Posts
For six days now, I have been out of Africa.
Little things have been the weirdest adjustments. Like the fact that I can no longer tell time or direction by the movements of the sun, which rose and set almost exactly due east and due west, at 6am and 6pm. I don't fall asleep to the sounds of bugs, but rather the sounds of cars. The obnoxious hooting of morning doves, their frantic flapping as they land on their perch under the outdoor portion of the overhang of our banda, no longer wakes me up in the morning. And I'm no longer greeted by Kilimanjaro as I walk to the choo or the chumba.
At first, the feelings of being out of Africa were omnipresent. I didn't particularly care about exploring the European cities which I was visiting--they couldn't compare to the open, painfully dry rangelands of the Maasai group ranches. What did it matter if I spoke with the local people or not, they couldn't possibly be as interesting or funny or engaging as the friends I made in Kenya. But now, even with the help of pictures and videos and voice recordings, it already seems like that existence is slipping away, becoming an old and particularly vivid dream.
As I settle back into being in cities, the fact that I once had to check for snakes in my bed before getting in, the fact that I slept under a mosquito net, the fact that I never wore skirts above my knees, that all feels as if it is becoming forgotten.
It is not that if I try to recall, I cannot, it is just that those instincts that I developed over the course of my months in Kenya, are slowly fading. Once again, I pull back my blankets and get under the covers without looking. It was always going to happen, and I expected it, but still the expectation cannot completely erase the sense of loss as I stand so close to the experience of it all.
Even as these small habits fade, these constant reminders of where I have been and what I have learned, there is a part of me that knows that what I did in Kenya will never really leave me. I know that the simple whiff of an old, familiar smell can send me reeling back to the time that I lived among the Maasai in the arid and semi arid rangelands of Eastern Africa. I know that if I ever go back, it will not matter how many years have gone by, that the friends I made there will still be my friends. And, perhaps most importantly, I know that Africa, Kenya, the Maasai, will always travel with me, because no matter how much the details may fade, the whole of the experience never will.
Hakuna matata. It means no worries.
(Come on, haven't you ever seen the Lion King?)
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Monday, April 27, 2009
Atasha enkai te Amboseli pi
We had our last game drive today. We went to Amboseli one last time, and sadly, it was not much greener than when we had left it at the height of the dry season. There really has not been that much rain yet, and at this point, probably won't be enough to end the drought before the end of the long rains season in mid-May. Dead, rotting carcasses lay everywhere within the park, pelts resting on bones with decomposing guts to the side, the occasional dismembered leg lying asunder.
But to be out in the open, among the life, and death, of the savanna, was a welcome change to the past couple days of data analysis and paper writing for DR. We saw elephants and Grants gazelle and Tommies and black-backed jackals and hipppos and buffalos and reedbuck and impala, and it felt like I was seeing it all again for the first time.
As we drove around for the hours before lunch, we could see ominous sky surrounding us, and it was weird to know that the dark, almost black clouds were pouring out rain all around, and yet within our wide circle it was dry. In New York, the rain is either on you or it's not, but you certainly can't see it from afar, you certainly can't see it coming. And come it did.
I could see it approach from my spot on Observation Hill, where we had lunch. I did not get back to the cars in time to avoid getting wet, but I was enjoying to much watching the approach to care too much. And it just fascinates me how the water pools on the surface of the ground, yet still a few inches below the dirt is still just dust, so that if the rain is really hard and really good, it kicks up an organ-red cloud of dust as it falls. And with the windows to the cars closed to avoid the water, the smell of the dust within is strong, and I realized today that I will miss it.
Atasha engai te Amboseli pi: roughly translated from the kimaasai, it means, "Much rain has come from God to Amboseli."
But to be out in the open, among the life, and death, of the savanna, was a welcome change to the past couple days of data analysis and paper writing for DR. We saw elephants and Grants gazelle and Tommies and black-backed jackals and hipppos and buffalos and reedbuck and impala, and it felt like I was seeing it all again for the first time.
As we drove around for the hours before lunch, we could see ominous sky surrounding us, and it was weird to know that the dark, almost black clouds were pouring out rain all around, and yet within our wide circle it was dry. In New York, the rain is either on you or it's not, but you certainly can't see it from afar, you certainly can't see it coming. And come it did.
I could see it approach from my spot on Observation Hill, where we had lunch. I did not get back to the cars in time to avoid getting wet, but I was enjoying to much watching the approach to care too much. And it just fascinates me how the water pools on the surface of the ground, yet still a few inches below the dirt is still just dust, so that if the rain is really hard and really good, it kicks up an organ-red cloud of dust as it falls. And with the windows to the cars closed to avoid the water, the smell of the dust within is strong, and I realized today that I will miss it.
Atasha engai te Amboseli pi: roughly translated from the kimaasai, it means, "Much rain has come from God to Amboseli."
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Dreaming
"All I wanted to do now was to get back to Africa. We had not left it yet, but when I would wake in the night I would lie, listening, homesick for it already." -Ernest Hemingway
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Corruption Junction, What's Your Function?
While Kenya is seriously lacking in rain right now, it is certainly not lacking in corruption (or dead cow carcasses everywhere).
We spent this entire morning and afternoon interviewing group ranch and government officials about cultural manyattas in Loitokitok Town. Our first three interviews were with group ranch officials, with whom we spoke about the way the manyattas work, from the management structure to how they earn money to whether they preserve the culture or not, and about the new association (kikundi) that they are forming to regulate the manyattas in the Amboseli region.
It is just so sad to see how tourists are completely duped in all senses of the word when they visit these manyattas. When we went to one earlier in the semester they told us that Maasai do not use any modern technologies whatsoever, explaining that every morning they make a fire for the entire manyatta to use by rubbing sticks together to ignite it since they do not even use matches. They told us how all Maasai are polygamous, and that the only things that their diet consists of is a mixture of cow's milk and blood. These were all versions of the truth, but really failed to capture how the modern culture is changing and adapting to development and contact with the West.
I don't know a single Maasai who only eats cow's milk and blood, and in fact, blood is only really drunk during ceremonies. Also, because of Christianity, many Maasai men are giving up polygamy. But funniest of all is that Kenneth, my tour guide through the manyatta when we went as a group for class two months ago acted as my translator when we did our first day of interviews, and every so often an interview would be interrupted by the sounds of his American pop ring tone on his cell phone. So much for no matches.
But no matter how disturbing this fudging of the truth was, it was nothing compared to the corruption involved in all levels of this business. Firstly, the thing that our study has focused on a lot is the fact that tour drivers take 97% of the entry fee that the tourists pay to the manyatta. They get away with this because of the fact that pretty much the only way for the manyattas to get tourists in the first place is through the drivers, and at least if tourists are there they can still manage to make money by selling their goods to them.
In speaking to the three group ranch officials, they really delved into these issues with the tour drivers, which is one of their chief concerns with the cultural manyattas. Then, we spoke with a fourth official about how people register manyattas. The conservation at first was very technical about that process of registration, but then from him we finally received a truthful answer: HIV/AIDS and prostitution are problems in the manyattas.
All other officials we had spoken to, from the management committees of the manyattas themselves to the group ranch officials had said that they had addressed the problem of HIV/AIDS through education and that prostitution was not an issue because all men came to the manyattas with their wives--and yet, in interviews with manyatta members we found that many of them had their family living outside of the manyattas to take care of their livestock or shambas (farms). While the education programs had certainly helped to alleviate the severity of the problem (one manyatta was completely wiped out by AIDS), this official informed us sexual promiscuity and spread of STDs is still a problem.
And he went further. He explained how all of the corruption among manyatta committees in taking larger shares of communal money for themselves stems from the corruption of the group ranch officials themselves, in other words, the very three officials with whom we had just spoken. He explained how group ranch officials ensured close relationships with manyatta management, and how money from the manyattas went into election campaigns for group ranch officials. We sat there and listened, questioned, fascinated at what was actually going on, outraged at how many lies we had been told.
After this last man left, we sat around exclaiming about the corruption in this country, something we had always heard about, but which we had never personally experienced in this way. Our teacher came in after he had seen this man off, and entered our conversation. He told us that this in fact was the man he had mentioned before to us who gave out multiple registration permits to the manyattas, because he made more money that way. He told us that the real reason that this official was against the formation of a manyatta association was because he would lose personal power, and his system of corrupt actions would crumble.
The spit just hit the fan.
We spent this entire morning and afternoon interviewing group ranch and government officials about cultural manyattas in Loitokitok Town. Our first three interviews were with group ranch officials, with whom we spoke about the way the manyattas work, from the management structure to how they earn money to whether they preserve the culture or not, and about the new association (kikundi) that they are forming to regulate the manyattas in the Amboseli region.
It is just so sad to see how tourists are completely duped in all senses of the word when they visit these manyattas. When we went to one earlier in the semester they told us that Maasai do not use any modern technologies whatsoever, explaining that every morning they make a fire for the entire manyatta to use by rubbing sticks together to ignite it since they do not even use matches. They told us how all Maasai are polygamous, and that the only things that their diet consists of is a mixture of cow's milk and blood. These were all versions of the truth, but really failed to capture how the modern culture is changing and adapting to development and contact with the West.
I don't know a single Maasai who only eats cow's milk and blood, and in fact, blood is only really drunk during ceremonies. Also, because of Christianity, many Maasai men are giving up polygamy. But funniest of all is that Kenneth, my tour guide through the manyatta when we went as a group for class two months ago acted as my translator when we did our first day of interviews, and every so often an interview would be interrupted by the sounds of his American pop ring tone on his cell phone. So much for no matches.
But no matter how disturbing this fudging of the truth was, it was nothing compared to the corruption involved in all levels of this business. Firstly, the thing that our study has focused on a lot is the fact that tour drivers take 97% of the entry fee that the tourists pay to the manyatta. They get away with this because of the fact that pretty much the only way for the manyattas to get tourists in the first place is through the drivers, and at least if tourists are there they can still manage to make money by selling their goods to them.
In speaking to the three group ranch officials, they really delved into these issues with the tour drivers, which is one of their chief concerns with the cultural manyattas. Then, we spoke with a fourth official about how people register manyattas. The conservation at first was very technical about that process of registration, but then from him we finally received a truthful answer: HIV/AIDS and prostitution are problems in the manyattas.
All other officials we had spoken to, from the management committees of the manyattas themselves to the group ranch officials had said that they had addressed the problem of HIV/AIDS through education and that prostitution was not an issue because all men came to the manyattas with their wives--and yet, in interviews with manyatta members we found that many of them had their family living outside of the manyattas to take care of their livestock or shambas (farms). While the education programs had certainly helped to alleviate the severity of the problem (one manyatta was completely wiped out by AIDS), this official informed us sexual promiscuity and spread of STDs is still a problem.
And he went further. He explained how all of the corruption among manyatta committees in taking larger shares of communal money for themselves stems from the corruption of the group ranch officials themselves, in other words, the very three officials with whom we had just spoken. He explained how group ranch officials ensured close relationships with manyatta management, and how money from the manyattas went into election campaigns for group ranch officials. We sat there and listened, questioned, fascinated at what was actually going on, outraged at how many lies we had been told.
After this last man left, we sat around exclaiming about the corruption in this country, something we had always heard about, but which we had never personally experienced in this way. Our teacher came in after he had seen this man off, and entered our conversation. He told us that this in fact was the man he had mentioned before to us who gave out multiple registration permits to the manyattas, because he made more money that way. He told us that the real reason that this official was against the formation of a manyatta association was because he would lose personal power, and his system of corrupt actions would crumble.
The spit just hit the fan.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
DR
It's directed research time at the center. This means that for ten days, we are out in the field collecting data, which in my case means interviewing about ten people per day about conservation issues and Maasai cultural manyattas. It is just amazing because we basically walk around all different areas in the Maasai group ranches of southern Kenya talking to people in their homes or bomas, out in agricultural fields, or just under trees in the dry, hot rangelands.
One of the coolest interviews that I've had came when we were walking in Mbirikani Group Ranch from one boma towards a clump of trees just visible over a hill with no other development in sight. It was about lunch time and we were planning on going over to those trees to eat our packed lunch, but as we were walking, two Maasai men in their traditional blue and red shukas came walking over to us from a laundry washing area (i.e. a hole in a water pipeline had led to a small patch of green grass among the barren, dead, dry, and dying rangelands in this time of drought; people were taking advantage of the water as a place in which to wash their clothes).
Anyway, the elder of the two, a man over fifty and a Maasai senior elder, after conversing with our guide and translator led us over a sparse, low-hanging tree to let us interview him. In the heat of the day, he crouched low to avoid the pointy branches, and half knelt, half sat while leaning against the trunk of the tree throughout the entire interview. It was a position in which I have seen many Maasai men sitting as they converse and meet with each other under the slight shade of the twiggy trees, and I couldn't believe that now I was a part of one such gathering. He was the first man whom I had interviewed in the past three days who was not a Christian, and practiced no form of modern religion. It was just so cool!
One of the coolest interviews that I've had came when we were walking in Mbirikani Group Ranch from one boma towards a clump of trees just visible over a hill with no other development in sight. It was about lunch time and we were planning on going over to those trees to eat our packed lunch, but as we were walking, two Maasai men in their traditional blue and red shukas came walking over to us from a laundry washing area (i.e. a hole in a water pipeline had led to a small patch of green grass among the barren, dead, dry, and dying rangelands in this time of drought; people were taking advantage of the water as a place in which to wash their clothes).
Anyway, the elder of the two, a man over fifty and a Maasai senior elder, after conversing with our guide and translator led us over a sparse, low-hanging tree to let us interview him. In the heat of the day, he crouched low to avoid the pointy branches, and half knelt, half sat while leaning against the trunk of the tree throughout the entire interview. It was a position in which I have seen many Maasai men sitting as they converse and meet with each other under the slight shade of the twiggy trees, and I couldn't believe that now I was a part of one such gathering. He was the first man whom I had interviewed in the past three days who was not a Christian, and practiced no form of modern religion. It was just so cool!
Monday, April 6, 2009
There and Back Again
I'm back in Kimana. The past two weeks seem like an eon ago already. While the Nairobi Park Site was similar in many ways to our Kimana site--we still had bandas, the chumba, the garage, etc--it had a completely different feel. For one thing, ants were EVERYWHERE, crawling onto food plates, into bags, over everything. For another, I fell asleep to the sounds of hyenas laughing outside of our fence (did I mention that it is an electric fence because of the threats from carnivores like hyenas and lions?). And the ground wasn't covered in so many thorns that they got stuck in my feet when I walked around in flip-flops. And we had access to the most amazing soccer field.
It was outside of our camp atop a nearby hill that got my heart racing climbing to the top of it, scrambling over rocks and through acacia trees. From it, we had the most open, 360 degree view of everything around us, from the rangelands stretching out through Nairobi National Park to Nairobi City itself to the Ngong Hills. We would go up there and start a game, and local guys would almost miraculously appear to play with us (all of whom were incredibly fast and pretty much better than all of us wazungu). We ran, ran to our fullest extent on that field, in that open space, over scanty grass littered with small rocks and animal dung, and it was just the best times I've had playing soccer. We played as the sun set behind those Ngong Hills where Karen Blixen once lived, as the sky turned from blue to yellow to golden to a silky, dusky blue-grey. We played until it was just about time for dinner at seven, and left before it was completely dark, before the predators would become a serious threat to us.
We had a four-day expedition to Lake Nakuru National Park. I saw flamingos! They are gorgeous, and it was refreshing to see pink, this new color to me from what I have seen so far in nature. On our first full day there, we went on three game drives, once at 6am, once at 11am, and once at 4pm, and each time that lake with its flamingos looked different, each time appearing, if possible, more spectacular than the last. In the gentle tones of the morning light the flamingos appeared as a soft pink band stretching along the rim of the lake, turning a darker, stronger hue under a more brilliant blue in the blazing mid-day sun, and finally popping out vividly against the grey atmosphere of the cloudy afternoon.
On April Fool's Day, as I walked outside to clean my dishes, I heard that there were lions feeding outside of the fence which enclosed us. I saw Daniel jumping into one of the Land Cruisers and turning it around to leave through the gate; I knew that he was going to see them, and I had to be in that car. I motioned at him to slow down and jumped in dirty dishes in hand, pajamas still on, contacts not in, no camera, no binoculars, no nothing. The car had barely slowed down and stopped before myself and four others had jumped in, ready to go.
We drove, scanning the landscape. Something shadowy appeared in the grass before us, seeming too small from afar to be that for which we were looking. But as we approached, it was that indeed: two female, sub-adult lions, feasting on a waterbuck.
The lionesses took turns tearing away at the carcass, one lying in the grass watching as the other ate. I could see the legs of the waterbuck move with the force of the lions ripping away at the tender flesh. I could make out faint spots on their bellies, remnants of their youth that had yet to fade away in adulthood. I gazed in wonder as I watched these amazingly powerful bodies walk--they exhibit raw power.
Watching them, I understood why people refer to lions, the simba, as the king of the savannah. They are beauty and power perfectly matched into one dangerous yet endearing animal. It was a phenomenal morning, made all the sweeter by the fact that the cry "lion" was not in fact some elaborate April Fool's Day plan concocted by the staff.
But that wasn't it: we saw white and the much more reclusive black rhinos. We hiked through a gorge in Hell's Gate National Park that required bracing myself with my hands on one boulder and feet on another to make it through a narrow pass over a hot spring. We visited an elephant orphanage where I got to touch baby elephants and a baby black rhino. We went to a giraffe center where I fed a giraffe and others kissed them (I did not really want to swap spit with them, and let me tell you, there kisses were slobbery). I ate my first ostrich burger, and an hour later tried riding one (it's something I do not need to do again).
It was a full two weeks, but I am glad to be back in Kimana. As we drove back, my heart warmed as we entered again the Maasai group ranches, as I saw Maasai men in shukas wandering solitarily through the rangelands, as the people we passed opened up the most marvelous smiles in greeting and waved to us as children ran after our cars. I like this more rural country, even with its unpaved roads. I missed the hot days and nights, the baboons right in our backyard.
It feels good to be back here for our final month.
It was outside of our camp atop a nearby hill that got my heart racing climbing to the top of it, scrambling over rocks and through acacia trees. From it, we had the most open, 360 degree view of everything around us, from the rangelands stretching out through Nairobi National Park to Nairobi City itself to the Ngong Hills. We would go up there and start a game, and local guys would almost miraculously appear to play with us (all of whom were incredibly fast and pretty much better than all of us wazungu). We ran, ran to our fullest extent on that field, in that open space, over scanty grass littered with small rocks and animal dung, and it was just the best times I've had playing soccer. We played as the sun set behind those Ngong Hills where Karen Blixen once lived, as the sky turned from blue to yellow to golden to a silky, dusky blue-grey. We played until it was just about time for dinner at seven, and left before it was completely dark, before the predators would become a serious threat to us.
We had a four-day expedition to Lake Nakuru National Park. I saw flamingos! They are gorgeous, and it was refreshing to see pink, this new color to me from what I have seen so far in nature. On our first full day there, we went on three game drives, once at 6am, once at 11am, and once at 4pm, and each time that lake with its flamingos looked different, each time appearing, if possible, more spectacular than the last. In the gentle tones of the morning light the flamingos appeared as a soft pink band stretching along the rim of the lake, turning a darker, stronger hue under a more brilliant blue in the blazing mid-day sun, and finally popping out vividly against the grey atmosphere of the cloudy afternoon.
On April Fool's Day, as I walked outside to clean my dishes, I heard that there were lions feeding outside of the fence which enclosed us. I saw Daniel jumping into one of the Land Cruisers and turning it around to leave through the gate; I knew that he was going to see them, and I had to be in that car. I motioned at him to slow down and jumped in dirty dishes in hand, pajamas still on, contacts not in, no camera, no binoculars, no nothing. The car had barely slowed down and stopped before myself and four others had jumped in, ready to go.
We drove, scanning the landscape. Something shadowy appeared in the grass before us, seeming too small from afar to be that for which we were looking. But as we approached, it was that indeed: two female, sub-adult lions, feasting on a waterbuck.
The lionesses took turns tearing away at the carcass, one lying in the grass watching as the other ate. I could see the legs of the waterbuck move with the force of the lions ripping away at the tender flesh. I could make out faint spots on their bellies, remnants of their youth that had yet to fade away in adulthood. I gazed in wonder as I watched these amazingly powerful bodies walk--they exhibit raw power.
Watching them, I understood why people refer to lions, the simba, as the king of the savannah. They are beauty and power perfectly matched into one dangerous yet endearing animal. It was a phenomenal morning, made all the sweeter by the fact that the cry "lion" was not in fact some elaborate April Fool's Day plan concocted by the staff.
But that wasn't it: we saw white and the much more reclusive black rhinos. We hiked through a gorge in Hell's Gate National Park that required bracing myself with my hands on one boulder and feet on another to make it through a narrow pass over a hot spring. We visited an elephant orphanage where I got to touch baby elephants and a baby black rhino. We went to a giraffe center where I fed a giraffe and others kissed them (I did not really want to swap spit with them, and let me tell you, there kisses were slobbery). I ate my first ostrich burger, and an hour later tried riding one (it's something I do not need to do again).
It was a full two weeks, but I am glad to be back in Kimana. As we drove back, my heart warmed as we entered again the Maasai group ranches, as I saw Maasai men in shukas wandering solitarily through the rangelands, as the people we passed opened up the most marvelous smiles in greeting and waved to us as children ran after our cars. I like this more rural country, even with its unpaved roads. I missed the hot days and nights, the baboons right in our backyard.
It feels good to be back here for our final month.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Follow the red dirt road
Tomorrow we leave to go to our Nairobi camp site for a two week stay. The trip will take about eight hours driving in our Cruisers over the wonderful bumpy and dusty roads of Kenya (when we drove for five hours from the Nairobi airport to here, I arrived with a solid layer of dust coating me and all of my stuff). It will be quite the adventure.
For the past two weeks here at KBC, not a whole lot has happened, as we just finished all of our exams (four total) today, so most of the time was spent studying and turning in about five assignments before then. We did go to help build desks for a local primary school, and we did have one field expedition where we went around to farmers and asked them about human-wildlife conflict, but other than that it's just sort of been hanging out at camp.
The daily schedule is pretty simple. Get up for breakfast at 7:30 (or if you have cook crew, then you're up at 6:30 to prepare breakfast for everyone else--I'm on Luo i.e. Team Obama!), classes start at 8 and run until noon with a half hour break in between. After a two hour break, classes start back up at 2pm, and tend to run until anywhere from 3:30 to 5:30pm (and we don't really have weekends, but rather one randomly selected day off a week, which is when we take the opportunity to go do stuff like going to Loitokitok to see an HIV/AIDS VCT). After classes finish, we'll lounge around a bit, working or just hanging out, basically waiting until the sun gets lower and the day cools off, so that we can go into our fields and play soccer or volleyball. By sundown we're showering, and then it's time for dinner at seven.
One cool thing that we did get to do was go to watch the Liverpool-Manchester United soccer game in Kimana town in this little tiny wood building on our way back from building desks. The room was jammed packed with about eighty men (the females from our group were the only women) in relative darkness staring at a tiny TV as beams of sun streamed through the cracks in the woodwork.
It was an intense atmosphere. As Liverpool pulled ahead in the game, the entire room would literally erupt at each successive goal. This would be followed by shouting at from the guys in the back of the room to the guys in the front of the room to sit down so that they could see the replay. This is the way that soccer is meant to be enjoyed.
Anyway, I've still got to pack for tomorrow as we're leaving at seven (6am wake up--woo hoo!). However, I feel that I should warn you that I will be without internet access for these next two weeks, so I regret to inform you that you will have to wait a while for new posts. I have an elephant orphanage, an ostrich farm, Nakuru National Park, Hellsgate National Park, and Nairobi National Park all in the future. It's going to be wild.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Celestial navigation--the sun
The sun was directly over my head! I literally could draw a line from the sun to my head to the center of the earth on March 13th at local apparent noon!
If you're wondering what is this crazy girl talking about, the sun is always overhead at noon, then I regret to inform you that you are wrong. True, the sun is always at its zenith (highest point) at local apparent noon (which is not the same as 12 noon) every day, but, if you live in the continental United States, then THE SUN NEVER HAS BEEN NOR EVER WILL BE DIRECTLY OVER YOUR HEAD!
Crazy, right? Not really.
Basically, when the sun travels along the ecliptic year in and year out, it moves from a declination (basically word for the latitude of the sun) of around 23 degrees north at the summer solstice to 23 degrees south at the winter solstice. Do those latitudes sound familiar? They should because they are the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. Thus, only if you live within the tropics will you ever experience the sun directly over your head, as I did just a few days ago.
If you're wondering what is this crazy girl talking about, the sun is always overhead at noon, then I regret to inform you that you are wrong. True, the sun is always at its zenith (highest point) at local apparent noon (which is not the same as 12 noon) every day, but, if you live in the continental United States, then THE SUN NEVER HAS BEEN NOR EVER WILL BE DIRECTLY OVER YOUR HEAD!
Crazy, right? Not really.
Basically, when the sun travels along the ecliptic year in and year out, it moves from a declination (basically word for the latitude of the sun) of around 23 degrees north at the summer solstice to 23 degrees south at the winter solstice. Do those latitudes sound familiar? They should because they are the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. Thus, only if you live within the tropics will you ever experience the sun directly over your head, as I did just a few days ago.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Tsavo Expedition
I survived. I survived man-eaters while camping in Tsavo West National Park.
Well, to be perfectly honest, I feel that “survived” is a bit of an extreme term, since the week was pretty great. And sure, I needed to be accompanied by a Kenya Wildlife Service guard with an A-K 101 or an askari from our staff with an A-K 2009 (i.e. their spears) to the bathroom, which was a pretty smelly pit latrine, and sure, we had no running water so no showers, and sure, we had to shake out the stuff in our tents every time we got into them to check for scorpions and snakes (they really scare me here—I mean, one bite and 45 minutes to live? They could be literally anywhere), but while we were game driving through this fantastic national park at 7am viewing lesser Kudu and hartebeest and rock hyraxes, Dik Diks and water buck and elephants and giraffes, everyone back at home was probably studying late into the night at that very same time for school. I’m in Africa!
The enormity of that park was almost unfathomable for me, a person who has grown up surrounded by tall buildings that break up the landscape. Tsavo West is over 7,000 square kilometers, and adjacent to it is Tsavo East, which covers 13,000 square kilometers. What a change from Amboseli! Here you have to work to see wildlife, though their tracks (footprints and dung) were everywhere. Grassland was sparse, and most of the dirt roads were surrounded by shrubs between 2-6m in height, rising up from the alternating deep red and dark grey soil. When we first drove into the park, so much dust was kicked up from the car in front of us that as I stood out of my hatch, my face literally turned grey, and when I put on chap stick, even more got stuck to my lips so that by the time we stopped for lunch, they were actually black and everyone who saw me either laughed or told me to go wash my face.
At night I was serenaded to sleep by the sounds of lions roaring and elephants trumpeting within 200 feet of our camp. On our first day, as we game drove through the park in the evening as the colors of the sky were softening, I saw a light grey, misty sun shower move across the plain over the tops of vegetation, a rainbow flowing down the right side of the wide column of water. Later than night we were deluged with that rain, a welcome friend given the long drought here. The sounds of rain falling on our tent was so different from that of it falling on the roof of a building that even though I awoke in the middle of the night to find the bottom of the tent was wet, I didn’t make the connection until the morning that it was because of rain.
We walked across the Shetani Lava Flow, and up to the top of the volcanic-rock hill that overlooks it. We traveled through the tall, brown-green grasses of Chyulu as elands grazed and hartebeest leapt and bounded in herds across the hills--it was the Africa I had always imagined, the one brimming with life and vitality and wind and wild. We went to Mzima Springs, a water-filled oasis, to see hippos and crocodiles, and as I walked on the path I caught sight of a red snake in the rocks that lined it--a red spitting cobra (it can make you go blind with its venom)!
After nightfall we would just all gather around the campfire, no internet, no phones, no homework to distract us from that moment, and under the cover of a sky full of stars either just chat with each other, sing along to Will playing guitar, or listen to stories. And let me tell you, some of the staff especially had some crazy stories.
Kiringe, our Wildlife Ecology professor, told us how at that very campsite seven years ago, a bunch of students were preparing to walk over the choo (toilet) as part of a choo party before the askaris had arrived at the camp. In the darkness of the night no one was aware of the fact that a pride of about ten lions was standing in the camp just before the choo preparing to attack. By a complete stroke of luck, the car bringing the askaris pulled into camp just as the students were beginning to walk over (the choo is about 400 feet from the campfire, so those lions were close) and revealed the lions in the headlights. While they drove the lions away and everyone was safe, five of the students refused to sleep in tents the rest of the week, and instead slept in the White Rhino, our big white truck in which we put all of our luggage, food, water, etc. when we go on expedition.
But his next story was even worse. The next year, he had been sleeping in his tent and had a dream that an elephant was sleeping on him. He woke from the dream in the middle of the night, and realized that something actually was sleeping on him through the thin wall of his tent. By the breathing, he realized that it was a lion. He knew that he had to keep it together if he didn’t want to be eaten, so he lay perfectly still, preparing to “take his tent and fly with it” should the lion start to do anything else.
Well, the lion did start to do something else. It got up and grabbed a corner of the tent and began to drag it off into the tall grass surrounding the camp. Just before Kiringe took action, the KWS guards shot off some warning shots into the air, which caused the lion to give up and go running.
Now, just in case you weren’t concerned enough, let me tell you of the Ghost and the Darkness, a story that was actually made into a film that we were not permitted to see before we went on expedition. The Ghost and the Darkness were two male lions who 111 years ago killed and ate 135 people over the course of 9 months in Tsavo West National Park. These were basically super lions, males without huge manes, which is actually a result of greater testosterone levels in the body. They were each about nine feet long in length, and virtually invincible.
As a result of serious disease in the area at the time, these two lions turned to the workers of the Kenya-Uganda railway as their main source of food. And once they realized how tender and satisfying human meat was, they never turned back. They would enter silently into the camps of these workers at night, grab them as they slept from their tents, drag them off into the grass, and eat them as they were still alive as the rest of the camp had to listen to the sounds of screams and ripping flesh.
When these lions were finally killed (two weeks apart), the first took five bullets to kill and the second took eight, and died still crawling towards the gunman. They are now on display at a museum in Chicago.
The kicker to all of this is that not only are we in a serious drought (which is a problem because once again food for lions is scarce), but also that no one knows for sure whether all of the offspring of these man-eaters were killed, so the descendents of these alpha lions likely still roam the plains of Tsavo.
Oh, did I mention that we found a lion sleeping on the road into our camp one of the nights we were there?
Well, to be perfectly honest, I feel that “survived” is a bit of an extreme term, since the week was pretty great. And sure, I needed to be accompanied by a Kenya Wildlife Service guard with an A-K 101 or an askari from our staff with an A-K 2009 (i.e. their spears) to the bathroom, which was a pretty smelly pit latrine, and sure, we had no running water so no showers, and sure, we had to shake out the stuff in our tents every time we got into them to check for scorpions and snakes (they really scare me here—I mean, one bite and 45 minutes to live? They could be literally anywhere), but while we were game driving through this fantastic national park at 7am viewing lesser Kudu and hartebeest and rock hyraxes, Dik Diks and water buck and elephants and giraffes, everyone back at home was probably studying late into the night at that very same time for school. I’m in Africa!
The enormity of that park was almost unfathomable for me, a person who has grown up surrounded by tall buildings that break up the landscape. Tsavo West is over 7,000 square kilometers, and adjacent to it is Tsavo East, which covers 13,000 square kilometers. What a change from Amboseli! Here you have to work to see wildlife, though their tracks (footprints and dung) were everywhere. Grassland was sparse, and most of the dirt roads were surrounded by shrubs between 2-6m in height, rising up from the alternating deep red and dark grey soil. When we first drove into the park, so much dust was kicked up from the car in front of us that as I stood out of my hatch, my face literally turned grey, and when I put on chap stick, even more got stuck to my lips so that by the time we stopped for lunch, they were actually black and everyone who saw me either laughed or told me to go wash my face.
At night I was serenaded to sleep by the sounds of lions roaring and elephants trumpeting within 200 feet of our camp. On our first day, as we game drove through the park in the evening as the colors of the sky were softening, I saw a light grey, misty sun shower move across the plain over the tops of vegetation, a rainbow flowing down the right side of the wide column of water. Later than night we were deluged with that rain, a welcome friend given the long drought here. The sounds of rain falling on our tent was so different from that of it falling on the roof of a building that even though I awoke in the middle of the night to find the bottom of the tent was wet, I didn’t make the connection until the morning that it was because of rain.
We walked across the Shetani Lava Flow, and up to the top of the volcanic-rock hill that overlooks it. We traveled through the tall, brown-green grasses of Chyulu as elands grazed and hartebeest leapt and bounded in herds across the hills--it was the Africa I had always imagined, the one brimming with life and vitality and wind and wild. We went to Mzima Springs, a water-filled oasis, to see hippos and crocodiles, and as I walked on the path I caught sight of a red snake in the rocks that lined it--a red spitting cobra (it can make you go blind with its venom)!
After nightfall we would just all gather around the campfire, no internet, no phones, no homework to distract us from that moment, and under the cover of a sky full of stars either just chat with each other, sing along to Will playing guitar, or listen to stories. And let me tell you, some of the staff especially had some crazy stories.
Kiringe, our Wildlife Ecology professor, told us how at that very campsite seven years ago, a bunch of students were preparing to walk over the choo (toilet) as part of a choo party before the askaris had arrived at the camp. In the darkness of the night no one was aware of the fact that a pride of about ten lions was standing in the camp just before the choo preparing to attack. By a complete stroke of luck, the car bringing the askaris pulled into camp just as the students were beginning to walk over (the choo is about 400 feet from the campfire, so those lions were close) and revealed the lions in the headlights. While they drove the lions away and everyone was safe, five of the students refused to sleep in tents the rest of the week, and instead slept in the White Rhino, our big white truck in which we put all of our luggage, food, water, etc. when we go on expedition.
But his next story was even worse. The next year, he had been sleeping in his tent and had a dream that an elephant was sleeping on him. He woke from the dream in the middle of the night, and realized that something actually was sleeping on him through the thin wall of his tent. By the breathing, he realized that it was a lion. He knew that he had to keep it together if he didn’t want to be eaten, so he lay perfectly still, preparing to “take his tent and fly with it” should the lion start to do anything else.
Well, the lion did start to do something else. It got up and grabbed a corner of the tent and began to drag it off into the tall grass surrounding the camp. Just before Kiringe took action, the KWS guards shot off some warning shots into the air, which caused the lion to give up and go running.
Now, just in case you weren’t concerned enough, let me tell you of the Ghost and the Darkness, a story that was actually made into a film that we were not permitted to see before we went on expedition. The Ghost and the Darkness were two male lions who 111 years ago killed and ate 135 people over the course of 9 months in Tsavo West National Park. These were basically super lions, males without huge manes, which is actually a result of greater testosterone levels in the body. They were each about nine feet long in length, and virtually invincible.
As a result of serious disease in the area at the time, these two lions turned to the workers of the Kenya-Uganda railway as their main source of food. And once they realized how tender and satisfying human meat was, they never turned back. They would enter silently into the camps of these workers at night, grab them as they slept from their tents, drag them off into the grass, and eat them as they were still alive as the rest of the camp had to listen to the sounds of screams and ripping flesh.
When these lions were finally killed (two weeks apart), the first took five bullets to kill and the second took eight, and died still crawling towards the gunman. They are now on display at a museum in Chicago.
The kicker to all of this is that not only are we in a serious drought (which is a problem because once again food for lions is scarce), but also that no one knows for sure whether all of the offspring of these man-eaters were killed, so the descendents of these alpha lions likely still roam the plains of Tsavo.
Oh, did I mention that we found a lion sleeping on the road into our camp one of the nights we were there?
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Heroes
We had our first spear-throwing lesson the other day. After a couple throws, I really got the hang of it; between experience from volleyball, basketball, lacrosse, tennis, baseball, and generally just tossing anything around, it wasn't to difficult to get the feel for it. It felt kind of like serve-shooting a really heavy lacrosse stick in fact.
The spear is about six feet long. In the center there is a dark wood handle flanked on one side by a metal point and on the other by a long metal knife. You can throw with either end forward, though if you are really hunting or trying to kill something you would throw with the knife end forward. As I mentioned before, one good throw can pierce an elephant and kill it.
Daniel, our Swahili teacher and a Maasai, was instructing us, and in demonstration hurled his spear about 45 yards with a running start. Needless to say I'm not quite there yet, but I'm confident it will come. I'm thinking that practicing in Dunster courtyard might be good to keep my skills sharp throughout the year.
Anyway, the Maasai are really the most interesting people, from the spear-throwing abilities to their deep, deep knowledge about the land on which they live. Out forty plus tribal groups in Kenya, the Maasai are unique in that they are among the few who have refused to modernize, and largely retained their pastoralist, semi-nomadic lifestyle.
There is a lot about them that remind me of the Greek heroes that I studied this past semester. Even their type of dress for men is based off of the Greco-Roman toga (apparently this is because they immigrated from the Roman-occupied North Africa).
They divide themselves into different age classes: young boys, older boys, warriors (murrans), junior elders, and elders. (This is mostly in reference to the men, as once women marry they become the age set of their husband, regardless of what their age actually is.) The murran stage is one of the most interesting.
To be initiated into the murran stage (at ages of around 17-25), all of the boys come together for a big ceremony in which they are publicly circumcized. If they show any signs of pain during the circumcision, they are outcast by the community, though once the circumcision is over, they are allowed to react however they like.
Following circumcision (which nowadays can be performed in hospitals to ensure cleanliness of the operation), the murrans have about three months to recover, and then move away from their boma (homestead) to a special training camp with other murrans and senior elders. They live there for a few years training and basically form the standing army of the Maasai people. With more Maasai going to schools, they basically attend school like other Kenyans, and then when they are on break they will go join the camp of murrans (if they are in that stage) and continue with life as usual there, until it is time to go back to school.
During this period, they are never allowed to eat alone, or in the presence of women. They braid their hair and paint it with red dye. Currently, we are waiting for the time of circumcisions, so I haven't yet seen any murrans, but the ceremony is supposed to be occurring sometime within the month.
That is about all I've got for now. On Tuesday we leave to camp out at Tsavo National Park for a week, where I will not have internet access, so you will have to just wait for a bit to hear my next news brief. I have a feeling it will be an exciting one as we are not allowed to go to the bathrooms alone at the camp site after dark because of animal attacks, and apparently when you go you just see eyes everywhere looking at you. Students apparently get nightmares pretty commonly--not surprising if there are lions walking in between your tents when you're asleep.
The spear is about six feet long. In the center there is a dark wood handle flanked on one side by a metal point and on the other by a long metal knife. You can throw with either end forward, though if you are really hunting or trying to kill something you would throw with the knife end forward. As I mentioned before, one good throw can pierce an elephant and kill it.
Daniel, our Swahili teacher and a Maasai, was instructing us, and in demonstration hurled his spear about 45 yards with a running start. Needless to say I'm not quite there yet, but I'm confident it will come. I'm thinking that practicing in Dunster courtyard might be good to keep my skills sharp throughout the year.
Anyway, the Maasai are really the most interesting people, from the spear-throwing abilities to their deep, deep knowledge about the land on which they live. Out forty plus tribal groups in Kenya, the Maasai are unique in that they are among the few who have refused to modernize, and largely retained their pastoralist, semi-nomadic lifestyle.
There is a lot about them that remind me of the Greek heroes that I studied this past semester. Even their type of dress for men is based off of the Greco-Roman toga (apparently this is because they immigrated from the Roman-occupied North Africa).
They divide themselves into different age classes: young boys, older boys, warriors (murrans), junior elders, and elders. (This is mostly in reference to the men, as once women marry they become the age set of their husband, regardless of what their age actually is.) The murran stage is one of the most interesting.
To be initiated into the murran stage (at ages of around 17-25), all of the boys come together for a big ceremony in which they are publicly circumcized. If they show any signs of pain during the circumcision, they are outcast by the community, though once the circumcision is over, they are allowed to react however they like.
Following circumcision (which nowadays can be performed in hospitals to ensure cleanliness of the operation), the murrans have about three months to recover, and then move away from their boma (homestead) to a special training camp with other murrans and senior elders. They live there for a few years training and basically form the standing army of the Maasai people. With more Maasai going to schools, they basically attend school like other Kenyans, and then when they are on break they will go join the camp of murrans (if they are in that stage) and continue with life as usual there, until it is time to go back to school.
During this period, they are never allowed to eat alone, or in the presence of women. They braid their hair and paint it with red dye. Currently, we are waiting for the time of circumcisions, so I haven't yet seen any murrans, but the ceremony is supposed to be occurring sometime within the month.
That is about all I've got for now. On Tuesday we leave to camp out at Tsavo National Park for a week, where I will not have internet access, so you will have to just wait for a bit to hear my next news brief. I have a feeling it will be an exciting one as we are not allowed to go to the bathrooms alone at the camp site after dark because of animal attacks, and apparently when you go you just see eyes everywhere looking at you. Students apparently get nightmares pretty commonly--not surprising if there are lions walking in between your tents when you're asleep.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Tin Dancing
I've been selected to be an official, 24- hour on-call backup dancer for the musical group known as Tin!
Let me explain: two guys, Mike and Will, formed a musical percussion group titled Tin. It all started when we were waiting on line to wash our dishes after dinner, and Mike started up an impromptu rhythm chain with the tin plates on which we eat with our tin silverware.
From these origins, Tin was born. The band has continued with this musical tradition, and hits include "Kiswahili," "Spears," and "Wash All Day."
On Monday, after lots of hype, the group held their first performance after dinner had finished. They jammed in the shadows of tree, while the rest of us grooved to their sweet rhythms. I knew right then from the way their music spoke to me: I was born to dance for this band.
So I made inquiries with their manager (Jesse, also my banda-mate) about the possibility of auditioning for the role of back-up dancer for the band with Cybil, my partner in crime. After lots of urging, the band finally decided to hold auditions last night.
Cybil and I were VERY nervous. After all, this was Tin we were talking about, and the audition was pretty much do or die for us. I mean, auditions hardly ever come all the way to Kimana where we live. So we worked ourselves to the bone in preparation, and eventually, though still nervous, we felt ok about it.
And then it was time. We watched two more groups audition before us. The nerves were pretty serious, and we made sure to pray a lot before getting up there. But it was our time to shine in the study banda.
I explained that the inspiration for our dance troupe, The Fifth Leg (from the bush), came from the stimuli around us: animals, tourism, the bush itself. Equipped with our high 80s pony-tails and patterned headbands courtesy of Cybil, sunglasses, and bikini tops over our shirts (see the tourism influence?), we began the choreographed portion of the audition with cloths bought from the local markets. We then continued with a lot of mechanical spirit fingers and robotic-animal moves, finishing with a bang with the SNL Spartans-through-the-legs move. It was fierce.
For the improv section of the audition, Tin actually played! To make the setting more realistic of their actual performance venue, they turned off the overhead lights in the study banda and lit the stage area with the strobe headlamp light. The band played "Wash all day," and we delighted with some interpretive washing moves, the wave, and some swing kicks, making sure to use all levels.
Then it was done, and it was just a waiting game. Tonight after dinner, the band posted the audition results, and I admit I couldn't bring myself to look at it at first. But then when Mike and Will started making serious positive hints (like Will telling me "congratulations"), I figured things probably went pretty well.
And they did! We made the official back-up dancer position! It's a pretty grueling touring schedule from now on, but I think I'm up for the challenge. I can't wait for the future as an official back-up dancer for the triple dung-platinum recording artists, Tin!
(Oh, and in case you're wondering, we have the entire audition on video.)
Let me explain: two guys, Mike and Will, formed a musical percussion group titled Tin. It all started when we were waiting on line to wash our dishes after dinner, and Mike started up an impromptu rhythm chain with the tin plates on which we eat with our tin silverware.
From these origins, Tin was born. The band has continued with this musical tradition, and hits include "Kiswahili," "Spears," and "Wash All Day."
On Monday, after lots of hype, the group held their first performance after dinner had finished. They jammed in the shadows of tree, while the rest of us grooved to their sweet rhythms. I knew right then from the way their music spoke to me: I was born to dance for this band.
So I made inquiries with their manager (Jesse, also my banda-mate) about the possibility of auditioning for the role of back-up dancer for the band with Cybil, my partner in crime. After lots of urging, the band finally decided to hold auditions last night.
Cybil and I were VERY nervous. After all, this was Tin we were talking about, and the audition was pretty much do or die for us. I mean, auditions hardly ever come all the way to Kimana where we live. So we worked ourselves to the bone in preparation, and eventually, though still nervous, we felt ok about it.
And then it was time. We watched two more groups audition before us. The nerves were pretty serious, and we made sure to pray a lot before getting up there. But it was our time to shine in the study banda.
I explained that the inspiration for our dance troupe, The Fifth Leg (from the bush), came from the stimuli around us: animals, tourism, the bush itself. Equipped with our high 80s pony-tails and patterned headbands courtesy of Cybil, sunglasses, and bikini tops over our shirts (see the tourism influence?), we began the choreographed portion of the audition with cloths bought from the local markets. We then continued with a lot of mechanical spirit fingers and robotic-animal moves, finishing with a bang with the SNL Spartans-through-the-legs move. It was fierce.
For the improv section of the audition, Tin actually played! To make the setting more realistic of their actual performance venue, they turned off the overhead lights in the study banda and lit the stage area with the strobe headlamp light. The band played "Wash all day," and we delighted with some interpretive washing moves, the wave, and some swing kicks, making sure to use all levels.
Then it was done, and it was just a waiting game. Tonight after dinner, the band posted the audition results, and I admit I couldn't bring myself to look at it at first. But then when Mike and Will started making serious positive hints (like Will telling me "congratulations"), I figured things probably went pretty well.
And they did! We made the official back-up dancer position! It's a pretty grueling touring schedule from now on, but I think I'm up for the challenge. I can't wait for the future as an official back-up dancer for the triple dung-platinum recording artists, Tin!
(Oh, and in case you're wondering, we have the entire audition on video.)
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Wazungu, give me sweets
I figure that it's about time to talk about some of the people that I've encountered here, since they have been as integral to my experience in Africa as the wildlife and landscapes.
Firstly, I've had a lot of great opportunities to work on my princess wave. Whenever we drive anywhere in our Cruisers, people always stop and stare. But the reaction of children is by far the best; put simply, they love us. They would just stop and wave at us all day. And some get so excited that they run after our cars as fast as their little legs will carry them. And we just wave and wave and wave.
I feel that I have to make a confession here: I'd say that at least half of the time, these kids run after us yelling two main things: "give me sweets" or "give me money" with a bit of "hello, how are you?" and just some plain old whooping at the top of their lungs. We basically either ignore those pleas, or just respond to them "hakuna sweets," which means "there are no sweets." After three weeks here, it still hasn't gotten old.
When we're on the ground in towns or villages, we tend to create a similar sort of stir. In our local village, the mamas (Maasai women) start swarming our cars before we've even stopped moving, preparing to bombard us with sales pitches for their jewelry. On market days, they literally will not leave us alone, following us around wherever we go.
The kids will follow us around too. Without the distance of the car between us any longer, they are slightly more shy, although they warm up pretty quickly. Since I really like playing with them, I'll have foot races against them or make up hand games to play or show them how to pound and explode it. It's really fun to play with kids that are so interested in you.
One day, we drove to a school outside of Loitokitok town to help a local hospital group serve the community. We weighed babies, gave out vitamins and deworming mediation, and administered vaccinations. We were arrived, before we had even gotten out of our cars, we heard a group of mamas walking out way and singing together. As they sang, we went through their long receiving line, shaking each of their hands, and the hands of the children around them. They led us singing into the schoolyard.
When they had finished singing, they lined up all of the kids (there must have been at least 70 of them, but maybe more than 100) to sing to us too, though I think that yelling is a more appropriate description of their serenade. When they had finished, it was expected that we sing something for them (which was not surprising since when we visited a Maasai boma or homestead, pretty much the same thing had happened by way of greeting). So we treated them to a bit of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," "Ain't No Mountain High," the Hokey Pokey (which was a HUGE hit, probably because we did the dance moves to it too), and finally the Macarena.
That last one was my idea, because I thought we could get the kids to do it with us. They didn't really get that they were supposed to copy us, so I ventured up to their mass and took one of their hands in mine and did it for her. Then all of the sudden I had a crowd swarming around me, reaching their hands towards me, asking me to show them next. I finally got them all doing it, and some of my fellow American students followed my lead and got the other kids to do it too.
I think that most of the kinds just really liked touching me because I'm American and look different from them. So I let them. I went through the crowd and tried to offer my hands to as many as possible. If I stopped and sat, some were so bold as to touch my hair. (They are really fascinated by hair here, as pretty much everyone, men, women, and children, shave their heads.) I admit that I always thought it was weird watching politicians wade through crowds offering their hands out to everyone, but when I was there, I could just tell that it would mean so much to these kids, that I wanted to give some of myself to them.
On the other side of things, yesterday we went out into the field to conduct interviews of the local community about farming and agriculture, and one little kid who had never seen white people (wazungu) before started bawling at the sight of us.
There is so much more to write about the people whom I've encountered (particularly about the Maasai and their beliefs and traditions), but I feel I have already written a lot for now. I will leave you with the knowledge that I received my Maasai spear today, which if thrown properly will kill an elephant, giraffe, lion, etc. with one blow. Lessons are pending.
Firstly, I've had a lot of great opportunities to work on my princess wave. Whenever we drive anywhere in our Cruisers, people always stop and stare. But the reaction of children is by far the best; put simply, they love us. They would just stop and wave at us all day. And some get so excited that they run after our cars as fast as their little legs will carry them. And we just wave and wave and wave.
I feel that I have to make a confession here: I'd say that at least half of the time, these kids run after us yelling two main things: "give me sweets" or "give me money" with a bit of "hello, how are you?" and just some plain old whooping at the top of their lungs. We basically either ignore those pleas, or just respond to them "hakuna sweets," which means "there are no sweets." After three weeks here, it still hasn't gotten old.
When we're on the ground in towns or villages, we tend to create a similar sort of stir. In our local village, the mamas (Maasai women) start swarming our cars before we've even stopped moving, preparing to bombard us with sales pitches for their jewelry. On market days, they literally will not leave us alone, following us around wherever we go.
The kids will follow us around too. Without the distance of the car between us any longer, they are slightly more shy, although they warm up pretty quickly. Since I really like playing with them, I'll have foot races against them or make up hand games to play or show them how to pound and explode it. It's really fun to play with kids that are so interested in you.
One day, we drove to a school outside of Loitokitok town to help a local hospital group serve the community. We weighed babies, gave out vitamins and deworming mediation, and administered vaccinations. We were arrived, before we had even gotten out of our cars, we heard a group of mamas walking out way and singing together. As they sang, we went through their long receiving line, shaking each of their hands, and the hands of the children around them. They led us singing into the schoolyard.
When they had finished singing, they lined up all of the kids (there must have been at least 70 of them, but maybe more than 100) to sing to us too, though I think that yelling is a more appropriate description of their serenade. When they had finished, it was expected that we sing something for them (which was not surprising since when we visited a Maasai boma or homestead, pretty much the same thing had happened by way of greeting). So we treated them to a bit of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," "Ain't No Mountain High," the Hokey Pokey (which was a HUGE hit, probably because we did the dance moves to it too), and finally the Macarena.
That last one was my idea, because I thought we could get the kids to do it with us. They didn't really get that they were supposed to copy us, so I ventured up to their mass and took one of their hands in mine and did it for her. Then all of the sudden I had a crowd swarming around me, reaching their hands towards me, asking me to show them next. I finally got them all doing it, and some of my fellow American students followed my lead and got the other kids to do it too.
I think that most of the kinds just really liked touching me because I'm American and look different from them. So I let them. I went through the crowd and tried to offer my hands to as many as possible. If I stopped and sat, some were so bold as to touch my hair. (They are really fascinated by hair here, as pretty much everyone, men, women, and children, shave their heads.) I admit that I always thought it was weird watching politicians wade through crowds offering their hands out to everyone, but when I was there, I could just tell that it would mean so much to these kids, that I wanted to give some of myself to them.
On the other side of things, yesterday we went out into the field to conduct interviews of the local community about farming and agriculture, and one little kid who had never seen white people (wazungu) before started bawling at the sight of us.
There is so much more to write about the people whom I've encountered (particularly about the Maasai and their beliefs and traditions), but I feel I have already written a lot for now. I will leave you with the knowledge that I received my Maasai spear today, which if thrown properly will kill an elephant, giraffe, lion, etc. with one blow. Lessons are pending.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Killing for class and eating
I warn everyone reading this that I'm about to be fairly graphic, so if you don't want to hear about it, don't keep reading.
We just killed a goat a few hours ago. I saw the life of a goat taken as its legs were tied up, as two men held it down, as a third sawed at its throat with a knife. I saw the red blood sit poetically splattered on green leaves and grass. I heard one faint bleat, watched it struggle, and slowly stop moving. I saw after moments of stillness, its legs begin to curl and stretch, and the body to convulse, to shake--a reaction of the nervous system. When it stopped moving, we began to cut.
We were killing this goat mainly so that we could examine the contents of its stomach, in order to truly understand what rumination was, how it worked, and why it has proven to be such a successful adaptation for grazers. We were killing this goat, examining the contents of its body, and then we were going to eat it.
The skinning began. The askaris (guards of our camp, they are basically super-Maasai) moved about deftly with their knives, starting at joints on the legs and under the shoulders. They gently tapped along the skin membranes to separate the layer of fur from the coveted innards. One by one, students moved forward to try their hand at skinning.
Would I try? I didn't want to touch the goat, and I had had difficulty watching the killing itself as well as the skinning, but I wanted to be able to say that I had done it. All in.
I tried my hand at it. Pulling the already dislocated skin away from the meat with one hand, I tapped at the seams of pelt and tissue with the knife, carefully bending my wrist repeatedly like the nodding of a head. I worked around the stomach, peeling the skin closer towards the spine, and along a leg. The white, thin connective tissue easily gave way to my knife, while the pinkish-yellow muscle required a more persuasive force.
Later, I held a cut-off hoof. It was still very warm, and I couldn't bear to hold it. I tried to get rid of it as quickly as possible, eventually just throwing it on the ground.
I watched as the askaris cut open the abdomen, blood pooled inside, as they removed the organs. the stomach expanded and expanded. The intestines spilled out. The smell. I forced myself to watch.
They passed around the heart and lungs. I touched them, did not hold them, got blood on my hands. I held the liver, which was still warm, but not covered in blood. I watched them go through and open the four chambers of the stomach, seeing and understanding all that we had studied about rumination.
And then, we went to the fire pit and roasted the pieces. The guys in the group ate the testicles (the Maasai believe it gives them strength); the females were not allowed to do so. I do not like the taste of goat, though I definitely prefer the liver to the regular muscle-meat.
I had never seen a life taken from so close up before. I had never so directly seen where my meat comes from before. I'm glad that I made myself watch, touch, and taste.
We just killed a goat a few hours ago. I saw the life of a goat taken as its legs were tied up, as two men held it down, as a third sawed at its throat with a knife. I saw the red blood sit poetically splattered on green leaves and grass. I heard one faint bleat, watched it struggle, and slowly stop moving. I saw after moments of stillness, its legs begin to curl and stretch, and the body to convulse, to shake--a reaction of the nervous system. When it stopped moving, we began to cut.
We were killing this goat mainly so that we could examine the contents of its stomach, in order to truly understand what rumination was, how it worked, and why it has proven to be such a successful adaptation for grazers. We were killing this goat, examining the contents of its body, and then we were going to eat it.
The skinning began. The askaris (guards of our camp, they are basically super-Maasai) moved about deftly with their knives, starting at joints on the legs and under the shoulders. They gently tapped along the skin membranes to separate the layer of fur from the coveted innards. One by one, students moved forward to try their hand at skinning.
Would I try? I didn't want to touch the goat, and I had had difficulty watching the killing itself as well as the skinning, but I wanted to be able to say that I had done it. All in.
I tried my hand at it. Pulling the already dislocated skin away from the meat with one hand, I tapped at the seams of pelt and tissue with the knife, carefully bending my wrist repeatedly like the nodding of a head. I worked around the stomach, peeling the skin closer towards the spine, and along a leg. The white, thin connective tissue easily gave way to my knife, while the pinkish-yellow muscle required a more persuasive force.
Later, I held a cut-off hoof. It was still very warm, and I couldn't bear to hold it. I tried to get rid of it as quickly as possible, eventually just throwing it on the ground.
I watched as the askaris cut open the abdomen, blood pooled inside, as they removed the organs. the stomach expanded and expanded. The intestines spilled out. The smell. I forced myself to watch.
They passed around the heart and lungs. I touched them, did not hold them, got blood on my hands. I held the liver, which was still warm, but not covered in blood. I watched them go through and open the four chambers of the stomach, seeing and understanding all that we had studied about rumination.
And then, we went to the fire pit and roasted the pieces. The guys in the group ate the testicles (the Maasai believe it gives them strength); the females were not allowed to do so. I do not like the taste of goat, though I definitely prefer the liver to the regular muscle-meat.
I had never seen a life taken from so close up before. I had never so directly seen where my meat comes from before. I'm glad that I made myself watch, touch, and taste.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
I'm in love
Friday was just another normal day of class. We got up, went on a nature walk for Wildlife Ecology class, had lunch, and then went on safari. Ain't no thing like a chicken wing.
At the gate of Amboseli National Park, we opened up the roof windows of our Land Cruisers (one for each of the three back rows), kicked off our shoes, and stood up on our seats, now ready with our binoculars, cameras, notebooks, and field guides for some animal observation.
We saw ostriches, impala, wildebeest, gazelle (Thomson's and Grant's), elephants, an oryx, wart hogs (they look exactly like Pumba from The Lion King, which, incidentally, means wart hog), hyenas, giraffe, buffalo, zebras, hippos, and lions, among others. I got a bruise on my life side from where I was leaning against the opening of the roof, but that didn't matter--we were zooming around wide open spaces.
Having grown up in New York City surrounded by tall buildings, what struck me most was all of that wide open space and blue, blue sky. We zoomed through the roads, wind whipping through the planes, stirring up my hair into awful knots and coating it in dust. Grasslands, barelands, wetlands, wooded lands, dry lands, swamplands, we passed through it all. Freedom in the watchful eye of Mt. Kilimanjaro.
And there were the animals. If I thought that we saw a lot of ostrich and wildebeest and zebra close to the entrance of the park, that was nothing to the immense volume of animals we saw at the swamps (which were really just more like watering holes) that are the park's lifeline. Around the water were grazing literally thousands of animals, mixed in peacefully together while the water glittered blue and white in the hot sun. A Maasai herded his sheep and goats (or shoats as they're called here) through the mass of wild animals, while elephants and hippos reposed deep in the waters.
It was the most amazing feeling. And truthfully, my mind kept casting itself back to The Lion King, which really was my only reference point for anything on this scale. I didn't need my iPod, "The Circle of Life" kept playing itself through my head. Something about that song really does capture the rhythm of the life out there.
Wonderful.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Danger, danger! High voltage.
Transcript of my notes from Part II of our safety lecture from the Student Affairs Manager about the danger of animals here in Kenya. Since the electric fence that surrounds our camp and the lands around it is no longer functional because people could not afford to pay for it, we have to look out for lots of animals not only in the field and camping out, but literally every day and night at KBC. Vigilance is the key.
Crocodiles.
Can launch selves nine feet out of the water
Buffalo.
Most dangerous. Pure muscle, big. Stupid. Try to avoid completely. Like to hide in bushes. Very aggressive.
Hippos.
Biggest killer of tourists in East Africa. Big, but fast for their small legs. Very mean. Ok when they’re in the water, very dangerous when you’re on land, especially if you’re between them and the water (their comfort zone).
Lions and predators.
Look them straight in the eye, stare them down. Slowly back away. When at a safe distance, turn and run like hell. Pretend like you’re bigger and more aggressive until you run.
Elephants.
Like buffalos, most aggressive ones are lone males, and mothers with babies. Don’t climb a tree, they can knock them down. Apparently run in zigzag, which confuses them. Can be very aggressive, particularly in parks.
Baboons and Monkeys.
In tourist sites they are very aggressive. They will take your Tupperware, open it, and eat it. In general will take your food if you hold it out. Best to just give it to them if they go for it. Close car openings because they will take it and leave their feces. Nothing you can do, don’t try to scare them off. They will scratch, bit, and give diseases.
Rhinos.
Run like hell.
Snakes. Askaris (guards) have to kill venomous snakes in student areas because they are very territorial, and they will come back. Have found Black Mambas at the Center. Back away from the snakes, don’t go running after them, don’t put face near them (apparently a lot of students have put themselves into serious danger by doing this). Baby snakes can be more dangerous because they’re still learning how to control their venom. Best thing to do if bitten is to fly you to Nairobi, but it takes 45 min to drive to the airstrip, then 1-2 hours flying, and some venom will kill you in 45 minutes.
Black Mamba.
Can strike from one yard away. Most dangerous if backed into tight corners. Not necessarily black. Easily confused with Brown House snake.
Egyptian Cobra.
Can spit, if it goes into your eyes it can cause you to go blind. Some say best treatment for spit on eyes in putting urine on eyes, but they don’t recommend it. Should just wash eyes with water.
Puff Adder.
Might not react to first person to come across it, but can get annoyed and attack next person.
If bitten: most of the time, venom is not released. Do not elevate the bitten limb. Apply pressure to limb, above and below bite area but not to tourniquet.
Avoidance: be aware of where you’re walking. Stick to paths at night. Wear closed-toed shores and long pants. Use flashlight. Leave tent and banda doors closed.
Other biting/stinging critters:
Scorpions.
Most not deathly, but might make you wish you’re dead from pain of bit.
Hairy caterpillars.
Hairs can get stuck in your skin.
Safari Ants.
Bites are painful. Don’t stand on anthills, they will crawl up your legs.
Vegetation.
Everything is pointy or thorny. Some (Acacia thorns) have poisons; wash and cover as response to puncture wounds.
________
Well that was about it. Unless you were wondering what Part I of this lecture was about. In case you are curious, it was all of the diseases we can get, from African Sleeping Sickness to Yellow Fever to Malaria--well, you get the picture.
Crocodiles.
Can launch selves nine feet out of the water
Buffalo.
Most dangerous. Pure muscle, big. Stupid. Try to avoid completely. Like to hide in bushes. Very aggressive.
Hippos.
Biggest killer of tourists in East Africa. Big, but fast for their small legs. Very mean. Ok when they’re in the water, very dangerous when you’re on land, especially if you’re between them and the water (their comfort zone).
Lions and predators.
Look them straight in the eye, stare them down. Slowly back away. When at a safe distance, turn and run like hell. Pretend like you’re bigger and more aggressive until you run.
Elephants.
Like buffalos, most aggressive ones are lone males, and mothers with babies. Don’t climb a tree, they can knock them down. Apparently run in zigzag, which confuses them. Can be very aggressive, particularly in parks.
Baboons and Monkeys.
In tourist sites they are very aggressive. They will take your Tupperware, open it, and eat it. In general will take your food if you hold it out. Best to just give it to them if they go for it. Close car openings because they will take it and leave their feces. Nothing you can do, don’t try to scare them off. They will scratch, bit, and give diseases.
Rhinos.
Run like hell.
Snakes. Askaris (guards) have to kill venomous snakes in student areas because they are very territorial, and they will come back. Have found Black Mambas at the Center. Back away from the snakes, don’t go running after them, don’t put face near them (apparently a lot of students have put themselves into serious danger by doing this). Baby snakes can be more dangerous because they’re still learning how to control their venom. Best thing to do if bitten is to fly you to Nairobi, but it takes 45 min to drive to the airstrip, then 1-2 hours flying, and some venom will kill you in 45 minutes.
Black Mamba.
Can strike from one yard away. Most dangerous if backed into tight corners. Not necessarily black. Easily confused with Brown House snake.
Egyptian Cobra.
Can spit, if it goes into your eyes it can cause you to go blind. Some say best treatment for spit on eyes in putting urine on eyes, but they don’t recommend it. Should just wash eyes with water.
Puff Adder.
Might not react to first person to come across it, but can get annoyed and attack next person.
If bitten: most of the time, venom is not released. Do not elevate the bitten limb. Apply pressure to limb, above and below bite area but not to tourniquet.
Avoidance: be aware of where you’re walking. Stick to paths at night. Wear closed-toed shores and long pants. Use flashlight. Leave tent and banda doors closed.
Other biting/stinging critters:
Scorpions.
Most not deathly, but might make you wish you’re dead from pain of bit.
Hairy caterpillars.
Hairs can get stuck in your skin.
Safari Ants.
Bites are painful. Don’t stand on anthills, they will crawl up your legs.
Vegetation.
Everything is pointy or thorny. Some (Acacia thorns) have poisons; wash and cover as response to puncture wounds.
________
Well that was about it. Unless you were wondering what Part I of this lecture was about. In case you are curious, it was all of the diseases we can get, from African Sleeping Sickness to Yellow Fever to Malaria--well, you get the picture.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Jambo
I'm here. It took forever (43 hours to be exact), but I'm here. Honestly there is too much to write--I feel like a computer that's been overloaded with data--but I will try to give some highlights.During my 12-hour layover in Heathrow, I went in to London. After a mini sightseeing self-guided tour, I went to meet Caroline (who is studying at Oxford this semester) for lunch. We ate in Notting Hill, and it was a fantastic last little jaunt in "civilization," complete with an amble along Portobello Road, where we wandered into the most amazing antique shops I have ever seen; my favorite of them was, of course, the one with the pith helmets and binoculars and trunks and brown riding boots, or, in other words, the one with all of the safari gear.
Well, about fifteen hours later, I found myself in Kenya. At first glance, the country seemed really similar to the developing countries that I've been to in Central America, but then, all of the sudden, this funny thing started to happen. I started seeing animals. And I'm not talking about the cows and goats which, though certainly slightly funny looking, are also found in Latin America. Visible from the Kenyan highway (which is by no means as big or well-groomed as the highways traversed by Jack Kerouac and the rest of us in the U.S.), were animals. Our heavy-duty Land Cruiser (definitely not the type of SUV you see in the states; these ones seat ten, and have three viewing roof windows for safaris, no air conditioning, and manually-opened windows), which had been completely devoid of chatter due to the utter exhaustion of its inhabitants, suddenly, at the beck of one voice calling out "giraffes" became a hub of oohs and ahhs, inquiry and delight.
And it didn't end with that one sighting. During the rest of the 6-hour drive from Nairobi to our camp in the foothills of Kilimanjaro (Kilimanjaro Bush Camp or KBC), we saw at least a hundred zebra, all in different packs, probably about ten giraffes, two wildebeest, and one ostrich. From the road. Not in the middle of a national park. From the road. It was unbelievable. So unbelievable, in fact, that when I awoke from a dream about home during a nap in the car, I was convinced that the self in that Land Cruiser was the dreamer--I just couldn't understand where I was, or what was going on.
Finally, I will share one last little tidbit. When I woke up this morning at 6:30am under the cover of my mosquito net, I girded myself to take a shower (which I desperately needed) in the cold water of the cool morning. Having searched about our dark banda (or hut), and having located all of my shower materials, I walked out the door into the pale light of the new day, the sun visible yet behind the trees to the east. And as I turned right and walked up the path to the bathrooms, I saw it: Kilimanjaro.
Kilimanjaro in all its glory, small white snow caps clearly visible from my little location in the south of Kenya. I was looking right at it, amidst the songs of birds, and chattering of bugs, my first morning in what was increasingly appearing to me to be a magical country to my now rested self. The snows of Kilimanjaro, cresting the pale brown/grey silhouette of the mountain, standing above the trees in front of me. Majestic.
Now I hope I haven't led you to believe its been all animals and play. The extreme heat of the afternoon today was draining, I got prickly plants stuck in the bottom of my feet, we only have cold showers, and I'm pretty sure I found mice poop in the bed next to mine (which is not occupied by a person but rather my stuff). But those moments are fleeting, and I know that tomorrow I will awake to Kilimanjaro again, and as Robert Frost wrote, that has made all the difference.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Help!
I'm supposed to leave my house in fifteen minutes and am decidedly not ready. I thought I had everything under pretty good control--after all, I was fitting ALL of my stuff in two medium-sized suitcases--when my mom checked the airline regulations and we discovered that no single bag can weigh more than 70 pounds. And guess what? One of them was 74.1 lbs. I would go on but as you can imagine I mostly need to get out of my house, and not be writing this update.
See you next from across the pond and just south of the equator!
See you next from across the pond and just south of the equator!
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
A Poem
I was poking around the Internet last night, and came across this poem on the website for Blixen's Africa safari website (Karen Blixen, aka Isak Dinesen, wrote Out of Africa on which the Sydney Pollack film is based).
"Africa" by Emily Dibb
When you've acquired a taste for dust,
The scent of our first rain,
You're hooked for life on Africa
And you'll not be right again
Till you can watch the setting moon
And hear the jackals bark
And know that they're around you,
Waiting in the dark.
When you long to see the Elephants,
Or to hear the coucal's song,
When the moonrise sets you blood on fire,
You've been away too long.
It's time to cut the traces loose
And let you're heart go free
Beyond that far horizon,
Where your spirit yearns to be.
http://www.blixensafrica.com/index.html
The poem reminds me a lot of the John Masefield poem, "I must go down to the sea again" for its romanticization of life in Africa just as Masefield romanticizes life at sea. The Masefield poem, while certainly beautiful, I quickly learned was not what being at sea was all about: there was no mention of the smells of a boat, the pains of sea sickness, the glories of getting on hand and knee and scrubbing each little corner below decks with a toothbrush.
So, though I myself dream of and imagine being met with those beautiful images of Dibb's poem, I still wonder what Africa will really be like. I know that Timi doesn't like the oppressive heat, and made the great suggestion that I bring some trash novels with me since I won't have the energy to read anything too intellectual in such hot conditions. But right now, I still don't think anything can be worse than trying to stand watch for four hours at night when you've been up since 5am, spent most of the day lying on the deck trying to fight the nausea, have thrown up twice, have taken promethazine which is putting you to sleep, and are about to throw up again. But that's just my opinion.
"Africa" by Emily Dibb
When you've acquired a taste for dust,
The scent of our first rain,
You're hooked for life on Africa
And you'll not be right again
Till you can watch the setting moon
And hear the jackals bark
And know that they're around you,
Waiting in the dark.
When you long to see the Elephants,
Or to hear the coucal's song,
When the moonrise sets you blood on fire,
You've been away too long.
It's time to cut the traces loose
And let you're heart go free
Beyond that far horizon,
Where your spirit yearns to be.
http://www.blixensafrica.com/index.html
The poem reminds me a lot of the John Masefield poem, "I must go down to the sea again" for its romanticization of life in Africa just as Masefield romanticizes life at sea. The Masefield poem, while certainly beautiful, I quickly learned was not what being at sea was all about: there was no mention of the smells of a boat, the pains of sea sickness, the glories of getting on hand and knee and scrubbing each little corner below decks with a toothbrush.
So, though I myself dream of and imagine being met with those beautiful images of Dibb's poem, I still wonder what Africa will really be like. I know that Timi doesn't like the oppressive heat, and made the great suggestion that I bring some trash novels with me since I won't have the energy to read anything too intellectual in such hot conditions. But right now, I still don't think anything can be worse than trying to stand watch for four hours at night when you've been up since 5am, spent most of the day lying on the deck trying to fight the nausea, have thrown up twice, have taken promethazine which is putting you to sleep, and are about to throw up again. But that's just my opinion.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Hat? Check
I'm fired up and ready to go: I've got my safari hat. I was told at the store that it is in the Hemingway style, especially if you button up one side of it. Anyway, now that I've got my official safari gear, the rest of packing everything I will need for the next four months should be easy, right? I mean, let's face it, theoretically I could just head to Kenya with that hat and a bunch of Barack Obama paraphernalia with which to barter and be set for the entire time.
My main goal for this week is not to fall back on my typical practice. For example, last summer when I had to pack for a month-long voyage from Hawaii to San Francisco I spent the morning of my flight to Hawaii madly throwing things into my suitcases with the help of three other people. Like this trip to Kenya, I had to bring everything I needed for that month on the ship, because obviously I couldn't run to the store in the middle of the Pacific to pick up some toothpaste. But the challenge for the voyage was also to minimize what I was bringing because all of my personal items went into my bunk with me, as space is limited on a boat. By contrast, now I am packing for four months, and I'm pretty sure I could fill up an entire suitcase with toiletries, bug spray, and sun screen alone. Anyway that morning last June, I was convinced that I would miss my plane, and though I did somehow manage to make it, needless to say it was not a fun experience. So now, with just under a week left until I'm schedule to travel, my goal is to do everything in a calm and orderly manner. We'll see how that goes.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)