed. We ran into Lydia on our walk to their place and they told us we had to find their place (it was a test). We passed the test successfully and proceeded to their apartment. Wendy and Randy were already there (Beatrice’s twins) and I got a hug from Wendy, much to my surprise. We hung out with them chatting and had to explain why we didn’t stay over the night before (the kids seemed bummed about this). We had some tea and butter sandwiches and were planning to go as soon as Ken came home (we wanted to tell him goodbye). He didn’t get home until 6:30 and they already told us we were staying for supper. We decided to stay and everyone was pleased (I think). We had a yummy meal of chapati, lentils, and spaghetti, and Moses and Ruth had to leave. I let Wendy and Randy take turns taking some pictures. They are so cute! After dinner, everyone was tired so we went to bed. They had made a very cute little space for us in their guest/kids bedroom. There were 5 of us in the room , but we all had mosquito nets and private sections separated by sheets. We said our good nights and went to bed. It had been a very good day!!

June 20, 2006
How do we get out? We had gotten dressed in the dark and repacked everything, but when we left our room, headlamps on, we saw our exit locked. I disappeared to the other side of the courtyard, following two other backpackers who were struggling to find a way out. Scott went in a different direction and apparently didn’t hear me call for him. After I found the way out and waited for Scott to follow, I realized he wasn’t coming and went back in after him. I found him still trying to find a way out, but the staff who man the desk were with him. We went outside to wait until Joseph arrived. He arrived around 6:15am and we piled in. 45 minutes later, we pulled into a gas station in Mukono and transferred over to Hassan and Jaria’s other Landrover. The drive through Uganda was nice and uneventful. We picked up a lot of fruit along the way: LOTS of bananas, 4 pinapples, a cane of sugar cane, 2 bags of mangos, and even a “sashtafele”, a small green spiky fruit the size of a softball with a soft white meat. The border crossing was uneventful as well, although it took quite awhile because the officials wanted to keep Hassan’s car registration until he returned to Uganda and Hassan wasn’t about to let them do this. We got the familiar greeting from hawkers on the Kenya side…lots of offers for samosas, cookies, sodas, etc. Soon we were back on the road.

The Kenyan part of trip was pretty uneventful with all of us reading or sleeping. Around 3pm we stopped in Eldoret for a small meal of sausage, samosas, and chips at Kenchic Inn (We’re “kuku” about chicken). The next stop was hours later in Nakuru for a bathroom. I had decided to try to plan my bathroom breaks in advance so as to avoid another embarrassing “bush stop”. Around the Naivasha area, we ran into lots of rain and even some hail! We also kept hitting some warm and cold patches of air, which was a very bizarre sensation. The road in these parts was quite bumpy. We would be weaving all over the road to avoid potholes as were the oncoming cars. At one point we saw our lives flash before our eyes as a two-way two-lane road turned into a four-lane one way road with our car approaching a solid row of four vehicles. Amazingly enough we survived…somehow. Scott wondered how they can detect the drunk drivers here from those simply trying to avoid potholes…maybe the drunk drivers are the ones who DON’T avoid the potholes and instead drive straight?

By this time we had left Nakuru, Scott and I had realized that we would not be getting into Nairobi until around 9pm—too late to stay with Beatrice. We had already sent her an SMS saying we would be staying with her the night before, but as most of these well-intentioned plans, this did not work out. Being driven to the city center, finding a matatu at night with all of our bags (we weren’t even sure they would still be running), then making the walk to her place on the other side after everyone in her family would already be asleep just didn’t make sense. We sent her a message explaining this and had Hassan and Jaria drop us off at the “Sirona Hotel”. They still had rooms available (much to our relief) and they were even the “standard” less expensive rooms. We said our goodbyes to them and took our pictures with them. Then, they headed out. It was great to be finally in a place where we would stay for 3 whole days! We decided that even though it was 9pm, we were hungry. The dining was not closed, so we ordered a chicken sandwich and chips to share. Unfortunately, I think the chicken had to hatch, grow, be slaughtered, and then finally cooked before we were able to enjoy it, for it took over an hour to get our food. That was taking “pole pole” to a whole different level! Scott had decided to get started on laundry (since it seems to take our things so long to dry) while I would wait for the dinner to arrive. Once the food arrived, we watched some of the world cup (England vs. Sweden). Then it was off to bed.

June 19, 2006
Sleeping in is wonderful and we indulged a bit today. We finally got moving and had breakfast at Backpackers : crepes, bacon, toast, eggs, fruit…very yummy. Today was for shopping and we started at the craft store at the hostel. It was nice and seemed decently priced. We grabbed a taxi (matatu) to town and looked around the market. We continued on to Access Uganda to talk with Joseph, Hassan, and Jaria. They saw us wander into the building and thought we wouldn’t find them…they found us in the hallway on the wrong floor. Hassan asked if we could stay in Mukono, but we had already paid for our room. Hassan volunteered Joseph for taxi service; Joseph was not happy-looking, but it was settled. We escaped and continued our shopping odyssey with a trip to the crafts market behind the National Theatre. We spent all of our cash…almost. We still had enough for a very late lunch (or a slightly early dinner) and proceeded to walk across Kampala in the rain towards Hotel Equatoria where we were to find a Chinese restaurant. When we reached the intersection where the hotel was, we realized crossing the street would not be easy. Finally, Scott took a cue from another guy crossing and he followed along right in front of a large bus with me trailing a bit. The bus started moving!! Before I got hit, the police officer helped pull me back and started laughing as I proceeded to blame Scott for almost getting me run over. The traffic cop then told me to wait until he gave the signal and I was able to cross the street safely. That was a close call!

When we arrived at the Hotel Equatoria, our dreams of a Chinese dinner were crushed…the restaurant was no longer there. We decided to go all the way back across Kampala to near where we had begun to find “Fang Fang” another Chinese restaurant in the city (we didn’t really have anything better to do with our time). We decided to fuel up on ice cream cones first though! J We reached the place and saw our problem—it was impossible to actually get into the Chinese restaurant. It was on the second floor and we could find no entrance, only the office entrance staffed by guards and a metal detector. We finally reached the third side of the building, a driveway to a tall automated gate and 2 guards. We finally asked how to get to the restaurant and the guards said we just go in and up; we didn’t see a door except a cargo door. The security guy escorted us in and showed us how to get there. The restaurant was very nice and we felt woefully underdressed. However, we had no choice as we had brought very few clothes with us to Uganda. Luckily, the waiter took the attention off us. He kept tripping and at the end of our meal when he brought us our caramelized bananas, he dropped a piece of silverware from his tray. When he bent down to pick it up, the whole plate of bananas went right onto the floor! We couldn’t help but laugh and the other waiters had no problem doing so quite loudly! We were pretty happy to see that they took Visa (it really is “everywhere you want to be”). We exited the restaurant out the front office door and took the guards by surprise. We walked out like we did so every day even though we could feel their stares and puzzled looks boring into our backs. They were saying to themselves, “I know we didn’t see these two poorly dressed wazungo enter this place…how did they get in here…well, I guess it doesn’t matter cuz the place is still standing and they are leaving.” We found their expressions quite priceless and were in a great mood on the way home.

We made our way back to the taxi (matatu) park and after some help we found a matatu to Natete Rd. We were a bit worried after it left since it took a path we did not recognize, weaving through dirt roads and tiny neighborhoods…in the dark. We finally came to a place we recognized. Our last problem was to cross the street. This was a VERY BUSY street and we were sure we would not be seen crossing the street in the dark. We took our break in the traffic and ran for our lives! It was much like being in the game of “Frogger”. We made it, went back to our room, and were off to bed for an early morning.

June 18, 2006
Today was much less exciting (how much more exciting could it possibly get). We elected to drive back along the less exciting (but tarmac and faster) route to Kampala. In general, we were pretty bored, mostly due to neither of us feeling well. We stopped after a few hours for a bush break. I had to go, but did not want to do so in the bush, particularly in the particular place we were at. I finally gave in when I realized I had no choice and found a place down the slope of the h ill next to the road. Just as I was about to pee, a pickup truck with several guys standing in back rounded the corner. To my horror, I realized they could see me. They started pointing and laughing. I was SO EMBARASSED!

We both tried to keep our minds off our stomachs by reading. A little after noon we stopped at the Hotel Agip. I was terribly excited because they had a bathroom without a truckload of men watching! Scott’s face wore a look of dread—not food. As Joseph fueled the car, Scott and I had a heartfelt discussion about our feelings—we agreed that we felt like our intestines were being clamped by barbed tweezers. I felt like I had been inflated just before the point of my stomach exploding. Eating was the last thing on our mind, but we ordered some ham sandwiches anyway. We saved the plain one and ate the grilled sandwich. Erik was traveling through and we chatted a bit before heading out. We also stopped at the Equator to take some photos and watch a Coriolles Effect experiment of water about a sink. Basically, it demonstates that water flows in one direction if North of the Equator and in the reverse direction if South of the Equator. How fascinating! We also kept stopping to pick up fruit (a Ugandan pastime), and we even got a jack fruit. When we finally reached the Backpacker’s Hostel, we brought in the jackfruit much to everyone’s amusement. They warned us about how stinky and sticky it was and had us take it out to the outside kitchen to split it open (on a piece of cardboard). We soon found out why: It is filled with a viscous, milky substance that sticks to you like tar. We ate a little of it, shared it with the stuff and the people we saw around, then tried washing the stickiness off our hands. It would not come off with soap or alcohol. I found our carmex, which finally did the trick. We ate dinner while everyone else watched the Australia/Brazil game. Then we used the internet to catch up on a little email and send Dad a Happy Father’s Day message.

June 17, 2006
Today we woke up early again, ate a bit of breakfast (we are both eating light to avoid getting sick), and went to registration to track gorillas (Scott ended up borrowing a pair of my socks since his were still not dry). We got registered and briefed on what would take place. There would be 3 groups of 6-8 people trekking 3 habituated groups (our group was group “R”). Finding them would take anywhere from 30 min to 10 hrs so we must be prepared to hike through some difficult terrain and be patient! We picked out hiking sticks (some paid for porters too), met Moses, our guide, and met the guard who would be with us with a machine gun!

We started off on a nice trail with little difficulty. We then veered off the trail with our guide and the guard bushwhacking. It was awkward to move through this, but I found it to be quite similar to the job we were used to doing every day. The forest was different though and very mysterious and beautiful. After only 40 min, we came upon “the trekkers” who had been communicating with Moses about the gorilla group’s whereabouts. Apparently, we had already found them! We went into a lush vine-filled clearing (quite close to where we had begun, making us wonder if they had simply taken us the “long” way to make the experience more exotic). There we could see the bushes moving. At some point we came close enough to see them. They were VERY big and SO BEAUTIFUL! They didn’t mind our presence at all and just sat or lay there eating leaves with peaceful contented looks on their faces. Soon we were approximately 7 meters from them and could see their babies playing. It was incredible and almost brought tears to my eyes! After about 40 min of viewing several females with their infants, we went looking for the silverback. We found him nearby and managed to get about 7 meters from him also. He just sat there eating and ignoring us. A few times individuals came walking right towards us and we had to stay still and avoid eye contact. Finally, with about 1 min of our allotted hour to go, the silverback got up and walked away (right past us, approximately 4 meters away)! What an adrenaline rush! It truly was an experience of a lifetime, yet since it had been so easy to find them, it almost seemed like a dream!

We walked back to registration, received certificates for completing the gorilla trek, bought a photo sheet of our group, and tipped our guide. Before heading to our room, we talked with one for the people who had gone on our trek. Erik Patel turned out to be a post-doc at Yerkes Primate Center and had been working with sifakas in Madagascar for several years. He had done his undergrad degree at Earlham College after transferring from Wash U’s Business School (after 1st semester). He had also done some work at UC Berkeley, so I asked his advice regarding possible San Francisco mentors. He quickly mentioned a few professors and graduate students to contact as well as their projects. We had not discovered them because they are now in the Environmental Science Plant Management (ESPM) department and not Integrated Biology nor Anthropology. This gave me some hope that all is not lost even though Nina is leaving SFSU and I might be able to pursue my own project with an outside advisor. If paying to see the gorillas gets me a mentor, it would in itself be worth the trip!

We headed back to our room where Scott rested a few minutes to let his stomach pains ease and then we headed into the town of Bwindi. Though we had gone to buy souvenirs, the experience was completely different from that in Kenya where they constantly pressure you to buy things. The people in Bwindi were very polite and let you look around. We eventually returned laden with a few fun things, including our silverback statue (which we love)!

We decided to eat our packed lunches finally around 3pm. Scott was not feeling well again (but at least better than yesterday). First, we checked on going for a hike through Bwindi, but it was too late and would cost extra; unfortunately, we had spent our last Ugandan schilling in Bwindi earlier. We napped instead, and I did a little journal writing while Scott slept more. The drumming from the village reminded us of Gede. Sleep did Scott well and we decided to go out and take a walk to the internet place about 2 km down the road. Yes, they have a wireless internet place in Bwindi! On our way, we got some great scenery photos. The internet café was truly in the middle of nowhere, and everything was powered via a solar array with a broadband connection provided via satellite. It was very impressive! The café’s staff was very friendly and they showed us around and told us about their mission. The café is part of the Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH) project in Bwindi (ctph.org). We were introduced to Moses (yet another one!) who showed us around the affiliated infectious disease gorilla lab, added in 2002. It was designed by a Scottish vet and funded by Bayer, US Fish and Wildlife, and others and is partnered with UWA to monitor the gorillas. Moses was VERY ENTHUSIASTIC, as he explained how they analyze parasites (in gorilla poo). The also have some sort of partnership with Cornell University. What a cool place! Basically, the have the guides at Bwindi (and other sites) collect the samples, noting GPS UTM location and individual type (e.g. adult mail, adult female, etc), in special containers. Moses collects these weekly and analyzes them for parasites before entering the results in paper forms and again in the computer. If the results indicate a problem a team is called in to help, allowing for rapid evaluation and treatment of disease. It is very interesting stuff!

We found Joseph at the internet place and caught a ride back to camp. We both took a (very cold) shower and had a nice lantern-lit dinner. We finished our meal of tomato soup, pasta, and crepe and returned to our room to write postcards and sleep. It was an exciting day, and we were in mild shock at all of the things we experienced!

Traveling to Uganda

2006-06-24T00:29:00.000-05:00

June 16, 2006
We woke up early at 5:25am and still fully from dinner (just like I
had thought). The electricity was out so we got ready in the dark. We
canceled our breakfast order, aside from some fruit and juice, but our
room guy (who had been trying to convince us the we need to eat more)
gave us our full order anyway. We didn't eat it for fear of feeling
sick in the car. We took our picture with him and then headed off.

The drive to Kibale was relatively short, but Scott realized he had
left the room key in his pocket so we had to figure out a way to get
it back to them. We also took some amazing sunrise pictures this
morning.

Once at Kibale National Forest, we found our guide, Johnson, and he
took us to where we began our trek. We trekked for approximately 30
minutes, stopping to listen for the chimps. After what seemed to us
very little time, we found them! At first, we could only hearthem,
then we were able to see them high in the trees. We saw several
males, including the dominant male, and some females with babies. At
some point they started making a lot of noise and coming down from the
trees. Sure enough they came down, one by one and they were quite
big!! We were able to get some great photos and Johnson led us onto a
dirt road. Soon the chimps began crossing the road right in front of
us! They came to within about 15 meters!

Next we saw some grey-cheeked mangabeys high in the tree. We got some
good photos of them as well. The are SO odd/ugly-looking! They also
make the craziest calls, very loud and garbled. When we were almost
back to the car, we spotted some Olive Baboons. These guys are much
better-looking than most species of baboons! Once at the car, we took
a picture with Johnson and went back to the canteen area for lunch.
We had both ordered a burger and chips, but realized we were both
still full from the previous night! Thus, we shared one plate and
gave the other chimp tracker, Chris, the other plate. The meal was
good and while the burger was plain (only burger and bread), it was
good because it tasted like meatloaf. We also had a nice conversation
with Chris.

Chris was on the chimp trek with us and had just come from Bwindi the
day before. He said that the gorillas were amazing! He was from the
US (CA, MA, etc), but has been living in England (Cambridge
University) for the past 6 years doing a post-doc dealing with hearing
impairment. He had done his PhD at MIT so he and Scott swapped
stories. After lunch, it was time to head to Bwindi. Christ hitched
a ride with us for 10km before getting out to catch a matatu. He had
done his trip the "brave way" and didn't have a tour guide/driver, but
was just "winging it".

The drive to Bwindi was long, but interesting. The first several
hours were filled with lush green surroundings, many people (lots of
children), and lost of bananas. At some point, the scenery changed
dramatically to dry desolate landscape (much like what you would find
in New Mexico). This was part of the "Rift Valley". We were also
told as some point that we were only 20-30km from the Congo border!
We sure didn't feel like we were in any danger! Next was Queen
Elizabeth National Park and the Equator. The park was quite dry and
savannah-like rather than the environment we had been getting used to.
We saw hippos, waterbuck, warthogs, antelope, and kob (deer-like
creatures). Unfortunately, we never saw the famous "tree-climbing
lions". I took this opportunity to nap.

We arrived at Bwindi Tented Camp around 6:30pm and unfortunately,
Scott was not feeling well at all. We moved into our rooms and Scott
went to sleep while I showered and did some laundry. He was in no
mood to eat dinner, so I went by myself and met some interesting
people. The was an African American girl from Chicago who had studied
at Tuskegge, but was currently at Yale doing a Public Health degree.
She had just arrived yesterday and was to spend the next two months
here at Bwindi working on education and public health issues
surrounding the townspeople and the gorillas. Another girl, a Ugandan
from a university here, was new with her and they were both trying to
get their bearings. They were to live in town with no electricity,
etc. Good luck! I also talked with Joseph and another driver who
seemed quite friendly. I finished dinner, checked on Scott (who was
feeling a bit better), and asked Joseph if he could pick up some
medicine (we had forgotten to bring this medicine from Nairobi).
Unfortunately it was closed so we had to pass. I got ready for bed
and Scott realized I had washed all of his socks. One would think
this is good news; however, this meant that he wouldn't have any that
were dry by morning. Oops! What a dilemma. This put Scott in a
worse mood and I just went to bed.

June 15, 2006
We woke up early and were on the road to find a bank by 7am. We
wanted to be back by 8:30 and Scott figured we were only 3km from
Kampala center. After walking and walking and walking past the most
grid locked traffic, we finally decided we would not soon find a bank
(we struck out at the first 2 banks we found: the first had no power
and the second only accepted Stanbie Bank ATM cards). We finally
caught a matatu and had them drop us off at Backpackers where we
caught (scarfed down) a quick breakfast of eggs on toast, paid for our
room, and left with Joseph, our driver, to go to Barclay's Bank and
meet Hassan to finish paying for the safari.

We discovered that once you meet your daily limit on your account you
cannot take our more, even if it is from a savings, rather than a
checking account. Alos, please not that Mastercard is worthless at
most places! We barely managed to pay as we had some Kenyan
schillings that were were able to convert to Uganadan shcillings.
Once this was all sorted out, we began our journey.

We rode for a LONG time, but in more comfort than the past few days
(simply because their was much air circulation) and Scott napped while
I studied Swahili (now I'm working on the 2nd grade reader). We past
some wonderful scenery of lush green forests, banana plants
everywhere, and farms with maize and tea. We got to Fort Portal
around 2pm and ate lunch (chicken and chips) and got settle into our
room. It was quite nice, although the place seemed to be deserted.
We didn't care!

Around 4pm, we headed to the cave, but stopped briefly for an outdoor
child dance competition sponsored by "Blue Band" butter spread. They
little kids were "getting down" and it was quite cute/funny to watch!

We arrived at the cave and met our guide. He told us this very
interesting story of how the cave got its name. The cave was
beautiful, albeit not really deep like we think of a cave in the US.
There was a beautiful waterfall coming off of it and a curtain of
vines. The rainforest environment we entered was amazing! Next, we
went for a walk up a hill and had a wonderful view of a couple of
carter lakes (2 which were filled and one that was dry, but
beautiful). We also had a fabulous 360 degree view of the land! The
mountains are gorgeous!!

We had a soda, filled in the comments section of the visitors book and
headed back. We had dinner at 7:30 and it was again delivered to our
room (this had happened at lunch, but we though it was because we had
arrived late). It was great with fruit salad, spaghetti (Monica's),
chicken curry (Scott), and banana fritters (most of which we were too
full to eat so we wrapped them up for later). I'm going to get fat
off of this trip for sure!! L We ordered breakfast for tomorrow
since we planned to leave so early in the morning at 6:30am. I tried
to order light, but the guy wouldn't let me! He added some things to
my order saying that I must "eat like an African", meaning "the more
you eat the better". I agreed to do my best seeing as I wasn't
convince I would be at all hungry the next morning. We watched
another world cup game, updated our journal, and went to bed.
Tomorrow would be an early, but exciting day.

June 14, 2006
Today was a very early morning! Even after waking up at 5:30, we
still managed to be too rushed to catch breakfast. We got to Akamba
by 6:30 and were the first people on the bus. The seats on this bus
were really big (you could fit 2 of me in them and my feet couldn't
reach the seat in front of me!). They handed out free bottled water,
but the problem with this was I couldn't drink it because I would have
to go to the restroom and we had noticed only minutes before that even
this "posh" bus didn't have a restroom on board! There were very few
people on this bus which was nice and allowed us to change seats.
This proved to be quite handy as I was soon baking in the sun and the
windows would not open, so there was a distinct lack of a breeze.
About 4 hrs into the trip, we stopped for a bathroom break. From my
previous experiences I have learned that one must run if they wanted
to be able to catch the bus before it leaves without you. Next, was
the border crossing. Scott and I had both thought it would be a big
deal, but instead, it was rather quick and painless. Two stops, two
forms, and two passport stamps. My passport may actually be full by
the time I return to the US!

We reboarded the bus and were off towards Kampala. We crossed the
Nile and Jinja and were excited to be going over the Nile! It is a
beautiful and sprawling river as it flows out of Lake Victoria on its
northward journey. Just when we thought the view was over, Scott saw
a group of police officers huddles next to a rail of what looked like
a hydrow plant as were were leaving the bridge. They had a pole and
at the end of the pole in the water was a body of a man in a blue
shirt, face down in floating. Creepy!

Going into Kampala, they turned on the radio to some nice American
hip-hop, which was interrupted by a heartfelt song (ad) with a female
diva singing about "pure vegetable oil". "Its good for my family…"
We thought it was hysterical! The traffic in Kampala was crazy and it
took us at least and hour for the bus to pull into the station. We
were immediately accosted by taxi drivers. After deciding we had no
clue where we were, where we were going, or how much to pay, we
decided to take a taxi. We asked a driver how
much…20,000ush…no…15,000?…how about 10,000…ok (it is probably safe to
assume that ½ of the first offer is probably closer to the "fair"
price). Once we settled this, we were off…ish. It was 7:30pm and
rush hour was still in full force. An hour later, we turned into the
Backpackers Hostel and checked in. I was already on the verge of
whiny, but checking email pushed me over the edge (an email from
Robert Patterson that looked bleak on the prospects of finding a new
advisor for my upcoming Master's program had been waiting for me).
Scott ordered some dinner, and Monica joined shortly thereafter. We
realized we did not have enough Ugandan shillings to pay for our room
and everything else and I was very concerned about paying for our
safari tomorrow. We were both getting cranky, so after I had a
heavenly bath, we headed off to bed. We resolved to wake up early the
next day to find a bank.

June 13, 2006
Around 1am, Scott woke me up on the bus and wished me a "Happy
Anniversary!" Only about 6 more hours til Nairobi. By now I was
needing the restroom, but I wasn't fast enough on our first stop and
the second I soon realized was just a "bush stop" where all of the men
were peeing at the side of the road. I didn't join them! Finally,
around 2:30am we had the real stop, and I was able to relieve myself.
Guess they don't have restrooms on Scandinavia either. We'll have to
see what Akamba is like.

We arrived in Nairobi around 7am and realized that it is not nearly as
chaotic and hectic as we remembered! Actually, maybe it is just that
we have been living on the coast for a few months, but it is very
Western looking. We arrived and caught a taxi to check into the Sirona
Hotel, a nice little place located close to the National Museum. It
seems like a nice place and pretty reasonably priced. We have been
enjoying the TV, which we have not seen in months. The channel of
religious Swahili music videos is especially entertaining! We had a
"fast food" breakfast of doughnuts, maandazi, sausage, and samosa, and
I took this opportunity to buy a couple of Swahili VCDs.

We texted Beatrice to arrange a time and place to meet in Nairobi. We
had a cab take us to the Hilton, where we had decided, but the taxi
misunderstood that we were just meeting friends and dropped us off at
the main entrance. Before we knew what was happening, the bellhops
were taking our bags into the Hilton! We had to catch them and
explain that we were just meeting people here.

We chatted with Beatrice and met her sister, Lydia. Unfortunately,
Beatrice had a 2pm appointment so we went with her sister to catch a
matatu to Beatrice's house. Little did we know just how far this
would be. First, we carried our bages all over Nairobi in search of
the "famed" #45 matatu, almost getting run over or trampled several
times in the process. Once we got on the matatu, it was approximately
a 30 minute ride. All the while were were wondering, "Where is this
place?", "How are we going to get back tonight?", "Does she think we
are staying with her?", "If so, how are we going to get out of this
situation tactfully since we have already paid for a hotel room?"
Once we got off the matatu, we had about a 15 minute walk to her
place. Her apartment was also on the top floor so we were getting
quite the workout!

Her place was very nice and we were soon given another clue that some
miscommunication had occurred when Lydia took us to a room and told
us, "This is where you will sleep." We said, "Oh, ew are not too
tired right now. We should chat!" We helped her make ugali and
secumaweki and spinach and watched some very interesting TV in the
process. First, there was a Gary Colman movie from the early 1980's.
Wow, it was cheesy beyond belief! Next, it was a show with a
televangelist from Detroit who was out to save us all! Lydia probably
would have changed channels, but we were trying to be tolerant of this
show, so we commented on the woman's accent. She mistook this for
interest and turned up the volume! We could only take so much of it
so we decided to do dishes. It was our only escape!

After seeing that it was 3pm and still Beatrice had not yet arrived,
she told us we would be having dinner in about 4 hours. I knew I had
to confront her about our miscommunication. Sure enough, they had
though we were staying the night for in African culture, if you say,
"I'm coming to Nairobi.", it means, "Make room, we're moving in!" We
would have loved to stay with them and will likely do so when we get
back from Uganda. Once she realized the situation, she called
Beatrice and suddenly many people arrived. First, was Beatrice, then
her kids (twins Wendy and Randy), then three neighbors, Moses, Ruth,
and ??, then finally Beatrice's husband, Ken. We had a great time
conversing with all of them and got to see some pictures of Beatrice's
famly. We watched some "Tyra" on TV which started a discussion about
plastic surgery and trying to make one's self more beautiful/perfect.
Next we played some Poker with her kids until we realized that I
didn't understand how to play. The TV turned to the world cup just as
the food arrived. We had pilau, meat, and sauce with matoke. It was
very good. They also had made sure to have some boiled water for us
(they just drink the tap water and seem to stay perfectly healthy!).
We were quite thankful!

When it was time for us to leave, Beatrice's husband walked us to whee
we catch the matatu and came with us so we would be safe. We rode the
coolest matatu/bus! It was huge and filled with black lights and
black light stickers. Soon the music started and IT WAS BUMPIN'!
They were playing good songs too—rap and R&B from the US such as
Beyonce, R Kelly, etc. They call these kinds of matatus, Manyangas
because of the loud music. I wish the US had something like it. He
came with us to catch a cab as well and rode with us til we were
secure in our hotel.

What a great night! Scott and I had such a great time with their
family. I can't wait to stop by their place again! Hopefully, next
time we can minimize the confusion. We finished it up with a drink at
the hotel bar and then were off to bed. What a nice, yet unique, way
to celebrate our 2 yr wedding anniversary!!

Saying Goodbye to Mwamba

2006-06-14T12:40:00.000-05:00

June 12, 2006
We worked in the morning and said goodbye to our monkeys. They gave us
a special performance by raiding the shamba to the south of the ruins
and grabbing several ears of corn before the people on the shamba
realized what was happening. Maurice appeared to be injured when we
saw his this morning and was limping with a large gash along his left
hand. Despite being slowed considerably by his injury, he kept going
into the shamba to grab tasty corn. We are worried that the little guy
will become Maurice Choma if he is not careful. The people on the
shamba often set dogs out to guard their plots when there have been
too many monkey raids. We took several photos of them before we left
the group for the day. We stopped by Kipepeo to say goodbye to Salim
and then went on to lunch at the Mobil Mart Café with Leslie, Patrick,
Laura, and Susan. We said our goodbyes and grabbed a matatu back to
Mwamba where we worked feverishly to get finished packing before we
had to leave for Malindi. We stopped off to do some quick emailing
before leaving to catch the bus. The bus was late, but we really could
not complain, since there was an ice cream store right there that we
had never noticed before! The bus finally arrived about an hour late,
and we were very happy to see that it was very nice! This was no
sketchy Falcon bus like we'd taken when we first arrived, this was a
coach! The overnight trip was not bad at all, and we both got plenty
of sleep before we arrived in the morning.

June 11, 2006
Today was our day off. We finally woke up and made ourselves some
breakfast before starting of getting a lot of errands done, like
laundry, etc., in preparation for our safari. We had to visit the
beach a last time, and the waves were amazing and high. Monica took
one look and thought she would just sit out. Scott ran straight into
it and had a blast thrashing in the 10'+ surf. It was much fun!

We went to Colin and Ronnie's tonight to have a little exit interview
about our experiences at Mwamba and to transfer a birding database
into Colin's hands. It was an interesting discussion, and Colin had
not been getting much information from the management at Mwamba about
what was going on there. We were apparently not the first people to
voice concerns about the management. Hopefully, he can enact some
changes before the reputation of the field station is tarnished too
badly.

June 10, 2006
We walked to Turtle Bay today taking photos of everything and looking
like quite the tourists. We continued our photo expedition at Gede and
got some good shots of the guides and workers there. The coolest thing
about today was going out to dinner at Turtle Bay Beach Club with
Andrew McNaughton. His project redesigning several of the guest areas
is nearly complete, and it is mostly open for use. We started with
dinner in the pizza garden. It was quite good, and we had a
impassioned discussion of how environmental and human concerns can
work harmoniously in Kenya in light of the attitudes of tourists
(e.g., Italians) and the government. We had a great tour of his work,
including a very cool new bar that is made from sanded, finished, and
joined canoes that had been used by local fishermen. He also painted
all of the pictures in the guest areas. It was a fun night.

June 9, 2006
We hade an early morning with a walk/run to Turtle Bay. We finished
our monkey-watching duties early, so we could concentrate on other
data collection. At lunch, we decided to have chapati while watching
the monkeys, which is typically bad, but we thought that they would
not think of us as a food source, considering we had been with them
almost every day for 4 months. As we were eating, Monica saw a monkey
looking at us. Nancy had spotted the chapati, so we hid the chapati
quickly! She came over until she was maybe a meter away and looked at
us both with sad brown monkey eyes. When that didn't work she tried to
threaten us by bobbing her head. Evenutally, she gave up and left to
eat some leaves on the ground. The whole episode was very cute.

On the way home, we stopped by High Tech Dream World (which lives up
to none of its namesake) to do some emailing. After 10 minutes, our
email loaded and Monica received the stressful news that her
advisor-to-be at SFSU is leaving before we return to take up a
position at Penn State as the head of their anthropology department.
Luckily, we had decided to make tonight our happy hour night at Pole
Pole. It was definitely a good night to go.

June 8, 2006
It was a pretty good day. We saw an incredible sunrise this morning.
We watched the sun open up in the sky like an enormous orange eye on
the horizon. What a great way to wake up! We had a good
monkey-watching day, and we stopped off at Plot 15 to get a tour of
Mida Manor, which is a nice place on Mida Creek. Ivor gave us a ride
back to Plot 28, which was great. Monica spoke with her mother tonight
and found out that Dave and Liz had conveniently forgotten to deliver
the message from her. The rest of the night was filled with lots of
mosquitos eating Monica's feet and lots of packing in preparation for
leaving.

June 7, 2006
We had a great day. It started off with a run in the morning, and we
barely missed a downpour. Monica walked with Patrick to the ruins, and
she ended up having a very successful monkey-watching day. Scott went
on to Malindi to get some emailing done, buy tickets from Malindi to
Nairobi for our gorilla trek, pick up our Swahili rap video CD, and
then caught an "express" matatu to Mombasa.

"Express" is used pretty untruthfully sometimes, and every so often
you will have a manamba tell you it's express when it is not. Express
matatus are cool, because they do not overcrowd and they go straight
to Mombasa without stopping. On the way to Gede, the "express" matatu
made a couple of stops, and I started to wonder if they were just
trying to fill the last seat or if I had been had. But I did not get
to find out, since the matatu broke down completely when it reached
the Gede Mobil station. We all piled out, and they crammed about 20
people into a rather sketchy matatu. Then they started making stops
... everywhere. If it was not stopping to pick up and drop off someone
every kilometer, the engine was giving out, and the manamba would have
to get out and try to turn over the starter from behind the driver's
seat. At least Scott had a nice slow tour of the road from Malindi to
Mombasa.

Finally, he reached Mombasa 2 hours off schedule and immediately
headed to the Akamba ticketing office. It was pretty painless. The
office is only about 1 km from the matatu stand, and the Akamba staff
were very fast and efficient. 10 minutes later he was headed back to
the matatus, made a stop along the way to grab some food, and made it
back to the matatus 30 minutes after he arrived. The first matatu was
"express" but with no one on board Scott decided to find a more full
one after waiting a few minutes. The second matatu was almost full,
and it looked like a winner. This time he really did get an express
matatu and they even dropped him off at the Gede junction, so he could
walk back to Patrick's house.

Why Patrick's house? Tonight was Pati ya Chapati night! Laura, Monica,
and Scott all went to his house to learn to make our favorite meal. We
had a great time. Monica and Laura received kangas to be in the
kitchen. We each worked the mbuzi (literally, "goat" in Swahili which
refers to a stool with scraper used to shred coconut). We each took
turns doing the different steps and quickly realized that it takes a
pro to make chapati nice and round. We finished and ate until we were
completely stuffed. It was absolutely wonderful! We finally caught a
ride on their truck to Gede where we took a matatu back.

June 6, 2006
Today was Leslie's first day back to monkey watching. We took the
morning matatu with her and Laura rather than running since there was
heavy rain. We worked 1/2 of the day, but took the afternoon off to
go to Malindi and get a bunch of emailing done. Our plans were foiled
when we arrived and realized the power was out! We decided to eat
some lunch at Stars and Garters. This was not our favorite place as
we were both famished and it seemed to take years to get our food.
Once it arrived though, the ham and cheese sandwich and chips were
quite good. It was also amusing to watch the sixty-yr old Italian men
hitting on the African prostitutes at the bar (right in the middle of
the day). Power had still not come on when we were done so we just
about resolved to go back when we decided to try to find some Swahili
music to buy. We found a store, but they only had tapes.

The guy there took us to another store "nearby" (he walked us halfway
across Malindi) where we not only found the Swahili music, but in
music video form. We were quite excited! When we told them we didn't
have enough money for it (we hadn't brought much with us), they
offered to burn us an illegal copy for only a fraction of the cost.
We thought this was great! :) However, when they tested the burned
copy, it didn't work so we arranged to buy the original for 1/2 price
the next day. Finally, we were almost out of time and had to take
care of the most important thing ... getting Scott a haircut to trim
the enormous bush of hair that had accumulated on his head! We tried
the kinyozi (barber) that Steffen and Stanley had suggested, but they
were closed (that side of the street was without power), but the other
side had one open. We decided: why not? So Scott got his first Kenyan
haircut, and it looks very good (and all for 50KSh). While Scott went
back to Mwamba to finish some computer work, Monica decided to stay in
Malindi until the power returned. Unfortunately, the power never did
return, so she came back a bit frustrated.

Scott had some great comments at dinner while he talked about how
horrible it is to put people in the banda at $20 a night and how many
other places there are in Watamu for much cheaper. He had
unfortunately started talking without thinking, but we thought that
"issues resolve themselves", so no harm could be possibly be done.

The Trouble with Colonialists

2006-06-07T00:44:00.000-05:00

June 5, 2006
Today we had lots of rain. Luckily, we were able to complete most of
the things we wanted to accomplish in the morning before the rain hit.
The rain allowed us to work another hour after 11, but the rest of the
day was a torrential downpour. We ended up leaving at 5:15 during a
brief pause in the rain, which promptly began to fall again just as we
reached about the halfway point between the ruins and the matatu
stand. We reached Gede, and we all stopped in to the Three Spears for
a drink and a lot of fun discussions before Patrick went home and the
rest of us caught a matatu back to Turtle Bay.

The rest of the night was interesting. Monica decided to have a talk
with Lispa. She had been "resting" a lot instead of coming to dinner.
It turns out that she is sick of Liz's remarks (especially her
condescension to the African staff), and that she really cannot stand
being near Liz. She also disclosed one particular Liz comment that we
now keep near and dear to us…the fact that we are "noisy Americans".
At the same time, Scott had decided to live up to this title and
confront Liz about her remarks the previous day. When asked if she
could see how it would be offensive and awkward to everyone involved
for one person to be singled out as the "only full-paying guest", she
abruptly left to attend to a guest without saying anything.

Later, she brought in Dave to our previous conversation. He offered
that he deeply dislikes people who confront problems and that "issues
resolve themselves." It was a strange comment from people who are
supposed to be managers. This was always used as a textbook example of
how not to manage people in my business coursework, and they seemed to
be seeing the textbook results: little respect for management, low
morale, high turnover, etc. The fascinating observation, though, is
how stark the difference is in the efficiency of the field station
(e.g., morale, maintenance of facilities, email access, etc.) from
when Beatrice was managing the station and now that Liz and Dave are.
Unfortunately, it will probably take several of the staff quitting
before any action is taken, though.

June 4, 2006
Today was another good day for running. This time we managed to run
all of the way to Turtle Bay without stopping (or feeling like we were
about to die). We did not know if we could do it, but we finished the
work week by finishing the work for both groups of monkeys! This is a
pretty amazing feat when considering that even with the regular full
staff of researchers on Putin's group, they had not done this for at
least 6 months. It was great teamwork! On the way home, Laura, Scott,
and Monica had another strange experience in Gede. A funny man in a
tight shirt that exposed his belly came up to us and said "Excuse me."
And then proceeded to talk. At first we thought he was speaking
Swahili, but when we adjusted we realized that no, indeed he was
speaking gibberish. We did what any self-respecting Bostonite or New
Yorker would do … we ignored him, but he was persistent. Meanwhile, a
group of secondary school students and several of the local
townspeople were watching with big smiles, as we tried to tactfully
get him to move on. Finally, he touched Monica's shoulder, and Scott
had to inform him that he had to respect people's personal space.
Luckily, after about 30 minutes (the longest wait for a matatu that
we've ever had at Gede) a matatu came and rescued us! We were happy to
get away, and that we provided so much amusement to everyone. We
stopped off at the internet place while Laura went back to Mwamba,
which turned out to be a complete waste of time, and their connection
was too slow to access anything. We still ended up getting back in
time to take a quick swim in the ocean before coming in to get ready
for dinner. Dinner was interesting. New guests (birders) had arrived
from Taita to attend another ringing course from Colin, and Liz
introduced Tom as "the only full-paying guest," to which Scott added
"And I suppose the rest of us are trash then." It was a typical Liz
way of expressing her contempt at having so many researchers around;
she seems to fail to grasp the concept of a field station.

June 3, 2006
Today we went running along the beach, and that went very well. We saw
a beautiful sunrise and arrived at Turtle Bay with plenty of time to
pick up breakfast. The only caveat was that (like usual) Monica's face
got bright red from exertion and stayed this way for at least an hour.
Between her pasty-white legs and her bright red face, she got even
more stares than usual! We caught a matatu there, and when we got off
and were walking through Gede, we noticed a heavy cargo truck pull up
behind us. We went to move out of the way and noticed that it was
Patrick and his father! They gave us a lift to the ruins :), which was
a very nice surprise. We ended up working straight through the day,
and we definitely reached our goals for work. There was no power in
Gede all day so our hopes for doing email were yet again shattered.
That night, Scott received a nice call from his parents.

June 2, 2006
We have restarted (after the failure of two days ago) our training
regimen to get ready for our hike to see the mountain gorillas in
Uganda and our climb of Kilimanjaro. We have started easily by walking
along the beach to work, and we stopped at Turtle Bay to grab some
tasty mandazi (triangular fried pastries) for breakfast.
Monkey-watching went well, and we were even successful in walking to
Gede and accessing our email from the post office. We perfectly used
up our internet card sending a few important things off then headed
back to the ruins in time to see Salim trying to salvage some
butterfly pupae. Apparently, Putin's group of monkeys had broken into
the butterfly center and stolen several pupae. While he was explaining
what was happening through the fence, we saw Kito, a very brave
juvenile male, come from behind and start eating more pupae off the
table Salim had been working on. We came around and tried to help
control the monkey problem, and when Kito came back Scott used some of
his monkey knowledge to threaten him away. After all of the
excitement, we picked up 4 jars of honey to bring back with us.

June 1, 2006
It was a much better day. We worked all morning (after a walk/run to
Turtle Bay along the beach earlier in the morning) and then left to go
horseback riding with the Mwamba staff. We scheduled it for Kenyan
Independence Day so everyone could attend, and it was a great time!
Carol and Stanley had arranged for our own private matatu to come and
pick everyone up from Mwamba and Gede, so at 2 everyone piled into the
matatu and started off. The first stop was Gede Mobil station where
Scott met the matatu with Patrick and Salim (Monica had left a bit
earlier to help get everything organized at Mwamba, since Liz and
Dave, the managers, were not particularly happy about the idea and
were unwilling to help). Colin was sitting in the manamba's
(conductor's) seat and even had on a maroon shirt, the signature
uniform of the manambas. We arrived at Seaview Resort and immediately
headed down to their newly (i.e., just finished less than 1 month ago)
finished stables to start people off on the horses. The looks on
everyone's faces when they rode a horse for the first time were
priceless. Lawrence was beaming the whole time, and Kidenge, Tsofa,
Thomas, and Stanley were all very excited to be riding. Kidenge had to
bail from his horse when it started going too fast, but all in all it
was a good time. Sarah, an accomplished rider, had quite the spirited
horse and went running up and down the beach for some time. It looked
great, but we are still unsure who was in control. It took a lot to
convince Michae to ride; however, after Leslie told him that his
little girls could see a photo of him riding a horse he finally agreed
:). Despite Dave leaving early without giving Colin the money to pay
for the outing and Liz trying her best to make people feel
uncomfortable, the event went very well. Afterwards, we had the matatu
drop us off at the internet café, so we could get a little emailing
done.

May 31, 2006
Today was a total failure … absolutely. I think it all can be traced
to us looking like tourists. We started with a run along the
Watamu-Temple Point road where we were heckled every so often by
passersby. Scott had not had much to eat and was very grumpy by the
time he arrived at Gede. Scott had a pretty bad morning following the
monkeys, and Monica received a nice scratch across her hand. She had
gone to get a monkey poop, pulled down a branch to help her, and when
she released it, it brought along a thorned vine, which caught on her
hand. When the day was finally over (we thought) we headed out and
were met by two miraa-chewing fools on the road from the ruins. They
kept asking us what we did and were mocking that we study monkeys. It
was such a strange experience, since we had never seen these guys
before, and had never met anyone like this before. We were thoroughly
annoyed by this point, but we stopped by the post office to get a
package from Kevin and Steve, who sent us socks!!! You might think
that we get excited way too easily, but socks are like gold here, and
poor Leslie has been trying to live on 2 pairs of socks ever since she
landed in Nairobi and someone stole her other pairs from her bag.

It was the one glimmer of hope in our otherwise dismal day. We walked
back to Turtle Bay and ran into Lawrence, who called us over to his
sister's-in-law salon, where we managed to mangle "we are bad
students" in Swahili, so it came out "wewe ni wanafunzi mbaya" or "you
are bad students". I think everyone at the salon got the idea :).
Lawrence invited us to his house, and we met his little son, Isaac,
and wife, Cristin, and he shared some mangoes and bananas with us
while we sat and watched the sunset and let our stress drip off. We
needed this so badly. We realized it was getting late, so we decided
to walk back along the beach, which there was precious little of since
it was high tide. In the middle of the walk, Scott gouged his foot
with a stick. By the time we reached Mwamba we were quite a sight.
Thomas took one look at our wounds (Monica's hand and Scott's foot)
and asked us what happened. All we could say was that the day was "si
nzuri" (not good).

May 30, 2006
Not much happened today …

May 29, 2006
Today was our day off, and the rain fell all morning. We woke up and
made banana pancakes, which we shared with everyone. We also met
Britt, a technology support person with the Miami University group,
who was very fun and interesting, and he informed us of all the new
developments in the States. We worked on updating the blog, and later
caught a ride with Moses to Malindi. We showed Laura around Malindi
(like where to get a fan and where not to change US dollars … like the
guys who hang out in the alley next to the Standard Chartered Bank).
We mostly just took care of errands like checking the bus schedules
and emailing, but later we ended up eating at "I Love Pizza" for
dinner and everyone sampled the fabulous "chini chini", a nice
cocktail made with vodka, honey, and cane sugar.

Typhoid Bad, Horseback Riding Good!

2006-05-29T09:26:00.000-05:00

May 28, 2006
We decided to delay our day off so we could see Maurice again before
the week is out. We don't want our monkeys to forget us. They were
very welcoming and provided us with 8 poops! And this was even with
sporadic rain throughout the day. What good monkeys we've raised :).
We ran into Salim later in the day, and found the students from Miami
University at Kipepeo. They let us get a ride with them back to
Mwamba, and since Salim was planning to come see Leslie, he hitched a
ride as well. When we got to Leslie's room, she looked rough.
Apparently, she thought she was better and decided to go all out and
eat a bunch of pili pili (hot peppers), which were not well-received
by her colon. The result was a very pained Leslie. We had dinner with
Salim then he caught a ride back with Moses, who was going to
Comeback.

May 27, 2006
Today was a better day. We both worked with Putin's group yet again
and I think we have them figured out! Also, the weather was nice all
day so with both of these factors going for us, we ended the day with
a record 11 poops (6 from me, which was also a record)! (All of you
reading this must really find this poop talk quite strange!) Laura,
the new monkey researcher, appeared in Gede and we spent the day
talking to her, showing her around, and introducing her to the
monkeys. Laura is from NYC and will be here for the next 6 months.
She seems quite nice and it was interesting to hear about her career
switch. Before monkey poop she was doing laser hair removal. Those
she worked with joked with her saying that when she finishes with
these monkeys, all of the monkeys will be hairless! J She also told
us her adventures getting here, which seem to always be numerous. We
ate lunch at the Mobil Mart Café to welcome her and Patrick came along
later. We ordered him a hamburger, seeing as he had never had one
before and were pleased to find that he enjoyed it! J

The monkeys today were very different. I don't know if they are just
getting used to me or what, but I was charged/attacked by an adult
female about 3 times. I accidentally got between her and her infant
and rather than just retrieving the infant, she ran right at me and
pushed me several times. It didn't hurt, but seeing as I had never
been touched by a monkey before, this scared me to death!! I have
since found out that this is not unusual and that Putin's group is
just a lot more bold than our group. Next, my leg was groomed twice
by a male juvenile, Kito, and then later in the day when I was
watching an adult female, he jumped on my head!! I just froze and
said to myself, "What should I do?" I just stood there as he made
himself comfortable on my head and then I felt a little hand start
patting my face. It was very amusing!! A minute or so later, he
tired of this and jumped off only to return to my head again a few
minutes later to take off my hat. I have since found out that he used
to do this to Nadia, the monkey researcher from England who left in
early March. We think Kito must think I am Nadia, as she had a
similar hat, was also short, and wore her hair in a braid. I feel
honored to be accepted into the group…I guess!? All of this attacking
and jumping on me, along with a few wasps that decided to run into my
chest (I'm glad they did this rather than stinging me) left me quite
jumpy the entire day. From one moment to the next, I didn't know if I
was being attacked or played with.

After work, Laura came back to Mwamba for dinner. After dinner we
went to the office for a "monkey researcher meeting" which consisted
of some celebratory drinks since Steffen leaves tomorrow, some real
monkey questions, and some random stories. We had a good time and
toasted with the phrase "Mavi Mengi" (many poops!). I think Steffen
was amused by this and will likely use it in the future with his
researchers!

May 26, 2006
It seems the more cool people who leave, the more the rain picks up.
Today it rained all morning so we headed into work late. Today Scott
and I both worked with Putin's group and began to start to actually be
able to tell these new monkeys apart. We managed to collect 6 poops,
not bad for a rainy day with a new group. We ate leftovers for lunch,
but unfortunately we had forgotten to pack spoons. We took a 30
minute nap on the benches and finished out the day. Not much else
happened that day. I was a bit bummed the entire day and just decided
to go to bed a bit early.

May 25, 2006
Today was a day off and I had high hopes for it as it would allow me
to spend some time with Ben before he left for Lake Naivasha.
However, the weather was super crappy! It rained all day. It would
have been perfect for a movie, but there was no way to watch one. We
had hoped to go swimming, but that wasn't going to happen either. I
just fixed some scrambled eggs with cheese, wrote some postcards,
listened to my iPod, and chatted with Ben and Leslie in the living
room, while Scott carried on some more "serious" discussions with
Susan regarding politics, etc. Around 3pm, I decided to go to the
beach whether there was rain or no rain. I thought maybe I would nap
under the banda or read for a bit while watching the waves.
Unfortunately, the banda leaks and I was soon getting quite dripped
on. I went and sat on the beach itself, which was actually drier than
the banda and just watched the ocean and took some short naps. Awhile
later, Thomas, came out to walk on the beach and he came up to me to
tell me he had found a shark or whale head up on the beach. I went to
see it and saw Ben coming to the beach. I waved him over and the
three of us pondered what kind of decaying skull this was. Ben and I
decided it was a dolphin or porpoise. It was quite interesting , yet
also disgusting. We walked along the beach to where Mida Creek meets
the ocean (or close to it) and then walked back to Mwamba. I wrote a
couple more postcards, exchanged contact information with Ben and we
all said goodbyes to him before Colin drove him to Gede. Hopefully we
will be able to stop by and see him in Lake Naivasha during our safari
and/or he can meet us in Nairobi before we leave for the US.

May 24, 2006
Today was a frustrating day. Steffen had asked one of us to help him
with Putin's group. Since neither of us wanted to do this, we flipped
a coin and I lost the coin toss. I began the morning with a poop
sighting, yet since it dropped from about 40 ft up and hit a zillion
branches on the way down, it was a lost cause. I simply couldn't find
it. I then tried to hoot for Patrick and Steffen to see if they could
help me look. They were far off in the forest somewhere and when I
tried to find them I couldn't find them either! I am not very
familiar with the northern part of the forest or with their monkeys so
I found the whole situation quite frustrating! I decided while I
waited to "cool off", I would label all of their trails, for if I
couldn't find my way around the upcoming Earthwatch Volunteers would
not be able to either. After doing this, I felt better and managed to
get 2 poops (along with another one I couldn't find). At noon at
switched back to my group.

Scott had also had a frustrating day. He got very few poops as a
result of the morning rain. He had also gotten stung again. He did
however, get to see Maurice go nuts again at the whistling farmer.
This guy seems really weird and he keeps staring at Scott funny.

Around 3pm I left Scott to go into Malindi to get prints of some
digital photos I wanted to give to Ben and Moses before they left. I
will likely get some more printed for others before I go. This was an
interesting experience. I went to what I think is the only place in
Malindi you can have this done, one of the local chemists (or
pharmacies). They had a Kodak Kiosk like the ones you find in any CVS
or Walgreens in the US, but it was behind the counter covered up by a
cloth. When I asked about printing the pictures, they unveiled the
machine like I was the first or last customer to ever use this
machine. It worked well though and took no time at all, although it
definitely costs more to print digital photos than in the US. I don't
think there is much demand for it here yet. After getting the photos
and buying some cheese from "The Cheese Shop", a new discovery in
Malindi, I texted Ben who I knew was in Malindi to see if he wanted to
head back to Mwamba together. I did some emailing while waiting for
him then we headed back to Gede. We decided I still had some time to
go back to work and this would give him the chance to see Gede and our
monkeys. He had planned to go on Saturday, but since he was having to
leave early, this was not possible. We got to Gede, I showed him
around a bit and then we went back home with Steffen. On the way
home, we stopped at Villa Veronica, a hotel in Watamu, to book a room
for Laura, a new monkey researcher who we just found out yesterday was
coming in a few days.

After dinner, I spent some time chatting with Ben and showing him a
lot of our "goods". Since we are likely to leave a lot of stuff when
we go, I thought he could see what he might want. He has to buy a lot
of camping stuff anyway. I also showed him the computer which we
might be giving to him as well. We brought it with the intension of
leaving it here with someone who could use it, so we will see if this
works out.

May 23, 2006
Veronique left today at 1pm, but we found today was a very rough day
for other reasons! We had stayed up a bit too late and were VERY
TIRED and VERY SORE from the horseback riding!!! I guess we weren't
the only ones who were tired as we ended up having to wake Steffen up
to get him to come to work. He just kept turning his alarm off! We
decided if ever there was a day to have coffee, it was today. Boy
were we wrong! While it tasted good (Scott even put some hot
chocolate into it!), it went through us super fast, made us jittery,
and played complete havoc with my system. Around 11am, I felt like I
was going to be sick in the forest and had to sit down. I lost the
monkey had been following, but happened to see another one poop.
Unfortunately, I was feeling so sick I was having trouble collecting
it. Scott saw me and how pale I was and came to walk me back to the
trail. I didn't even want to walk to the office so I just laid down
on the trail and went to sleep until I felt a bit better. As the day
progressed, I felt better. We also managed to see another bush baby
when we were in the southern part of the forest. When we got home
from monkey watching, I began to feel worse again. To add to this, my
legs were so sore, I could barely walk! The electricity was out so we
all had dinner via candlelight. I was in the middle of a conversation
with Ben later that night when Liz came and told him he had to be out
of his room by Friday. He had planned to be around until Sunday until
he was hit with this news. I was so annoyed. First of all, I didn't
want him to have to leave early. Secondly, the situation was not
fair. This is not the first time they have decided to kick people out
of their rooms for other "full-paying guests" (non-volunteers) who
plan to only stay for a night or so! This is not good business
practice and will likely end up hurting their business in the long
run. GRRR! I did the best I could to not give her a piece of my mind,
vented to Ben afterwards, and then headed to bed quite annoyed at the
situation.

May 22, 2006
Today was another fabulous day! It started with a very early morning
with the monkeys, but was okay as we knew we only had to make it to
2pm when we would leave to go horseback riding! We managed to
accomplish quite a bit of monkey work and then we met Ben and
Veronique on the matatu and headed into Malindi. We stopped by the
ATM machines first so Veronique could pay her rent and then grabbed a
tuk tuk to the Kibokoni Riding Centre. On the way, I discovered that
Ben had not only never ridden a horse before, but had also never
ridden in a tuk tuk! So many "firsts" in one week! I'm so glad he
decided to join us in all of them! When we got to Kibokoni, we
immediately knew there was something wrong…there were no horses! We
found someone to ask and they explained that the place had been sold
and the horses were taken to a new place nearby. I'm glad Ben and the
tuk tuk driver were there as we couldn't understand anything that was
being said! We decided to find the other place and after some time
turning around, asking people nearby, etc, we managed to find the
horses new home…Seaview Hotel and Resort. The place was quite fancy
and beautiful and we learned that the horses had just moved to their
new home about 3 days before. I believe that we ended up being the
first people to ride the horses under this new management. Our guide,
Thomas, was the same guy we had talked to the week before, so he must
have moved from Kibokoni along with the horses. He was very nice! He
made sure to give us horses that were appropriate for our levels of
riding experience and then we were off to the beach! We spent the
whole time just riding in the surf and along the beach. It was
beautiful! You could even see the Sabaki sand dunes off in the
distance! This was the best paid riding experience I have ever had as
rather than the horses just plodding along one behind the other, these
horses were independent and spirited and they let you ride your horses
side by side, and walk, trot, canter, or gallop as you wished! It was
so invigorating!!

I loved my horse, Minimax, who always fought to be in the lead. While
he was full of energy and rearing to go, he was also very well behaved
and listened to my commands beautifully. Scott and Veronique enjoyed
their horses as well, which trotted along at a nice pace, but didn't
go any faster than that. Ben, unfortunately got the "slow" horse who
seemed ancient and who just didn't seem to want to go faster than a
slow walk. I kept galloping back to see him and tried to explain how
to kick and click to them to get them to go faster, but every time I
tried to demonstrate how to "kick and click" my horse would just take
off! He eventually got the horse to trot, which is probably
sufficient for a first time horseback riding venture to ensure you
come back in one piece. I had a wonderful time and I think everyone
else did as well. I plan to try to get large group from Mwamba
together to go again and negotiate a discounted price, although,
compared to what it costs in the US to go horseback riding, this place
was very reasonable! I'm so glad we did this!

Once we got home we couldn't stop talking about our day's adventures.
We had dinner and then had some wine with Veronique, Steffen, Lispa,
and Susan as a send off to Veronique as she will be leaving tomorrow
for Canada. L I even managed to take a candid photo of Steffen, who
hates having his picture taken! Score! This week has been so much
fun; we are dreading the departure of Veronique, Ben, Moses, and
Steffen, whom we have enjoyed having around Mwamba.

May 21, 2006
Today was a fabulous day off. I had decided to go to church with Ben
and Colin in Malindi. Thus, I woke up early and got ready for church.
I had some chai and had a discussion with Ben about the complications
of ordering cappuccino along with its caffeine-related effects.
Church was interesting; it was an Anglican service, a type of service
I had not yet been to. It was quite similar to a Catholic Mass. I
was a bit intimidated being the only mzungu there (aside from Colin
who does the music), but it ended up being quite a pleasant
experience. After church, Ben and I walked to the internet café to do
some web surfing. This was the first time he had been walking with me
in public I guess, because he immediately commented that he felt like
everyone was staring at him. I explained that that was because they
were!! Welcome to my life! He was amused! Our regular internet café
was closed so we went to another one, which was so slow we got nothing
accomplished. The next one we went to was much better. We then
headed back to the Matatu Stand and on the trip home I got to hear all
of the Mwamba gossip! Apparently without Ben to keep me updated, I am
completely out of the loop! J We decided to take bodas back so we
would be home in time for lunch. However, when I looked back, I
noticed that rather than "riding" on the boda, Ben was actually in
front pedaling! I, on the other hand was struggling to stay on, as I
was wearing a skirt and I still haven't quite managed to get the
"side-saddle technique" down. Ben paid for both of us (I offered to
pay, but he refused) then he vented his frustration that wazungu are
charged more for bodas than Kenyans (even if a Kenyan pays for them)!
I told him that I understood and that it frustrates us every day, but
we have gotten tired of fighting for the cheaper price. He had also
paid for himself and that was something I didn't understand, as he had
been the one pedaling the other guy!! Oh well; it made for a good
story!

After lunch, which didn't get started remotely on time (as usual), we
went to the beach. After learning last night that Ben didn't know how
to swim, through the course of the day, I had managed to coerce him
into coming to the ocean so I could try to teach him how to swim. I
had never taught anyone how to swim, seeing as I only recently learned
how to do so myself, but we had a great time! It took me quite awhile
to figure out why he kept sinking and I found myself having to lift
his legs up over and over again. I had him use the mask and snorkel
(minus the snorkel as this seemed to only complicate matters) and that
seemed to help a lot. Finally, it all clicked and he easily floated
to the top. He had managed to make himself relax (not an easy feat)
and that was all it took! From there he began actually swimming,
although the kicking and the breathing will have to be perfected in
the future. Still, this was much more than I had expected us to
accomplish in such a short time! Also, during the lessons, he had
mentioned to Susan who was also swimming with us, that he had never
actually been in the ocean before! Wow, I felt so honored that he had
mustered up the courage to try with me as the teacher of all people!
J

While these lessons were going on, Scott had decided to go snorkeling
out on the reef with Veronique and Drew. Drew was a new guest from
the US (Boulder, CO) who was in the area to teach GIS (Global
Information Systems?) workshops using software donated by ESRI (the
makers of ArcGIS). Scott also learned of his future plans to do a
6-month circumnavigation of Africa on a sailboat. He will have his
own blog at www.serviceatsea.org. We are intrigued. They had a great
time on the reef where they saw several sea turtles, brightly colored
sting rays (beautiful blue-spotted rays in pairs all around).
Veronique and Drew got some great photos with their underwater
cameras. Drew's camera was especially cool as it looked like a regular
digital camera. We saw him come into the water to take a picture of
Ben and I, and Scott was thinking, "Wow, this guy better be careful
with his camera!" He then explained that it was waterproof to 3
meters and how he liked to trick everyone by "accidentally" dropping
his camera into the ocean and seeing everyone's reactions. Another
way he will get a reaction is by say, "Hmm…this camera seems a bit
dirty. Let me just rinse it off." He will then just dip it in the
water and wait for the reactions! J

My mom called right after I finished swimming so I had a nice long
conversation with her, although the connection was not great for us.
After dinner, I fell asleep while "helping" Scott plan our upcoming
Uganda trip. I woke up in time to talk to Colin to see if Ben could
come horseback riding with us. Scott, Veronique, Susan (a new
Community Development researcher here from Canada), and I sat out on
our porch talking and listening to each others iPod tunes until
midnight or 1am.

May 20, 2006
Today was another day with the monkeys. We went the wonderful Mobil
Mart Café again, this time for chapati mayai (chapati with egg). Even
though it was not on the menu, they were more than happy to fix this
for us as we are now giving them so much business. It was wonderful!
After work Steffen dropped us (and Patrick) off for a dinner with
Andrew McNaughton. Scott was going to take a look at his computer,
Patrick wanted to see his artwork, and I was just along for the ride.
He started us off with drinks, for me a very welcome vodka and coke
and for Scott a Tusker Beer. We then had a delicious dinner of
tilapia, beans with mchicha, and some soy thing that was fairly tasty.
Before dinner, when Scott was busy working on the computer and
Patrick was busy looking at artwork, Leslie and I sat out on Andrew's
hammock swing and had some nice girl talk under the stars. It was
very nice. Andrew even offered to have Patrick come and help him with
his Turtle Bay Beach Club renovation project the next day. Patrick's
face simply lit up at the suggestion! Since we had to get Patrick
back home and Steffen had the car, we had to leave for Colin's place.
They were having a movie night at his place. We made it there before
the movie ended so I got to see the last part of "Castaway". I forgot
how much I like that movie. After the movie ended, I went back to
Mwamba with everyone via the beach. I left Scott to talk with Ronnie.
Once I got back, I realized that Scott had our room key. Also, I
hadn't left him with a sufficient flashlight so Ben and I went back to
get Scott. We had a nice talk on the beach. The weather was
wonderful and the stars were amazing! It was close to midnight by the
time we left with Scott to go back. The moon was not out and the tide
was very low so we accidentally passed the entrance for Mwamba and
ended up at Plot 35 (about twice as far as we should have gone). When
we finally found our way back it was close to 1am and we were all
exhausted.

May 19, 2006
Today was our day off, but didn't bring the much needed rest we had
hoped for. We had to finish a photo project for Steffen, but we had
to wake up extra early to get access to the research computer before
everyone else got up. This left me quite grumpy. The day got better
as Scott made French toast, we ate lunch with Leslie on the roof, and
went to the beach to catch up on sleep there. I attempted to plan the
horseback riding trip for Monday, but ran into the problem I had
foreseen. The phones didn't work, or the phone numbers were wrong,
etc. Anyway, I couldn't get through to them and even my lengthy text
messages that I was sure would work, kept getting erased and would not
send. I had to give up on this and decided to just try my luck and
bring Scott, Ben, and Veronique to the riding place and hope the
horses were available at that time. The rest of the day was pretty
uneventful.

May 18, 2006
Today was another sub-par day, and we just wanted to get some sleep.
We went to the Mobil Mart for egg sandwiches, which lightened up our
moods a lot. Not much else to report.

May 17, 2006
Today the really cool birder guys left to go back to Taita. We said
our goodbyes to them before heading to see the monkeys. Today was
still frustrating and stressful as we felt we had so many things to
catch up on. Liz had also been driving me crazy with her insistence
that we visit Leslie all of the time. I'm afraid her badgering had
the opposite effect from what she intended. Today, we also spent the
day helping Steffen with Leslie's monkey group. Since we do not know
this group at all, it was very difficult for us to be helpful. The
whole things just made us feel rather dumb and unhelpful. When we got
back to Mwamba we went straight to see Leslie. We had a really good
conversation with her and got to hear her extremely funny dream…

We were living in a poorly decorated shack full of horrible 1970's
décor. She was spending time with us when we were in San Francisco,
but she was horrified to see our taste in décor and our taste in
clothes for when she saw us we were wearing matching plaid polyester
pants! We had both decided to give up on the world of academia and
pursue another path instead. We were planning to market a "Hello
Kitty"-type product, only this product would be called "Hello Maurice"
(Maurice is the dominant male monkey in our monkey group). We were
showing her albums and albums of our "Hello Maurice" prototypes for
stickers and "shrinky dinks" (I don't know what these are!) that we
were sure would make us a fortune. Leslie truly felt we had gone
crazy! She decided to try out her new gumboots (rubber boots) in our
huge eternal puddle outside of our '70's shack. She laced them up,
for these gumboots were bright red knee-high boots that laced up.
When she stepped into the puddle she discovered they had special
propulsion powers and she would bounce right out of the puddle every
time she tried to step.

We thought this dream was hilarious! Soon after we heard this story,
Veronique and Andrew McNaughton arrived to visit with Leslie.
Veronique (in case we have not yet mentioned her) is a Turtle Watch
volunteer from Canada. Andrew McNaughton is the cool artist whose
house looks like a museum and he is very into the drums. He is
redesigning parts of the Turtle Bay Beach Club and I can't wait to see
it. Just for a visual on the guy, he is British and wears the
tightest, shortest spandex shorts you could ever imagine! He has been
titled Andrew Mc "tight pants". He is very eccentric, and his art is
amazing!

May 16, 2006
Today was not the best of days. We went into to watch the monkeys,
but were preoccupied with how Leslie could have gotten typhoid.
Typhoid is generally spread via bad food or water so we kept trying to
figure out where we should avoid eating and whether we might be
incubating it ourselves (since we often eat/drink at the same spots).
Leslie had also been immunized for typhoid, yet she still got it,
leaving us extra worried (we have since discovered that the
immunization is only 65-75% effective). On the way home from work, we
stopped at the internet café and read up on Typhoid. This made us
feel a bit better, although the thought of going into her
"contaminated" room to give her company did not seem like the wisest
of ideas. I was also stressed because I realized just how behind we
were on inputting our monkey data. We decided to eat dinner, work on
data and see how much time we had after that. Unfortunately, since we
had brought our computer into the dining area, we were faced with many
interruptions.

A new guy Harrison interrupted us because he wanted Scott to help him
fix his pen drive right away. Scott was taken aback by the
not-so-subtle demand and bluntly told him he might help him later, but
not now. One of the birders, Tom, started up a discussion about his
birding research at Taita and what he plans to do for his
dissertation. This really got Scott's mind going and they got into a
very long (albeit very interesting) conversation. However, this meant
that I was doing the data inputting by myself and it took me twice as
long. To make up for this, Scott stayed up late and worked on some of
it by himself. Needless to say, we didn't get to bed until quite late
and Leslie was fast asleep by the time we were ready to visit her. We
vowed to visit her the next day.

May 15, 2006
Leslie could not come in again today. We ended up going from work
straight to Malindi to take care of some emailing and other errands,
skipping lunch so we could take our break at the end of the day. We
arrived back at Mwamba approximately 30 minutes late and found that
all of the food was gone. This is never a good thing to have happen
when Scott is hungry! He was quite angry until we realized there were
ingredients around to make something for dinner. I had an egg
sandwich and he made a French toast and mango sandwich. While we were
cooking we were told that Leslie had finally gone to the doctor and
had found out she had typhoid. Everybody was very worried since
typhoid can be quite contagious. Scott and I decided that we would go
learn more about typhoid at the internet café tomorrow. We visited
her briefly and then went to bed.

The Burn Intensifies, the Poop Falls, and the Rash Spreads

2006-05-15T10:11:00.000-05:00

May 14, 2006
Thankfully, there is not much to say about today. We decided not to
set our alarm, hoping that Leslie would be well enough to go in and
leave us able to take a day off. Steffen did not come knocking,
though, Leslie did not go in. She finally moved back into her room at
4 this morning. Monica and I had a sleeping in marathon! We slept
until 10. It was pure bliss :). We finally got up, and then made
ourselves a pile of French toast before getting to the day's work …
watching a movie on the desktop. Since one of the desktops has failed,
we had the task of getting the other one to play movies. We finally
found them, and then took another 30 minutes to find speakers. It was
definitely worth it, and we had a good time getting back in touch
with American cinema. The film of the day was "Bourne Supremacy", a
movie we have already seen, but like a lot. We finished the day with a
swim in the ocean as the sun set, and then Monica gave Scott a quick
hair cut by headlamp light :), and it actually looks really good!
May 13, 2006
We were woken up this morning by the sound of a knock at our door at
1am. Leslie was outside saying she was terribly sick. She had been
camped out next to the outhouse all night vomiting. We were
immediately awake and found some good meds for her. She refused to
come and sleep in our second bed (her room doesn't have a bathroom,
but ours does), so we set our alarm to wake us up every 2 hours to
check on her. Needless to say, she stayed home the next day, and we
volunteered to collect poop in her group today. It was the day from
hell. We thought we were seasoned monkey watchers, able to
differentiate and follow monkey like K group, which we thought was
much slower and lower to the ground than ours. We were surprised at
the difficulty in identifying the individuals. They have nearly twice
as many females and a whole bunch of juveniles that are as large as
the females. Without knowing the individuals, the task was VERY
difficult. Despite this, we still collected 3 poops. By the time we
ended the day, we were ready to eat Putin's group.

The night was a bit more relaxing. We came back, showered, and then
came out to meet Steffen to go to Carol's house for dinner. Scott's
parents gave him a call right before we left, and he had a nice
(albeit short) conversation with them before we left. Carol's place
was fun. She, Sarah, and Veronique had spent the day cooking pilau and
mandazi. It was tamu sana! We also watched "Cats and Dogs", a strange
movie about dogs attempting the thwart a cat plan to rule the world …
the looks on everyone's faces when it ended was a mixture of horror
and shock. We all left.

May 12, 2006
Today was a lot of fun and pretty laid back. Veronique, a Canadian
volunteer for Turtle Watch, decided to come see the Gede Ruins today
and rode in with us. She had an amazingly lucky day: first we saw
Putin mating with a female right when we got there (a first even for
Scott), then she followed Putin's group in the morning, got lost, and
ended up at the eastern fence where a pair of the fabled
Arabuko-Sokoke elephants were just passing by! These elephants are
RARELY spotted, and many who have lived in Gede all of their lives
have never seen them. Unfortunately, she could not get her camera out
in time, and they left. While she was seeing elephants, we were
drawing our group's tails in preparation for creating a set of monkey
ID cards for a bunch of Earthwatch volunteers, who are coming in July
to watch our monkeys (at an exorbitant price). We all met up for lunch
and went to the Mobil Mart café, which was Veronique's first
experience with eating out in Kenya. We ordered fries, coffee, and
other Western goodies. We returned to Gede and took a tour of Kipepeo
with Salim. We finally got back to work and caught up with our monkeys
at the fort. When we went up to the office at the end of the day, we
interrupted what had been a heated argument between Leslie and Steffen
(they don't seem to see eye to eye). It turned out it was a good day
for a Happy Hour.

We left Gede and stopped off at the Pole Pole bar for drinks and met
up with Ben, Lispa, and Moses. It was, as always a good time and a
welcomed break from Mwamba. We returned and met the new guests from
Canada, a pair of professors and a pair of grad students from the
University of Manitoba, who are in Kenya to study the social
networking and knowledge transfer promoted by field schools. We also
discovered that it was Carol's birthday, which everyone had forgotten
to inform us about, and saw that they had a banner and a cake for her.
Shortly, after we started eating, Veronique received a call about a
turtle nesting at Plot 16! We all finished eating really quickly,
grabbed some cake (with chocolate sauce!), and then slowly got
organized to leave to see the turtles. When we were finally ready to
leave, we piled 9 people into Steffen's RAV4 and proceeded to get lost
in Turtle Bay (no small feat, since there is only a single, straight
road and fragmented frontage road). It was funny, and we ended up
getting to the turtle in time to see it heading back to the beach. We
watched the poor creature go straight for the most difficult path back
to the water. It was a full moon and low tide, and we could see the
large rock outcropping of shallow, jagged pools that she had to move
through. It was embarrassing to watch it flap its flippers
ineffectually and then finally go head first over the lip of a pool
into the edge of the other side of the pool. We finally had to leave
and walked under the full moon back to Mwamba.

May 11, 2006
After yesterday, we were glad to have a day off, though we did not
sleep in. Instead, we decided to hang out with the bird ringing guys
(Tom, Nathaniel, Max, and ? from Taita) and learn how to do bird
ringing. It's pretty neat! They put up the nets called "mist" nets,
which are thin, black nets that hang in loose sheets from 3 horizontal
lines. This has the effect of creating long pockets, in which the
birds are trapped. We watched the extraction process and were amazed
at how docile the birds are. Apparently, you need to check the nets
almost continuously so that the monkeys do not have a chance to raid
your nets and eat your catch. They weigh, measure, and take their
"molt score", a measure of the bird's age based on the age and growth
of its primary feathers (the first 10 feathers on its wing counting
from front to back).

After the ringing, we decided to work on the computer, which was
short-lived since the power went out. We were so happy that it
happened, because we finally had an excuse to do the other, more fun
things we had on our list. We first went to see Colin's wife, Ronnie,
who has been recovering from a nasty case of hepatitis. She was doing
well, and their new Jack Russell terrier, Bonga, is keeping her good
company. We talked about a lot of things then finally went back home a
few hours later – very fun time. We got back, did a little reading,
and then went to the beach for a bit to read, taking care not to be in
the sun, since Monica had been sunburned so badly. It did not matter,
though, since she was sunburned again anyway.

We decided to go with Veronique and Leslie down to the beach with a
bottle of Amarula to vent and relax under the very pretty full moon.
We came back and received some nasty looks from Carol and Stanley, who
seem to believe that drinking is right next to child molestation in
the eyes of God.

May 10, 2006
Not much happened today. We had a full day with the monkeys. We were a
bit frustrated with them and ended up going for our full lunch break
today by walking to the Mobil Mart Café in Gede. It was a good time,
and we had a chance to rest and decompress before returning to the
forest. Patrick had to leave today to attend the funeral of his aunt,
which is being held in a town about halfway between Gede and Voi.

May 9, 2006
Today, the weather and the monkeys behaved again. It's a welcomed
change from the previous week. Steffen suggested last night that we
photograph the monkeys when they are on the ground in the ruins, to
which we replied they are never on the ground in the ruins. Today they
spent about an hour wandering leisurely on the ground in the ruins
without much apprehension to Monica's camera lens (which they usually
avoid like the plague). We caught some great head shots as well as
some very funny looks on the monkeys' faces.

The interesting event today was that Scott saw a monkey get shocked by
an electric wire. The monkey just all of a sudden fell off the wire
onto its side on the ground, not breathing. A few seconds later, its
chest began moving rapidly, and it slowly raised its head and started
screaming. One of the females came out of the tree, chirped in each
direction looking for the source of the danger, and ran down to
retrieve the fallen monkey, which she had to hold to her chest as she
ran across the ground into the bush.

We ended up working through the day again and then leaving early to
catch a swim in the heavy surf followed by some downloading of our fun
new photos.

May 8, 2006
It was another great day! The sun was shining, and, as my brother
says, the monkey poop fell from the skies like manna from heaven! We
worked all day without a break. Monica was pooped on today by our
dominant female … well, it was more of a trap she fell into. She saw
Shujaa poop, but only found a small amount on the ground, then the big
piece fell off a limb right onto the back of her neck. Monica went
home slightly early (not because of the poop), so she could stop by
the chemist, which was not open yesterday to fill her prescription.
Scott stayed and put our little monkeys to bed. They are great!

May 7, 2006
Today did not begin well for Monica. Her rash had been quite itchy
last night and kept her awake; putting on clothes was no fun either.
These problems seemed pretty small, though, when we arrived at
breakfast. Everyone who was supposed to be on safari today was seated
in the dining room looking shell shocked. Another driver (still drunk
and reeking of alcohol 4 hours later when the police finally arrived
on the scene) had run head-on into Moses' van as they were driving
through Timboni. Luckily, everyone had their seatbelts on, and Moses
only broke a toe and seriously sprained his ankle. The driver's side
of his van was crumpled seriously, and the steering wheel was very
close to pinning Moses to his seat and crushing him. The other
passengers only had minor cuts and bruises. On our way to Gede, we saw
the remains of the van near the side of the road with a crowd of
people looking at it.

Monica's rash intensified today, and it was enough to convince her to
leave in the morning to see the doctor in Watamu and then head home.
She thinks it might be an allergic reaction to a fuzzy caterpillar she
saw crawling on her yesterday. It's amazing how efficient the doctor
here is: Monica was seen right away; they asked a lot of questions and
took the time to make a diagnosis; then they gave her a shot of
cortisone to ease the itching, wrote a prescription for a stronger
cortisone cream (not spending 20 minutes trying to hawk the newest
prescription drugs), and sent her off … all in less than 1/2 hour and
for less than US$10! We need to come to Kenya for health care; $10
would not even pay for a doctor's time to sneeze back home, and taking
the time to make a proper diagnosis … unheard of!

Monica had to talk with Jeffrey, the crappy boda boda driver, on the
ride back to Mwamba that included:
Jeffrey: "I will kill a goat for you."
Monica: "Why?"
Jeffrey: "It's a Maasai tradition!"
Monica: "Are you Maasai?"
Jeffrey: "No, I'm Giryama"
NOTE: Ben told us later that this is not a Maasai tradition
He also launched into a diatribe about: how can people call themselves
Christian if they drink alcohol? It's weird riding boda bodas
sometimes.

May 6, 2006
We had a much appreciated ride to Gede from Steffen this morning. It's
amazing how much hassle a car can eliminate (no 1 hour commute … only
20 minutes). The monkeys were good to us this morning; they must have
heard about Steffen returning and wanted to show what good little
monkeys they are … or something. Steffen visited our monkeys at 2 and
took notes. He thinks they might be habituated enough for the Earth
Watch volunteers who are coming in July. Our favorite quotes of the
day were "these monkeys are quite peaceful" (in reference to the fact
that our monkeys did absolutely nothing interesting socially; they
just walked and ate the whole time) and "Yes, this is a bit difficult,
but I don't know if paths will help" (in reference to the tangled mass
of thorned vines and brambles our monkeys like to go through that we
have affectionately named "Crappyland").

After dinner, we had a typical Mwamba moment, when Monica wanted to
use the printer. Dave's response was "it isn't hooked up properly or
something" without the slightest hint of concern or any promise of it
being fixed ever. Luckily, Scott got it going, but the response is
very typical of the "oh dear, it's not working; how about that?"
mentality. Monica also developed a rather annoying rash today, and it
has been driving her crazy (and spreading).

May 5, 2006
Today, Monica did not want to wake up. The cursed sunburn had kept her
up much of the night, leaving her tired and raw. Putting on our work
clothes was no fun. At least we found the monkeys immediately. The
poop collection was decent, and we had our first chapatti na maharagwe
delivery right to our office … and free! It was great. Alice and her
sister Zanabu, who is deaf, came to collect the dishes. We ended up
conversing with Zanabu via a notepad in English and Swahili (our
written Swahili is much better than our spoken) for quite a while, and
it worked out great.

After work, we stopped in Timboni to pick up a Kenyan soccer jersey,
but it didn't happen. Bargaining put us both in a bad mood, since we
still have trouble communicating in Swahili. We stopped at Turtle Bay
to buy some kaimati (Kenyan donut holes), catch boda bodas, and we
were walking down the driveway as Steffen drove past. It was good to
see him, even in our bad moods. We ate pizza for dinner and brought
Steffen up to speed on our habituation work as well as the data we had
gathered.

May 4, 2006
Today was our day off (strategically planned for the day after Happy
Night). We slept in a little bit, and then Scott was ambitious enough
to go make French toast. It was wonderful; so good in fact that it did
not need anything on it! Since it was a bit sunnier than it had been
for a week, we decided to take a trip to Mida Creek. We took a matatu
to Mida and then walked a long but very pretty walk. We paid 80KSh to
enter and another 100KSh per hour for our guide, Sammy. He told us
about the various types of mangrove that grow along the creek (really
a mud flat that floods at high tide, providing the
saltwater/freshwater interface necessary for the mangroves to thrive),
as well as birds, crabs, and little mollusks. A lot of it he told us
in Swahili, and I think he was surprised and happy to see that we knew
a fair amount, though, we did not know some of the more technical
words like "chini" = "root".

We took the boardwalk, a series of spans of suspended planks, to the
bird watch tree house. The boardwalk can be a harrowing experience, as
it sways violently as you walk, and some of the planks don't appear as
though they will hold up. We then went out into the shallows of the
mud flat to see the birds closer and to see the jellyfish and other
creatures trapped in the receding tide. At this point, we began
regretting leaving everything (including sun block) at home. We
thought we would only be gone a short time and be covered by the
mangroves and that (like the rest of the week) it would cloud over;
instead, we were exposed in the open mud flats for an hour in the
blistering equatorial sun. We started to truly bake, and Scott gave
Monica his shirt. We finally had to tell Sammy we were cooking to
death ("ngozi hawaistahamili jua" = "skin has not yet caught up with
the sun"). We stopped back at the desk to have some juice and meat
from young coconuts (good) then took the shortcut back to the matatu
stage with our guide in order to get him some change (it is impossible
to get change for a 1000KSh bill anywhere).

We ate lunch back at Mwamba and although we knew we were fried, we
didn't know how much and went to the beach anyway. We covered
judiciously and laid out, but we only lasted before retreating from
the jua kali ("harsh sun"). By dinner time, Monica was so red that
everyone in the room stared at her with a mixture of shock/pity/awe.
Ben had never seen a sunburned mzungu.

May 3, 2006
Today, aside from the monkey difficulties, it was a great day! Monica
got a new necklace (very pretty) that Joro had made for her, and she
also received a little present from Unis, Mike, and Joro: a drum made
of a baobob pod and stretched, tanned goat's hide. The drum is
inscribed with a very personal message: "Monica – Sima na Nyuma;
Karibu; Rafiki" (referring to the "Sima na Nyuma" incident) It was
perfect! We then took a much too crowded matatu to Turtle Bay (we both
had 3 children on our laps). Monica was also sitting next to a kid who
was really jamming to his music.

We arrived at Pole Pole for a much needed before everyone else and
began to wonder if anyone would join us. Then everyone came … Leslie,
Lispa, Moses, and Ben. We had a great time! We finally took a taxi
back, had dinner, and also had some interesting conversations about
the U.S. before we went to bed.

May 2, 2006
More rain … what more is there to say? We salvaged part of the day by
going to Malindi and getting a few things done. The interesting event
today was watching Maurice (our group's male) go crazy when he saw one
of the farmers heading down the path along the southern fence. He
heard him coming and started pyaoing, then when Maurice saw the
farmer, he began running along the fence barking at him and stood at
the fence after he passed threatening and then pyaoing. We have only
seen him do this when there is a very big danger, like a pack of wild
dogs or large birds of prey and never this strongly. We are wondering
if the farmer is either a tree thief or, more probably, if he
hunts/traps the monkeys in the shamba (farm) to the south.

May 1, 2006
Not much happened today except that the monkeys drove us crazy (I
know, you're thinking that it was a pretty short drive for us). It
keeps raining off and on and the monkeys are nearly impossible to find
these days. It does not help that they are zipping around in the tops
of the trees, dodging behind dense leaves while the rain blinds us and
leaving us well behind as we drive through thorned bushes in a vain
attempt to follow them. We have been ending up wet, dirty, cut, and
usually without any poop or follows. The morning was particularly
frustrating, as we had before been used to getting all of our work
done then. It's amazing how much of a workout your neck muscles get
while watching the tops of 30-meter high trees.

Our food has returned to normal rotation of African yumminess. After
dinner, we watched 2/3 of the movie "Out of Africa". It was
interesting to watch in the presence of Lispa, who is Kikuyu, and Ben,
who is Maasai.

April 30, 2006
Today we had a day off, so we of course slept in and then did the
emails and stuff we cannot do on normal days. The local people here
are quite cool. Ben is one of the people we've gotten to know; he's a
Maasai from Nairobi who is getting ready to study wildlife
conservation in Lake Naivasha. He is being sponsored by an American
who works at the California Academy of Sciences (the same one that
Monica's new master's thesis advisor belongs to). He's definitely
working hard enough; every night we see him pre-studying for the day
when he goes to school (he says he does not want to disappoint his
sponsor; he won't). He wants to visit his sponsor in San Francisco, so
hopefully we will get to catch up with him in Cali. Lispa is great, as
always. She has been exhausted by her cooking classes at Turtle Bay in
addition to her regular duties at Mwamba, but she liked the classes a
lot and is now rejuvenated after a week of resting.

Mombasa and Rain

2006-05-02T10:26:00.000-05:00

April 29, 2006
Today was uneventful AND unproductive. We only ended up with two poops after having faithfully tracked them all day through all kinds of forest conditions. D'oh! We ate lunch at the Hot Point Café and although they had promised to have coconut soup, they did not, so chapatti and beans it was. We came home, ate dinner, and got to meet Colin's new dog, Bonga (zulu for "Thank You" and a "lion's roar"). He
was VERY tiny and cute!

April 28, 2006
Today was quite the rain day. We went into work and after about 2 hrs the rain came. We got absolutely soaked and just sat around the office reading a book and talking with each other waiting for it to clear. It didn't. At some point we decided to use our time wisely and get some much needed errands done in Malindi. We got to Malindi and there was no electricity making it very difficult to do our email
and get money out of the ATM. Fortunately, the electricity came back on about an hour after we got there and we managed to accomplish everything we had set out to do. We even bought some Swahili reading for kids in grades 1,2, and 4 (we already have grade 3). We got back to Mwamba early and found out that the rain had never let up, so we had made a good choice. Patrick and Leslie had also gone home. I
decided to study some Swahili and just relax. After dinner, the Mwamba folks played games until deciding to watch a movie. When the movie was about to begin the electricity went out. It has become much more unreliable now that the rains have come. We still managed to watch a movie on someone's laptop. We watched 'Mr. Deeds', a not-so-great Adam Sandler flick. Surprise, surprise. It was
entertaining, so it worked for me!

April 27, 2006
We had another morning of rain, and Scott was in no mood to get up. Monica had had some fun dreams the night before about huge 6" long caterpillars in Kilifi that were crawling around on the ground, and then it turned dark, so all she could do was feel them crawling around. We ended up walking to Turtle Bay this morning since the matatu did not show up until much later (i.e., as we were just arriving at Turtle Bay), and Scott was Mr. Grumpypants. The morning was rough, and our follows were not very successful for poop. We stopped for a 5 minute lunch of rock hard peanut butter and honey sandwiches … at least we had a bottle of our own homemade iced sweet
tea. After our quick lunch, things started going better, and we ended up with all of the follows and sample we had wanted for the day.

April 26, 2006
We could tell it was raining outside in the dark, as we tried to get ourselves up out of bed. We got ready but could not find our laundry, which we had left to be done while we were gone. Luckily we found a few things waiting to be ironed. Monica was the first to search for our clothes and ended up finding nothing except how easy it is to slip on the wet cement porch, which has left her with a massive blue bruise
on her knee. Scott had a bit more luck.

We ended up catching a ride to Gede from Stanley, and were able to make it to the office before it started pouring rain. A little while later we saw Leslie stroll in soaked through. When the rain stopped, we went to find our group, which has taken to foraging around in the extreme south end of the park, a 15 minute walk from the office. The area is overgrown with low-lying bushes and thorned vines – just the
type of place you want to be looking through. It was raining off and on all day, and right as the last big rain was coming through, Scott was following one of the monkeys who had decided to run through the forest away from the rest of the group. Apparently, the monkey went right through a bee hive area, because Scott walked straight into a swarm of bees and was stung 3 times before he was able to get out.

April 25, 2006
We had a great night's sleep on our new pillow!! It is amazing just how crappy our pillows here at Mwamba are! I woke up at 6am as usual, but forced myself back to sleep until 8am, when I decided to read my book. We handed our hotel room over to Leslie while we ate breakfast so she could enjoy the luxury of a bathtub. The bathtub had been her idea, but unfortunately she was unable to get a room that had one.

Scott and I had a wonderful breakfast! Unlike our usual breakfast of 'cardboard' toast with jam from a can, we had poached eggs with sausage and bacon, fresh fruit, toast, passion fruit juice, and chai (tea with milk). What a treat!

We checked out of our room after having taken some pictures of the hotel, called Nicodemus (our tuk tuk guy) and headed for a matatu to Haller (Bamburi) Park. The matatu ride was quick and uneventful (aside from the good rap music they were playing). The park is 35 years old and used to be a huge limestone quarry until they decided to create this park. We paid our 600ksh each for admission to the park and spoke with the woman behind the desk in Swahili. At the reception desk we got our guide and began the tour. First, we got to feed the giraffes, the main thing Leslie wanted to do. There were two babies, a 19-yr old male and 2 or 3 12-yr old females (Giraffes live 20-30 years).

They did a great job of creating the environments. They planted a specific type of evergreen tree, because it grows so tall so quickly. This tree also sheds some of its needles, which gives the ground nutrients, helping to create a nice (albeit very thin … only 5cm in some areas) topsoil for other plants to grow and thrive. It seems to have worked well! The vegetation is quite thick, and they've created
an environment where lots of types of animals can live. The river that the crocs live in has enough fish in it for the crocs to live on while the fish reproduce fast enough to keep a reasonably constant population (despite being snack food for the crocs). It has become self-sustaining! This park has become much more well-known recently as 'Owen and Mzee' have become famous. Owen is a hippo that was
stranded by the tsunami last year. He was brought here and made friends with Mzee, a 130-yr old tortoise! An email (one that I had thought was fake) has been going around about them ever since. We went to see them and managed to do so, although they were apart at the time.

Next we saw some Waterbuck and a vervet monkey (there were more of these to come). We entered crocodile country and saw many more crocs than I had ever seen before! We saw the 40-yr old big croc and several sunning themselves with their mouths open (they keep their mouths open to regulate their temp, not because they are hungry). We saw their aquaculture place where they breed tilapia (of which there are 70 species worldwide!). We had lunch at the park restaurant. Leslie had the Kenyan buffet (good, but a bit pricey for Kenyan food) and Scott and I had a chapatti each and the Tilapia Starter Fish Fingers. We eat light but didn't realize just how light until we saw the fish. It was only 1 fish finger that was 2" x 1"! We staying and talked for several hours and Scott and Leslie got into a rather heated discussion about building efficient houses. I was amused. We walked around until we found a group of vervet monkeys and stopped to watch the little ones play in the puddles of water. It was very cute and their behavior was very similar to that of our Sykes monkeys. We then admired the male and his robin's egg blue testicles! They are rather shocking, yet impressive! It also makes it easy to tell the males
from the females! We also witnessed a very familiar site: these monkey groups had all come together just like at Gede. We discovered it was not because the tourists provisioned them directly, but because the tourists fed the giraffes and what the
giraffes dropped, the monkeys took. The result was very similar behavior to that of our Gede monkeys. Interesting…

On the way to see the hippos being fed, we almost literally ran into a Waterbuck (?) lying right across the path! He was huge, with long horns and we couldn't decide what to do until he helped us decide by getting up and looking like he was going to charge. We decided to go back the way we had come and find another way. We finally got to see the hippos being fed. One was being fed separately and a cameraman was filming it (from National Geographic like his hat said?). We soon realized this was not THE hippo feeding and got to it just in time. It was so cool to see the two hippos surface in the water, get out (they were HUGE!) and eat while vervet monkeys and various birds walked around them also eating their food!

This ended our trip, so we headed back to reception. Suddenly, we heard what sounded like a large explosion and shook the earth. We ducked and tried to figure out what had happened. When we found other people no one seemed disturbed by this. Scott soon realized it was just a normal explosion from the now existing part of the quarry! We saw some large tortoises and were reminded of the sign we had seen
when we came in reminding us 'Do not sit on the tortoises'. We decided to make a short movie clip to remind us of this!

We took a matatu back to Mombasa to get an 'Express' matatu back to Malindi. We got on a matatu, which we were told was an express, but later discovered it was only express to Kilifi. From Kilifi we had to get out and were 'shooed' into a charter bus. While the bus was nice, no one would tell us how much it would cost. Luckily, it was the same price as the matatu and the bus had air conditioning so it was great!! From the Gede Junction we caught a matatu to Turtle Bay and sat next to a very drunk African who kept asking us why we couldn't understand his English (of course he was slurring way too much!). We ate dinner at Turtle Bay Resort once we got through the hotel guards who thought we wanted to eat at their restaurant, not their Pizza Garden. The place was nice, the prices were good, and the service was good, but security was strong. They escorted Leslie to the restroom and then told her to take off her hat once she had sat down. She kept saying no, until the waiter said it was restaurant rules. She did so hesitantly. Her hair was sweaty and crazy underneath! Scott and I started laughing. The waiter joined in and put the hat back on her head. He was laughing to himself about this every time he came back
to our table; she made his night!

The meal was great! The garlic cheese bread was to die for, my pasta alfredo was good and so was Scott's pizza. We will likely go again. We took a taxi back to Mwamba since the bodas were all gone for the night.

April 24, 2006
We woke up bright and early today to catch the morning matatu to Malindi. The object was to head onward to Mombasa. We had gathered several good tips last night from Lispa, Lawrence, and Ben about what we should pay, which matatus not to take, etc. It worked out well; we followed their directions and went down the street next to the market; on the side of the road are parked "express" matatus, which will only stop in Malindi and Mombasa. The trip only cost us 180KSh each, and it was smooth. We headed straight for the Provincial Headquarters, where the immigration office is located, via tuk tuk to start the process of extending our visas. The process is properly bureaucratic:

Arrive at the HQ and go to the help desk for directions
Go to the building next door, where the office of alien registration is located, and enter Room 2 for an alien registration form
After filling out, go to Room 1 where an official stamps and signs the form
Take the signed form back to Room 2 where they take your money, passport photos, and give you a receipt (no passport photos? Take a tuk tuk across town to a passport photo studio)
Take the receipt with you back to the HQ and go to the help desk where you can obtain a visa renewal form.
After filling out the visa renewal form, go through the hidden, unmarked door in the corner of the room, and go down the hallway to Room 3. Wait for the official to sign your visa renewal form. (no return air ticket? Unless the official is unusually nice, you will need to return with it before you can get the signature)
Take the signed form to Counter 6, where you pay the fee, get a visa stamp, and get a receipt.
Take the receipt, and stamped paper to Counter 4 to have the visa
stamp signed and dated.

Congratulations, you have successfully navigated the Cape of Endless Bureaucracy! We saw Leslie, as we were just finishing Step 7. She had been the first person in line in the morning (since she had stayed in Mombasa over night, she was able to catch an early tuk tuk to the HQ), but she did not have the photos and ended up spending a few hours getting passport photos made. We gave her Sarah's phone to call us when she finished and left while she was just starting Step 6. Sarah, Jo (the new volunteer), and we left to find food, which of course meant that as we stepped out of the HQ, it started to rain hard.

We wandered for a few blocks looking for a restaurant and getting completely waterlogged in the process, and finally went back to a café at the trade school next door to the HQ to grab lunch. The café had a limited assortment of food (i.e., 6 slices of bread and a few eggs + matoke), so we ordered what they had and split it among us. We received a call from Leslie while we were waiting for our food, saying
she would be with us shortly. After finishing lunch and waiting a while, we finally gave up and started to leave. Just then, Leslie pulls up, and says that the driver had to run a "quick 5-minute errand", which had taken him 1/2 of an hour to finish. We walked to Fort Jesus, saw the fort from the outside, saw the price, and decided
that there are other cool things to see in Mombasa for a lot less. We hailed a tuk tuk and somehow fit 5 people in it (amazing if you know the size of a tuk tuk) then went to the Nakumatt.

What is Nakumatt you might ask? Well, it is a grand shopping complex that looks exactly like a Wal-Mart without the clothing section and with a furniture section added in. It is the largest shopping complex in Kenya. Normally, we would be unexcited, but after months of haggling at tiny kiosks and running all over Malindi to find things we could not find in Watamu or Gede, it was heavenly to just browse a few shelves and find what we needed. We even found ice lolly (i.e., British for "popcicle") moulds! We left our shopping orgy at Nakumatt to take a matatu to Biashara Street (oh, silly wazungu). We ended up
being dropped off blocks from where we needed to be, and had to make our way to the fabric district. We made it finally and Sarah and Jo decided to do some shopping while the rest of us headed towards the Jain Temple. We asked someone directions, and he told us where to go (while his friends struggled to keep from laughing) … we decided to get a tuk tuk instead.

The Jain Temple was a much needed sanctuary from the crazy streets of Mombasa. We looked at the interesting Jain sculptures then regrouped and ate coconut fingers and Chevda (Indian Chex Mix) while deciding to forgo a trip to Diani Beach to see the Colobus Trust in favor of staying with Leslie in Mombasa. It was too rainy to enjoy a resort experience and we thought we were trying to fit too much into this
trip. We took a tuk tuk first to Lotus and then decided to compare it with the Royal Court Hotel. The Lotus was very cute and had a lot of character but didn't have bathtubs (something we were really hoping for); the Royal Court Hotel was very Hilton-esque, and while fancy, was a bit too expensive and American for our liking (i.e. we could easily stay at a similar place when we get back to the states). We
decided to stay at the Lotus, were able to bargain down the price and when we were shown our room, we discovered it even had a bathtub in it!! How perfect

After enjoying the luxury of the hotel, we called Nicodemus, our
reliable tuk tuk driver friend and we went to Galaxy Chinese Restaurant for a tasty meal of sesame chicken, fried rice, cashew chicken, and tea!! While we were there, we had three power outages (just to remind us we were in Africa) but our food was still good as ever and we took it all in stride. Nicodemus collected us after our
meal and after discovering that the Bollywood (sp?) movie Leslie had convinced us to join her at wasn't playing, we returned to Lotus for drinks. The Lotus had a great friendly staff and a great bar area (although they kept having to ask whether they had some of the stuff we were requesting). Monica had a Malibu and Coke (well…two) and Scott had a Smirnoff Ice and a Guiness Malta (a non-alcoholic
barley-based malted beverage). He's hooked now and will be bringing some home from Africa for sure. We had fun talking and unwinding, but Scott kept dozing off. We made it an early night and resolved to sleep in.

Tasty Caterpillars!

2006-04-28T06:48:00.000-05:00

April 23, 2006
We slept until 10:30! It was nice to actually see light when we woke
up. Unfortunately, Monica's stomach decided to revolt, and she ended
up staying at home entering data, while Scott went in after lunch.
Lunch was a typically frustrating affair. We suffered through the
requisite 30 minutes of chatting before eating, but the "one person
serves all" thing was one step too far. Scott grabbed the bowls from
the cupboard and tossed them on everyone's placemats, while Monica
started serving us our own food.

April 22, 2006
What a rainy day! We spent our day towards the south of the ruins
watching the monkeys and came back to the office at noon for lunch and
data entry. We ate at our favorite burger joint in Gede (we discovered
the real name is not the "Greenland Café", which is next door, but the
"Mobil Mart Café"), and Monica ventured out to the egg sandwich, which
she thoroughly enjoyed. The rains moved in shortly after we returned,
and we ended up doing data entry all day, since the rain did not stop
until 5. It was not a bad change of pace. The fries and the rain hit
Scott, and he could not stay awake. He kept dozing off while reading
log book entries to Monica. She thought that no one could possibly
fall asleep while typing at the computer, so we switched. It did not
work, and Monica had a great time laughing at him as he kept falling
asleep on the computer.

The best part of the day was going to Comeback Club. We had seen Bango
advertised for months and were very intrigued to hear it. We came on a
good night. The band playing was the family that originated the Bango
sound. The band's leader and patriarch, Mzee Ndala, was also there.
Mzee Ndala is considered to be the father of Bango, which has, over
the years, brought in many musicians who play with the band and then
splinter off to create Bango music fused with hip-hop, rap, and
reggae. Bango itself has a salsa beat and the lyrics are almost
exclusively addressing couples in love.

At midnight we toasted Salim's 27th birthday! We were impressed that
the band was still on when we left at 2. We grabbed a taxi and headed
home. It was nice to be able to sleep in the next morning on our half
day off.

April 20-21, 2006
Not much to say. The monkeys have been enjoying the tasty
caterpillars. They usually grab them greedily from the trees, squeeze
the juice out (sometimes precariously close to our heads), and then
munch the skin with bared teeth. The caterpillars are everywhere now,
and Monica is completely disgusted by them. It does not help that they
try to avoid the monkeys by descending on silk threads, which results
in them dropping right to eye level, so they can get on your face or
fall in your hair/down your shirt. It's great fun!

April 19, 2006
Today we brought back the hard-boiled eggs ( now miraculously
transformed into tasty deviled eggs) to the triumphant victors of the
Easter Egg Hunt. Everyone enjoyed them quite a bit!

Another Fortnight

2006-04-19T11:09:00.000-05:00

April 18, 2006
Where are the monkeys? Just when we thought we knew our monkeys, we came in this morning and could not find them. We walked around everywhere! We finally decided to sit down and wait, but we could only think of the horrible things that may have befallen them: people with a truck full of bananas luring Maurice in and then turning him to bush meat. We thought this must be what it’s like to have children (albeit, small fuzzy ones). After some reassurance from Patrick that this happens every so often, we went back and waited then gave up and went back to the office to prepare for the day’s main event: an Easter egg hunt!

We brought the Easter eggs we painted a few days ago to hide in the ruins. How cool is it to have your own private Easter egg hunt in the ruins of a 16th Century Swahili town? Katiki, Ziro, and Mwochia, three of the guys who work at Gede, as well as us monkey researchers were in. Just as we were preparing to go, several Muslim men came to the office and asked if they could speak with us, and we told them we would return. We thought this was strange, but there are many strange things. While the others waited, Monica and Scott hid the eggs, took some photos, then hooted for everyone to come. Everyone raced around trying to find the 16 hidden eggs, and it was a great time! We finished after a record 20 minutes.

After the first 10 minutes of the hunt, we noticed the Muslim guys following us, and several of them looked either horribly confused or angry. We took that to be their normal demeanor and kept on with our hunt. Afterwards, we came back, and they were still waiting and looked none too happy that we were late because of running around the ruins to find colored eggs. We left for lunch. It turned out that they were there to collect their winnings from the dhow competition and thought that we were the ones to give it to them! The misunderstanding must have been cleared up, because they were much more relaxed when we returned from lunch afterwards.

April 17, 2006
The day after a vacation day is always tough, though, we did quite well in recovering! It was a great data collection day. When we got home, we went straight to data entering using the new database. It worked well (with a couple of bugs that needed to be eaten), and we finished Scott’s whole notebook as well as most of our maps! The brief time we spent in the dining room, we met a couple originally from Tennessee but now running a school for AIDS children near Lake Victoria. They had just graduated their first class from primary school.

April 16, 2006
Happy Easter! We had a good Easter, and celebrated by waking up early to attend an informal service on the beach with the people at Mwamba. There have been many guests here for the Easter weekend, so there was a good number of people there. We sang and watched the sun rise above the Indian Ocean. It was a good way to start the day, and we came back afterwards for breakfast then went straight back to bed until 11:30. The day was very chill, and we had a good time relaxing.

April 15, 2006
Today continued our week’s downward slope. Monica was feeling ill again and had the extra fun of having something terribly painful land in her eye in the morning, which hurt for the rest of the day. The season has also led to an abundance of small larval stage moths hanging by silk threads from the trees, which like to stick in your hair and crawl up your legs. Monica stopped to talk with Leslie when she came in the late morning and quickly discovered that her day was going much worse: she had never made it back from Ocean Sports after we left yesterday and instead went on a bender to Malindi and wound up waking up with a blisteringly bad hangover in a strange bed not remembering how she got there. Why she came in is anyone’s guess … she ended up fighting to work, but gave up couple of hours later and went home.

Over sodas at the museum shop, Monica, Leslie, and Patrick talked about Easter customs (i.e., Easter eggs, egg hunts, Easter bunny, etc.). Scott joined, and we all decided that it would be fun to paint eggs at Mwamba tonight. With our morale better, we went back to the forest and got 2 more poops (one from Kamili, our new mother, which is a minor miracle!). Monica was sitting in the path staring at the forest when Kamili went and scared some poor Canadian who she didn’t know was behind her with an exclamation of “She pooped!”; that required an explanation that, no, she wasn’t a crazy person staring at nothing and that instead we study monkeys by collecting fecal samples … ok, not much better.

Before we left, we bought some Arabuko Sokoke honey from Salim (there is a honey processing facility supported by USAID there) and got a quick tour of the Kipepeo Project, which supports approximately 700 butterfly farmers around the forest. The farmers can make a substantial amount farming butterflies, while not harming the forest. We then had to delay leaving because a part of the cultural festival was actually going on: there was some very cool Giriama dancing. We took a last data point for the day, and showed Patrick our monkeys near the extreme southern fence, then all went to the museum to watch the performers. It was great to see the different dances of the different tribes.

We made it home slowly, first stopping at Mama Lucy’s for chocolate and eggs. Patrick arrived for dinner, and everyone was happy to see him. He had volunteered at A Rocha before working for Steffen. The food was impressive: a huge baked kingfish and roasted garlic potatoes! After dinner, Leslie brought out her painting supplies, and we brought out the hard-boiled eggs. The spectacle attracted a lot of people: Patrick, Moses, Sarah, Lispa, George, Ben, Liz, Leslie, Monica, Scott, and one of the guests,and we all had a really fun time painting, listening to music, and enjoying each other’s creativity. They were the best Easter eggs ever! Monica paid tribute to Maurice and the monkeys as well as one with the Red Sox. Scott also had to pay tribute to the monkeys and made one with the Boston and San Francisco skylines. It was a lot of fun!

The Easter egg decorating party was so much fun that we all decided to stay in, talk, and play cards instead of going with the original plan of going to the Happy Nite Club to listen to a local band play. We taught each other card tricks and attempted to teach each other card games. We finally sent Patrick home via cab and went to sleep. The day ended up being great after all!

April 14, 2006
The day was pretty lackluster for collecting data, and we had decided to skip lunch, so we could leave to watch the dhow competition in Watamu. We had been told it would be in the bay outside of Ocean Sports, so we went to Gede to catch a matatu and caught a random safari van instead, which took us right into Ocean Sports. We got a table with a great view of the bay, but we noticed there were no people and no dhows and no Leslie, who was supposed to meet us. We also noticed that there were no waiters, but this is a common occurrence at Ocean Sports.

We eventually ended up going up to the waiters in the back room and asking for menus after 20 minutes. The waiters also seem to be very confused when you want to order something and often look at you as though you’re crazy if you actually want food. Leslie came up shortly afterward and was not happy: not only did no one know about the dhow competition but she had gotten a bad henna tattoo instead of getting lunch, and her camera had decided to stop working. It was good to vent while waiting for our breaded fish filet. Our food finally came an hour later with the iced tea we’d ordered. The fish was pretty good and included tartar sauce, and it was great to have real ketchup again (Heinz). The truly wonderful part was the iced tea, iced and sweet and made with lime juice (which led to the equally wonderful inspiration to brew sweet tea tonight at Mwamba)! We finally gave up on the dhow race and went home.

We took a quick swim then sat down to finish our work day with some data entry, which ended prematurely when juice found its way to our laptop’s keyboard instead of Monica’s mouth. To finish off a perfectly bad day, Scott received news that his grandfather had had a stroke a couple of days ago.

April 13, 2006
It was another great poop-collecting day, and we are just a few samples shy of having 4 per individual for the week! I know, it’s disturbing what we get excited about here. We also received the schedule of event’s for tomorrow at the cultural festival: Dhow competition, boda boda race, and the Maulid at the Great Mosque.

We stopped at a mzungu café on the way home for a heavenly treat: brownies! It was delicious. We went next door to the supermarket then went home for a quick twilight swim under a beautiful full moon. Stanley came out and asked us if we’d like to come to a drum rehearsal at one of Colin’s friends up the beach. He wanted an audience to listen to his work before playing at a benefit concert in Nairobi tomorrow.

We ended up arriving 30 minutes late to Plot 8 (the house of Andrew McNaughton) with a car packed full with 9 people and several cartons of food. Andrew is an interior designer with apparently a good bit of notoriety for designing lounges and restaurants in up-scale hotels. He is also an artist and a drummer, both of which hit you like a wall when you step in the door. The house is visually amazing and decorated with his artwork: sculptures, furniture, drawings, and other interesting pieces. Much of the furniture he has crafted from pieces of driftwood he has found on the beach, and his artwork is mainly composed from materials available locally. The sound of percussion was also a treat. He demonstrated his new toy, a Roland HandSonic digital percussion “synthesizer” (though, it is really more of a digital library of sounds with pressure/motion-sensitive mixing). It ended up being a fun night of music, wine, and interesting characters, which ripped us away from our normal live for a brief moment.

April 12, 2006
So today was a rough day for Monica. She seemed to wake up with the same symptoms Scott had a couple of days ago when he was sick. Scott stayed home to take care of her and ended up mostly completing the monkey database. Despite a few bugs, it is close to being ready for data entry. Monica spent the day lounging on the roof in the breeze between frequent trips to the bathroom.

The best thing about today was browsing through Patrick’s portfolio of art. He is our fellow monkey watcher, but we found out that his real passion is drawing. We enjoyed looking through his work, and it made the whole day better. Monica was feeling well enough to go out for a walk, so we went across the street to Dongo Kundu to find a fundi to repair Scott’s pants, whose zipper on the convertible pant legs broke unexpectedly (definitely sending those back to REI) leaving him with a single pair of pants. After coming back, we went through the nature trail on the A Rocha property, which winds through the underbrush on the west side of the property past the old camping ground when the place used to belong to Ms. Simpson.

Tonight was Katie’s last night, so after dinner was a tasty cake and a very odd set of speeches. It was clear that several people were not sad to see her go. Moses had skipped her send-off all together. The farewell speeches were … interesting, and Katie was in typical form with her foot-in-mouth disease. Stanley said it best, though: “Katie, you have been very … what’s the word? Entertaining.” As an ode to Katie, here are some of our favorite Katie moments:
1) The Little Red Riding Hood monologue
2) Her obsession with her cereal, which always bore the epithet “Eat and Die!!!”, as well as screwing with her by attaching the “We ate some of your cereal. Hope you don’t mind!” note
3) Waking up to hear Katie’s screams in the middle of the night about bugs crawling all over her along with other mefloquine-induced screams
4) Katie’s legendary foot-in-mouth disease, including such favorites as:
i) Talking about how horrible she thought it was to see overweight people in tight, skimpy clothing when one of the guests sitting next to her was overweight and wearing a tank top and shorts, completely ignoring the 5 minutes of “shut up” looks we kept giving her
ii) Coming in to dinner after a happy hour at Pole Pole when a group of foreboding church matriarchs from the surrounding area were sitting in dead silence and trying to get them to tell her whether they knew any embarrassing stories about Stanley from when he was little (like him running naked through the village or picking his nose and eating it); after several minutes of no one saying anything and incredulous stares from the church women, she finally acknowledged “maybe this is inappropriate”
iii) Singing the “everyone has AIDS” song from “Team America” out loud in AIDS-ravaged Africa is tasteless enough, but she took it to a whole new level by singing it with Beatrice nearby the night before she was leaving early for Nairobi to attend the funeral of her 4-year-old nephew who had died from complications of being positive.

April 11, 2006
On our way to the ruins today, we finally saw the snail that belongs to these 7” long “sea shells” we keep seeing in the forest. The snail was an impressive 8”(-ish) long and looked terribly awkward with its lop-sided shell, as it was trying to cross the dirt shortcut to the ruins. We watched it for a few minutes, since we’re easily amused, and got a kick out of how the snail will move forward about an inch while its shell stays stationary and then it will move its shell forward, gouging a little trail in the dirt to its right.

We have been watching the week-long transformation of Gede Ruins from brown and desiccated to lush and green. Where there had been dust covering all of the ruins, there is now grass and other plants covering just about every square inch. It’s amazing how much a little rain can do. The monkeys have been enjoying the change, too, as it has also brought a huge increase in the number of moths and other insects as well as more buds and leaves to eat. They have finally stopped their 5K walk and are now much more content to take it slowly. That is good, since Monica has been running a fever all day and not excited about walking a lot.

Kamili’s new baby also has lived the night and seems to be doing well, though, the poor new mother is very tired and has been taking a lot of naps. We also saw a large bushbuck come within a dozen yards of us in the forest today.

We met some Americans on the matatu ride back and told them about places to stay and about Mwamba. They liked it enough to come stay at Mwamba tonight and came with us on our night out for Katie’s second to last night in Kenya. Monica’s temperature had spiked, but she decided to come anyway after doping up with some fever reducing medicine, which worked great. We finally tried the African pizza place next door to Kukuchoma. African pizza is a mixture of egg, minced meat, and onions fried inside of a thin, fila dough shell, and it was quite tasty!

April 10, 2006
Kamili (our youngest adult female monkey) had a baby this morning! While we didn’t see her give birth, the baby was clearly still wet and had been born only a few hours before at the most. This is the first monkey in our group to give birth (the other monkey births have been with Leslie’s group). I had thought she was pregnant and kept talking to Scott about her “little belly”, but had not expected her to have the baby so soon! We were very excited, yet concerned at the same time as the baby did not appear to be suckling or moving much. We are afraid this baby won’t survive.

April 9, 2006
It’s been depressing to go back to the daily grind, but all good things must come to an end :). We did, however, collect a lot of data. Not much happened today aside from a record poop collection from us of 6 today!

April 8, 2006
We started out by going straight back to the hill where we saw the lions, but they had already left for the day. After a slow start, we came back to Tarhi for breakfast … full English breakfast! We settled our bill and left for a really nice afternoon of wildlife, including some ostriches, more elephants, giraffes, and a pride of hunting lions. We capped it all off by stopping in Voi for lunch at a local Kenyan restaurant, where we had chapatti mayai (like a breakfast burrito) then headed to the Voi Safari Lodge before heading back through Tsavo for a last look at the animals. Right before leaving the park, we watched a pair of secretary birds hunt and trap a rabbit; they consumed their kill right in front of us!

April 7, 2006
The morning started art 5:15 when our alarm went off and we rolled out of bed to start our safari. Scott’s stomach was still rebelling, so he did not have any breakfast. We grabbed our bags and hiking boots and jumped in the van for a bumpy ride across the back roads which wind past the Arabuko Sokoke forest and the Sabaki river before leading to Tsavo East. We have definitely been spoiled by the paved Mombasa-Malindi road. The drive took us about 3 hours, and we started to see what we came to see as soon as we entered the park grounds. There were herds of elephants and zebra just grazing in the grassland (as well as a family of baboons in one of the trees). After a good morning of seeing wildlife, we arrived at the Tarhi Camp, where after much haggling of the price with the camp and much convincing of Sarah to stay at Tarhi, we arrived at 5500 KSh for each person for the night. We stopped for lunch at the camp and watched the open plain fill with a drenching rain shower. We hung out for a little bit talking and enjoying our meal before the rain stopped and we could continue on our safari. The rain brought out the animals, and the best part was seeing a pride of 12 lions resting on the hill right before sunset! We returned to Tarhi for dinner and eventually got to sleep.

April 6, 2006
This morning it thankfully rained until 9am again and we sat at Mwamba reading environmental children’s books (“Mala the Mongoose” and “The King and the Mango Grave”). Finally, the rain lessened and we grabbed bodas and a matatu. Leslie had been worried that Patrick was waiting for her, but we found a note from him explaining that he would not be in today. Today was our first really day of behavioral follows and our first real serious poop collecting day. We didn’t do too bad! We collected 4 poops and did 6 follows. We left at 6pm to make up for starting late.

We packed our things tonight and went to sleep early so we could wake up and go on our 2-day safari to Tsavo East with Sarah, Katie, Moses, and Raymond!

April 5, 2006
Today started at 2am when Scott woke up feeling a bit strange then had to run to the bathroom to vomit profusely. He woke again at 5:15am to do so again. Me being such a light sleeper these days, did not sleep through this. I felt really bad for him and couldn’t have gotten back to sleep if I had tried after 5:15. I got ready for work around 6am, did what a could to make Scott feel better, and headed to work after promising to return by lunch to check up on him (he had insisted I go into work).

At 10am, Scott woke up and threw up a 3rd time. He tried to sleep the rest of the morning. I found him around noon asleep with the laptop on beside him (that is Scott for you). He had a temperature of 100.8 degrees and we were afraid he might have Malaria so we called the doctor and waited until 2:45 to go to Watamu to see him. Since we didn’t have any transportation, and he was afraid he would be sick on a boda boda or matatu, we called a Tuk Tuk. Unfortunately, these are very slow and very bumping and we were lucky he made it.

The doctor in Watamu was uite nice and they were fast and very professional. We came at 3 and were going home by 4pm, even with a blood test. The whole bill was 1300ksh (<$20) for everything…including some medications…what a deal! A blood test indicated he did not have Malaria and instead probably was an intestinal infection brought on by eating bad food (we are less certain that this was the cause now; see April 11 and 12). Since the only thing Scott had eaten that was different from what Monica ate was the Mexican Pizza, we concluded that the chicken must have been bad (after having set out in the heat for too long). After getting home, having some Sprite and crackers, and taking some Cipro, Scott started feeling better.

There was a dinner to go to at Salim’s (a guy who works at the Butterfly Farm near Gede). We had tried to cancel since Scott was sick, but this is difficult to do here as they had specially bought and prepared the food and no one has refrigeration so we would have felt awful if the food had gone bad. We were afraid that it would be a repeat of the debacle with Patrick’s family. They had specially prepared “Pilau” a Kenyan dish with spiced rice and meat. We caught boda bodas and then a matatu and arrived at Gede right on time. Leslie met us there. We learned a lot about Salim and his family that night, and we learned about why Scott’s stomach cannot handle spicy foods on Cipro, but that’s for later. We ate pilau into the night, and were just feeling pleasantly sleepy when Scott realized something wasn’t quite right. He tried to get up, collapsed, and ended up throwing up all of his meal in front of Slim’s whole extended family; luckily, it was dark. What a great way to repay someone’s hospitality! We explained about the Cipro and its unpleasant effects, and everyone seemed to understand. The trip back home was uneventful, and we crashed as soon as we hit the pillow.

April 4, 2006
We arrived at Gede around the normal time this morning, but it was raining pretty steadily so we hung out at the office and talked. Patrick and Leslie explained how we were to begin taking the behavioral data, what forms to fill out, etc. I ( Monica) also shared her latest wacky-larium-induced dream with everyone. She dreamt that she was playing “Truth or Dare” with Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, and Angelina Jolie. The twist was that these two ladies were topless! Jennifer was telling a “truth” about how she had been pretty upset when he got together with Angelina, but that she was okay with it now. I was not at all disturbed by any of this, but was much more concerned about what my “truth” or “dare” would be. I wanted it to be something profound so I could impress them. In the second part of my dream, I was wandering around the ruins and I was having trouble locating some of them. I realized why I couldn’t find them when I found that they were buried under a pile of Tufts Admissions files! :) These dreams are truly amusing!

At 9am the rain let up and we found our monkeys at their usual spot. At lunch, we skipped the pizza we’d brough and went to the M&H café with Leslie because I was really hungry! We came back, ate the pizza as well, finished off the day, and went to bed unaware of what was to come (as a result of the Mexican Chicken pizza?).

April 3, 2006
We found the monkeys fairly easily today. At lunch, Scott left until 3pm to get his hair cut. He had been concerned that a local “kinyozi” would not cut his hair properly seeing as the only real hair cut they seem to know here is shaving your head. Thus, he went to the nearby resort hotel to get it cut. Unfortunately, she wasn’t great either so I will likely just give it a go next time. Before leaving the ruins to get his hair cut, he changed his shirt. The Gede guides are so used to us wearing the same clothes day after day that they didn’t recognize Scott and kept joking about him being a tourist. At the Turtle Bay Hotel, Scott was also given the third degree by their security. Apparently there he wasn’t touristy enough. Finally, after he took off his hat and showed them his “nywele ndefu” (long hair) they let him in. The hairdresser was Swiss and has lived in Watamu for 30 years. Scott enjoyed talking with her in German.

Scott also saw an exciting spider today. It was 6 inches long from leg tip to leg tip with a mottled yellow abdomen and red tips on black legs. If ever a spider looked like it should be poisonous, this was it. He got several good photos of it.

Around 4pm Scott and I went into Malindi to do some email and then meet Leslie for dinner at I Love Pizza. We found Leslie at the Internet Café and noticed when she left, but didn’t think anything of it until the person who works at the Internet Café told us she had forgotten to pay. We bailed her out, but not without bugging her about it. On our way to “I Love Pizza” we stopped at a bookstore. We found a bunch of cool Swahili books that primary and secondary school students use to learn Swahili and decided we would buy the whole set before we head back to the states. We bought Level 3 and a Kamusi (Swahili Dictionary) to get us started and then headed to dinner. Unfortunately, even with the picture of 3rd grade children on the cover and all of the pictures inside, I have to say, we are going to need to start with Level 1, I think :)

We had Chini Chini’s (alcoholic drinks with honey, fruit juice, and vodka) and some very yummy Hawaiian and Mexican Chicken Pizzas, which Leslie paid for since she owed us one for doing her a past favor. Just as it was getting dark and we were dreading the matatu and boda boda rides home, Moses pulled up in his safari van and asked us if we wanted a lift. He had taken some American guests to Sabaki and went horseback riding. Apparently you can go on a beach ride for 2 hrs for only approximately $10/person. We will definitely be doing this in the future!

Successful Poop Collecting and More...

2006-04-03T09:39:00.000-05:00

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).

Rains are Coming

2006-03-26T06:10:00.000-05:00

March 23, 2006
The boda bodas were not around for the second time in two days and
walked a couple fo kilometers before they came.

The interesting event today was that a black mamba was killed in Gede
today. The story we were told is that the snake was attacking a
monitor lizard when a local walked by. The mamba left its kill to
chase the local man, who eventually was able to save himself. People
arrived later to find the snake attempting to swallow the lizard, and
they killed it. Highly unlikely that a mamba would drop its pray and
go after a human you say? Well, yes, but it's interesting to hear
there are dangerous snakes in the forest.

Some of the people we knew were also arrested for a false traffic
violation after they refused to pay a bribe. The police block off a
major intersection, and if your friends did not tell you about it you
get caught, and you are either guilty or guilty ... unless you pay
them off with what amounts to a rather large sum for Kenyans.
Unfortunately, the police found out that the people we knew worked for
wazungu (the better to extort a bribe), so it did not go well.

March 22, 2006
We had another good day. Monica spent the morning tracking several
groups in the North and West. She even ran into a VERY guilty looking
woman who had been grazing her goats in the forest but was trying to
push them out as Monica walked past. Meanwhile, Scott tracked
Maurice's group and recorded several new GPS points to make our maps
more accurate.

We met for lunch and actually made the walk into Gede to eat at a café
we had wanted to try. We had pilau (rice and meat mixed together),
maharagwe (beans), and chapati (a tasty flat bread) with Fanta Citrus
to top it off. It was very good, but they tried to give us the wazungu
(i.e., double) price. We paid what was advertised and left. We were
strangely not annoyed this time that they tried to overcharge us.

We returned to Gede and immediately started taking GPS points for the
places Monica had been in the morning, which demonstrated an
exceptionally ability to tell direction on Monica's part, as her
points were exactly what the GPS said. She also pointed out where some
illegal logging had been going on.

We stopped off at Ocean Sports on the way back to return a book to
Steve (scuba guy) and decided to have a nice walk back along the beach
at dusk to watch the stars come out and watch the crabs swarm into the
receding tide.

March 21, 2006
What a great monkey watching day! We were awake and refreshed all day.
It helped that about mid-day there was a wonderful, drenching downpour
that cooled us off. The only downside was that while trying to make
sure he did not step on anything nasty in the forest, Scott missed
that there was a wasp nest above his head and received a nasty sting
on the back of his neck. The monkeys probably thought it was funny to
lead us through a hive. We also had our first collected monkey poo
samples (2)!! It was very exciting to capture, prepare, and bake them
just like REAL primate researchers.

March 20, 2006
Nothing much to report today. Sleep was a bit fleeting last night, as
it was mefloquine night. The monkeys were at least pretty nice to us,
and we gave one of the guides a hard time for giving Monica a hard
time yesterday. It actually did some good, we think. The best part was
stopping at the "Pole Pole Bar" for a much needed drink and to wait
for Mike ("In God We Trust" matatu tout) to drop off a tape of Swahili
rap for us.

We were joined by a Kenyan who was quite entertaining (though probably
would have been less so without the drinks). He spun a wonderful
(though rather improbable) story of how he was a shooting instructor
at the Kenyan Police Academy for 8 years but is now a police officer
in Malindi (likely true, as his friend actually is a police officer in
Malindi and knows some of the A Rocha people). He had ostensibly been
on secret assignment in "the bush" for the past 8 months. There he had
had to arrest 4 Somali bandits, but he had no vehicle. He and his men
had to hike 50 miles to find them. Just when they were so tired they
thought they would collapse they came to the place where the 7 Somalis
were hiding. He waited until nightfall when he poisoned the 17 Somalis
(yes, the number increased as the story unfolded) and told them to
give themselves up before he would give them the antidote. Also,
Chinese is the most widely spoken language in the world.

I tried to capture the essence of his drunken stream of consciousness
monologue, but I cannot do it justice. He also bought us our first
round of drinks, so cheers to him! We had a fun time on the boda boda
ride back, too. It's amazing how a few drinks can make everything a
bit more fun.

March 19, 2006
Scott had a full day off and Monica a half day off today. We started
off nice and lazy … stayed in bed to write some emails, blog updating,
etc. then walked up the beach a couple of kilometers to the matatus.
Monica got off at Gede and Scott went on to Malindi. The only things
open on Sunday in Malindi are the ATM and the internet café, so
Scott's day was pretty relaxing. Who could complain about AC and a
fast internet connection? Scott returned to Mwamba to help Stanley on
the database until dinner.

Monica went in for a frustrating day: an hour to find the monkeys,
lots of forgetting things in the office, and it was ridiculously hot.
The guides were giving her a hard time, and to top the day off the
matatu ride was smelly.

A Month of Monkeys (Almost)

2006-03-19T07:17:00.000-05:00

March 18, 2006
We felt our sunburns when waking up. It is always a high price for a
little bit of sun. Leslie had gone on safari with Nilesh over the past
couple of days, and she told us about it this morning. It sounded
amazing and we can wait to go on safari in a few months! We also told
her about our experience at the Swiss restaurant, and we resolved to
talk with Colin tonight, which we did. We will talk again on Monday to
see whether we can come to a better arrangement.

March 17, 2006
Today was another rest day, which we wanted to use to sleep in.
Unfortunately, a 6:30 Moses was outside yelling to Sara and Katie
(next door) about waking the visitors to see the sea turtle up the
beach. We ended up finishing a lot of things while being lazy in bed
before going to the beach to bake ourselves. Scott now has a crazy
pattern of red blotches from some fantastically uneven application of
sunscreen, and Monica burned her lips (we call it Mdomo choma …
barbecued lips). Happy St. Patrick's Day (unfortunately, we didn't
realize it until two days later)!

We walked around Watamu for some groceries (pineapple, milk, pb, etc.)
and stopped at Rafiki Chemist for a ridiculously expensive tube of SPF
lip protection. We stopped by to see a house for rent in Watamu owned
by an Italian and then went on to the internet café for an
extraordinarily slow look at email. We ended up only doing half of
what we wanted to do, and Scott will be going to Malindi in a couple
of days to make sure that those emails even sent successfully.

The day was saved by a trip to the Swiss restaurant at the turnoff for
Gede. We saw a cottage there that was quite nice, and it was being
offered at less than we currently pay. We liked the proprietors (Vreni
and Johny) a lot and ended up staying for a wonderful dinner of cheese
fondue at their restaurant. Scott had a good time trying out his
German. We came back to Mwamba and talked with Beatrice about maybe
leaving at the end of the month. She seemed quite sad about the news.

The water was out this evening (both the drinking and tap water), so
we were lucky to still have a couple of bottles of water in our room.

March 16, 2006
We have 15 high-school students from the Rift Valley Academy here for
a few days, so we will be quite tightly packed and will probably have
to watch the water and food supply (hungry teenage boys … not good
odds).

March 15, 2006
It was a rough morning after staying up late to type (and losing sleep
all week), and neither of us were in a good mood. We also could not
finish washing a couple of pairs of socks yesterday and both of us
were stuck wearing Scott's white socks instead of our usual hiking
socks. We kept ourselves awake by discussing what we should do with
the research data generated and started coming up with ideas.

Maurice saw another male today and took a defensive pose. We were able
to see him go through all of the motions: head-bobbing, yawning (to
show his long fangs), and even "pyowing" and "booming" but the other
male just copied him! He finally went over to show the other male who
the boss is, and he was gone. Maurice looked all over the museum but
finally had to give up. What really happened was that he had seen his
own reflection in the glass pane of one of the museum windows and was
just threatening himself (at least it was a handsome adversary).

Stanley and company were back from their conservation conference in
Nairobi, so we had an interesting discussion with him on "no-till"
farming, which I would like to find out more about when we return
stateside. We managed to escape dinner early to finish our laundry
(and had finished Patrick's paper before dinner) just in time for a
power outage. We plotted points by candlelight on our laptop … how
romantic!

Also, the winds changed over today! Kaskazi (Kiongazi) is now soon to
end, and Kusi (the cool, wet rainy season) should start to push its
way in over the next few weeks. The interesting thing is that the wind
direction literally changed overnight (along with the current close to
shore). Instead, of the steady stream of dry air from the north that
we had experienced our whole time here, the wind is now coming
steadily from the south bringing up big, fluffy, white clouds and
causing much more seaweed to pile up on the beach. The beach was
gorgeous tonight under the full moon.

March 14, 2006
We finally had a chance to try the Greenland café in Gede, which
Leslie introduced us to during our lunch break. It is tucked away
behind the gas station at the Gede junction (on the Mombasa-Malindi
highway). They have a seriously wonderful hamburger, which Monica and
I relished. The waiter was surprisingly unwilling to let us see the
menu and kept finding excuses before we finally cajoled him into
bringing us one (but he was REALLY eager for us to try the kingfish
with rice). We also had some passion fruit juice ("very fresh:"
according to the waiter, but I saw a suspicious 5 gallon jug of orange
liquid being used to pour other people's passion fruit juice … maybe
we were special … or not).

After a nice fattening burger, the afternoon was tough. Scott actually
fell asleep while squatting and quizzing Monica on Swahili. The
highlight of the afternoon was seeing a rather unique tourist: picture
large dark 70's style CHiPs sunglasses perched on a white, pointy
Michael Jackson nose and sporting a white bowling shirt with maroon
trim, shorts printed with white-flowers on a faded black background,
and finally black socks with a pair of beat up (but still bright red)
shoes. We were trying to articulate our surprise when another of his
companions came over: she had a red kanga wrapped like a bath towel on
her head with a dirty white kanga wrapped like a bath towel around her
body and yellow flip flops. Their child was similarly strange and kept
emitting strange beeping noises for no apparent reason. We are
starting to become believers in extra-terrestrial life!

Tonight we vowed to work on Patrick's paper and finally finish it
where so many others had failed. Instead, we ran into two guests from
Uganda, who ran a touring company (check out
www.accessugandatours.com), and we talked with them about a visit to
the mountain gorillas. They quoted us a very reasonable price, and we
think we may have found some good people to go with! We thought we
still had time to Patrick's paper, but we had been a bit misled:
instead of 8 pages (half of which were ostensibly done by Nadia), the
paper was really 16 pages of which only 2 had been typed. We finally
stopped at 11:30 and called it a night with only half of the paper
done.

March 13, 2006
Today was a good day with monkey-watching in the morning and then went
to see the much-anticipated book opening of the "Magic Pot" about the
Giriama people. There a little festival, and our question about
whether the monkeys would flee the loud sounds or come to the masses
of people was answered: Maurice and crew came up to the museum to see
if they could get a piece of the action. While there, we met Saleem,
who works as an educator at the Kipepeo Butterfly Project. We cannot
believe we had not met him before; he's quite interesting with a
wealth of knowledge on the butterflies of the region. It was
interesting to hear that butterflies typically close their wings while
resting while moths often keep them open.

Kipepeo is a kind of experiment in sustainable community development
and conservation of public resources. The Arubuko-Sokoke Forest in
Gede is cut off from the community, and the surrounding farmers would
like to use the resources of the forest. The conundrum of the
officials is how to give the farmers benefits from the public resource
to stave off illegal activities such as logging while preserving the
forest (which has a lot of economic benefit for tourism). Kipepeo
trains farmers to harvest butterfly pupae for export to international
buyers, and the project has been branching into production of honey
and beeswax, since bees also consume the pollen of the indigenous
plants and the farmers need a source of income when the market is down
for pupae. The farmers are taught how to use a special type of beehive
that prevents the destruction of the honeycomb during extraction,
allowing for higher production rates, since the bees do not have to
spend time and energy rebuilding. Currently, the project supports 750
farmers (and many more people since the farmers often each support an
extended family). We plan to visit Kipepeo, which is at the entrance
to the ruins, during the rainy season when there is not much else to
do and when there are also more butterflies.

After lunch, we almost ran into the Minister of Heritage while he and
a group of people were touring the ruins. Apparently, his position is
to help preserve the heritage of the different tribes while helping
them to modernize and adopt practices acceptable to the Kenyan
community as a whole. Some examples are: (1) encouraging the Maasai
warriors to keep wearing their traditional red garments but adopt the
professional dress of other Kenyans when they are at work or (2)
enforcing the prevention of compulsory female circumcision because of
its health effects. His importance at Gede, though, is that he
oversees the National Museums of Kenya, to which the Gede Ruins site
belongs.

At 2, we checked out the festival and saw a lot of people hanging out
in the shade listening to Swahili rap music and waiting for the
minister to speak. We hung out with the Safari, Katana, Emmanuel, and
Sendel; we were a bit shy to go out and mingle since we were the only
wazungu, and our Swahili is still pretty poor (but getting better).
Therre were school children everywhere who were dancing up a storm and
were very cute.

The minister finally processed into the atrium area and several school
groups performed as well as a group of Giriama dancers from Mzee
Randu, the Giriama village just beyond the gates of the ruins.
Everything was in Swahili, but we were picking up a surprising amount
even with the PA system cutting out often.

Finally, the Italian author got up to speak. She mumbled everything in
broken English, which was much more difficult to understand than the
Swahili. Unfortunately, she said she did not know Swahili, and what we
soon realized was that she was not the serious researcher we had
expected. The book looked to be about 30 pages long, and she said that
it had been her most difficult work ever. This was not a massive
ethnography on the Giriama people, but rather a children's book! We
were a bit disappointed and decided to leave soon afterward to go to
Malindi.

To all interested, the meeting of the International Primatological
Society is June 25-30 in Entebbe, Uganda. Since we're in the
neighborhood, we've been checking to see whether we can make it over.
Monica found a very fun skirt that we bargained hard for and
eventually brought him down to about 2/3 of his asking price. Usually
50% of asking seems to be a good rule of thumb in local transactions.

March 12, 2006
Unlike a usual quiet Sunday, the ruins were buzzing with activity, as
the maintenance people were decorating for the "Magic Pot" book
opening. The only "exciting" thing today was that Scott had a plastic
bag to sit on and put it in his back pocket, but Maurice heard the
plastic bag rustling and came up behind Scott and grabbed his rear. It
was terribly funny to see the look on his face!

March 11, 2006
This morning started at 6am like every morning, the difference being
that this was a day off. This time, we got ready for our first real
scuba diving trip (all of our other dives have been purely for
certification). We did a bit of review, walked up the drive with our
gear, and waited for our ride. Steve arrived about 10 minutes late in
a large pick-up truck. We squished in (there were 4 of us, as Sarah,
and Katie from Mwamba were also going) and went to Ocean Sports. On
the way, he told us about Mrs. Simpson (see the end of this entry),
who sounds like was a very interesting person.

The fun seemed to stop there as Katie was not allowed to dive because
she didn't have her dive card with her (only the number, which had
worked for her in the past). Next, Monica was told that I couldn't go
because, she had "filled out the medical forms incorrectly." Monica
had also answered yes to some of the health questions, and since she
did not have a recent letter from a doctor they would not let her go
either (apparently, that she had been fit enough to be certified for
diving in July was not enough). They said I would not be able to dive
unless I had a note from the doctor but gave us the name of a doctor
in Watamu. At least he's honest, and that is good in a dive
instructor.

We decided, though, that we wanted to be the ones to determine whether
we were fit for diving. Scott (who wanted to dive with me), Katie, and
I all left and decided to try Turtle Bay. Turtle Bay is quite a bit
more relaxed, and Joseph took us in without a problem and didn't seem
overly worried. There, the system seems to be, if you have money, you
can dive. This may sound like they do not care about your welfare,
however this was not the case at all. They allowed me to refresh my
skills in the pool (we went right in with our "diving" equipment right
next to a "No Diving" sign. We though this was kind of ironic) with
our divemaster, Saleem. This definitely renewed my confidence, which
is not so high in this particular sport, particularly since I was
already frazzled after hashing it out with the last guy.

Around 10am we boarded the boat with 6 other divers, 2 divemasters,
and 2 crew. It was a gorgeous sunny day. (We knew we had to get the
diving in before the end of the month because the rainy season is
coming soon and they close everything down until around when we leave
in July). We arrived at the site, Saleem briefed us, we put on all of
our equipment, I almost threw up over the side due to the Larium
motion sickness, and we did our very first boat dive with a backward
entrance off the side of the boat! We descended the rope line (this
give you much more control than a decent without a rope) and my ears
started hurting really badly. (It is difficult for some people to
equalize their ears) Saleem was very patient with me and helped me
throughout my dive. It was nice to do this with a local Kenyan who
was not rushed to complete everything, but instead was slow and
patient. Everything can be done "pole pole" or "slowly slowly". The
pain was well worth it as the visibility at the bottom was absolutely
incredible (approx 8 meters)!!

The coral and the fish were unbelievable! Our certification dives
were fairly miserable, so we knew this would be much better, but this
was wonderful! It was a visual overload! Saleem pointed out a
lionfish (beautiful and strange), a camouflaged ray beneath a shelf of
coral, and 3 sea turtles!! We say many other very beautiful fish, but
I don't know the names of any of them apart from the fact that several
of them had made an appearance on "Finding Nemo". This moving was
going through my head the whole time, particularly when I was looking
at the sea turtles!! J They looked so graceful, flapping lazily
across the sea. We saw a large sea anemone with little fish darting
in and out and the whole mass (including the fish) had a hypnotic
rhythm. There were matte cobalt blue starfish (approx 1 foot across)
along the floor and fish the looked like Gill from "Nemo". We also
saw a green fish with darker blue head and iridescent lines across its
face, a crescent shaped tail and yellow middle to the tail. Does
anyone know what this might be? After 47 minutes, we were almost out
of air so we resurfaced, waited 10 minutes for the others to surface.
Since we were newbies at this and more nervous, we consumed our air
more quickly.

We took the boat back, cleaned up, took some pictures, and went for
drinks at a local bar across from Turtle Bay. We were back in time
for lunch and to see Steve and Kevin off. They are headed to Tanzania
for a few days and we are all awaiting what is likely to be a good
story about their border crossing experience. The rest of the day was
spent on the beach napping and reading under the banda (so we didn't
burn to a crisp). It was a fabulous day, but left us quite exhausted.
Around 6pm, I had a conference call with my mom, Nancy, and Jim to
work out safari details. The plans are starting to materialize!!
Brian, are you going to be able to come?

After the phone call, everyone went out to "Kuku Choma" (Swahili for
Barbequed Chicken) and we ate what…barbecued chicken (with chapati,
salad, fries, and samosas). It was very good, and Scott and I ended up
paying 500ksh (approx $7 for our meals and ½ of our driver's meal)!
All of us rode back, but took a detour through downtown Watamu (I
didn't know there was one until last night). Then it was off to bed.

*Mrs. Simpson: Mwamba, the place we are staying used to be called
Mrs. Simpson's because it was Mrs. Simpson's place. She was a lady
who died (somewhat recently) but who was in a bike accident in her
teenage years which had left her crippled and with a palsy in the left
side of her face. However, she still managed to have many adventures,
including a trip by truck from Kenya to London by truck where 2 of her
companions died in the desert. Apparently there is a book and movie
about her. I have to find out the details, but I think it is called
"Trekkers" or something like that. I'm very intrigued.

March 10, 2006
Today was like many others. I'm not sure if I have mentioned, but by
now we have arranged certain boda boda guys to come pick us up at 7am
each morning. My boda boda guy is Max and he is very nice. It is
nice to not have to haggle each morning and evening and at the same
time get to know some of the local people. It also gives us a chance
to practice our Swahili and today Scott and I learned "wiki hii" or
"this week" in Swahili. When we got to the Ruins we found the monkeys
right away, but soon after we saw something else…could it be more
monkeys? More annoying tourists? No, a group of 12 goats decided to
visit the ruins this morning!! They were climbing the ruin walls and
walking around near our monkey group. It was quite surreal. We told
the guides and they herded them out somehow.

Later in the day, we saw a new Italian tourist trick and heard about
another (I didn't used to have anything against Italians, I swear, nor
will I in the future so long as they don't feed any monkeys). Today
one of them hid the banana on top of his bag, waited for the dominant
male to jump up and grab it from around his stomach, and then tried to
grab him after he managed to get the banana. Not a smart idea
considering Maurice has about 2-½ to 3 inch canines! The other
"trick" we heard about was the story about why all of the local
children say, "Ciao" and "Caramella" (sp?) every time we walk by.
Apparently the Italians have trained the locals (just like the
monkeys) to say "Ciao" and "Caramella" (or sweets/candy) every time
the children see them. They then give all of the children candy! Now
they are trained to say these every time wazungo walk by! Anyway, on
with the day.

Today we learned a few facts about the Gede Ruins from one of the tour
guides there, Eric. 1) The Sabaki River, which runs North of Malindi
now used to run closer to the town; when it moved, the water became
saline. 2) In 1884, Gede was rediscovered by a man from Zanzibar,
then rediscovered in 1927 by a British man, and finally public works
started opening the area for public view in 1939. 3) The foundation of
the city was built in the 13th century and its ultimate abandonment
occurred in the 18th century. 4) The fruit from the Neem tree, which
the monkeys find to be very tasty, is NOT edible for humans and the
pink flowers growing in the ruins are quite poisonous to humans (will
absorb into the skin and bloodstream) but are delicious to elephants!
Hopefully, the facts are correct.

Kevin and Steve, the two guys staying at Mwamba came to visit the
ruins today. We were able to introduce our monkey friends to them and
show they how we tell each of them apart. I don't think I have yet
mentioned that we have managed to identify and name Maurice (of
course), all 8 of the females in the group, and 3 of the juveniles
(although we can't tell which is which yet). Their names are as
follows:

Maurice – Dominant Male
Shujaa (Swhili for courage) – Alpha Female; is always the first to
fight, get bananas, etc.
Spot – You'll laugh at this one…she got her name due to the spots on
her right nipple. J
Athena – for the white scar on her tail; it looks like she has gone to battle.
Kamili (Swahili for perfect) – is the youngest adult female and has no
battle wounds, unique tail, lopsided or spotted nipples, etc; thus,
she seems perfect.
Zappa – has a young infant; has a tail that is broken at the end and
looks like a "z"
Fimbo (Swahili for a walking cane) – has a young infant; the end of
her tail is curved like a walking cane
Nancy – has a young infant; just seemed like a good name for her
Spaz – a medium juvenile; is always wrestling and playing with 2 other juveniles
Trev (we couldn't resist) - a medium juvenile; is always wrestling and
playing with 2 other juveniles
Wiley - a medium juvenile; is always wrestling and playing with the 2
other juveniles above

We met up with Kevin and Steve a bit later after their tour and took
them to our usual "café" outside Gede for some chapatti and beans. We
took some photos and then walked with them into Gede. They went back
to Mwamba and we went off to Malindi. Our matatu guy mentioned to us
after we paid that he was surprised we knew the price and that they
generally charge wazungo 50ksh each rather than the local fare of
30ksh. I said I knew this, but that we know the price. He laughed.
At least he was up front about their scams! Once we were in Malindi,
we managed to get our errands done quickly. The internet at the post
office worked very well and didn't take us very long! Yea! We also
managed to only spend 440ksh for the trip (160 for matatu, 130 for
water and juice, 20 for nuts, 75 for a card, and 55 for a stamp
(440ksh = approx $5.50)! We took the matatu back to Ocean Sports in
Watamu to investigate scuba diving prices. We arranged a scuba diving
venture with them, for tomorrow (they will pick us up at 7:05), but
also went to Turtle Bay Beach Club to see what theirs was like. We
decided Ocean Sports would be better (they were the same price)
because they seems very competent, the place we well maintained, and
they insisted on us having a pool refresher before going out, since it
had been so long since our last dive (I really needed one!). Steve,
the guy in charge was from Zimbabwe and seemed like a British
ex-military guy (and looks like Sean Connery in "Hunt for Red
October").

Finally, on our beach walk back to Mwamba, we saw a camel on the beach
(being led by a local person). We went up and petted it and learned
that we can get a camel ride along the beach for only 300ksh (approx
$4). That will be worth it just for the pictures. We'll see when he
is around next, as we didn't have our camera with us. ;-( We spent
the rest of our afternoon off relaxing on the beach, reading, and
watching the sunset.

March 9, 2006
The gods just were not with Scott today, though, he insists it was a
good day (despite that he does not remember most of it J). We found
the monkeys just fine, but as we were getting up from sitting to
follow the monkeys, Scott slipped and took a header into a tree root,
almost knocking himself out. Of course, Monica did the normal thing in
this situation – laugh hysterically. The monkeys let us know what they
thought of the whole situation when one pooped on Scott's arm and
binoculars (then ran, so we couldn't even collect it and record it …
arggh). Finally, a thorny branch got in a good shot at Scott's eye,
barely missing the juicy parts and leaving a nice puncture right at
the corner of his eye.

Despite the numerous insults and injuries, the day went quite well,
and we even caught up with Nilesh, who has been staying at Mwamba and
has been a great guy to talk with. They helped us rename the female
with spotted nipples to Shujaa, which is Swahili for "courageous".

Monica has become good at predicting the dinner schedule, and her
prognostication of mashed potatoes was spot on, but we also had yummy
fried fish. We had some more good discussions with Steve and Kevin;
then we hung around and had a good discussion in Swahili with
Lawrence.

March 8, 2006
Scott took a half day off today to run errands. He also created a new
version of our map with gridlines for GPS mapping as well as better
matching of known points. A few funny things happened today. Today
when we were in the forest we heard a bird that sounded just like
someone laughing. It was contagious. Everytime we heard it, we
couldn't stop laughing ourselves! J Also, earlier in the afternoon
we managed to collect our very first poop sample!! What an
accomplishment! ;-) I went to collect it in the bag, when Maurice
and Shujaa came running up to us. I then realized that they had heard
the bag crinkle and thought we had bananas. Maurice wouldn't leave us
alone to collect the poop until he knew that bananas were not in the
bag. Thus, we let him hold the bag and investigate until he lost
interest and threw it on the ground. We got a nice photo of his
antics!

Dinner is the same old same old, although we have some new guests at
Mwamba. They have been here for several days and will be here until
the 11th. Kevin and Steve are here together vacationing and are from
Maryland. They are really nice and we've had some great dinner
conversations with them each night. Anything from English accents,
books, and TV shows to US politics, healthcare, and education.

March 7, 2006
We were much less tired today. Yesterday after a day with the
monkeys, we stopped by the internet café for some emailing then
continued on to Mama Lucy's (the supermarket) for some cheese, milk
(which disappeared from the fridge 2 hrs after we brought it back –
record time!), passion fruit juice, a fresh pineapple, tomatoes, and
fresh bread. We after the night we were left without food for dinner,
we figured we had better have some reserves. We made a yummy meal for
lunch today – cheese (oh how I do miss cheese), and peanut sauce from
yesterday's dinner and had both of these with the fresh bread. We also
had cheese and bread for breakfast. Maurice got 5 bananas for lunch
from the tourists.

At 5 pm we went with Patrick to see Tsofa's house. He had a house for
rent. It was what we expected, since it was to rent out for the
locals. It was a small mud hut with two rooms, one for sleeping and
the other a living room? There didn't appear to be anywhere to cook
and the bathroom was a little hike from the house. It was as basic as
you can get. I am tempted to make myself live in these conditions,
without electricity, running water, etc to make myself appreciate
these luxuries more and to better understand how local people live.
However, the other part of me is quite happy where I am. Because of
the fact that we have to work 12-hr days and it is dark almost as soon
as we get home, a lifestyle without prepared food, water, or
electricity would be very hard. I think we will pass on his place,
although we could save a lot of money this way! We continued to
Gede via matatu, caught up with Leslie and went home. It sound like
Liz and Dave are leaving for 3 weeks and much of the staff is away in
Nairobi for a conference.

March 6, 2006
Tough day due to the Larium…we think we started following the wrong
group today, but we were so tired and hungry from the Larium I can't
be sure. We found Maurice at 10:30 at the Great Mosque and followed
him around the ruins most of the day as he begged for bananas. Not
much else to report on the monkeys, but a funny thing happened while
we sat at the South Fence waiting for the monkeys playing cards. A
couple of children came walking down the path on the other side of the
fence towards us. Since we were covered and not moving, I was afraid
I would scare the children if I didn't say something to them first. I
called out, "Jambo!" and I must have seemed like an evil spirit in the
forest because the children both jumped, screamed, and ran away
crying! I kept calling out "Pole" (Sorry), but they just stopped
about 30 yds away and kept crying. I felt really bad (yet it was
quite funny at the same time) and Scott now like to say that I make
African children cry.

After dinner tonight we got another Swahili lesson from Lawrence. We
have now learned the days of the week, and face parts (ie. Hair, head,
nose, mouth, etc). I really enjoy these lessons, although he doesn't
come until around 10pm each night.

March 5, 2006
Today was another day of rest (siku ya kupunzika), and we used it to
try and catch up on all of our other monkey work, such as, washing a
monkey skull we found, plotting points, and creating a key to detail
the differences between individuals in our group. We then ditched that
and went snorkeling at the reef. The reef is gorgeous, and we had a
great time, though, it is a bit nerve-wracking passing over sea
urchins at low tide. At least there were no jellyfish, and the water
was quite calm, which made the long swim to the reef quite enjoyable.
The coral was pretty, and we saw a large red starfish; a cool purple,
green, and blue fish; and several other tropical fish. Afterwards, we
went to the beach to read and soak some sun. As we relaxed on the
beach, we saw a small USAF cargo plane skirting about 200' over the
coast and only heard it coming as it passed overhead. We thought it
quite strange to see a US military plane flying that close to the
shore; anyone know of any military action in our part of the world
(maybe headed toward Somalia since it was flying that far north)?

Monica helped Lispa make chapati, while Scott went to Mida Creek with
the girls. Making chapati is an intense process, requiring one to
combine 2 part flour to 1 part water (as well as butter). The dough is
made into balls and then chilled for at least 1 hour. The dough is
then rolled out and sprinkled with oil, then cut, then rolled up. The
process is repeated and is what creates the layers in a chapati. The
final rolled out dough is put into a skillet and fried for 2-5 minutes
(until it bubbles and turns golden brown … similar to a tortilla).

Scott's experience was more harrowing, as the had a flat tire at
Dongokundu on the way back from Mida. Scott ended up jacking up the
car, and Stnaley arrived shortly to help finish the process. We
started back and watched as white smoke (burning oil) poured out of
the exhaust. The pour 4WD was not doing too well.

Tonight was our first Swahili lesson with Lawrence. Lawrence ni
mwalimu mzuri! He said he would only speak in Swahili and pledged to
quiz us tomorrow on what we learned J.

March 4, 2006
We decided to walk to the Hotel Palm Breeze after a good day of monkey
watching just to see what their rooms were like. The walk was not as
short as we thought, and the hotel is nearly a Timboni, an hour's walk
away. On the way, we encountered a bull, who was not terribly happy to
see us and was about to charge when Monica herded us quickly to the
other side of the road. All of the Kenyans for about ¼ mile each way
found the whole episode immensely funny. The hotel was completely
desserted, which was a bit eerie, but the rooms were quite nice (and
had AC).

March 3, 2006
Today we had a day off to sleep off the night before and recuperate
and went in to Malindi. We took a tuk-tuk to Oasis Gelateria to enjoy
a decadent meal of a ham cheese melt sandwich (which Monica had been
craving for weeks) and a plate of fries with gelato to top it off. The
tuk-tuk we flagged to take us back offered us 200 to get us all the
way back to Turtle Bay, so who could refuse? We got back home, and
went to the beach. After relaxing on the beach, we played in the big
waves, though, the price was sand in all sorts of crevices for days.
After a conference call to sort out safari options with Monica's
relatives, we came back to the dining room to find no dinner left (or
saved for us), and we were shocked, since everyone knew we would be
coming late. This taught us the valuable lesson of keeping our own
snacks and groceries on hand just in case.

March 2, 2006
The monkeys were not cooperative, and we discovered we may have been
following the wrong group every morning. Then we saw Maurice with the
other group in the afternoon. Does he have two families? There was a
cake for Nadia at dinner covered in coconut shavings and jelly spots
(Thomas can bake a great cake). We grabbed a bottle of sparkling wine
from the fridge and went to the beach to have a last toast to Nadia
under the Kenyan night sky. Then we headed to Ocean Sports for a last
night out. Ocean Sports was quite fun this night: they were having a
hen party (i.e., bachelorette party). We ordered drinks, and the
"hens" arrived, British ex-pats decked out in costumes (the
bride-to-be had little wings, a halo, and red flashing springy boppers
on her head). The music started pumping out 80's and classic rock
(i.e., Lynnard Skynnard, Madonna, ACDC, etc.), and the dancing was
great to watch. We felt like we were in a little bubble watching a
British wedding film unroll around. Nigel, a 70 something British
ex-pat, kept trying to catch a cheap feel on Leslie, who was in good
form with her black cowboy hat (she says its not, but it sure looks
like a cowboy hat). Anyway, as all such nights with wild Londoners, it
ended with many stories …

March 1, 2006
Nothing much to report. We saw more annoying Italian tourists again.
We had ginger beer for the first time (Stoney Honey Tangawiza), which
was interesting. We had the fish from Patrick's mother for dinner and
the chapatti for lunch. When we got home, we swam in the intense high
tide … great waves but left our swimming suits full of sand J.

February 28, 2006
Though Scott though he would have a half day, we decided to go to Gede
to stay to see the 5cm tide. We were out the door by 6:30, caught
boda bodas and then flagged down "the Legal Advisor" matatu which
apparently comes every day at 6:45. If we catch this, then we won't
have to do the "boda boda thing" in the mornings anymore. Having to
have change and haggle every morning gets a bit old.

We found our monkey group in the southwest corner again like
yesterday, but when I got to the fenceline I found a group of school
children who all stared at me like I was a wild animal in a cage. I
said, "Jambo. Habari gani?" (hello, how are you?) but they just
stared. I asked them if they were going to school and they said yes,
their school was around the corner and down a bit (they did this by
saying, "school" and pointing). I went on looking for the monkeys and
when I turned around, they we all squashed together looking at me
through the fence. I decided this was too much pressure and so I went
into the forest. When I turned around, there they were. They had
walked away from school just to come and watch me go into the forest!

We followed the monkeys all day and Maurice even walked over Monica's
notebook at one point…while she was writing in it. The habituation
seems to be going well (except for Zappa's infant, which starts
screaming if you look at it while away from Zappa, earning a qui8ck
hug and us a reproachful stare). We left at 5:15 after a good day of
tracking, so we could check email. We caught a matatu at Gede, which
was seriously overloaded, requiring Scott to sit on Monica's lap
(shouldn't it be the other way around?). Until Watamu, the matatu guy
made fun of us in Swahili. It was good to finally get off at the
cyber café. After checking email, on the way back to Mwamba, the boda
bodas said that they had change, but once they took us, we found out
they had been lying. D'oh! We were in a hurry to get back, since
Patrick told us we were invited to dinner at his place, and we wanted
to get cleaned up.

On the driveway, we ran into Leslie and Nadia who had been looking for
us to bring us back for a "monkey business meeting", consisting of
sangria, mango & regular salsa, 2 kinds of guacamole (even Monica
thought it was good), and chips … we also had fish n' chips from the
kitchen. To top it off, we had ice cream and cake. What a great end to
the day! Unfortunately, we received a call from Patrick at 8: though
Nadia had text messaged Patrick's mother earlier in the day to tell
her we weren't coming, she had not received the message, and the food
had been prepared already! We went to his place, apologized, and
visited for a while, but it was very awkward. They had put so much
into the meal, and they had prepared fish, which they could not
refrigerate. It was good, since his mother wanted to see Nadia off and
was leaving for Mombasa the next day. We returned to Mwamba then went
to the beach with Lawrence to see the 7cm tide, which was quite a
site! It would have been a bit better if we could see past the beams
of our headlamps, but the beach seemed to go on forever.

Going out in Kenya

2006-03-03T05:30:00.000-05:00

February 27, 2006

Today was a great monkey-watching day! It began by raining, which
normally doesn't make me (Monica) happy, but after 2-1/2 weeks of 95
to 120 degree weather and no air conditioning (note we just bought a
fan two day ago), the rain was nice. It also made it easier to find
the monkeys since they tend to be more active when it rains. Also,
the sound of the rain and the soaked ground made us less noisy when
moving through the forest. Once we found the monkeys we managed to
stay with them the WHOLE day. This was definitely a first. They
even let us get relatively close at some points…14 feet. This was
close enough for us to really hone in on our group and the features
that help us tell them apart, their tails and nipples. I know this
sounds funny, but hey, no two nipples are alike! ;-) We counted at
least 15 individuals in the group. At least 7 of these are females,
and least 3 of them have infants. There are at least 5 juveniles in
the group and then of course, our boy, Maurice. These details will
make it much easier to make sure we are following the right group of
monkeys and plot out their ranges. I hope more days are like this.

Steffen left for Kakamega today and won't be back for two months so
aside from some email correspondence from him, we will be on our own.
He says we are doing fine so far, so that sounds promising. Speaking
of good news, Monica found out that she is officially accepted into
the SFSU master's program! Nadia left work early, so Leslie, Scott,
and I walked into Gede with Patrick, then took the matatu to Turtle
Bay where we took Boda Bodas. Max was there waiting for me (I had
made a deal with him so he will likely always be my Boda Boda guy. He
is really nice and is studying Italian. I think it is good for
Kenyans to know Italian here because there are so many Italian
tourists, and tour guides make some decent money. We had dinner, took
showers, and are off to bed.

Swahili phrase of the day: Tunapenda kula chapati na maharagwe (We
like to eat chapati and beans)

February 26, 2006

Being up until 3am took its toll on everyone and no one went into to
Gede until after lunch. Monica slept in then went to Watamu with
Nadia. Scott went snorkeling with Sara and Steffen and saw some
amazing fish and coral in the marine park, taking advantage of the 1/2
meter tide. Unfortunately, Scott burned his backside badly (karma…see
entry from 2/20). Our monkey watching was fruitless, as the monkeys
were only on our side of the fence for about 1 hr and we spent the
rest of the day waiting for them to come back across the fence. Very
frustrating, although, I will say we are progressing with our Swahili
because of it.

We've learned to bring our Swahili book in case we have down times,
and today we got through two chapters. We are now on chapter 14. We
had chapati na marahague tonight, did some reading, and went to bed.

Swahili phrase of the day: Sikukuelewa (I don't understand you.)

February 25, 2006

We watched monkeys, but that was not the interesting part. At 5pm we
piled into Nadia's car (Monica, Leslie, Scott, and Nadia) to return to
Mwamba and change/shower before heading off to Pilipan for Nadia's
going away dinner. Monica and I showered and even had time to do
laundry while waiting for the others to get ready. We finally left
Mwamba at 6:15pm and made it to Pilipan in time to watch the sunset.
Unfortunately, it was not as spectacular as it usually is (there were
too many clouds). We all ordered cocktails (which we were assured by
the waiter, after a prolonged meeting w/the other waitstaff at the
bar, that the drinks were all under 300ksh). We texted Steffen to
determine when he was coming and he replied that he hadn't known we
would leave so early. We ordered some yummy food (Monica had chicken
tikki w/ nan and Scott had grilled tuna, medium rare, w/white bean
salad and french fries) and talked while watching the sunset and the
twilight creep in. Steffen finally arrived at approx 7:45pm and the
food came a few minutes later (which in hindsight meant that we waited
over an hour for our food). The meal was good, and we were ready to
move on to Ocean Sports. The bill came and 3 of our cocktails were
450ksh, so we had to argue with the waiter and then the manager that
we should not have to pay 450ksh per drink when we were quoted 300.
Finally, after Scott played hardball, they gave in and changed the
bill, so we paid the bill exactly (leaving no tip) and left.
Ocean Sports was rather quiet because a group of ex-pats and British
holiday-types were clustered quietly around the TV at the bar to watch
a rugby game between Scotland and England. I was surprised to see
that when watching these types of games, it isn't a rowdy affair, but
more like watching golf. J No one was happy when Scotland won…Nadia
said it was expected. We ordered a round of Sambuka, a blue liquor
that tastes like liquorice cough syrup (an unpleasant surprise). We
tried to light Nadia's mouth ablaze again like we did in Malindi, but
with disasterous results again. Monica lit a match but the match went
out when she was prepared for it. Then by the time Monica had lit
another, Nadia was no longer ready, but Monica did it anyway. She
spit it all over her top and skirt…oops! J Luckily, the blue stains
came out in the wash under Michael's expert hand. The party would not
get started at Ocean Sports, so we called Steffen and headed over to
the "Comeback Club" to meet Steffen and Moses.

Oh the Comeback Club…what a surreal experience. When we arrived, we
waited for approx 20 minutes for Steffen to arrive, giving Nadia the
chance to work her magic and get us in for only 200ksh (we were
supposed to pay 600ksh)! We headed for the pool table and proceeded
to play two games that never ended! Apparently, every single one of
us is terrible at pool…ridiculously bad! I think the locals were
annoyed that it took us so long and at the same time very amused that
anyone could be so bad! After giving up halfway through the second
game, we went dancing there. This was quite the experience. All of
the music was Swahili rap/dance and a drugged up Kenyan prostitute
kept grinding on Leslie, who was dancing the funniest dance (picture a
big cheesy grin, raised eyebrow, and moves like the characters in
Peanuts). The prostitute moved on to Steffen (they tend to gravitate
toward wazungu males). Steffen fought back the way a Sykes monkey
would, by constantly turning his back on her. She did not seem to
take the not-so-subtle hints though. At about 2am, the music turned
off and the lights came on so "the show" could set up. I won't say
that we were not curious, but we were sadly disappointed. While they
were setting up, the prostitute in the black strappy top and short
neon green skirt, took an interest in Scott. Scott was obviously
repulsed by her, which just made Monica think it was funny. Finally,
she took the hint (i.e. Scott yelling, "Go away!" and "Don't do touch
me!") and decided to grind with the performers on stilts.

Yes, by this time the show was underway and there were two guys on
stilts dancing. There were also three guys in zebra print tops and
loin cloths who did contortionist tricks, bent a metal bar with there
teeth, contorted body through a metal hoop in many fascinating ways,
etc. If that wasn't surreal enough we had the background vocals of
D.J. Swen, a Swiss guy rapping in French, along with a local rapping
in Swahili. He was even doing a '90s bebox. Surreal! That was the
point where we left with Nadia and came home and went to bed.

Swahili phrase of the day: Siku njema (Good day)

February 24, 2006

A night of drowning in our own sweat left both of us exhausted in the
morning, but that was to be no more. We hitched a ride with Nadia into
Malindi and did a lot of little errands before returning to Gede. We
found inexpensive silver wedding rings, got a lot of stamps at the
post office, found calling cards, did email, and most importantly we
bought a floor standing electric fan … no more sweaty nights! We
caught a matatu back to Gede, and we had a lot of "crazy wazungo"
looks (it is odd to see people with a large electric fan across their
laps).

Swahili phrase of the day: Mimi ni joto. (I am hot.)

February 23, 2006

Pretty normal day. The male of the east group has been getting less
skittish, and the rest of the group stayed in sight all day. To
celebrate we bought a liter of ice cream and gorged ourselves on the
drive home. We've been enjoying the wildlife noises, like the hornbill
that sounds like a crying child and the bush baby which sounds like a
meowing street cat. Btw, watch out for Monica, she's deadly at rummy
(playing cards are saving our sanity on the slow days)

Swahili phrase of the day: Mimi ni choka (I am tired.)

February 22, 2006

Today we both took a day off and woke up to watch the sunrise
together, which is amazing over this part of the world … we also have
it on digital photo and movie J. After a quick swim, we walked to Plot
15 to talk with Sara Engel about rentals in Watamu
(http://www.discoverwatamu.com), and they are pretty gorgeous places.
Though we weren't interested for the long term, and she really had
nothing for more than a few weeks), we will definitely keep them in
mind for a getaway weekend or if people come to visit (hint, hint).
Prices start around 6000 Ksh for a house to rent, and many have house
staff that can cook and clean for you! Despite not having anything for
our immediate concerns, she gave us a few leads that we are following
up.

We left and caught a boda boda (bicycle with a padded seat on the
back) up to the Bio-Ken Snake Farm. The boda boda guys are
hit-or-miss, and we had a guy who was quite pushy in trying to
overcharge wazungu … we usually try to avoid him, but today he was at
the right place. The snake farm is 700 KSh per person, which is a lot
for here, but it is for a great cause. The farm produces anti-venom
for the Watamu-Malindi region as a service to the less wealthy
inhabitants (anti-venom costs about 4000 KSh per vial and may require
up to 3 vials for a single victim). It was fascinating, and our guide
Joseph was quite knowledgeable and has a great sense of humor. We saw
a black mamba (really it's silver, but the rumor is that the inside of
its mouth is coal black and hence the name), green mamba, a puff
adder, and several other kinds of indigenous snakes. The mambas can be
identified by their big "smiley" mouth … the better to eat you with,
and the puff adder is short, fat, camouflaged as leaves, and does not
like to move but at least makes a loud Darth Vader huffing sound if
you get too close. The mambas and the puff adder are very poisonous,
but then again you would have to avoid medical attention for at least
12 hours to be in any serious danger. We also saw some very long
pythons; Joseph told us that before the establishment of the national
parks, many people who shared the same home ranges as the pythons
would be constricted and eaten by 5m+ pythons.

We caught a boda boda to Watamu and then a matatu to Timboni. We
stopped at the Bits and Bites Café for chapati na maharagwe, passion
fruit juice, and an order of chips (French fries … which were quite
good). We bought some button-up short sleeve shirts for Scott, a
little Tupperware container for lunches, and a couple of shirts for
Monica.

We took a matatu and boda boda back to Plot 28 and worked on
downloading and labeling our digital photos of monkeys. Hopefully, we
will soon have some nice info sheets on each of the monkeys in the
groups we've been following. We ended with a 5:30 swim and watched the
beach boys harass the two new wazungu girls at Mwamba. After dinner we
studied a bit of Swahili and then went to sleep.

Note: I have decided to include a "Swahili phrase of the day" in each
blog entry so here goes: Tutonona baadaye (See you later)

A new monkey in the family!

2006-02-24T05:55:00.000-05:00

February 20, 2006
There is something about being a tourist in a foreign country that
brings out the worst in people no matter what nationality they are.
There are ugly Americans, but there are also ugly Germans, Brits,
French, Italians, etc. However, something truly terrible happens
(adverse selection or some altered state of mind?) when you mix some
Italians with the prospect of seeing monkeys. Not all of the Italian
tourists, but a select few have rather obnoxious behaviour even for
tourists. Would you try to feed a monkey a lit cigarette? Would you
feed one chewing gum? How about hold a banana up to a wild monkey and
then yank it away at the last second (then repeat several times) …
and, of course, do this right next to the sign advising that you
should not feed the monkeys? We have seen all of these happen
(regularly) at Gede, and it only seems to be the Italian tourists that
enjoy this spectacle, even though, plenty of German and British
tourists (and a token few Americans) come through.

Monica took the morning off and decided to walk to Watamu along the
beach while Scott was at the ruins having an uneventful morning
watching the monkey eat Baobob flowers and sleep. Monica's Watamu walk
took much longer than she expected and the 2 hours of sun she received
left a nasty red sunburn over much of her body. At least the internet
was up at the café and she could check some email.

We witnessed the birth of a new little monkey today! What an amazing
finale to our day! I don't think many people are able to witness the
birth of a Sykes monkey, since they typically leave their group 2 days
beforehand and disappear until after they give birth. Instead, Zito
was very accommodating and began the birthing process at 5 and was
finished by 6, the time we usually leave to return to Mwamba. Here is
an excerpt from our field notes:
5:37 - Zito gives birth J face appeared in mother's bottom and 3
minutes later mom pulls out baby & holds J; gave birth while balancing
on a tree limb 20' above
5:46 - placenta out and mother eating it
6:10 - infant is holding onto mom without assistance
6:16 - eyes opening (starting to) ½ way - blinking
6:23 - UC [umbilical cord] finished (done with snacking … mmm)

Finally, Natalie, Nadia's friend visiting from the U.K., left today to
return. It looks like Nadia will be following in another 1-1/2 weeks.
It will be sad to lose a fellow monkey watcher, particularly such a
pro who has been here for 7 months. Also, chief monkey watcher Steffen
will be leaving in about a week for Kakamega. It will be strange with
half of our team gone, and we will need to make some major adjustments
since the transportation is leaving with them.
February 19, 2006
Today was fun for Scott, but decidedly terrible for Monica. Scott
slept in and studied Swahili when he woke up. After lunch he took a
matatu jamming with Nelly to Gede and walked in to meet Monica and
hear the whole horrible story of her morning. Dragging on only 2 hours
of sleep and slightly more alcohol than she should have had, the
morning was not fun, and the baking heat made it even less so. Despite
feeling terrible, it was a good monkey watching day with locating both
Putin's and Teddy's groups and observing Maurice's group cross the
southern fence.
February 18, 2006
Tonight was the first night we have really gone out together since we
arrived. The occasion was Natalie's impending departure from Kenya, so
we hopped into Nadia's car and off we went! We first stopped at
Pilipan, a very nice-looking European style bistro close to Mwamba
with a supposedly spectacular view of the sunset (though we arrived
much after the fact), decided the menu was good but expensive and kept
driving on to Malindi.

The first stop was La Bistro for dinner and drinks. Part restaurant
with an Arab décor and part gallery for a local artist (who
incidentally was commissioned to create many of the sculptures on
display at the museum at the Gede Ruins), we had a wonderful dinner.
Monica had pennette with ricotta cheese and ham (a sacrilege on
Saturday evening during prayers in a very Muslim town) and Scott had a
generous portion of tender nyama choma while Leslie had to wait until
we were all finished before her escargot was finished. Dessert was out
of the question, and we headed into Malindi for more drinks with some
Candians that Nadia had met a couple of months ago in Malindi. Their
friend Robert had gone to McGill but had made the decision a few
months before to move back to Nairobi and his other friends at the
table had decided to pay him a visit. Paul was volunteering at the
polytechnic in Gede trying to revamp their management, curricula, and
finances but had been bored for the past two months. He had uncovered
a fraud scheme by the manager, and it is being investigated by the
main office. This has kept him from doing anything until it is
resolved but at least it gives extra time to spend with friends and
see Kenya. They also gave us a glowing recommendation for Game
Trekkers safari (http://www.gametrekkers.com), which they said not
only accommodated them and suggested a great itinerary (much better
than the agent they had been working with). The good part is that it
is not a lodge safari but a camping safari (tents not lodges), though,
it is much more luxurious than we are used to (mattresses, etc.).
Also, the price they paid was quite reasonable US$600, though, they
warned us that we could pay twice that during tourist season in July.

We left Fermento to walk down the road to Club 28. Malindi is much
nicer at night: the dust is hidden by the darkness, the hawkers and
peddlers are inside, and the buildings are accented quite nicely by
exterior lights. Club 28 was okay. We sat on cushions while we
listened to an Italian football match (in Italian) when we arrived.
They started playing music (all 90's boy band music for some reason),
and we drank Smirnoff Ice. They changed to Craig David, Usher, etc.,
so we were happier. A round of shots let us see Nadia's party trick of
lighting her mouth on fire! Dancing in the disco part was
underwhelming though the music was marginally better than outside.
They couldn't seem to play anything with a dance speed, and there were
hardly any people in the room. Finally, at about 1am people started to
filter in and the music picked up. They played mostly western music
(including some good Crunk). The dance floor was lined with mirrors,
and several Kenyan girls were dancing in front of them, though, we
tried to avoid them … it's just weird to watch yourself dance. The
music was hit or miss, and we decided to move down to the Stardust.

Stardust was much more like a New York or Boston nightclub (with
prices to match, relatively: 500 KSh each, or $6, which is a lot here,
and we've learned that people rarely have change for a 500), complete
with the fog machine J and bouncers outside the door dressed in black
and carrying metal detector wands (though they were obviously just for
show). It was not quite as polished, of course (the big screen above
the dance floor was playing satellite TV of anti-smoking commercials
and then Little House on the Prairie followed by a football game while
the music was blasting … very odd). However, drinking at a club for
100 KSh ($1.30) a bottle is a welcome treat. We were at the club until
3 and finally were in bed by 4, which made for a rough morning for
Monica. Scott had his ½ day off the next morning.

Another Week

2006-02-19T07:43:00.000-05:00

February 17, 2006

Today did not get off to a good start. We were preparing breakfast, assuming we would get our usual ride to the ruins with Nadia, but she and Leslie left without us. We were a bit annoyed and were afraid we would not get to ride in with Steffen as he has been touring the Earthwatch Coordinators around for several days. Fortunately, he agreed to take us in. We stopped in Timboni, another small nearby town, to try to make copies, but nothing was opened. We did manage to buy some white-out and some colored pencils which will help us track each group of monkeys with a different color each day. We got to the ruins and went straight to where we now expect the south group to be. We found them easily, but scared them as they crossed the fence coming back from the farm. They wanted nothing to do with us and lost us within minutes. We were very frustrated, wondering if we were doing everything all wrong, and decided to give up for awhile and walk into Gede to try to make photocopies again. This proved to be successful, although it took nearly an hour to run this little errand. Scott was really friendly, saying “Jambo” to everyone we passed, but I was just not in the mood. I would like to use my Swahili more, but feel like we get laughed at every time we do this.

We went back to Mwamba for lunch and plotted our data. The afternoon was much better and we both got some good data. Dinner was good. We had Kenyan pizza and rice and beans. In case you hadn’t noticed everything comes with rice and beans. ;-) That finished off our day and we went to bed.

February 16, 2006

Today we were hoping to make copies of our newly created map, but unfortunately copy machines are hard to come by and difficult to get to, so this will have to wait. We had a productive monkey- watching day as Scott and I located two separate groups right away and each of us followed one of them. At some point I lost my group and joined Scott at the south fence. The south group seems to spend a lot of their time across the fence in someone’s farm. They always spook really easily when they come back, as if they realize that they have done something they shouldn’t have. While we wait for them to come back from the other side, we have gotten in the habit of bringing something to do. Generally we write postcards or learn some new Swahili words. In the future, we might even play cards. Today, a Kenyan from the other side of the fence saw us sitting on the ground looking at the farm and writing postcards. He came up to us, we exchanged, “Jambos”, and then he gave us a puzzled look and said, “What are you doing?”. We explained that we were waiting for the monkeys. I don’t think he had a clue what we were talking about. All of the Kenyans are amused by us and don’t understand why we would spend all day just watching monkeys. They just think we are strange wazungo. Nothing else terribly eventful happened today.

February 15, 2006

Today was a usual day, up at 6;30 and out to the monkeys by 7am. However, we have started to lose our patience about the water situation here. When we first came, there was always cold water to fill our water bottles in the morning, but the past few days, this has not been the case and we have had to deal with lukewarm water that gets hot enough for hot tea in the afternoon. L We think this is happening because there are a lot of guests staying here right now. It is also hotter than usual and I think they just changed the water filter.

Today, we got to use the GPS device to start tracking the monkeys. The monkeys were just as good at losing us while we had this device as when we didn’t. J We both were starving by 10am, but had to wait to noon to eat. We also had our daily treat of a cold beverage, this time Black Currant Fanta, and a 30-minute nap on our usual benches.

Like usual, we had a much better time in the afternoon. The monkeys seem to tolerate us in the afternoon, but not in the mornings. We even witnessed an intergroup encounter with lots of loud chirps, peyows, and guffaws. Scott reported on Maurice’s shanigans. Maurice is quite the “man’s man” and Scott likes to call him “Shaft”. We also made a few fun discoveries today. We found a monkey skull and some very pretty red and black bird feathers. I plan to keep them. (Susan, we need your advice on how best to clean them.)

On our ride home, Steffen got pulled over by the police for talking on his cell phone while driving. We all just held our breath to see what would happen. It was noted that we were not wearing seat belts (I’m not sure that they even work) and Steffen had left his license at Mwamba. Luckily, the guy was nice and let him off with only a warning.

Dinner was good tonight with Matoke (Siobhan, this is the banana recipe that Ndegwa was telling us about), rice with peanut sauce and fresh pineapple. We helped clean up, worked on creating our map of Gede, and then went to bed.

February 14, 2006

The sunrise on the beach this morning was amazing! The sky grew light with fanes of pink and orange at around 6am and the plump glowing orange sun peeked above the water at about 6:30am. We packed up our gear from the lean-to, took showers, did some laundry, and got ready to head into Malindi. Colin, one of the A Rocha guys, gave us a ride to Gede. You must take advantage of any ride you can get here, otherwise you are stranded at the field center, must resort to multiple forms of transportation, or have a very long walk ahead of you. From Gede, we caught a matatu to Malindi. Once there we took a Tuk Tuk (yet another form of transport; it is a very small three wheeled car/cart) into town. There we were able to change some money over, check email, get postcards and stamps, and do some shopping. I bought a very cool pair of leather flip-flops, which they seem to specialize in here. I was particularly excited that I found a pair that fit me. Apparently, I am a size 36 here, which much be equivalent to an American size 5. We had lunch at “I Love Pizza” and you’ll never guess what we had…a pizza. J It was really good and was followed by a crepe with chocolate and ice cream! Yummy! While it was tasty, it took forever to get our food and often times, you must remind yourself that things move much slower here and going to town may take up your entire day off (although Malindi is rather hectic in its slower pace and everyone pounces on you to try to get you to buy things. It gets kind of annoying.). Today, we had many other things we wanted to do, so we were not about to have our entire day sucked up by this lunch. After lunch, we tried to get money out of the ATM, but it was down. L On the way back to Mwamba, we caught a really cool matatu that was jammin’ to some great American Pop tunes, such as Mariah Carey (he pronounced it Maria Caaree). It was bumpin’! We got a few video clip of this. Once at Turtle Bay, we had to catch a Boda Boda. I always feel weird on these because you are simply on the back of a bike while a Kenyan is hard at work pedaling as hard as he can to get you home. Also, since I was wearing a skirt, I had to ride side saddle and hope we didn’t crash and burn.

Once back at Mwamba, we headed out snorkeling. Scott had bought us Marine Park tickets for about $5-6 each, which allow you to swim out to the coral reef. We headed out to the buoys, quite a long swim (approximately 300 meters). I was quite proud of myself, as I’ve never been a particularly good swimmer, and there were some pretty big waves. At some point, we started feeling little pin pricks all over our bodies and we realized that we were being stung by tons of tiny baby jellyfish! The stings started getting more frequent and we decided to go back. I wasn’t at all certain that I wouldn’t be allergic to these stings as well as the previous ant bite! Scott also noticed that we were about to swim right into a large group of jellyfish. I couldn’t see a thing! This statement, freaked me out a bit, and I had to regain composure before I continued to get stung and inhaled all of the ocean water! We swam back to shore and just lied in the sun for about 2 hours. So far, the application and reapplication of SPF 30 sunblock has kept us from getting burned.

For Valentine’s Day dinner we went out to dinner at a nearby resort. We walked there via the beach, approximately a 30-minute walk. It was beautiful. The sun had gone down, the stars were coming out, and the tide was coming in. There was a very strong cool breeze, which is always very welcome after the heat of the day. We had to pay careful attention that we didn’t step on any crabs which are all over the beach, and you never know which way they will walk next. Aside from a bizarre waitor and waitress (this is another story in itself), the meal was quite good. The Valentine’s Day meal consisted of bread and butter and cream of tomato soup followed by a seafood platter with potatoes, rice, and vegetables. Crème caramel was for dessert. One of the best parts of the meal was simply the ice cold water that we bought. It is so hard to find COLD water here and with the heat, you find yourself wanting some all of the time! The other interesting part of the meal was the extremely cheesy love music that played in the background. We were amused! J

We walked back to Mwamba via the beach again. This walk was just as beautiful, yet by now the full moon had risen and it seemed almost light outside. The tide had also receded a lot so the walk looked completely different. So completely different in fact, that we almost couldn’t find the entrance to the field station. Once we got back, we tried a calling card we had bought in Malindi and were able to talk to Scott’s parents for the first time since we arrived. It was a great 10-minute conversation. We’ll have to get more of these cards in the future. We told the night guard, Lawrence, “Lala Salama” (good night) and went to bed.

February 13, 2006

It’s amazing how much difference 24 hours makes in letting us recover from our anti-malarial medication. Unfortunately, Monica had been bitten by a rather large ant yesterday, and she had a slight allergic reaction, which caused a welt the size of a CD to appear on her leg. To try to help, she took 2 Benadryl last night, and she is still dragging.

A crew at the ruins has been working to clear about a 1 meter wide path along the south and east fences, which is a huge help for us in accessing the areas to watch monkeys. Unfortunately, their presence seemed to have scared off the little creatures, so we followed the south group instead. As a little side note, habituating monkeys is not easy. Since we do not even know how many groups of monkeys are at Gede, Monica and I have been working to see all of the groups and identify their dominant male. Rarely do groups of Sykes monkeys have multiple males, and then usually only during mating season. We have especially been concentrating on two groups: a south group and an east group. The east group is quite shy, so we often end up following the south group, where the male is pretty self-confident. We thought Maurice was an appropriate name for him. He is always with the ladies and seems to hang around the other groups to get a quick moment with their females. He’s also fairly aggressive and self-confident. He also seems to like to pose for our camera so you’ll have to see pictures of this guy. We have both grown pretty fond of the guy.

We have been watching the monkeys all day, but they have been sleeping nearly all day. I think they suffer from the heat as well as us humans and do their best to rest in the shade. We did the same, but boy was it hot. Our keychain thermometer quit at around 1:00pm after registering at 121 degrees F (approx 43 degrees C)! By 1:43 it had finally dropped to 105 degrees.

At Mwamba, one of the volunteers is with Turtle Watch, which seeks to release sea turtles that become entangled in fishermen’s nets by compensating the fishermen and removing the turtle whenever they accidentally snare a turtle. This particular night at 9pm, they brought three rescued turtles by, so we could take them down to the beach and send them back to the ocean. It was so cool to watch the turtles swim out to the open sea, and they are surprisingly fast! The whole time we were carrying one of the turtles to the beach, we couldn’t help but do a rendition of the sea turtles in “Finding Nemo” (one of the greatest kids movies of all time)! ;-)

Finally, we ended up taking our mattress down to a lean-to on the beach and sleeping under the stars, which was pretty fun (especially since we also set up a mosquito net). Then we woke up to a beautiful sunrise on Valentine’s Day morning.

February 12, 2006

Mefloquine is a mean drug. We took our weekly dose this morning, which was a bad idea. For us, it has the side effect of removing any trace of energy while making us both nauseous and abnormally hungry at the same time. Today, we ate our lunch at 9:30 and ended up in slow motion all day … not to mention particularly hungry when lunch came around. We couldn’t help but laugh at each other while the other tried to sleep while walking or could not figure out how to move through the brush. We finally went for our lunch break and purchased some Picana juices – passion fruit and fruit cocktail – which were cold and heavenly. We also ran into a couple of wazungo from New York, Barry and Rob. Interestingly, they told us they were on a U.S. State Department cultural trip, though their itinerary sounded decidedly upper-class wazungo (played at the Carnivore and an American university in Nairobi then on to Watamu to play at Turtle Bay … none of which have many native Kenyas). Check out their web site at www.RobThomasViolin.com. After running into them, we dragged ourselves across the central court of the museum to snooze on the benches. Our afternoon nap almost turned into an all-day event. Even without Mefloquine, taking a mid-afternoon nap during the hottest part of the day can be a life-saver. We were at least coherent enough to catch the male of the East Group coming back from beyond the fence with a stolen ear of corn, which he had no intention of sharing with his admirers.

Mass transit in Kenya is both insane and provides the occasional Adrenaline rush periodically. Matatus are the main mode of transportation. These overpacked passenger vans scream down the road towards their passengers’ destinations for pretty ridiculously low prices (you can go 20km for 50 KSh or about $0.66), though, you might need to haggle pretty hard if you’re mzungo (and especially if you’re male … Monica never seems to have a problem J). Luckily, Lispa, one of the A Rocha staff, told us what the going rates for the different transportation options are.

The matatus are absolutely awesome. They all are pimped out, and it is especially entertaining to see them in the early evening with the black lights on and the LED’s going on the outside. Each one is quite unique with a name (e.g., “Street Life”, “Salaamtak II”, and “Fat Mama”), a rocking sound system with a particular style of music, and a totally pimped out paint job. Hopefully, we’ll be able to send some photos.

Tonight, when we got to the Gede parking lot at 5:30pm, we noted that Steffen’s SUV was gone and we realized we would have to take the above public transit back. It isn’t bad, but after walking around in the sun all day, it isn’t something your look forward to. It didn’t help that my leg was itching like crazy with that CD-sized ant bite and my pants rubbed against it every step I made. Thus, we did the 20-minute walk to Gede, the matatu ride to Turtle Bay, and then realized we hadn’t brought enough money to make it the rest of the way home. Thus, we walked the last 1-2 miles home. Once home, we asked Steffen what had happened. It was just a communication error. Apparently, Leslie was supposed to tell us that the three of us would have to take public transport together today. This message never reached us. In addition to this, it never occurred to us that Leslie wasn’t with Steffen, so we had inadvertently left Leslie at the ruins. She came strolling in to Mwamba around 8:00pm and was not happy. She had waited for us until 6:15, at which point she had left us a note (but we had already left, of course). She then realized she didn’t have enough money to get home either and she walked about 5-6 miles in the dark before catching a Boda Boda the rest of the way home. Once we all told our versions of the story, there were no hard feelings and we now have an interesting story to tell. J

February 11, 2006

We have seen quite a few strange animals in Gede (outside of the “normal” Sykes monkeys). After consulting the African animals book, we think we saw a few duikers, a few golden-rumped elephant shrews (skittish, giant rat-looking creatures), and a young bushbuck. We still have not seen the adders or mambas. Computer access in Kenya is surprisingly good – not broadband but at least somewhat modern computers. Unfortunately, because we work every day from 7-6, all of the internet cafes (and everything else for that matter) are already closed. Luckily, Mwamba provides a lot of support for us in providing us with dinner (and lunch if we can get back) as well as access to some pretty nice computers for downloading and manipulating our photos. One of the staff, Michael, will also do our laundry, iron, and fold it for 100 KSh per load, which is a huge help since we barely have any time to ourselves.

Scott’s day off today let him take a boda boda (a bicycle fitted with a padded seat on the back for passengers) up to DreamWorld, the closest internet café and not too bad of a price at 3 KSh ($0.04) per minute, though, Malindi has relatively better internet access at 2 KSh per minute. The supermarket across the street from the internet café is also not only convenient but stocked with some great goodies like ice cream, Cadbury bars, mango salsa, Smirnoff Ice (not a malt beverage and only 65 KSh), and all sorts of other treats!

He decided to only take a half-day off and he joined me around 2:45, just in time to see me get bitten by a big ant. It bit me about 3 times sending me dancing around like crazy trying to get it out. This gives new meaning to having “ants in your pants”!

The beach near Mwamba is unbelievable. Luckily, we are quite a few miles down the beach from the resort hotels in a protected marine area, which leaves us fairly protected from the tourist and the derelict beach boys. Tonight after getting back, we ran to the beach for a quick swim before showering and going to dinner. We watched the sun go down in the west just as the almost full moon rose in the east under a cloudless, midnight blue sky. It was breathtaking to roll in the waves of the Indian Ocean as the sky unfolded overhead.

February 9

2006-02-12T10:44:00.000-05:00

Days 7: February 9

Monica and I have had a strenuous week with the start of our monkey-watching activities. The temperature during the day starts out at about 83 and reaches over 95 by mid-day. It's definitely the opposite of a dry heat as well. Luckily, there is usually a nice cool breeze, and the work is fascinating. Also, the monkeys tend to take a two hour nap in the shade during the hottest part of the day so it isn't too bad. There is a new drama unfolding every day, and it is acted out by tiny, cute monkeys that you just want to hug.

Today, we got quite the workout following the group of monkeys that we are trying to habituate through about half of the park (several miles), trying to keep them in sight while navigating through thorned vines and thick vegetation. Since they do not like to use the trails, we are using our compasses a lot to try to figure out where we are at any given time. Also, in case we haven't mentioned, the Gede Ruins themselves, they are very beautiful. They are much more extensive than I had imagined, and we have actually gotten lost on the trails several times (i.e. there are several trails that are not found on any map). It definitely gives us the feeling of being in an Indiana Jones movie! ;-)

We are still trying to work out all of the normal little details of life, such as, how to withdraw money (no ATM's in Watamu), where to we get groceries/laundry detergent, food, containers, etc, and how to get around? We have some days off coming up, so we might sort out a lot of this then. Since in the beginning we can't take the same days off, we are going to alternate and Monica will take her first day off tomorrow.

Up until now, we have been lucky enough to catch rides with other researchers in their cars, but soon they will be leaving and we will need to resort to public transportation. Each morning have been able to get a ride to the Gede Ruins where the monkeys are. This should be fine.

Tonight, after dinner, Monica went out and had some drinks with some of the other researchers. She met several British Army blokes that are staying at a nearby resort. The other monkey researchers are British as are many of the tourists. Scott stayed at home tonight because he is helping Stanley, one of the people at the field station, to set up a database.

Not much else happened today, but as a side note, feel free to leave us comments on this blog!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mwamba Field Study Centre & Bird Observatory

A Rocha Kenya

PO Box 383

Watamu 80202

Kenya

Tel: +254-(0)42-32023

eml: mwamba@arocha.org

<www.arocha.org>

Scott's First Day Off

2006-02-11T04:16:00.000-05:00

I cannot believe it's been a week already or that's it's only been a week. There has been so much to take in and yet the time has flown by so quickly. Today is my day off, and since Monica was able to take care of almost all of our errands yesterday on her day off in Malindi, I have a lot of time to spend writing email and relaxing on the beach.

This place is strangely beautiful with a surreal mixture of technology and tradition. In among the corrugated steel roofed shops along the road from Watamu to Gede you see kiosks for cell phone charging and airtime cards about as often as you would see a Starbucks in Seattle. In Timboni (near Gede) I noticed two right across the street from each other for convenience of those walking on the other side of the road. All of the post offices in Kenya have two internet terminals now that are connected via 56K modem connections to the internet with rates that seem to be affordable to most. As with everything, though, there are issues with reliability. On Thursday, we had decided to finally get back to some email only to find out when we walked in Gede village that the electricity had been cut off for the day to allow crews to perform some unscheduled maintenance of the main power lines (which also affected Mwamba).

Regardless of the reliability of the infrastructure, it is fascinating to see just how much computer literacy there is and is interesting to wonder at how much this corner of Kenya will change in the next couple of years as the fiber optic trunk off the coast comes live and brings broadband internet (and maybe high tech jobs?) to the area. I've heard rumors that broadband service is scheduled for the area in 2007. Thinking of the broader picture, already the first offshore markets of Korea and Taiwan have come close to maturing, and there are signs that offshoring to India and China is also causing wages for tech workers to increase dramatically in those areas. It is only a matter of time before companies realize that they are not necessarily better off and begin looking again for a new, cheaper offshore labor pool ... probably in sub-Saharan Africa and then with a whole new set of lessons that they have learned in India and China to reduce the uncertainty of investing in such a move. Currently, there are large numbers of people making less than 300 Schillings, approximately $4, per day.

But I need to stop thinking of such things and enjoy the beauty of this land. The ride to Gede in the mornings is wonderful. Women in colorful wraps try to herd their goats out of the dirt road, as Land Rovers come roaring along at disturbing speeds, though, I learned that the vehicles are often very respectful of the livestock they share the road with. Killing a goat with your vehicle is considered the driver's fault and requires you to stop and pay the fair market value of the animal, which is no small sum. I also see scores of people walking or biking the roads in the morning on their way to jobs/school/ etc. The children headed to school usually come in large groups and are uniformed according to their school (e.g., pink button up shirts and dark blue slacks/skirts).

The homes are quite interesting, and, around Gede, often consist of a bound wood frame cemented with mud of the deep red color so characteristic of the Kenyan soil. The roof is often made of thatched panels that are, according to Liz, often hand-woven from palm branches by the children of some of the local families for 5 Bob (the local name for Schillings) for a panel of a couple of feet long. This is only about $0.07 per panel. Monica and I visited a Giriama village outside of the Gede ruins. When we walked up, we saw a copious amount of mnazi (palm wine) being poured into a large (5-gallon?) container, though, this practice is apparently banned by the government. The village is a wall-enclosed clearing with houses composing parts of the walls. Most of the dwellings are constructed of a wood-reinforced mud plaster (Swahili influence) or woven thatched grass sides (Giriama) with a thatched palm frond roof and consist typically of two rooms with possessions stowed in hammocks above the bed. We took a tour of the place with Joro, who showed us how to play the traditional drums and sold us a fun mouse trap.

For our more immediate activities, monkey watching yesterday was frustrating. Our group went about their normal routine of migrating from the southeastern part of the park to the northwestern side, making a stop at the ruins and other points along the way to relax in the tasty tamarind trees (it bears red fruit encased in a papery brown shell that we like to eat if we can, since it is a nice tart wake-up and is full of vitamin-C). I even was able to see why they had been moving to the northwest corner ... I spotted our male stealing a mango from beyond the northern fence. Unfortunately, they encountered another group of Seykes monkeys and after an intense chasing and shouting match, which was difficult to follow in the dense brush, they ended up scattering. I followed what I thought was our group but then saw I was mistaken. Despite a couple of hours of searching I could not find them again, so I instead set off to chart the rest of the park and improve the map we are using to record our monkeys' activity. Stanley and I sat down again last night to recreate a database that had been lost from a backup error; we had tried a few days ago to finish during a power outage where we sat on his balcony by candlelight at the laptop to design the tables but were not quite successful. Instead, we got about as far as finishing the configuration of a new PCMCIA modem he purchased, which will give him the ability to finally connect directly to the internet. No more receiving emails on the Mwamba computer, downloading to diskette, and then re-downloading them onto his laptop.

Well, that is about it for today, and I want to get outdoors :).

In Kenya

2006-02-07T06:52:00.000-05:00

The email access here has been down for the past few days. Here
is a quick summary of what we've been up to since we left our
home in Boston and started our adventure to Kenya.

Day 1 (2/3/06):
We arrived in Nairobi after a long flight (17 hours) that was delayed
on the tarmac in Zurich for another 1-1/2 hours, so we arrived in
Nairobi quite late and were pretty exhausted after crossing 8 time
zones and sitting for ~20 hours. When we arrived, we were
supposed to meet Patrick, the brother of the person who had been
teaching us Swahili before we left, but we did not see him and
figured he had gone home, so we instead took a cab from the
airport to our hotel and crashed as soon as we got in the room

Day 2 (2/4/06):
The next morning after spending all morning trying to locate a sim
card (to give us a prepaid cell phone line) we finally phoned Patrick
to see if he was free and learned the whole horrible story that he
had waited at the airport for us until 11 the night before. It turned
out that we could have literally gone across the street for one, but
we were clueless. We felt so bad about missing Patrick at the
airport, but it all turned out ok, and we had an excellent time in
Nairobi. Monica has a rather saucy photo of me and a giraffe :)
when we visited the Giraffe Center ... if only we had the bandwidth
right now to post it! He showed us around the city, including the
sites of the American embassy bombing and the recent building
collapse and then took us out for Nyama Choma (barbecued meat)
and biya (beer ... Tusker brand, of course) before getting us to the
8:30pm night bus to Malindi.

We were the only wazungo (Europeans) in that part of the city not
to mention on the bus. We were in the back of the bus for the trip
on the bumpiest road imaginable, which made it like a fun roller
coaster for the first 20 minutes (bouncing a couple of feet from our
seats each time we hit a bump), but it became irritating and
exhausting for the next 9 hours. Monica's bladder was on the way
to bursting from all of the bouncing, and we only had one bathroom
break!

Day 3 (2/5/06):
We arrived at Watamu the next morning at around 5:30am, took a
matatu (crazy-driving minivan stuffed with people and pimped out
with black lights and pimping music) to Turtle Bay, and then caught
a ride from Steffen to Mwamba, where we will be staying for the
next several months. The place is awesome and the beach outside
absolutely gorgeous; we can't wait to send photos, though, the
bandwidth restrictions will probably cause problems. The people
and food are great. We were able to spend our first day on the
beach and saw some very strange little blue jellyfish and a weird
sand worm. We also experienced the beach boys who all wanted to
hawk us their wares.

Day 4 (2/6/06):
We had our first day of monkey-watching today (just rested
yesterday), which was fun (I've never seen so many monkey
nipples) and exhausting, since the heat between noon and 2pm is
unbelievable. We have some great zoomed in photos and videos
up close and personal with our new monkey friends and cannot wait
to send them back. We even named two of the juveniles: gizmo
and scrapy. Anyway, we should probably head to
bed.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.
Mwamba Field Study Centre & Bird Observatory
A Rocha Kenya
PO Box 383
Watamu, 80202
Kenya

tel: +254-(0)42-32023
eml: mwamba@arocha.org
website: www.arocha.org
also: www.assets-kenya.org

A few more details...

2006-01-22T11:24:00.000-05:00

We will be staying at the Mwamba Bird Observatory and Field Study Centre; on the eastern coast of Kenya (Indian
Ocean) near the town of Watamu. If you want to learn more about the
project take a look at Guenon
Social Behavior, Ecology, and Stress Physiology Research Project.
We will be making our observations at the mysterious Gede
Ruins.

Where's the monkey?

2006-01-02T21:17:00.000-05:00

After-Christmas shopping is apparently a great way to get all sorts of good stuff to go monkey-watching. We now have enough books to entertain a small army for several months, and we are planning to take them all with us. If the previous students at Kakamega are right, we will need all of the reading material we can bring. Amazingly, there are a LOT of things you need to bring ... medicine, clothes, Tang, and all sorts of random things. Pens, notebooks, and flashlights, for instance, are typically imported to Kenya from China and are not of the best quality.

Happy New Year!

2006-01-01T10:29:00.000-05:00

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.