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!