Ms. Wonson Goes to Kenya!

Kenya watching the U.S. election

2008-11-04T12:07:00.002-05:00

I haven't found much to write about recently, so my guess is that no one is reading this blog these days, but just in case, I thought I'd make a quick comment about today's election. According to the Today show, many Kenyans are watching today's election in the U.S. closely, because Barack Obama has Kenyan roots. The Today show's report from the village where one of Obama's grandmothers lives can be seen after a report from Iraq in the video below.

Globe Trekker goes to Samburu!

2008-05-14T20:09:00.002-04:00

In case any of my former students are still checking in, I had to share my surprise as I watched a show that they will (I hope) remember. Glober Trekker was a show that I used frequently in my classes, and I still enjoy it now that I am no longer teaching. Imagine my surprise when tonight's episode in Kenya and Niger focused on the Samburu people! I am so excited to see a different look at the region and people I so enjoyed when I visited Kenya with Earthwatch. I'm pretty sure I even recognized one green area in the middle of a laga!

The show also visited Lewa Downs, where some of the Earthwatch expeditions in Kenya work.

Earthwatch resuming projects in Kenya

2008-03-11T14:26:00.003-04:00

I was so happy to receive an email from Earthwatch late last week announcing that the projects in Kenya, which had been suspended due to election-related violence, will be resumed beginning April 1. It's good to know that important environmental research in Samburu and other parts of Kenya will continue. I just wish I could get back there!

Oprah gives students a way to help kids in developing countries

2008-01-21T16:10:00.001-05:00

I'm home today because of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day holiday, and I'm watching Oprah, which I rarely have a chance to do.

I just learned about Oprah's O Ambassador's programs and wanted to pass on the word in case anyone is interested. It makes me wish that I were still teaching so that I could get a program going!

You can form an Ambassador's club at your school. Clubs explore the 4 Millennium Development Goals from the UN (poverty, education, health, and sustainable development) and raise money that will go to a specific area of the developing world.

Why do I care? Well, the ad for this program that came on a few minutes ago showed a group of students raising money to build a school in Kenya. East Africa is one of the areas that is meant to be helped by the O Ambassadors program, and so I'd like to spread the word and encourage people to get involved.

If you are a teacher, parent, or student interested in the program, check out the website.

Not Kenya-related, but pretty cool

2008-01-17T09:00:00.000-05:00

Yes, I know this is a blog about Kenya. However, since I related similar news stories about Madagascar to my students in the past, I just have share, on the off-chance that any of them are still out there reading this.

Botanists have discovered a previously-unknown tree species living in Madagascar. The palm tree flowers only once after 100 years, and the effort of flowering weakens the tree to the point that it dies off within months.

No one is sure how this species has been missed until now, or even how it got to Madagascar. It closely resembles a palm-tree species found more than 3,700 miles away in Asia. Botanists therefore theorize that the tree has been living unnoticed on the island since Madagascar split from the Indian subcontinent 80 million years ago.

Ever since my time in Madagascar with the Peace Corps, I have found it fascinating that new plants and animals are still being discovered on the big red island.

To read more about this latest discovery, click here.

Election-related violence in Kenya

2008-01-01T16:07:00.000-05:00

I was saddened today to read about the election-related violence currently plaguing Kenya. Disputed election results have resulted in riots and deaths in Nairobi and other Kenyan towns. I hope that the friends I made during my Earthwatch expedition are safe.

For more information about the violence, click here to read an article from today's LA Times.

Malnutrition among the Samburu

2007-07-01T08:34:00.000-04:00

The video below explains the results of a UNICEF study about malnutrition among the Samburu. As drought persists in the region, it becomes increasingly difficult for Samburu families to get enough food. Women and children, in particular, are at risk. Watch the video for further details.

A zorse?!

2007-06-29T11:58:00.000-04:00

I saw the craziest thing on the news this morning...a zorse! It's a cross between a zebra and a horse. Zorses result from zebra stallions being bred to horse mares. The one I saw on the news this morning, from a safari park in Germany, has stripes in some parts of its coat and pure white in others. From a quick search of the internet, however, it seems like in most cases the zorse gets the coat color of its mother and the zebra stripes of its father all over. There's even an International Zebra-Zorse-Zonkey Association!

And yes, that's right. It's not just zorses that can be bred. There are zonkeys (cross between a zebra and a donkey) and hebras (cross between a zebra mare and horse stallion).

I wonder what they'd make of a zorse in Samburu?!

Conservation success!

2007-06-28T14:14:00.000-04:00

This isn't Kenya-related, but I just wanted to take a moment to recognize the success of conservation efforts here in the US to save the bald eagle. The bald eagle was nearly wiped out completely by 1970, but today it was taken of the endangered species list. What a comeback! The species went from having only 417 breeding pairs in 1963 to 9,789 breeding pairs today.

Some conservationists worry about delisting the species because bald eagle habitats will no longer be protected. If landowners begin developing land where bald eagles live, this could threaten the species again. Hopefully the protection provided by the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act will be enough to keep the symbol of our country safe!

You can read more about the bald eagle's delisting and see pictures and videos of the birds on CNN.com.

Ms. Dolan Goes to Argentina!

2007-06-20T21:20:00.000-04:00

One of my good friends has the chance to go on her own Earthwatch adventure this summer! I'm so excited for her. Amy Dolan, a science teacher at Hanover Middle School, is going to travel to Argentina next month on an Earthwatch Education Fellowship. She'll be helping researchers on an expedition called Argentina's Mysterious Cats. She will travel with 5 other volunteers to Laguna Chasico Provincial Park to help researchers study four wild cats: the pampas cat, the jaguarundi, the Geoffrey's cat, and the puma. On the expedition, Amy will get to help track, examine, collar, and track these cats. She will be staying in cabins at Los Alamos farm; unlike my expedition, they won't have a staff to cook and do laundry for them, but will have to share those tasks with the researchers. She might get the chance to do some horseback riding on her day off, and she'll be able to try the beef for which Argentina is famous.

If you're interested in following Amy's experiences in Argentina, you can check out her website.

It was almost a year ago that I left for my own Earthwatch expedition, so I know what this time is like for Amy. I can't wait to hear all about her adventure...and to see what she brings me back as a souvenir!

Malaria in Africa and around the world

2007-04-25T20:38:00.000-04:00

Today, April 25, has been declared Malaria Awareness Day in the United States. This day has been observed as Africa Malaria Day since 2000. The day is intended to create an awareness of malaria and highlight opportunities in the fight against this disease.

Some of you may remember that when I went to Kenya, I took a pill daily to help protect me from malaria. Those who have known me longer may remember that I took a weekly pill when I went to Madagascar for the same purpose. I was lucky to be able to have that simple way to prevent this deadly disease; the anti-malaria pills kill the larvae of the malaria-causing parasite before it can cause you harm. The pills don't keep the mosquitoes from biting you and infecting you, but they can prevent you from getting sick.

Unfortunately, people in developing countries may not have access to such medication. Malaria is the leading cause of death in African children under the age of 5. The disease kills more than one million people each year in Africa. Halting malaria and other diseases is one of the United Nations' Millennium Goals.

In 2005, President Bush began a 5-year effort to encourage America's private sector (businesses) to assist the government in fighting malaria and cutting the disease's mortality rate in half in target nations. Kenya and Madagascar, the African countries closest to my heart, are part of this program, along with Angola, Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Senegal, Benin, Ethiopia, Ghana, Liberia, Mali, and Zambia. About 10% of the population of Zambia will receive bed nets (mosquito nets), and another 500,000 nets will be distributed in Uganda, meaning that about half of the households there will have a net. Also, as part of a campaign that includes polio vaccines, nets will be distributed to nearly 1.4 million children under the age of 5. After 2 years, more than 11 million people are said to have benefited from this program.

Some of you may be aware of all of this through American Idol's "Idol Gives Back" show, in which Malaria Awareness Day and various related campaigns were highlighted. The orphans of Kibera, Kenya were highlighted in this show, among others. I found it impossible not to be moved by the images of those children: children smiling, children crying, children hoping for something more. Knowing Africa as I do, these images hit home. I hope they helped some of you see what I have seen. Even though the program benefited Americans living in poverty as much or more as Africans, I'm impressed that the show highlighted worldwide problems as well as those closer to home.

For more facts about malaria, read the FAQ here: http://rbm.who.int/amd2007/docs/malaria_faq.pdf

I hope you'll think about malaria today, and the difficulties that it can cause throughout the world. We're lucky here in America to not have to face this particular mosquito-born parasite.

And OK, I'll admit to a few tears during the segments about Kibera and Josh Grobin's performance of "You Raise Me Up" with the African Children's Choir. It all makes me wish that there was more that I could do...

Elephants of Amboseli on PBS

2007-04-01T20:25:00.000-04:00

I'm watching an amazing episode of NATURE right now on PBS. It is called "Unforgetable Elephants," and chronicles the filmmaker's various journeys filming and getting to know elephants. His primary focus is the family of an elephant named Echo in Kenya's Amboseli National Park. To contrast the lives of the elephants in Amboseli, the filmmaker (Martyn Colbeck) also went to an extreme desert environment in Namibia where elephants manage to survive some of the harshest conditions imaginable, trekking over sand dunes to reach water holes that provide just enough vegetation to support the elephants. Colbeck also films the forest elephants in the Congo. However, he repeatedly goes back to Amboseli; on one visit, he witnesses Echo giving birth to a new calf, and on another he shows a run-in between Echo and the Maasai who also use the land for their cattle.

Echo's baby was so cute! She was named Ebony and the filmmaker tells the story of another family stealing her from Echo. Apparently it was some sort of statement about the other family's place in the elephant hierarchy, but Echo and the other big females in her family made sure they got Ebony back!

Family ties are very strong among elephants, as evidenced by the story of Echo's 34-year-old daughter Erin. She had a run-in with the local Maasai, and the spear wounds got infected. The Kenya Wildlife Service had to be called in to medicate Erin, because she would certainly have died; her calf might have been lost, too. Through the whole experience, Echo did not leave her daughter's side until the humans had stepped in to intervene. Unfortunately, Erin did not survive, but the other elephants led her calf, Email, away and took care of him.

You can learn more about this episode online at: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/unforgettable/interview.html

I'm having fun tonight learning more about elephants like the ones I saw in Kenya. Kenya is never far from my thoughts, and I look back fondly on the places and people I saw there. I am glad that I have been able to continue learning about the country that welcomed me last summer.

"Slum tourism" in Kenya

2007-02-12T12:23:00.000-05:00

My boss just handed me an article that he found on Yahoo! News on Friday. He thought I might be interested in knowing about a recent cause of controversy in Kenya, travel-agency led tours of Kenya's Kibera slum.

Kibera, located in Nairobi, in one of the largest slums in Africa. It was the setting for much of the movie The Constant Gardner, and it is an area that visiting foreign politicians and other dignitaries often visit. As the article I just read put it, Kibera is a place where you can see all of Africa's biggest problems in one place: extreme poverty, poor housing, poor sanitation, AIDS.

Now at least one travel agency is offering tourists the chance to spend a day in the slum. The travel agency claims that these walking tours raise awareness and give back to the people living in Kibera. Many of the residents and the organizations that are working to improve life in Kibera and other poverty-stricken areas see these tours differently, however. Obviously, there is potential for help to come to the area through any form of attention given to the living conditions there. At the same time, it is rather insulting to have people tramping through your neighborhood just to see how poor you are, how badly you live, how sick you and your neighbors may be. The article quotes one resident as saying, "They see us like puppets, they want to come and take pictures, have a little walk, tell their friends they've been to the worst slum in Africa."

If you're interested in learning more about Kibera, you can read the following:

"Slum tourism" stirs controversy in Kenya by Andrew Cawthorne

Living amidst the rubbish of Kenya's slum from BBC News

Kibera from Wikipedia

My friend Pete's article

2007-02-07T15:16:00.000-05:00

My friend Pete, who was on my Kenya trip with me, sent me an email earlier this week. He let me know that he recently had an article published about the trip in a magazine called Teaching K-8. It sounds like he's been doing some terrific things with his students based on the work we did in Kenya, so I wanted to share the article with everyone.

The article is called "A Summer in Kenya." Read it when you get a chance, especially since it includes 2 of Pete's truly awesome photographs.

Global Summit Meets in Kenya

2007-01-30T21:51:00.000-05:00

Check out the following article from CNN.com when you have a chance: Global Summit in Kenya to focus on Africa's Plight.

This month, various leaders met in Nairobi to discuss matters of importance to the continent of Africa. At the World Social Forum, people will campaign over trade, poverty, war, and the environment.

Kenya has the largest economy of the countries in East Africa, yet it possesses many of the problems that are typical of African nations: AIDS, poverty, environmental issues, etc.

This year, the World Social Forum was held just before the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Thank you, Scituate Rotary Club!

2006-10-26T13:54:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I spent a very pleasant evening at the Scituate Country Club discussing my Earthwatch Expedition, water issues in the Samburu District, and the challenges of development with members of the Scituate Rotary Club. This was the third time that I had been invited to join the Rotarians for Kenya-related events, but it was the first time that I took center stage. The Rotary Club is involved in several projects in Kenya, I believe; they are working with an orphanage there, and they have an interest in assisting with water projects as well. In May, they were visited by 3 members of the Lutheran Church of Kenya, who talked about the water crisis resulting from the on-going drought and the challenges of constructing boreholes, especially in the arid northern regions like Samburu. Last month, a couple who work in Kenya as missionaries helping street children return to their families and get an education visited a meeting to talk about their work there. Last night, it was my turn.

I spoke during dinner and dessert about Earthwatch, my experiences in Kenya, and what I had learned about the challenges that come with development and conservation projects. For example, I told the story of coming across a very nicely made and kindly donated borehole sitting next to a lovely pond; at the time, Sam had pointed out to us that it was a useless place for a borehole because it would merely drain the lake, all because someone thought that the water would be better if it were filtered through the surrounding sand and soil. Why is this a problem? It isn't just people that need to use the available water; wildlife need access to water as well, and they can't use a borehole. Boreholes are needed in areas where there isn't readily available surface water. Sustainable development projects need to be done with an toward maintaining a balance between people and nature, between tradition and modern-day knowledge, between a people's way of life and what someone else thinks would be "better" for them. During our expedition, my fellow volunteers and I were constantly coming up with ideas that we thought were brilliant solutions to the problems we saw each day, and our Kenyan friends gently pointed out the holes in each and every one. Sure, a bigger, sturdier, more permanent fence would certainly keep a lion or hyena out of a manyatta at night, but who wants to put the time, energy, and money into building one when your family could move on to a new location at any time?

After dinner, I spent some time sharing my pictures and souvenirs with anyone who was interested. I finally put together my photo album from the trip, so it was fun to show that off! I passed out slips of paper with my blog site, my email, and Earthwatch's website on them so that people could learn more. I also collected names and addresses from people interested in getting an Earthwatch catalog. I hope that some of them will be interested in participating in an Earthwatch expedition of their own. It is such an amazing way to learn about the world and the environment, and some firsthand research experience on the water project in Samburu could really tie in to the club's interests. It was just so great to be able to share my experiences with people who were so interested to learn more about a country that I came to love so much in such a short time, especially knowing that they are already helping there. I really enjoyed myself, and was very glad to be able to meet so many nice people as a result of my Kenya expedition.

Marc Ravalomanana's take on preserving the environment

2006-10-23T14:03:00.000-04:00

Really, this is related to my Earthwatch expedition, even if it is more about Madagascar than Kenya! :)

In the most recent issue of the National Peace Corps Association's WorldView Magazine, there is an article by Marc Ravalomanana, the current president of Madagascar. The article is called "Madagascar Naturellement," which means "Madagascar Naturally." In it, he talks about the importance of combating poor health and poverty as part of saving the environment. "For its size, Madagascar contributes more to earth's biodiversity than any other place," writes Ravalomanana. However, the amazing natural wonders of the world's 4th largest island are constantly threatened by the practice known in Madagascar as tavy--slash and burn farming. This is a driving force in Madagascar's economy, as rural farmers convert rain forest into rice fields in order to survive, feed their families, and bring in a little money. Because Madagascar is among the world's poorest country (13 million of its 17 million people live on less than $1 a day), it is hard to convince farmers to leave available land as rain forest. The loss of the rain forest, however, further destroys the environment, contributing to erosion and the loss of habitat for plants and animals.

Ravalomanana sees health and family planning as important parts of conservation efforts in Madagascar. In rural Madagascar, poor families tend to be large. As family size increases, children will not be able to get enough food and they will be weaker, more susceptible to disease. Mothers will be at greater risk from too-frequent pregnancies. In order to feed these large families, farmers will have to further destroy their land in order to attempt to feed their families.

In Madagascar, large families have traditionally been considered a blessing. In fact, I was taught that the traditional blessing offered to a new couple at their wedding translates as, "May you have seven sons and seven daughters." The government must therefore fight tradition as well as poverty and a lack of information. However, through education and more healthcare options, "In only a few years, the average number of children per family has decreased from 6.0 to 5.2 children per woman, one of the lowest rates among surveyed countries in Africa."

There are certainly many who would argue against the family-planning based approach that Ravalomanana has taken. However, he writes eloquently about how much it hurts him to see the children of his country struggling from malnourishment and diseases that could be prevented with clean water and general knowledge about staying healthy: "I see families struggling to feed nine to 10 children. I see their children, my country's future, weak from malnutrition and disease. I see farmers destroying their land in their effort to provide for their children. These sights hurt my heart. " In his opinion, bringing down the birthrate and improving overall health will help diminish poverty in Madagascar; alleviating poverty will save the environment because farmers will not need to practice tavy. "Having children is a good thing," writes Ravalomanana, "but having information on when to have them is even better."

I'll leave it to you to read the article and decide for yourselves whether Ravalomanana's ideas have merit. I will say that in Samburu, an increasing population has led to larger herds, which then leads to overgrazing of the land. Overgrazing eliminates the grasses and other plants that help the soil in place when it does rain, therefore contributing to erosion. On thinking about it, however, in Samburu many solutions to poverty would mean abandoning the Samburu way of life. While on the surface that might seem good for everyone, I get a little sad thinking of one of the few traditional cultures left fading away, so it's a tough call. It is certainly true, however, that a lack of education and information contribute to poor health, too many pregnancies, and families that may not be able to feed all their children. Overall, it's important to keep in mind that conservation and development are full of tricky issues and must be handled with an eye toward the balance between what is "right" and what can be done given the way people really live.

More Conservation Worries for Kenya

2006-10-19T16:18:00.000-04:00

While doing a search for news from Kenya, I just came across a report about the snows and ice of Mt. Kilimanjaro and Mt. Kenya (Africa's two tallest mountains) disappearing. According to an environmental group called the Kenyan Green Belt Movement, these 2 mountains could lose their ice coer entirely over the next 25-50 years due to deforestation (loss of trees) and industrial pollution. The snow and ice on these mountains are important sources of water because many rivers start in the mountains. Those rivers then provide major sources of water and can also be used to generate power using dams. The Green Belt Movement is hoping that a tree planting project will help eliminate dangerous carbon dioxide that affects the environment.

The full story can be read online at CNN.com.

Another way to help...

2006-10-17T15:48:00.000-04:00

My former students will (hopefully!) remember our discussions last year about how difficult it is for people in many parts of the world to get water. Every day, women and children all over the world walk many miles in search of water; often that water, is not really all that safe for human use. This was one of the problems that the Communities, Water, and Wildlife project was studying in Samburu.

Today, I came across an interesting way to help raise awareness of water issues around the world. A group in London is working on a project called Knit a River. This is a campaign to help an international non-governmental organization (NGO) called WaterAid raise awareness of the need for safe water and better sanitation in some of the worlds poorest countries. According to the project website, "More than 1 billion people do not have access to safe water, more han 2 billion people do not have access to sanitation. The resulting ill health is often a death sentence, in fact a child dies every 15 seconds due to water related diseases." They are asking people to knit 15cm x 15cm blue squares (any color, any type of yarn) to be sent to them in London. The squares will all be attached to create a river of yarn that can be used at WaterAid events to help demonstrate their message about the importance of water and toilets for all.

While WaterAid does not work directly in Kenya, they do work in Madagascar and other African countries (such as Uganda, Zambia, Ethiopia, and Tanzania). They partner with other NGOs to bring wells, better sanitation, and health education to some of the world's poorest people. In areas where they work, health improves and people have more time for economic activities.

So, for any of you knitters out there, I hope you'll join me in knitting a square or 2. Even if it doesn't help the Samburu directly, I think it's a worthy cause that could have a trickle down effect for all countries with similar water problems. For more information, visit I Knit or WaterAid. I'm happy to coordinate sending squares to I Knit; just drop me a line and I'll make a plan. Squares are due in London by March 2007, so let's get knitting!

Feathered headbands

2006-10-04T14:31:00.000-04:00

murran w birds 1030
Originally uploaded by crikenyasamburu.

I think I wrote about this in an earlier blog, but I didn't have a picture to share with you all. One of the teachers on a recent Earthwatch expedition to Samburu took this picture, so I'm borrowing it off of her flickr site. When a Samburu boy is circumsized, he has to go through a period of a month or two before he actually becomes a murran (warrior). During that time, he kills birds, stuffs them with grasses, and attaches them to a band that he wears around his head. The young men each try to kill as many birds as they can using a bow and blunt-tipped arrows. (My team saw some of the boys hunting one day, but none of them wore any birds yet.) Philip, our guide to all things Samburu, told us that the young men wear the birds to scare away girls (they can't have any girlfriends during this period of time), but they also try to kill a lot of birds in order to impress the girls for later. They keep adding birds until the headband is filled, and then they may give some of them away. The Samburu, however, do not typically kill birds and they never eat them, according to what we were told.

Another example of why conservation efforts can be difficult...

2006-10-02T17:28:00.000-04:00

I just came across a CNN.com article from last week about marauding elephants in Kenya. The article talked about how humans and wildlife are coming into closer contact as human populations grow and spread, and how the villagers in one region near Mount Kenya are constantly in conflict with elephants. The elephants destroy crops that are the only source of income for these villagers, and the villagers cannot fight back against the elephant because of laws against killing wildlife. This is so similar to some of the problems I saw or heard about in Samburu with carnivores. When people's livelihoods are threatened by wildlife, it is much harder for them to see any benefit in conservation. This is why programs like Earthwatch's Conservation Research Initiatives, which involve the local communities, are so important in the effort to help our environment.

Check out the elephant article at http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/africa/09/25/elephant.attacks.reut/index.html.

Earthwatch Conservation Update

2006-09-06T13:36:00.000-04:00

I just received an enewsletter from Earthwatch. Because it has an update on the water situation in Samburu and the Communities, Water, and Wildlife project there, I thought I'd pass on the information to you. The full article can be found online, and the enewsletter also includes information about climate change and other CRI projects.

Earthwatch Kenya: Looking for Water
By Jessi Flynn, Conservation Program Officer
Water and grass are scarce in northeastern Kenya where Earthwatch’s Samburu CRI is located. At times, there is not enough for humans, their livestock, and local wildlife to share. Climate change in this region seems to be leading to less rainfall and increased temperatures, and longer, stronger droughts. If this continues, access to clean water will decrease, water impurities will become more concentrated, and erosion of fragile habitat will increase under the hooves of the livestock that are so important to local communities.
Climate and Water
The Communities, Water, and Wildlife project volunteers, led by Dr. Alex Njue, have been looking for water sources throughout the Samburu region. They have mapped permanent and temporary water sources, and have been testing water quality. This information is creating a baseline that can be used to see if the area becomes more arid in the future, an expected result of climate changes, and where clean water will still be found.
As herders walk with their herds of goats, sheep, and cattle across the landscape, they must drink any water that is available. As Philip Leitore, the Wamba Mission Hospital coordinator of infection prevention and sanitation said, for a herder “there is no dirty water.” But the hope is that with this information people will be able
to find and choose cleaner water sources, as 80 percent of nomadic diseases are waterborne. So far, Earthwatch teams have helped find that the cleanest water is found in boreholes, with no fecal contamination, in comparison with piped water, which has a two percent contamination level, streams, which have 20 percent contamination, rivers, with 90 percent contamination, and dams, with 100 percent contamination.
People must often drink from contaminated sources, especially as water disappears in droughts. Julius Lesoori, a local intern trained in public health, is looking into possible intervention measures on improving drinking water in homes by undertaking a study that involves water filtration. This, combined with other locally developed measures may improve quality of drinking water in homes.

TeachLive! from Wamba

2006-08-27T09:09:00.000-04:00

A group of teachers from New Jersey is currently in Wamba with Earthwatch, and they are participating in the TeachLive! program that allows them to have access to a satellite phone and laptop that will help them get information to students back in the US while they are still there. (I would have liked to do that, but it wouldn't really have worked since it was summer vacation!) There site has information about the programs they are working on: Grevy's Zebras and Wildlife Habitats. You can check it out at http://www.salemnj.org/brown/index.shtml. I wish I could get cool music on my site like they have! I was very pleased and honored to discover that they included my blog in their list of resources for teachers.

Good luck to everyone out there as the start of the school year approaches!

Kenyan Music

2006-08-15T19:13:00.000-04:00

I didn't really get to know any Kenyan music (other than the murrans' and children's singing) in Kenya--I've already mentioned how most of what I listened to was 80s stuff--but I did find out recently that National Geographic now has a world music site where you can listen to and download international music. They have quite a few Kenyan groups available...and what I've listened to so far is good! You can check it out at http://worldmusic.nationalgeographic.com/worldmusic/. Just click on "Regions," then "Africa," and finally select Kenya. Happy listening!

Madagascar?

2006-08-15T18:58:00.000-04:00

OK, OK, I know this blog is supposed to be about my trip to KENYA! However, in my effort to keep teaching those of you out there who were once my former students, I just have to share this article. I found out about it through the Madagascar listserv to which I belong, and I thought it was kind of cool. Some of you will remember that I have pointed out how they are constantly discovering new species in Madagascar. Well, now they have 3 new species of mouse lemurs! They were discovered about 5 years ago, but it has now been made official through genetic tests that these are separate species. For a long time, scientists thought that there were only 2 species of mouse lemur on the whole island, but since the 1970s they have determined that there are at least 15 species that they know about. This is good--because it's pretty neat to discover that there are new species out there--and bad--because as the population is divided into all these different species, it turns out that some of them are more in danger of extinction than scientists originally thought when all the mouse lemurs were in two groups. Mouse lemurs don't fall prey to being hunted for food by humans, but they are still at risk of extinction due to a loss of habitat when people cut down and burn the rain forests for firewood and to clear land for subsistence farming. (Remember what that is, kids?) Anyway, I urge you to check out the article at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/06/060626-lemurs-africa.html because, at the very least, the pictures of these little primates are very cute!

My videos on YouTube.com

2006-08-13T14:05:00.000-04:00

I finally got around to putting my video clips from the trip onto YouTube.com. I have blogged them so that you can watch them directly on this site, but you can also see them on YouTube using the following links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFm5HBk5lLw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHOFy8b0a6c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPSdwtZiPCI

I hope you'll take a look and let me know what you think!

2006-08-13T14:03:00.000-04:00

Samburu wedding

My videos are finally on YouTube.com! This first one is from the Samburu wedding the other volunteers and I attended in July 2006. The men are leading the groom and best man (both in white) into the manyatta (Samburu homestead) for the bull slaughter that traditionally begins a Samburu wedding.

2006-08-13T14:02:00.001-04:00

Nagorworu Primary School #1

In this clip, the student choir from the Nagorworu Primary School (one of two schools we visited) gathered to sing us a couple of songs. This one is in English, "This is the day our Lord has made, a wonderful day our Lord has made."

2006-08-13T14:02:00.000-04:00

Nagorworu Primary School #2

In this clip, the Nagorworu student choir sang us another song, this time in the traditional Samburu language.

Samburu District on NationalGeographic.com

2006-08-09T13:38:00.000-04:00

I know my trip is over, but I still want to keep learning about the Samburu District, its people, and ways to help preserve this wonderful place. As part of that, I checked to see if there was anything about Samburu on National Geographic.com. There is! There are a few different articles on different parts of the site, but the one that has interested me most so far is called "Scenes from a Kenya Safari." It was originally from National Geographic Traveler. The author appears to have spent a large part of his visit to Kenya in the Samburu National Reserve, one of the two parks I visited. There are some great stories (I love the one about a lioness that adopted not one, but two, Beisa oryx calves and tried to protect them from other predators!) and some wonderful pictures of the animals and the Samburu people.

The author ends his article with this quote: "A safari teaches you to see, and seeing helps you understand. The patterns of a day may be simple, but the qualities of it are anything but. My guess is that every safarigoer makes two promises at the end of a journey: The first is never to forget the romance of the wild, and the second is to return again soon. These promises are why, though you may leave Africa, Africa will never leave you. It's a very specific relationship that way, one endlessly rich in its specificity." Although my expedition was not a tradtional safari, I can understand what he means. It is an amazing thing to really look and search the land as you drive through, to try to pick out the animals in the camouflaging bush. I learned that even very large animals can be hard to see when they want to hide. I learned the differences among different species, and trained myself to look for those little characteristics that would help make identification possible. On our first day, I strained to see a dikdik lying on the ground and thought that I would never be able to spot them without help from Sam and Nduhiu; after a few days of really watching, I found that the dikdiks had become a nuisance, so easy to see that I groaned at spotting them because it was "just another dikdik." But learning to quietly watch and appreciate the animals of Samburu really does teach you a lot about the world in which they live, even when you only see the tracks they leave behind. And the experience most definitely encourages you to return as soon as possible! Just as Madagascar is forever a part of who I am today, Kenya will be as well.

I recommend checking out the article when you have a chance! In the meantime, I'm going to see if I can try to track down the author through the magazine to share my impressions and experiences in Samburu with him.

The article's author, George W. Stone, with 2 Samburu guides who worked at the campsite where he stayed. (Photo by author, located at http://www.nationalgeographic.com/traveler/photos/africa0509/africa_gallery2.html.)

My friend Pete's pictures

2006-08-05T15:41:00.000-04:00

My friend Pete took some really great pictures during our trip, so I wanted to share a few of them with you. I hope he doesn't mind! This seems to be all that will fit in the post for now, but there were a LOT more that I really liked. The one to the left is a Common Zebra in Nairobi National Park.

A Samburu child with donkeys beside the Ewaso Ngiro river. The donkeys are rigged up for carrying things, so probably they were at the river fetching water to be used in the manyatta.

Giraffe watching us from behind a tree at the Samburu National Reserve.

Lioness at Nairobi National Park. This was how she was when we found her. When we arrived, she stood up and very calmly walked right past my window.

Lioness in Samburu National Reserve. This is the one that was resting right near herds of impalas and Grant's gazelles.

Me, Mercy, and a cow outside a store in Wamba. The cow didn't stick around long enough for a second picture with my camera.

Me and Jordana doing water sample work at the Ewaso Ngiro. I was in charge that day of keeping records about things like water temperature, water color, air temperature, relative humidity, etc. Jordana is holding the pole that we used to get water samples if we couldn't get right to the very edge of the river or well.

Another Samburu video

2006-08-03T07:32:00.000-04:00

I was just checking out YouTube.com again to decide whether I should post my own short videos there. I came across a video about the CRI project in Wamba. It seems to be professionally done, explaining the Earthwatch CRI goals, the challenges in the region, etc. It has some really great views of animals, of Wamba, etc. You can check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNXxA2X4PcU&mode=related&search= if you'd like to see it. I think it provides a pretty good overview of what Earthwatch is trying to do in Samburu. When you watch it, though, keep in mind that it's been a couple of months since the rainy season, and they've come up with a solution to the washed out road. I didn't have to jump the river like the volunteers arriving in the video did!

I still haven't decided about posting my own videos to YouTube, but I'll let you know!

Photos

2006-08-01T14:10:00.000-04:00

I've changed the update format for my photos. Flickr was proving too annoying. There are still some photos and descriptions there, and some of the links in the postings go to that site, but now all of my photos are on Shutterfly. You can see them at http://wonsonkenya.shutterfly.com. I am working on getting the titles and descriptions edited, which may take a little while longer. I hope you'll check out what's there!

Journal Excerpts

2006-07-30T20:41:00.000-04:00

This will be a really long post, because I wanted to type up excerpts of my journal. I have to turn typed excerpts in to Earthwatch anyway, so I figured it would be easy enough to type them up for here at the same time.

Before you starting reading, you probably need to know who everyone is. Here's the cast of characters:

Volunteers
me, Cheryl, Liz, Pete, Michelle, Jordana, Melanie, Dan, Jordana, Carol
(everyone except Jordana and Carol were there as part of the Education Fellowship program)

Researchers and Staff
Mercy Mbui: camp manager
Petro Baroro: day security guard
Dr. Samuel Andanje: principal investigator for Carnivores In Conflict project
Dr. Kiplagat Kotu: principal investigator for Communities, Water, and Wildlife
Steve: water project technical staff
Nduhiu Gitahi: carnivore project graduate student

There were, of course, many others who assisted with the research and the running of the camp, but I think this is everyone who is mentioned by name in the excerpts below.

July 10, 2006

I’m on my way! I’m sitting at JFK right now, facing about 8 hours of time to kill. I’m not entirely sure what I’ll do for all that time; there aren’t many shops or restaurants in this particular terminal. But I have books, logic puzzles, and this journal, so I should be able to fill the time.
I’m still not entirely sure what to expect from this trip. Actually, I think I’m purposefully trying to keep my expectations vague and my mind open to all possibilities. It was great of Cheryl to share her experiences in Samburu with me and Liz, but I want to be able to clearly form my own impressions and experiences. I’m looking forward to learning about the local people and how they live, in hopes of sharing that with the 7th grade World Geography classes when I get back, but I also want to make sure that I have good stuff to share with my friend Katie’s 5th grade Field Science classes, too. And I need lots of animal pictures to satisfy the curiosity of this past year’s students, my friends, and family. Hopefully I’ll be able to do all of that!

Today’s flight schedule is pretty crazy. I had a 7:55am flight from Boston to New York, and I’m stuck at JFK until my 6:05pm flight to Brussels this evening. I suppose I could attempt to go into the city, but I don’t want to risk traffic issues getting back and miss my flight. That would be a disaster! Tomorrow morning, I’ll have 3 hours in Brussels, and then I’ll fly to Nairobi. On the way, there’s a one-hour stop in Kigali, Rwanda. This is quite the international adventure!

~later~

This trip is certainly turning into an adventure in travel! I am currently on board a British Airways flight to London instead of my scheduled American Airlines flight to Brussels. Things got a little hectic when the Brussels flight was delayed again until 9:30 (there were apparently problems with 2 different planes) and I would have missed my flight to Nairobi tomorrow morning. I immediately got on the phone and got American to rebook me, then raced between terminals to get to the British Airways flight on time. That 8:30 flight didn’t leave until about 10:00, however. We’ve been told that they’ll be able to make up some time during the flight, so hopefully I will still make my flight to Nairobi. If I don’t, I’ll have to find a way to Wamba on my own, which I think would be rather difficult.

July 11, 2006

I’ve made it to Nairobi! I am at the Fairview Hotel in a very nice, quiet room. It has been a very long day. Unfortunately, my checked bag did not make it to Nairobi, so the arrival was a little stressful. With the flight changes, there is really no way to know where my bag might be. Hopefully it will come in tomorrow and they can send it by plane to Lewa, where someone from Earthwatch might be able to get it for me.

July 12, 2006

What a great day! I still don’t have my luggage, of course, but hopefully I’ll get it soon. I was told this morning that it had been found in London. No word on when it will get to Nairobi, but at least they know where it is.

We all met up in the hotel lobby this morning (and some of us ran into each other during breakfast), and a man from WakuWaku Safaris collected us all and got us to Wilson Airport for our flight to Wamba. There are 10 of us in total; Earthwatch ended up combining our team (Team 13) with Team 2 because it only had 2 people. All 8 of the original Team 13 are teachers. (Well, there’s one principal, Dan.) Carol is a speech pathologist and Jordana is a lawyer. From Wilson we boarded a small plane (just enough seats for all of us), and the pilot, James, flew us directly to Wamba. We could see a bit of Mt. Kenya, and we flew over some other smaller mountains. It was too cloudy to see the ground for a lot of the flight, but once we could it was pretty cool. I took quite a few pictures.

There isn’t actually an airport in Wamba. It’s just a big, dirt airstrip. Quite a few people (and herds of goats) gathered around to watch us land and unload. I got a lot of attention from some little boys; apparently my red toenails and sandals were quite unusual! We drove through the center of town, made a quick stop at the hospital, and then drove a little out of town to the compound. It’s small, but it should be comfortable for the next few days. There are really just 3 buildings. Cheryl, Liz, and I are sharing a room; most of the rest are 2 to a room. The facilities of the compound are nice. The bathrooms are decent, they’ll do laundry every day for us, and so far the food is great. All of the staff is very nice and very helpful. Today we’ve had a lot of meetings to fill us in on how things work at the compound and about the 2 projects on which we’ll be working. We also had a few breaks, which I used for journal writing and picture taking. After the 2nd afternoon lecture, we all took a little hike, which was a nice way to work out some of the kinks from traveling.

I’ve seen some animals around so far. There were Vervet monkeys in the trees as we drove in, although I haven’t seen them again. There are lots of goats around, but fewer cows than I expected, at least so far. I think this is, in part, due to the drought. Some camels came by the compound, too. They wear weird, dull-sounding bells around their necks. There was also something that looked kind of like a squirrel, and there are some cool birds. One bunch I saw was bright blue and mustardy yellow—gorgeous! Another is gray with a long tail and sounds like a cross between a dog barking and a baby crying. When I asked tonight, Kip told me that it’s probably the go-away bird.

After dinner tonight, Philip (a Samburu man who works at the mission hospital in Wamba) came to talk to us about Samburu culture. It was interesting, but I didn’t learn a lot about them that I hadn’t already read. I’m sure I’ll learn more as we get out into the fields and have more questions for Philip.

Tomorrow, we leave at 8am to start our research work. I’m starting with the carnivore project, which I’m really excited about. Sam, the principal investigator, said that we may spend tomorrow visiting carnivore dens; they do this to check for signs of what the animals have been eating by looking at bones, hooves, etc. and hair found in scat. I’m a little nervous about it after he told a story about going to what was supposedly an abandoned hyena den that was actually occupied by a leopard, but he said it’s usually pretty safe. In any case, I’m really excited about working with that project; I’ve done so much reading and watching videos for it, so I want to work on it while all of that is still fresh. Then I can work on the water project next week.
Liz just reminded me of one new thing I learned about the Samburu tonight. As a tradition, every Samburu must have his/her 2 bottom, front teeth removed at a young age, once their permanent teeth are in. This is because there was a time when tetanus was widespread and many people died from it; many got lockjaw and could not be fed medicines, so the solution was to remove 2 teeth to leave a hole through which to get medicines. An interesting solution to the problem!

July 13, 2006

Animals seen today: Grevy's zebras, ostriches, black-bellied bustards, dikdiks, Kori bustards, hornbills

What a day! It was long—our group didn’t get back until 6:30pm! But it was a good day.
We didn’t go to dens because the person who was going to guide us couldn’t come with us. Instead, we drove along roads and took counts of prey animals. We mostly saw and counted livestock, keeping track of how many animals there were, how many herders there were, what sort of weapons the herders had, and what sort of plant life and terrain was around. The livestock we saw were goats, sheep, camels, and donkeys. Often the herders were children or young women; the best protected herds had men with spears, knives, or clubs. A lot of animals, especially donkeys and camels, were just left to wander alone. It was really exciting to see the Grevy’s zebras and ostriches. The dikdiks were hard to spot; they’re little and they blend into the landscape.

We did our research in 2 areas today. We started in Ngutuk Ongiron (to the south) in the morning, driving a 20 km stretch and counting everything we saw. We then stopped for a picnic lunch for about an hour, and then continued to Ngaroni, where we drove 30 km in before turning around to count for 20km driving back. We were hoping to see more wild animals then because it was cooler, but no such luck.

We had several incidents of people being upset with us looking through our binoculars at them and their herds. Most Samburu people do not like to have their pictures taken, and some of them assumed that’s what we were doing when we stopped to observe their herds. It’s a little bit unnerving to have a murran (a Samburu warrior) demand to see your binoculars, even if you can’t understand what he’s saying and he will only take them from the men in the car. I was in the car, so I didn’t feel completely threatened, but he was pretty impressive with his ochre-colored hair, weaponry, jewelry, etc. Beyond those couple of instances, however, most people were friendly, waving to us as we drove by, and only a few children asked for “sweets.”

The best thing about today was meeting some young Samburu who came to visit us while we had lunch. They spotted Pete first and came to check things out. At first it wasn’t much of an interaction, because none of us know many words in Kiswahili and nothing at all in Kisamburu, but we tried. One of the older girls (there were 3 girls, 1 boy, and 1 baby) asked us for our names in English, and they repeated all our names and the older girls told us their own names, Jen and Christine. (We wondered about the very anglicized names, and later found out that most Samburu have both traditional and Swahili and/or English names.) Luckily, Sam was able to communicate a little better. We found out that Christine is 16; she is married, and the baby on her back was hers. She wore a LOT of bead necklaces; she told Sam that her father bought most of them for her, but her husband gave her a few of the thicker ones. She also wore a really cool beaded watch. Jen (or it might have been Jan) is 13. She is still in school, in the grade they call Standard 4 or Class 4. Christine left school after Standard 3. (We found out later that the classes correspond pretty well with grades in the US system. Children go to preschool—like kindergarten—at 5 or 6, and then start Class 1. However, not all children start at the recommended ages, so we saw students in Class 8 who looked to be much older than 13 and met high school students who were 19 and 20.) Jen also had many necklaces, but fewer than Christine; she told Sam that her mother sold a goat to buy her necklaces. We noticed that both girls had small keys attached to their jewelry, and found out that these went to lockboxes or trunks where they keep special things like their fancy clothes and special keepsakes. The two other children were 3 and maybe 5 years old; they were brother and sister. Neither one seemed particularly healthy. The little girl had a bad cough and spit up stuff several times. We had fun with the older girls. Michelle and I let them use our binoculars; Christine got so excited that she slapped me hard on the back, grinning all the while. She was also fascinated with my hair. She took of the hat I had borrowed from Mercy and started playing with my ponytail. When I undid the ponytail, she ran her hands over my hair some more, and then told Sam that I had hair like a murran. (Among the Samburu, most people shave their heads; only the murran, the young warrior class who are considered very glamorous, have long hair, which they color reddish-brown with ochre.) The girls were disappointed, however, when Michelle and I refused to give them our watches, and they left rather abruptly soon after the exchange. I wish we could have taken pictures of them, but they didn’t want us to.

Tomorrow, we are going to leave the compound at 7am to go pick up a Samburu guide (James) in Ngaroni. We’ll do some animal spotting with him in another area. He is a ranger/community security guard, and is also going to help us visit some manyattas (homestead) to conduct interviews. The interviews happen later in the week, but he is coming with us tomorrow. I’m not really looking forward to another day in the car, but I can understand why the work and data are important. Scientific research isn’t necessarily supposed to be flashy and exciting, so I’ll try to focus on how cool it is to be in Africa.

July 14, 2006

Today’s new animals: Vulturine guinea fowl, baboons, rock hyrax, vervet monkeys, gerenuk

Today was an interesting day. We were able to get out of the car today and interact with more people. We left the compound at about 7:15 and drove to James’ manyatta. Some of the women from his manyatta had beautiful beaded necklaces that they wanted to sell us when we stopped. I’d like to buy some and will tomorrow when we go back, but Sam thought we should ask Mercy about fair prices. After we picked up James, we did a 20km transect counting animals. We started off with 4 Grevy’s zebras. They were too far away for good pictures, but we could see them behind the bushes with the binoculars, and James took Pete out to see them up close. (The rest of us would have liked to go, but we weren’t invited.) We continued driving (counting rock hyrax, dikdiks, and ostriches as well as the usual livestock) until we crossed over the Ewaso Ngiro river into the Laikipia District.

At the river, we had a little photo mishap with a murran. He’d started herding his goats across the bridge, and James said that is was OK to take a picture. We meant to just get the goats, but the murran moved into the shot. James still said it was OK, so several of us took the picture. The murran was VERY annoyed. James finally convinced him that we’d been using binoculars rather than cameras. I felt a little guilty, but it’s a really great picture. It’s the only Samburu person picture I have so far.

After lunch (where we came across an old Nomadic Preschool that was kind of cool), we visited some manyattas and interviewed people about their livestock and predation. The interview forms were very long and we had to use translators, but it was nice to be part of the process and to interact with the people. We got up-close looks at the bomas and at least the outside of the houses. We were really able to see the differences in how well some people care for their livestock. At one manyatta, there was no perimeter fence (there usually is), and the boma fences (especially the small, enclosed pens for newborn goats and sheep) were not as solidly constructed as others that we saw. We also learned that it made a difference if the houses were located between the wall and the boma, if there were dogs, and if they have flags on the bomas (the flapping fabric helps scare predators away).

At the final manyatta today, Michelle, Jordana, and I took some time to play with some of the children. We managed to get their names, and then we demonstrated Ring Around The Rosie and some of them to play with us. We also tried to get some of them to sing “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes,” although that didn’t go over as well. Two boys tried it with us. Their mothers watched and laughed; I decided that it was nice to know what they were laughing about, for once. There was a lot of staring and laughing going on today, and a lot of conversation about us. Of course, we talk about them a lot, too, so I don’t really mind. But it would be interesting to know what they think of us. I’m glad that we thought of trying to play with the kids; children are almost always easier to interact with than adults when you don’t have a common language.
Tomorrow there is going to be a Samburu wedding in the neighborhood of the Earthwatch compound. We won’t be able to go to all of it, but we are going in the morning for the traditional bull slaughter (only the bridegroom can slaughter the bull, so it will be heavily guarded by the murrains to make sure that no one sneaks in and takes the honor, which would give him the right to take the bride as wife) before breakfast. We are also hoping to come back early tomorrow so that we can see some of the dancing and singing. We are all going to chip in 150 shillings so that we can buy the bride and groom a couple of goats, because traditionally everyone who attends a wedding should contribute something.

I just went out to check out the temperature and see the stars, which are quite visible here. The temperature is very nice at the moment, so I think I might go read on the porch for awhile. While I was out there, Pete told me that the animal I heard calling a little while ago was a hyena, according to Mercy, so even if I haven’t seen one yet, I at least know I’ve heard one. Now if I could just stop hearing the cricket that appears to be in our bathroom; it’s drowning out the singing that I assume are part of the wedding preparations.

July 15, 2006

New animals spotted today: klipspringer, rabbit, evidence of elephants (but no actual elephants)
We saw elephant dung today! The stuff is the size of cannonballs, and we saw a lot of it. I took a picture to show the science teachers back home. Unfortunately, we never saw the elephants, but we’ll keep looking.

Today has been a day of many cultural experiences. There was a wedding at the boma down the street from the compound, and we got to go! Even better, they let us take pictures. This morning, we woke up early to go to the ritual slaughtering of the bull, which supposed to happen around 6am. We were told that it has to happen before sunrise, but it didn’t happen until about 6:30pm. (Technically, I guess the sun hadn’t really risen over the Mathews Range yet at that point.) It was well worth the wait. The murrans led the bridegroom and best man into the manyatta while chanting. The bridegroom and best man wore white. The groom and some of the other men killed the bull by shoving a knife into the bull’s neck to try to cut the brain stem, spilled a little blood from that cut onto the ground as part of the ritual, then very skillfully cut the throat and drained the rest of the blood. I was proud of myself for watching all of it. Not all of the volunteers did! The groom speaks excellent English and works at the lodge in the Samburu National Reserve. We called our research quits early in the afternoon to go back to see some of the dancing at the wedding. Cheryl and I even joined the murrans and some women to dance a bit, although we didn’t do it very well. People were very welcoming, and we were again allowed to take pictures. We were all surrounded by children from the moment we arrived. Jordana has a great picture of me disappearing beneath a group of children who were dive bombing me to see my camera. One little guy, named something like Skola, didn’t let go of me for a couple of hours. (He's on the left in the picture.) He even fought his sister and others when it was time for me to leave. Kip eventually had to life him away from me and over a bunch of people while I walked away. One of the most fun things about the wedding was that we gave the new couple a pair of goats as a wedding present. We had a big group picture taken with the volunteers, some of the researchers and staff, the bride and groom, and the goats. Of course, when we came back to the compound we were all quick to disinfect; after all those kids touching us. It’s sad to think like that, but most of these kids had bad coughs, runny noses, and generally poor hygiene.

Another interesting cultural moment today was when we stopped to pick up an assistant chief (head of a sublocation, one of the governmental divisions of Kenya) who knew of some local predator kills. We had to make room in the car not just for him, but for his spear as well. Not an everyday occurrence in the US! Then we became an ambulance when we dropped off James at his manyatta and were asked to take an injured boy to the hospital in Wamba. He fell out of a tree and cut his stomach badly, but was amazingly calm in the car. He even smiled at us all and watched us when he got in the car! Sam and Nduhiu said that he had been given some sort of pain medicine.

We didn’t see the women selling necklaces today, but I did buy a camel bell. It is a wooden bell made by Petro, the day guard at the compound. He burns designs into the wood. I paid 500 shillings (about $6, give or take), and I got a tour of his home—not inside, but the outside and the chicken shed.

Today we did one transect this morning, but it went much faster. We were much farther out, up a mountain, and we saw more wildlife than herds of livestock. We saw lots of dikdiks, one klipspringer, 5 Grevy’s zebras (James said 8, but I only counted 5), several gerenuks, and a rabbit. After the transect, we conducted 3 interviews at manyattas; I worked on measuring with Carol, and we had a few interesting moments of having to walk alone between manyattas. Just a little scary when you’ve heard about lion kills in the area!

Tomorrow, we’re going to some dens (hyena, wild dog, and leopard) to look for scat!

July 16, 2006

No new animals today, but things to remember were:
1) Samburu man putting stick through his earring hole to hold onto it—he wound his ear around it!
2) Sam telling us, “We’re looking for a road to somewhere,” when we asked where we were going.
3) We had 2 men with guns with us (James and a Kenya Wildlife Service ranger named Fred), plus the assistant chief (named Aliben Lekumosaa).

Today was a nice change of pace. We got out of the car and hiked! We spent the whole day hiking to various carnivore dens. Some of the hiking was really rough; we got scraped by a lot of thorns and got very sweaty. We had 2 armed guards with us; the guns were rather reassuring when we were approaching leopard, hyena, and wild dog dens, although we never saw any actual carnivores. We saw lots of scat and dung, a few really good footprints, and a desiccated goat in a tree (a leopard’s kill).

July 17, 2006

We were awakened in the middle of the night last night by a chorus of hyenas. They sounded quite close for awhile, and then moved farther off. We’ve heard them before a couple of times, but this was the longest and loudest episode so far.

Just a couple more words about yesterday: We didn’t see a lot of animals (mostly dikdiks, a few gerenuks, vulturine guinea fowl, and a couple of good zebra sightings), but it was really neat to get off the road and explore a bit. The rock where we found the hyena dens was really cool. Most of the hiking involved hacking our way through a lot of thorns, so it was sometimes really difficult.

~later~

New species seen today: impala, mongoose

We went to the saddest little manyatta today. Our day was devoted to a transect (we saw 8 impala) and to interviews. Our second stop today was at a manyatta that seemed very poor. The fence was the shortest and thinnest we’d seen. There was no one who spoke Swahili or English, which means that people are not very educated. Worse, there were several children who looked very ill. One child was very still and looked possibly mentally disabled. There were also 2 children with big, distended bellies, which is a sign of very poor nutrition and something that we haven’t really seen here yet. It was very sad. They also had the meanest dogs we’ve ever seen. I was glad when Sam finished the interview and we could leave. Usually the children have runny noses and bad coughs, but they don’t have the bellies that show starvation and poor nutrition.

We made an earlier stop where we conducted interviews at 3 manyattas near each other in Inglai West. There were enough people who spoke English and Swahili for us to do for interviews. I’ve become the queen of measuring; Sam always has me do it because I’ve gotten used to it. Michelle and I took care of that while the others took care of the interviews. We measured the perimeter fence and the height and thickness of the fence, and then counted the number of bomas and the compartments in them. We also counted the number of huts and measured their distance from the bomas. After measuring, Sam and I sat in on the end of Sam’s interview. The translator he was working with told us that the women they were interviewing were surprised to see women in pants; they had never seen that and thought it was very funny. We spent a long time telling to the same interpreter, because he spoke English quite well and we had a lot of time to kill while waiting for Jordana and Carol, who had disappeared over the hill with 2 Samburu men. (I got nervous about that and had Sam send the ranger out on a rescue mission.) We talked about culture, such as comparing weddings (he liked the idea that the women’s families pay for weddings in the US), learning about the change from boy to murran to elder, and the meaning of bead colors. (White is for peace, red for blood, and green for pasture.) I also spent some time with an older man who wanted to reset the time and date on his watch, then asked me to trade mine for his. Luckily, he seemed OK with my “no.” We also found out that the woman Sam interviewed had spent about 7500 shillings (she sold a cow) to buy beads to make a big necklace for her daughter so that she could attract a husband (which seemed important, given that she appeared to be already pregnant). When the average income is less than $400 a year, $100 for a necklace sounds like a lot.

Yesterday, we finally got around to stopping at James’ manyatta to buy jewelry. I bought 3 pieces: a choker kind of thing for 300 shillings from one woman and a collar and bracelet from another woman (who spoke English quite well) for 1000 shillings. She originally asked for 800 shillings for the necklace and 300 for the bracelet, but I made a little bargain with her to buy both. When I put everything on as soon as I bought it, all the women got a kick out of it and tried to show me how to move to make them shake, and the second woman asked me to take a picture with her.

July 18, 2006

Animals seen in Samburu National Reserve today: dikdiks, vervet monkeys, yellow-necked spurfowl, water buck, impala, lion, Grant’s gazelles, malachite kingfisher, warthog, gerenuk, vulturine guinea fowl, elephants, Grevy’s zebra, African fishing eagle, baboon, greater kudus, reticulated giraffe, beisa oryx

Today was so awesome! We left the compound at about 6:25am to drive to the Samburu National Reserve. We got to see the sunrise over the Mathews Range as we drove, as well as a troop of baboons on their way to the river. (We saw them again on their way home, which was a neat way to round out the day, along with seeing the sunset.)

After paying the entrance fee to the park ($30 or 2200 shillings), we started a 20km transect and began counting animals. Sam did take it easy on us and gave us a lot of the info so that we could take pictures and watch the animals. At first, we mostly saw dikdiks, with which we are now pretty bored. They’re cute, but we see a LOT of them! Sam kept torturing us by pointing out evidence of elephants (fresh dung, footprints, trees they’d broken, rubbed against, or fed on…at one point he said to us, “Oh, did you want to see elephants? I didn’t know.”) And then, all of a sudden, there were elephants! We saw a couple, and Sam told us not to worry about photographing them because we’d see some closer soon, and within a few minutes, we were about 10 meters away from 2 more. They were amazing! Throughout the day, we saw elephants of all sizes, some closer than others, and got great pictures. We actually ate our lunch across the Ewaso Ngiro river from a whole herd. It was fun to watch them! Shortly before lunch, we also came across a lioness resting in the shade of a tree beside the river. She was very close to some impala and Grant’s gazelles, but we didn’t get to see any interaction, or “drama,” as Sam called it. I guess the lioness wasn’t hungry. We also saw a bunch of reticulated giraffes, which were so cool to watch. They’re so tall and skinny! I think I got some good pictures. It was especially cool when we came across some elephants and giraffes together, although we couldn’t quite get them all in one picture. I’ve now seen all the animals I really wanted to see on this trip: lion, giraffe, elephant, and zebra. Very cool! Some of the other animals we saw today were also very fun to catch sight of. The male water bucks were very stately and regal. The gazelles are dainty, but not quite as dainty as the gerenuks. The greater kudus were a little oddly put together, with some oddly places stripes. And the warthogs were very skittish.

One last thing that Sam told us today was that Fred (the KWS ranger) was with us today as an armed guard not just because of animals but because the road between Wamba and reserve can be dangers due to bandits/thieves. I’m glad he was with us, although we didn’t have any problems. Fred is not originally from the Samburu District. He is from the western part of Kenya and has been stationed in Wamba for about a year. He expects to be transferred to somewhere else soon. Sam later explained that the KWS doesn’t generally station people in the regions where they grew up in order to avoid conflicts of interest and family obligations in cases of reports of wildlife problems in the area. If they did have a Samburu ranger stationed in Wamba, he would not be from the immediate area.

July 19, 2006

The new water group had an OK day. A tire on the van was flat when we went to leave, so we had to spend some time getting that fixed in Wamba. Steve and Kip let us walk up the main street to post office because Carol wanted to mail some postcards (we met a lot of little kids who wanted to shake our hands). I did some shopping while we were there; I wanted to buy some of the fabric everyone wears, and bought what turned out to be more like a skirt than the lambas from Madagascar. It’s mostly the men who were the shukas (the Swahili name for what I bought), but I liked it because I have seen lots of people wearing that particular fabric, so I know that it’s authentic. I’ve found that it’s really quite comfortable! We also met a bunch of men and boys while we were waiting. There were some interesting discussions, with them asking questions about law and about the US.

After a late start, we headed to the West Gate Community Ranch of Ngutuk Ongiron (almost back to the reserve) to take water samples from the Ewaso Ngiro. It was a long process there: we needed UTM coordinates from the GPS, 3 different water samples, and measures of water speed, depth, and distance across the river. It was an interesting change of activity, but it was a lot of work in the hot sun. None of us brought any water and we were all anxious for lunch by the time we finished. After lunch, we drove a little farther and then hiked down to a lagga (dry river bed) to take water samples from a well someone had dug. I use the term “well” loosely; it was basically just a hole dug into the river bed. The water is in an underground river there, so they dig down to reach it. They have to keep digging it deeper as the water table drops. They pile acacia branches around the edge to make a fence in hopes of keeping out the animals, but it doesn’t do a great job. We saw baboon tracks that seemed to indicate they’d gotten beyond the fence. The water pretty disgusting, kind of scummy looking, and a nearby patch of surface water was completely covered in algae. It makes you wonder how people can survive as well as they do. There’s so little water! Kip told us that one reason the Ewaso Ngiro is so shallow where we were is that a lot of it is used for irrigation by the people who live to the north.

After dinner tonight, we had to learn how to do the titration tests for alkalinity and dissolved oxygen. Liz and Melanie taught Carol and Michelle, who then taught me and Pete. Hopefully the titrations won’t give us too much trouble. The other group had some late nights working on them, and they had more science teachers on their team than we have.

Other than the lost luggage and the broken camera, this has been a pretty good trip. I’m learning a lot, seeing some amazing things, and meeting some nice people. I just wish we had a little more down time. It’s really hard to find time to write in my journal, and I’ve hardly picked up my book at all since I got here. I end up having to make the choice between sleep and time to relax and unwind. Right now, most people have gone to bed, or are at least in their rooms. But it’s a lovely night, so I decided to sit on the porch for awhile. The generator is destroying the silence a bit, but there’s a lovely breeze and surprisingly few bugs. It’s good to have a moment to just stop and absorb everything.

July 20, 2006

Things to remember from today’s water use observation:
- men singing from the bottom of the wells as they watered cattle and donkeys
- wooden troughs set at the edge of the wells for the animals to drink from
- clouds hugging the tops of mountains
- big bull elephant (outside of the reserve!) on the way to the water holes
- young herder wearing fanny pack over Samburu man skirt (Steve says its pretty typical, but I haven’t notice it before)
- women moving their homes by donkey and stopping to ask permission to use the water

We saw 2 elephants today in our travels. Seeing them in the reserve was cool, but seeing them
outside the reserve was REALLY cool. One was a big bull. I’m not sure about the other one. They were fairly well hidden in the bush, so we didn’t get pictures, but it will still be a favorite memory.

Today we counted animals at some water holes/wells in a dry riverbed in the Sarara section of Namunyak, which on the other side of the Mathews Range from the Earthwatch compound. We counted so many animals! Between 5 water holes, there were a whole lot of goats, sheep, donkeys, and camels. There were also a lot of men bathing, women washing clothes, and even some women filling water jugs. We also saw 3 women and a girl apparently moving their manyatta on the backs of donkeys. (Steve told me that it is usually the women who do the moving, because the men are usually with the cattle and the women move to join them if they have to move too far away to find water.) The women asked permission to use the water and then were given priority over the others who were waiting. I wonder how far they were going.
To water the animals, the murran strips and climbs into the well. He scoops up water into a wooden trough on the side of the well, and the animals drink from the trough. The murrans sing the whole time, which was really cool to hear. I wish I could have recorded it.

After counting, we had lunch and then drove to a couple more wells to take water samples. We’re getting pretty quick at the water samples, and the titrations were not so bad. We divided them up so that it didn’t take too long.

July 21, 2006

Things to remember today:
- elephant dung soccer (For some reason, some of us decided it was fun to kick around some really dry elephant dung…not quite the same size as a soccer ball, but it worked OK.)
- tire jump rope (The place where we get tires fixed makes sandals and rope out of tires, and Mercy got us all playing jump rope while we waited for another flat tire to be fixed.)
- Shopping in Wamba: tire sandals and sarong cloth, ending with Pete taking a picture of me and Mercy with a cow
- Waving to James as we passed the house with the blue door at his manyatta, and him waving back when he recognized us
- School visit, with the choir singing to us (“This is the day the Lord has made” and a song in Samburu)…Nagorworu Primary School
- Mercy’s story about why dogs chase cars: A dog, a goat, and a sheep were riding together in a taxi. The sheep got out first and paid his fare. The taxi continued to the goat’s destination, and when the goat got out, he told the driver that the dog would pay for his share. When the dog got to his destination, the driver told him that he had to pay his fare and the goat’s fare. The dog argued, told the driver he had never agreed to pay the goat’s fare and that he didn’t have the money to pay for both, but eventually the driver got him to pay both fares. And to this day, the dog believes that the driver stole his money and that’s why he chases all cars that he sees, trying to find the driver and get his money pack. The goat, on the other hand, runs away from cars and dogs because he knows that he is guilty. And the sheep, being oblivious to all of this, isn’t scared of either.

July 22, 2006

We have had the most amazing morning! Steve and Petro took me, Pete, Jordana, and Michelle on a hike into the Mathews Range behind the compound. It was so nice to be out of the car! We hadn’t gone very far when it became very clear that there were elephants in the area. There were lots of tracks, and there were several piles of very fresh dung and urine. (According to Petro, the animals had been right near the compound at about one o’clock in the morning.) We all walked very slowly and quietly behind Petro until we were past all signs of recent activity. We heard breaking trees a few times, but we didn’t see the animals. It was definitely a little scary! We didn’t have an armed guard, just Petro with his stick. He didn’t seem too nervous, however, so I mostly focused on how cool it was to know that we were so close to wild elephants. The fact that we saw very few other people and no livestock added to the adventure because we seemed so far from all civilization, but we had all heard enough stories about the dangers of elephants to know that the situation could be very serious.

The place to where we were headed was a beautiful stream coming out of the mountains. Everything around it was green, and there were freshwater crabs, tadpoles, and dragonflies. It was the first water source we’ve visited without any livestock, which made it seem more idyllic. All we saw was a troop of baboons who arrived as we were about to leave. Some of them seemed as interested in watching us as we were in watching them.

On the way back, we actually saw the elephants! Petro found himself a bigger stick, handing off his original stuck to Pete, but otherwise he didn’t seem too worried. We met more livestock and people, but in one deserted spot we heard breaking branches and cracking trees just off the path. We couldn’t see anything, but Petro led us up a hill in the opposite direction. We found out later that we only climbed the hill to try to see the elephants, but it was a bit scary for a few minutes because we thought we were trying to get to safety. Once we were up the hill, we were able to see 4 elephants. Petro said there was a fifth, but we couldn’t see it. (He later told us that the 5th was a calf, which may have been why we couldn’t see it.) We couldn’t have been more than a few hundred meters downhill from them when we were on the path! They were so cool to see! Even though they are huge animals, they’re really hard to spot. You have to look for the moving branches first, and then try to see some moving body part, like a trunk or an ear. We were able to watch for awhile and get some pictures. It was definitely a highlight of the trip!
We’ve been entertained since the encounter with stories of other elephant run-ins and advice about what you should do if an elephant chases you. Apparently, the trick is to throw pieces of clothing in a couple of directions and then run in the third direction; the elephant will smell you on the clothes and trample them, giving you time to get away. Of course, we’ve also realized that some of the researchers weren’t very happy to hear about our encounter because it could have been really dangerous, so we’ve realized that it could have been even scarier than it was.
We’re getting a bit of a break this afternoon. We came to the compound for lunch, and we just have to do a couple of titrations this afternoon. We have to go get one more water sample, but Steve says we don’t have to leave for awhile because it is in Wamba.

Last night, the generator died. It gave us a nice ambience for a lantern and candlelit dinner, but it made it hard to find time to write in my journal. Without my headlamp (which I packed in my checked luggage), it was really hard to see!

Yesterday’s school visit was nice to do. What surprised me most was that the classes were really small. I expected class sizes like I had in Madagascar (I had 43 per class there, and that was small compared to the class sizes some of my friends had), but these classes were tiny. The biggest class was probably about 20 kids. The Class 8 group was the smallest, only 5 boys. Otherwise, I saw a lot of the same problems I saw in Madagascar. The desks were broken and they sat 3-4 to a seat. The walls were pretty bare, except for a few assignments taped up. The blackboards were just about as bad as what I had in Vavatenina. But the students were well behaved and seemed to be working hard. I would to try to send them something useful, but it might be hard to get it there.

July 23, 2006

Today was our last day of fieldwork. Tomorrow, we’ll have a free day, so I think most of us are planning to take a hike. On Monday, we’ll fly back to Nairobi. Hard to believe the trip is almost over!

Petro just called us off the porch to see a snake. It was big excitement at the compound, a thin green snake climbing up a large cactus-like tree. We’re told it isn’t poisonous.

Pete and Carol went to the hospital today, while Jordana, Michelle, and I went with Steve and Kip to do another water use census at a lagga. It was a long, dull process. The one we did earlier was more interesting. Steve and I didn’t have much to record after awhile, while Jordana and Michelle were swamped. I spent most of the time playing with some Samburu kids who decided to hang around me. They came over when Steve left for awhile to look for more wells; all of a sudden I was surrounded by women and children, only one of whom spoke English. I ended up trying to teach some of the younger kids tic-tac-toe on the back of my data sheets. They didn’t entirely get the concept, but they seemed to have fun with it. We did some other drawings, too, and I had them practice letters. One of them stayed for a couple of hours, playing with my hair, singing, drawing, etc. I ended up giving 2 of them my pens because they were having fun with them. Steve said it was pointless because they don’t really know how to write anything (they probably weren’t attending school very much), but I figured I might as well give them a little something. In return, I got to play with a club for awhile. After most of the animals seemed to be watered, I helped Steve and Kip do some water testing. We tested 15 wells for conductivity, salinity, pH, and temperature. It was 3:30 by the time we got back for lunch after stopping to pick up Pete and Carol and make some phone calls.

July 24, 2006

Ntepes Primary School visit:
- Angelina was in Class 2; Daniel & Eric in Class 5
- The two girls I sat & talked with (Nasieku & Soila) were in Class 8
- The biggest class (Class 4) was 90 students
- 9 teachers and more than 400 pupils
- Textbooks provided by government, but only 1 per 2-3 pupils; government also provides pens, pencils, erasers, notebooks
- Biggest challenge, according to one teacher, is class size making it difficult to do all necessary work
- Teachers are posted to the a school by the government; they can have a choice of 3 districts, but can’t request a particular town or school
- In primary schools, teachers teach a variety of subjects to a variety of grade levels: 35-40 lessons per week, multiple preps
- Students study in English and Kiswahili
- After class 8, students take a test to determine if they can go to Form 1 (secondary school) and how good a school they can get into. (Top score is 500; average grade is 250.)

July 25, 2006

We’re back in Nairobi, and I actually have my luggage! It felt so good to take a real shower and put on fresh clothes. We just had a nice lunch by the pool, and we’re leaving in about 15 minutes to go to the Maasai Market for some souvenir shopping. Tonight, we’re going to the Carnivore, and tomorrow morning Pete and I are going to Nairobi National Park before we fly out tomorrow night.

Unfortunately, I seem to have caught the cold that was going around camp. I’m a little stuffy, and my ears were really painful on the flight from Wamba this morning.

It was a little sad to leave Wamba. I really enjoyed my time there, and it was hard to say goodbye to the Kenyans who have become friends. I’m going to miss sitting on the porch in Wamba, especially in the quiet of early mornings when few people were awake and the only noises came from livestock in the distance, and at night after dinner when most people had gone to their rooms. It was a good place for being peaceful.

July 26, 2006

It’s my last day in Nairobi. I’m both sad to leave and looking forward to getting home to familiar things and friends and family.

After lunch yesterday, we went over to the market. What a zoo! It was definitely a shock to the system. The place is jam-packed with vendors, and it is also crawling with “brokers” who claim to want to help you negotiate a good price but are really ripping you off. I bought a couple of ebony animals, a cute wooden bowl and spoon set, a painted wooden bracelet, an African shirt, and a keychain. It was definitely necessary to bargain hard and be firm if you weren’t really interested in something. It was definitely an experience unlike anything else we’ve done in Kenya.

The Carnivore Restaurant last night was awesome! Nine of us plus Liz’s friend and Nicole’s parents all went. It was definitely touristy, but it was an experience that I wouldn’t have missed. The menu was a set thing that included the soup of the day, bread, a baked potato, a little bit of salad, all the mat you can eat, and dessert. Most of the meats were great. We had chicken, beef, lamb, pork, crocodile, camel, and ostrich. I wasn’t a big fan of the crocodile, but everything else was great. Most of us were stuffed by the time they finished serving us. Ice cream for dessert really hit the spot after 2 weeks without really cold beverages or foods.
This morning, a bunch of us met for breakfast before people started to go their separate ways. Pete and I were supposed to be picked up by Arthur (the carnivore team driver in Samburu) to go to Nairobi National Park. There was some sort of misunderstanding, however, and after waiting an hour and a half for Arthur, we gave up and got a taxi driver named Robert to take us. (The hotel has drivers based at the hotel.) We heard later that Arthur showed up at 9:00, two hours past our arranged time. Despite our late start, we had a great mini-safari. We were both idiotic and forgot our binoculars, but we still managed to see quite a few animals up close. The highlight of the day was getting to follow a lioness down the road for a bit until another car scared her off, but we also saw giraffes, a black rhino, common zebras, and some bush buck up close. We saw kongoni (hartebeest) all over the park, and we saw one heard of elands, too. One other cool thing was seeing a monitor lizard, which our driver and either one KWS ranger didn’t even recognize.

After a stop for lunch, we went over to the Giraffe Center. Jordana happened to arrive there at the same time as us. The center wasn’t much, but we got to feed a couple of giraffes. That was a fun—if somewhat slimy—experience. The giraffes have really funny, long tongues and loved eating out of peoples’ hands.

The remainder of the day is being spent by the pool at the Fairview. Pete, Jordana, and I will have one last dinner together before Pete and I take a cab to the airport tonight for our flights home. I’ll fly to London, have a 12-hour layover there, and then fly to Boston. It’s been a good trip.

I'm home!

2006-07-28T10:01:00.000-04:00

After being awake for most of 48 hours, I got home last night. It was such a good trip, and I have so much that I want to share with everyone. I took my disposable cameras in to be developed this morning, and I'll work on getting pictures edited, labeled, and uploaded as soon as possible. I'll also be getting excerpts from my expedition journal posted to the blog over the next few days. For now, I just want to say that this was an amazing trip and get a couple of little tidbits of information up here for you.

I know that Elizabeth H. posted a couple of questions for me the other day (thanks!). I'll write more about the wedding when I get my journal excerpts posted, but I think the bride and groom were both in their 20s. I was told that they met at university in Nairobi, and men in Samburu culture can't marry until after they serve their time as murrans (warriors), which usually takes about 14 years. The bride was fairly old for a Samburu bride; I was told that girls can legally marry at the age of 14 with parental consent, and many Samburu girls do marry that young (if not younger...the Samburu district is so far removed from the rest of the country and the lifestyle is nomadic, so it is often hard for national laws to be enforced).

As for the animals I saw, here's the list. There are bird species that I don't know the names of (although we tried to identify a lot of them), but I'll try to make sure I have all the mammals listed!

Grevy's and common zebras
Ostrich
Kirk's dikdik
Kori bustard
black-bellied bustard
Hornbill
Vulturine guinea fowl
Baboon
Rock hyrax
Vervet monkey
Gerenuk
Klipspringer
Rabbit
Impala
Mongoose (I'm not entirely sure about this one; we saw something that looked new, and Sam, the principal investigator on the Carnivore project, said it was a mongoose, but I didn't get a good enough look at it. If it was a mongoose, my guess is that it was a dwarf mongoose.)
Yellow-necked spurfowl
Waterbuck
Lion
Grant's gazelle
Malachite kingfisher
Warthog
Elephant
African fishing eagle
Greater and lesser kudu
Reticulated and Maasai giraffe
Beisa oryx
Bush buck
African buffalo (Only at a difference, unfortunately; both my friend Pete and I forgot our binoculars when we went to Nairobi National Park.)
Kongoni (also called hartebeast)
Eland
Black eagle
Black rhino
Monitor lizard
Go-away bird
Starlings (I forgot to write down the actual species name, but they were really beautiful turquoise and yellow birds.)
Livestock: cows, camels, goats, sheep, donkeys

Not a bad list! Some of those animals we saw more than others, of course. It didn't take long for us to get sick of dikdiks...they were everywhere in Samburu! On the days that we had to count and record every animal we saw, we really came to hate dikdiks because we had to count so many of them when we really wanted to see more exotic animals. It got to the point where, on the way to the Samburu Reserve early one morning, my friend Jordana asked, "Does anyone speak dikdik? Maybe they know where the elephants are." We REALLY wanted to see elephants at that point; we'd spent days seeing lots of evidence of them without seeing the actual animals, and we wanted to see more of an elephant than just its dung.

The other thing I want to post now, just to give you a taste of what the trip was like, is my "Things I Learned in Kenya" list. I wrote this over the past couple of days, starting on my last day in Nairobi when a friend and I had finished our sightseeing and were hanging out by the hotel pool until we had to get on the plane. The list is long, but I think it has a good selection of the cool, interesting, and sometimes bizarre things I learned. The items are in no particular order, and are based on observations and conversations with Kenyans. All the information is as accurate as I could get based on those conversations and my memory, but I do apologize if there are any mistakes in the information.

1) Never wear touristy Kenyan t-shirts to open-air markets unless you want to be harrassed. (You'll be harrassed anyway, but the t-shirt just adds to the level of harassment!)

2) Elephants are really dangerous and people are very much afraid of them.

3) African buffaloes are even more dangerous than elephants when they charge, because unlike an elephant, they don't ever try to just fake you out, and they will even stalk you.

4) According to the Samburu, lions will only attack murrans (warriors), not women or children.

5) There comes a point where you just stop caring about walking through dung because it's everywhere.

6) You can't escape dung in a manyatta. (Samburu homestead)

7) Elephant dung is really big, as are elephant footprints.

8) The Samburu don't generally bury their dead, but instead leave them out to be eaten by scavengers. When someone at a manyatta is dying, they are left outside the manyatta to die, and the rest of the people living there move. (In Wamba, the staff of the mission hospital drive around the district a couple of days a week looking for people who may have been left for dead but are actually still alive; they bring them to the hospital to try to help when possible.) Anyone with the same name as the deceased person changes their name. If someone dies at the hospital, the family rarely comes back to collect the body.

9) The biggest diseases (at least in terms of causes of death) are TB and HIV, with animal attacks and childbirth being other leading causes of death. HIV is spreading rapidly, probably help by the polygamous practices of the Samburu.

10) Samburu women have very few rights. Men will have the most say over the lives of the women in their families.

11) For a month after circumcision (which occurs for all boys in an age set--there is a new age set about every 14 years--at one time, so there is no standard time for the ceremony), newly circumcised boys wear black and kill birds to stuff and wear on their heads. The birds are supposed to scare off girls, but they also try to kill a lot of birds in order to impress girls. It is believed that these young men will turn into baboons if they are not inside their manyattas before sundown. After about a month, these men will kill a cow or a goat, give a special piece of meat to their mothers to symbolize that their mothers no longer need to feed them, and they become murrans.

12) There are certain smells that seem to be everywhere in Africa, at least based on my experiences in Kenya and Madagascar.

13) Roads in Samburu are REALLY bumpy.

14) Always bring binoculars when attempting to view wild animals.

15) Classic American light rock/easy listening (with an emphasis on the 80s) seems to be the preferred soundtrack for safari/taxi drivers. Our driver in Samburu frequently had it on (prompting one friend to take a "Michael Jackson break" from studying my Swahili guidebook one day), as did the driver who took me and Pete to Nairobi National Park. With the latter, we heard George Michael, ABBA, "Lady in Red," and "Sometimes the Snow Comes Down in June," to name a few. Really a little odd when you're looking for rhinos and lions.

16) Language lessons:

Hello in Kiswahili is jambo, in Kisamburu it is supa.
Goodbye in Kiswahili is kwaheri, in Kisamburu is lessere.
Twiga = giraffe
Simba = lion
Punda = donkey
ndovo = elephant
sowa = OK
tayari = ready
twende = let's go
kuja = come
pole = sorry
pole pole = slowly
ngombe = cow
ngamia = camel
ambuzi = goat
habari = How are you?
asante = thank you
asante sana = thank you very much
karibu = you're welcome

17) Birth defects are not uncommon due to home births in the manyattas attended by unqualified "traditional birth attendants." The hospital in Wamba has a special ward for Samburu children abandoned by their parents for such reasons.

18) Buying beads from someone with whom you have a personal connection means so much more than buying them in store or big market.

19) Hyena scat is white (because they eat the bones of animals they feed on and the scat is therefore high calcium) and sometimes looks like styrofoam balls. Lion scat is so high in protein that other predators will eat it. The leopard scat I saw was very hairy.

20) Elephants will strip away the bark from branches because it is the most nutritious part, and they'll leave the rest behind once they've gotten out all the moisture.

21) Adult giraffes can eat about 75 pounds (or more!) of food a day...unless I've mixed that up and it's 75kg, but I think I'm right. Baby giraffes are 5 feet tall at birth.

22) Giraffe saliva is really slimy when they eat out of your hand. They have really long, very flexible tongues.

23) Samburu men wear skirt-like clothes called (in Swahili, anyway) shukas. They're very comfortable!

24) If you're being chased by an elephant, throw a piece of clothing in one direction (in the elephant's path) and run in the other. In theory, the elephant will attack your clothing because it has your scent, and you'll be able to get away.

25) If you're attacked by a buffalo, lie flat and try to get a stick up its nostril to kill it.

26) If you need to shoot an elephant, shoot it in the ear. The skull has big holes one the sides there.

27) Elephants have very sensitive trunks, so if worse comes to worse, pinch the trunk!

28) If a bull elephant is traveling with a herd, it will usually be a ways behind the rest of the elephants. Make sure you don't get stuck between the herd and the bull!

29) They Kenyan government burned 60 million shillings worth of ivory tusks in 1989 as a protest against poaching of elephants and the illegal ivory trade. The tusks burned after being doused with gasoline, and the ashes can still be found at a monument in Nairobi National Park.

30) Dikdiks almost always travel in pairs (a male & a female), but sometimes an offspring will be with them too.

31) A mixed herd of sheep and goats can be referred to as "shoats" for note-taking purposes on Samburu CRI projects. When in doubt, call them shoats! The way to tell goats and sheep apart (harder than it sounds because Kenyan sheep are not fluffy and wooly like American sheep) is that the ears and tails of sheep always point down, while goat tails always go up and their ears are up or our to the sides.

32) The big Samburu necklaces (collars) are really heavy and hard to put on. Women actually sleep in them.

33) Solid color necklaces (red, from what I saw) are "at home" decoration, while the more colorful collars and strands are added for leaving the manyatta.

34) "African time" moves much more slowly than American time.

35) Camel and ostrich are pretty tasty, but crocodile is a bit disgusting.

36) Hyenas are more likely than other predators to make off with a goat from inside a boma.

37) Murrans can have girlfriends, but they'd better not get them pregnant. If they get a girl pregnant, they may even be killed by other murrans, or at the very least they will have to pay a fine to the girl's father if they don't marry.

38) Samburu women are circumcised (also referred to as female genital mutilation because this practice is considered barbaric and unacceptable to a lot of the world) the day before their wedding or at the age of 30, whichever comes first. A woman cannot have a child in Samburu culture until she is circumcised.

39) A Samburu woman's hair is shaved and her clothes given away before her marriage because she cannot bring anything old to her new life.

40) Sons must marry according to age/birth order. If a man marries before his older brother, he must give that brother 2 cows and he cannot live in the family manyatta with his wife until the older brother marries.

41) Dowries are negotiated between the bride's parents, the groom, and the groom's family before a wedding. In at least one Kenyan ethnic group/tribe, the bride is not actually allowed to know what dowry was paid for her. Even in tribes that pay dowries in cash money, the contacts are still written in terms of livestock.

42) Goats are an acceptable wedding gift when attending a Samburu wedding.

43) Sandals made from old tires are cheap (100 shillings, or about $1.50) and do not wear out for a very long time. I was told that mine come with a 10-year warranty.

44) To make one of the really elaborate bead collars/necklaces so that a daughter can attract a husband (girls with very few beads are not considered attractive), a mother can pay as much as 7500 shillings for the beads (in other words, the price of one cow or about $100).

45) All Kenyan children are supposed to attend school, but the law is not always enforced. Samburu families also keep their children home to herd livestock, etc. instead of sending them to school. Girls also leave school after they are married, so that many do not finish primary school. The national government has a hard time enforcing the law because Samburu is so remote.

46) Educated Kenyans generally speak 3 languages: their native tongue, Swahili, and English. They'll often switch back and forth between the 3 in the same conversation without realizing it.

OK, I guess that's enough for today! Pictures and more information are coming soon, I promise!

Back from the Bush!

2006-07-25T08:37:00.000-04:00

I made it through 2 weeks in Wamba and now I'm back in Nairobi! I can't write much now, because I am paying 15 shillings a minute to use the internet and I want to go jump in the pool, but I did want to write a little something in case anyone is checking the site. I'll get pictures up as soon as I can after I get home on Thursday, but in the meantime, let me just say that the trip was awesome!

A couple of bad things about the trip:
1) My luggage got lost on the way here, and I only got it today when I got back to Nairobi. Tough 2 go 2 weeks with only one set of field clothes, one pair of hiking socks, and 2 pairs of underwear!
2) My camera broke a couple of days into the trip. I borrowed a spare from someone else and bought a few disposible cameras, but I probably don't have quite as many pictures as I would normally have had.

Highlights of the trip:
1) Smiles of the Samburu children.
2) Getting to attend a traditional Samburu wedding in Wamba...we even bought goats as presents for the bride and groom!
3) Walking in the footsteps of elephants while hiking to get water samples. It was the scariest and most amazing thing I have ever done, especially when we started hearing the trees crack and break only a few hundred meters from us.
4) Making great new friends among the other volunteers.
5) Making new friends among the scientists and staff.
6) Seeing lots of animals in the Samburu Reserve.
7) Shopping! (Beads, carvings, etc.)

OK, I'd better go. The pool is calling my name. July is supposedly the coldest month in the Kenya, but it still seems pretty warm to me, and that pool likes like pure luxury after 2 weeks in the dust of Wamba.

I'll write more soon!

Kenya luggage

2006-07-09T09:39:00.000-04:00

Kenya luggage
Originally uploaded by Ms. Wonson.

I haven't been able to get this photo into my post from yesterday, so I'm adding it now as a separate post. This is all I'm taking for my 2-week trip: a small duffle bag, a backpack, and a small purse. Wish me luck!

Packing challenges

2006-07-08T12:56:00.000-04:00

Have I mentioned before that I am only allowed to bring 10kg (about 22 pounds) of luggage on this trip? That's way below the amounts allowed by the big commercial airlines, but I will have to take a little baby plane from Nairobi to Samburu, and that airline only allows passengers 10kg of luggage. I've decided that this may be one of the most difficult parts of this trip. So far, my checked luggage weighs about 10 pounds, which is fine, but my carry-on weighed over 20 pounds when I first packed it! I've had to take out my CDs (except the "white noise" CD that helps me sleep on the plane), and some extra clothing, and a few other things that were nonessential. Still, I had basically only packed what Earthwatch told me to bring, so I'm not quite sure how I can get the luggage any lighter. I'm hoping that my carry-on will get lighter on the way there, as I'll be reading and discarding books as I go. I'm only bring 2 novels with me, which is realy not enough for a 2-week trip with long layovers! However, I'm sure that I will finish at least one of them on the way there. Actually, I'll probably be able to finish one of them during my layover in New York! So that will lighten the load a bit. If worse comes to worse, I'll just have to wear several layers of clothing.

Here's what I'm bringing on this trip:
- a journal
- the Expedition Briefing provided by Earthwatch
- my passport
- proof of vaccines I've had in the past
- 2 pairs of hiking pants for field work
- 4 t-shirts for field work
- 5 pairs of socks to wear with my hiking boots
- hiking boots
- 2 extra shirts for when I'm not in the field (3 if you count what I'll wear on the plane)
- flip flops
- tevas
- wide-brimmed hat (to keep my face out of the Equatorial sun)
- 1 pair of shorts
- 1 light-weight fleece sweater for the plane and cool evenings
- pajamas
- underwear
- small daypack (I've actually got 2 small backpacks; one is my carry-on, and the other is inside it packed with the things that I want most easily available during my flights.)
- a small drybag (protect my camera from dust if necessary)
- insect repellent (I've got LOTS of this! I really don't want to get malaria or dengue fever!)
- sunglasses
- sunscreen (I have LOTS of this, too!)
- biodegradable soap/shampoo
- Purell
- personal first aid kit
- personal survival kit (My birthday present from my brother; he insists that I need it in case of emergencis. It has fish hooks, duct tape, a signal mirror, fire starting materials, etc.)
- contact lenses and supplies
- spending money (see my earlier post)
- digital camera
- extra batteries
- headlamp
- earplugs (just in case I have to share a room with someone who snores)
- Kenya guidebook
- Swahili phrasebook (I bought a CD to teach myself Swahili, but I never got very far with it.)
- Pass the Pigs (just in case we're bored in the evening and need a game to play; it's the smallest game I own.)
- watch
- swimsuit (in case I want to use the hotel pool in Nairobi)
- eyeglasses
- vitamins and medicines (like Malarone, the anti-malarial drug I'll have to start taking on Monday)
- brush, comb, barrettes, ponytail holders
- knee braces

I think that's it! It's a lot of stuff, but I usually take much more on other trips. I look at the two small bags I have packed and think that it is a ridiculously small amount of luggage compared to what I would normally pack for 2 weeks in France. Of course, I'm not bringing presents to anyone, which usually requires a lot of luggage space going to visit friends in France. Hmm, where am I going to put presents coming back? That could be a problem. So far, the strangest request has been for lion poop, while the easiest to fulfill has been for a rock. I'm hoping to find some interesting carved animals and things like that for presents and souvenirs, personally. Well, I'll have to assume that I'll use up and throw away items like insect repellent and sunscreen before I fly home again. There's supposed to be a big market in Nairobi, and I definitely want to go do some shopping!

Well, I'd better get around to finishing my reading about wild dogs. I've been trying to read up a bit on the local people, the animals I'll be studying, etc. Ugh, homework!

Money, Money, Money!

2006-06-30T16:49:00.000-04:00

I got my Kenyan shillings today! I took some pictures so that you could all see what the bills look like.

This first picture is of all the money I received, which is equal to $300.44. It is 17,350 KES.

This picture shows bills equal to about $5.

This picture shows bills equal to about $15.

These bills equal about $30.

These pictures show both sides of the KES 100 and KES 1000 bills.

I can't wait to see what I find to spend all this money on! Apparently, there are a few local crafts available to buy when we're in Wamba. Hopefully I'll be able to visit the big market in Nairobi as well and buy some souvenirs there, too. And, of course, there will be dinner at the Carnivore. Yum!

Online Videos

2006-06-30T10:47:00.000-04:00

It's amazing the things you can find on the Internet! I'm stuck close to home today, at least until my Kenyan shillings are delivered (I can't miss that!), so I was just playing around online a bit. I had seen a segment about YouTube.com on the Today show recently, so I thought I'd check it out. Just to see what I'd get, I looked at the Travel & Places section and searched for Kenya. Who would have thought there'd be a video related to my trip?! The video "Moran: Samburu Warrior" is not of the best quality, but it gives you a little bit of a look at the local people where I will be, and the region as well. You can find it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUcWG9zwydU. If you follow the Samburu tag link, there is another video about elephant watching, but it seems to be primarily an advertisement for a safari company. It has some cool music, but it doesn't show much of what I am likely to see.

In the Samburu warrior video, you may notice that the warrior is wearing some beautiful bracelets. Cheryl showed Liz and me pictures of those on Wednesday, and told us that the men make those bracelets to give to their wives to show that the women are taken. Apparently if a woman accepts a bracelet from a man, it means she is his wife. Note to self: Do NOT accept the gift of a bracelet!

Fellow travelers and Kenyan currency

2006-06-28T10:05:00.000-04:00

It has been a busy couple of days getting ready for my trip! I know that I still have a week and a half before I leave, but I am keeping myself busy by doing some of the things that need to be done.

Yesterday, I met 2 of my fellow travelers for lunch to talk about the trip. Cheryl Sanderson went to Samburu with Earthwatch 2 years ago and is now going back; she very kindly shared photos and helpful hints with me and Liz Crane. We had so many questions about what to pack, what to expect, the food, the people, etc. It was good to know that I'm mostly on track with my plans for what to pack, but seeing a picture of the very tiny plan we'll take from Nairobi to an area closer to Samburu makes me a little nervous. Cheryl and Liz are both very nice. I think it will be a great trip!

This morning, I decided to spend some time researching where and when I'll be able to get Kenyan currency. I normally wouldn't worry too much, but I will be arriving very late in Kenya before a very early meeting the next morning, so I'm worried about the timing of it all and whether or not the information I have found in guidebooks is accurate. Cheryl said that she changes currency in London, where they do have Kenyan shillings available at the currency exchange bureaus, and suggested that maybe I could get my currency during my long layover in New York or in Brussels. I found the phone numbers for Travelex at JFK and was told that they don't carry Kenyan shillings. I don't really want to call the airport in Brussels to try to find out if they carry shillings there, so I continued my search. It turns out that you can order Kenyan shillings from AAA. I get nervous thinking about carrying that much cash with me for that long, but I have a money belt and other ways to carry cash more safely, and the idea of taking out large amounts of cash from an ATM late at night in a city known for high crime rates makes me even more nervous than just carrying the cash on the airplane does. So, I ordered my Kenyan shillings and won't have to worry about not having money in Samburu. I should get my shillings in a couple of days.

According to the Universal Currency Converter at xe.com, $1 US is equal to about 74 Kenyan shillings, as of this morning. I made a list of a few basic amounts so that I'll be able to judge how much souvenirs and other things cost as I shop. I don't want to have to be dividing things by 74 in my head all the time!

I've been trying to add a picture of Kenyan currency for you all, but I'm having some computer problems. I'll try again later, or I'll take a picture of my money when it arrives and upload that.

I still have a few more errands to do to get ready. I think today I will go use up some gift certificates at REI and Barnes and Noble. I think I need to buy a little more bug spray and a long sleeved shirt, and maybe some Clif bars or something just in case I don't like the field lunches they pack. Cheryl said that some of the lunches got a little weird, like peanut butter and hardboiled egg sandwiches. Blech! Of course, I also have to pack, but I don't want to do that quite yet. I have a growing pile of things to take in my living room, and I've started trying to organize a bit, but if I start packing now, I know I'll forget what I've already packed and pack twice as much as I need. Because we'll be traveling on such a small plane, we're only allowed 10kg of luggage, so I need to avoid overpacking. That should be a challenge!

I'll try to check in at least one more time before I leave to let you all know how the packing goes!

Rainfall

2006-06-07T12:52:00.000-04:00

The rain is pouring down today in Hingham, and I can't help but think about how it would probably be viewed much differently in Samburu than many people here are thinking of it today. We have had quite a bit of rain recently, including the recent floods, and so many people in Massachusetts could do without this rain today. (Personally, I'm happy enough with the cooler weather it brings, at least until we get out of school.) However, I learned from Bishop Obare just how severe the drought has been in Kenya. Drought is constantly a problem in the arid parts of the country, but this year's drought was particularly severe, from what I have been told. I know I take water for granted, something that I thought I would never again do after my Peace Corps experience. But even there, I never had to deal with a severe water shortage. There was enough water in all the nearby wells. It will be interesting to visit Kenya in the middle of the dry season and see how it affects the environment, the people, and the animals.

One more article

2006-06-02T21:01:00.000-04:00

I found out today that I was mentioned in an article in the Scituate Mariner. The article was also published yesterday. It is a report of the Scituate Rotary Club's meeting that I attended. It can be found online at the TownOnline.com site. One of my colleague's is going to bring me the clipping from the newspaper, because there was also a picture of me, the Kenyan guests, and members of the Rotary Club. The article is as follows:

Kenyan Bishop welcomed to Scituate
By Rev. Robert Schipul/ Pastor, Christ Lutheran Church
Thursday, June 1, 2006

On May 24, Christ Lutheran Church and the Scituate Rotary Club played host to the Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Kenya and two of his associates. This visit was in response to a visit by 11 New Englanders who traveled to Kenya last August. Eric Foote, David Isbrandt and Pastor Robert Schipul were guests of the Bishop and his church body of 80,000 Lutheran Christians. Bishop Walter Obare,
General Secretary, Rev. John Halake and Treasurer: John Michoro spent two days in Scituate before heading west to Connecticut and Western Massachusetts churches for another week. While in town, they visited the lighthouse and the harbor before traveling to Plymouth to visit the Mayflower and Plimoth Plantation.

Their visit concluded with a dinner meeting with the Rotary
Club at the Scituate Country Club. Bishop Obare spoke of the extreme need for water in the arid areas of Kenya (roughly 1/3 of the country) and the need for clean water in the rest of the country. He encouraged the Rotary Club to find ways of assisting Kenyans in providing water resources for their people in the form of deep bore hole drilling and water purification systems.

Hingham Middle School geography teacher Amanda Wonson was also invited to the dinner. Amanda will study water patterns in some of the most arid areas of Kenya this summer. She will go with a group called Earth Watch Institute. The area Amanda will survey is the home area of Pastor John Halake. They two of them were able to talk and discuss her work. Next fall, Amanda will address the Rotary Club on her experiences. Parting gifts to the three were Red Sox baseball caps that they promised to wear when they visited Connecticut next week.

I am looking forward to sharing my experiences with the Rotary Club when I return in the fall. They were so welcoming, and it was wonderful to be able to meet Kenyans and Americans who have experience in Kenya.

I'm in the Boston Globe!

2006-06-01T09:59:00.001-04:00

Last week, I had a phone interview with Paul Kanderian, a reporter at the Boston Globe. He told me that the article he would write about my expedition would be published today, but with all the craziness of preparing for tomorrow's 7th grade Activity Day field trip, I completely forgot about it. This morning, I got an email from a student's mom, congratulating me on the trip and the article. What a nice surprise! I ran down to the library to check to see if Mr. Greenberg had the Globe; we found the article, and during my free period B block I drove up to the grocery store to buy the Globe myself. The article is in the Globe South section, in the People column. For those of you who may not read the Globe, you can also find it online.

The print edition has a picture of me (Thank you Mrs. Shannon for being patient enough to take a good one of me in our classroom!), but you can read the text at least online. Check it out if you get a chance. :-)

Here's the picture that I gave to the Globe to use:

More information from Earthwatch about the CRI in Samburu

2006-05-25T19:35:00.000-04:00

I recently received an email from Earthwatch that provided an update about their various CRI projects. There was an article about the severe drought in the Samburu region and how the project has been working to help the region. I've copied the text below, but the entire text (with information about the CRI's in general and the various CRI projects in particular) can be found here.

Samburu: Conservation Partners Meet in the Rain
This year was marked by severe drought in northeastern Kenya. Families whose wealth is measured by the number of livestock they own went from having 400 cattle to 4. Herders moved their cattle to protected forested areas on the top of mountains to find any remaining pasture, and when that ran out, they climbed the trees and cut down braches to provide the leaves to their cattle. Shortly thereafter, the rains fell in amounts that people do not remember occurring before. Since there was no grass due to drought and grazing to help absorb and slow down the water, it ran across the landscape, creating flash flooding and erosion.

In the middle of these rains, 55 partners, scientists, and community members managed to arrive at an Earthwatch workshop in Isiolo. Some of them had walked 40 kilometers in the pouring rain to arrive, while others were receiving news that their camp had been carried away by a river. Yet from April 6-7, 2006, the participants shared their research findings and community needs to improve the livelihoods of the people and wildlife living in the area. Recognition of the impacts of the drought on the region brought natural resource understanding and management to the forefront of discussion. Initial research findings from Earthwatch teams were presented in terms of how their findings about natural resource management can be turned into action by the communities. Dr. Alex Njue, of the Communities, Water, and Wildlife and Wildlife Habitats projects presented preliminary results from the water project, finding that water quality in the region is generally low, especially due to fecal contamination and land degradation caused by animals, but that the boreholes were the cleanest of all sources. The data, which he expects to be completed next year, will help communities identify and map the best water sources for humans, livestock, and wildlife. The project has already prevented an outbreak of cholera by detecting contaminated water, and containing it before it affected the general population of approximately 142,000 people. Results from the two Grevy’s Zebra projects have found that the endangered Grevy’s Zebra prefers to water from 8-10am. If they must compete with cattle for the water at that time, they will return at night, and be open to lion depredation. As PI Joseph Kirathe said, “The take away message for conservation is that possible mitigation is to water cattle later in the day.”

Results from all the projects will also contribute to the establishment of community conservancies in the pastoral area. These organized local communities have legal jurisdiction over the zoning of their land. The conservancies are determining which parts of their land will be used for settlement, grazing, and preservation. They recognize that by having zoned areas, there will be less competition for pasture between wildlife and livestock. Zoning will also allow the land to recover to its natural state, providing a crucial emergency pasture resource during severe drought. Titus
Letaapo of the Namunyak Wildlife Conservation said the community conservancies
“want to get reports from the scientists to identify those areas. The data could be used for wildlife management plans.”

Earthwatch scientists are eager to help the communities apply their findings, but data must be collected first, which requires the hands-on work of Earthwatch volunteers. With volunteers, data collection is increased, seasonal fluctuations can be understood, and the communities can have answers to their environmental questions.

The Samburu CRI is comprehensive and constantly evolving. There are six research projects, two research centers, and many partners and communities involved. Even if you’ve already been to a Samburu CRI project, come back and help out from another angle!

Meeting people from Kenya

2006-05-25T19:21:00.000-04:00

Last night, I was invited to the Scituate Rotary Club meeting to meet 3 men from Kenya. (Some of the members had seen the article about me in the Patriot Ledger and decided to contact me.) The Rotary and a local church are involved in helping the Lutheran church in Kenya with clean water projects, and the 3 gentlemen were in the area as part of a 3-week tour of the US to talk to the Scituate Rotary Club about the water situation and the church's involvement in trying to find solutions. I learned a lot. Two-thirds of Kenya is arid or semi-arid land, so water is very scarce. The bishop who spoke talked about meeting people who walk 2-3 days each way to collect water, people who will ask you for water before they will ask for food or money. He also described how difficult and expensive it is to drill for water in those regions. Finally, he talked about the prevalence of typhoid in the country. The men were familiar with the Samburu region, and they even know a pastor in the region that they are going to try to have me meet while I am there. It was wonderful to meet some people who know where I am going. Hopefully I will be able to see them when I am in Kenya. They were very nice people, and I would like to be able to share my experiences with them. The Rotary Club members were very welcoming as well. We had a wonderful meal and good conversation at the Scituate Country Club, which is a beautiful location. They were very interested in what I will be doing there, and because many of them had never heard of Earthwatch, I was able to explain about the organization's mission to many people. They have invited me to come back and speak to them after my trip, because part of my work will involve water sources, their use, and their safety. All in all, it was a very pleasant evening. I enjoyed meeting new people and learning more about the country I will be visiting.

Getting my shots

2006-05-22T18:57:00.000-04:00

Greetings from the human pincushion! Actually, getting my travel shots wasn't all that bad. I went to the travel clinic at South Shore Hospital, where a very nice nurse practitioner helped me figured out what I needed. In the end, I only needed three shots: typhoid, hepatitis A, and rabies. The hep A shot was the second of the series, because I'd had the first one when I was in the Peace Corps. I'd also had rabies shots in the Peace Corps (the first 3 were pre-exposure, and then I got the last 3 because my cat bit me and my friends freaked me out until I got on a taxi-brousse and went to see the Peace Corps doctors in the capital), so I just needed a booster shot of that. Hopefully I won't be bit by any lions, but I'm ready now in case they have rabies! As for the typhoid shot, that vaccine only lasts 2 years, and I'd had it almost 7 years ago, so I needed to have it updated. None of the shots really hurt badly; I used to be terrified of shots until I had to get so many in the Peace Corps, and this nurse practitioner was very good. All the same, just in case they were painful, I focused all my energy on telling her about the Adventure Club hiking trip. Now I just have to hope that my arms don't hurt as the night goes on; I remember some of them being very painful when I was in the Peace Corps! However, the nurse practitioner said that they usually hurt less when you already have some immunity built up, which I do because of the previous shots. To minimize any problems, however, she put 2 in my left arm and 1 in my right arm, because I'm right handed.

Along with the shots, I also got 2 prescriptions. One is for anti-malaria drugs, while the other is for an antibiotic. The antibiotic, Cipro, is just in case I get a bad case of diarrhea. The anti-malaria drug is more important. There's been a change in these type of drugs since I was in Madagascar. I took Meflaquin back then, but now I'll be taking Malarone, a newer drug. Instead of taking the medicine once a week like Meflaqin, I'll only have to take Malarone every day, starting 2 days before I leave and finishing 7 days after. I didn't have too many problems with Meflaquin, although my dreams were perhaps a little more vivid than usual. At least they weren't violent dreams like some people have! Malarone is supposed to have fewer of those side effects, which is why it is more commonly prescribed now.

One other cool trip-related thing happened today. I had a phone interview with a reporter from the Globe South. He said they'd print something about me "next Thursday." So I'm definitely going to have to keep an eye out! I had heard from the editor before asking for a picture that they could use in their "People" section, so I had Mrs. Shannon take a picture of me in our classroom. I sent it off to them, and then I heard from the reporter today. It was kind of fun to have a bit of an interview; he asked about how I got involved, the programs I'd be doing, and how I'd use this in my classes. If anyone spots the article when it's printed, please let me know!

Press Coverage

2006-05-10T11:08:00.000-04:00

There was an article about me in the paper yesterday! Mr. Edson brought me a copy of the article from the May 9 Patriot Ledger at the play rehearsal last night. It was such a surprise! As part of my fellowship, I had to write a press release and send it out to local papers. I emailed my press release to a bunch of different editors and reporters at various papers last weekend, but I didn't hear anything at all from the Patriot Ledger in response. I really wasn't expecting to have it be so easy to get press coverage for my trip. There doesn't seem to be an online version of the article anywhere, so I can't share it easily with all of you here, but I will be glad to show the print copy to anyone who would like to read it.

Video Recommendation

2006-05-08T11:45:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Ms. Corriveau (who called and told me that the show was on PBS on Saturday morning), I discovered a great video about lions in Kenya this weekend. The Nature series on PBS has an episode called "Vanishing Lions" that is all about conservation efforts centered around lion populations in Kenya. It was so great to watch it and get some idea of the issues that the researchers I'll be working with face in their work. A lot of the video focuses on the Laikipia region, where I will be, and on the efforts made their to keep lions from killing livestock. In areas where there is not enough game, lions will sometimes turn to attacking livestock, which are kept in pens called "bomas" at night to protect them. The small herders (like the Samburu or Maasai peoples) tend to kill any lions that attack the bomas; commercial livestock owners on large ranches tend to tolerate a few more losses, but if a lion becomes used to the easy prey in the bomas, the ranchers also kill the lions. This is part of the problem that the Carnivores in Conflict project in Samburu is trying to stop, because the lion population in Kenya decreased dramatically in the last couple of decades. The Nature episode does a really good job of highlighting these problems and showing the efforts that are being made to save the lions. I think it really helped add to my background knowledge for this trip, and I highly recommend it.

Unfortunately, WGBH won't be airing the episode again any time soon, according to the station's website. You can find out more about the episode and order the video or DVD at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/vanishinglions/. Hopefully, my parents taped all of it for me when it aired in Maine yesterday (I missed the first 15 minutes), so I might be able to show it in classes if we have time. The episode was only produced this April, so the local libraries do not carry it at this point. Still, I recommend watching it if you're interested.

Another upcoming Nature episode that I'm hoping will give me some good information is called "Chasing Big Cats." (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/bigcats/) According to the website, WGBH will be airing this on June 21 (ch. 44, 10pm) and June 22 (ch. 2, 1am).

Happy viewing, everyone!

Buying out the store at REI

2006-04-29T10:22:00.000-04:00

It's so much fun to buy things for my expedition! Even though there are still a couple of months before my trip, I used birthday money a couple of weeks ago to go on a shopping spree at REI. Because I like doing outdoor activities like hiking and camping, I have a lot of the gear I'll need already, but there were somethings that I either need more of, need to replace, or need to buy for the first time. A month or so ago, I made an REI gift registry so that I could keep track of the things I wanted to buy. There isn't really a "wish list" option on REI.com, so the gift registry worked well, and then other people could see it, too. If you'd like to see the kinds of things that I need to take with me, you can check out the gift registry at here. Anyway, everything I ordered came in to the Hingham store (I ordered online and had it shipped to the store...I love that option!) on Thursday, and I was so excited to pick it all up. I bought a new daypack, which is a little smaller than I expected. That's probably a good thing; the L.L. Bean backpack that I have is large and heavy, and might be uncomfortable to lug around all day in Kenya. I also got a new pair of hiking pants; I'll need a couple of pairs of pants for field work, and these can convert to shorts when I'm back at the Earthwatch compound. I also bought a lot of small things, like a new Nalgene water bottle, a small tripod for my camera, a digital camera card, biodegradable soap, sunscreen to protect me from the Equatorial sun, bugspray to keep away the malaria-carrying mosquitoes, and a big sun hat. I also bought some new light hiking socks...I'm still not sure how comfortable wool socks will be in Kenya, but I need good socks if I'm going to wear my hiking boots all day to protect me from snakes. I can't wait to test out some of my new gear, like the daypack and pants, on the Adventure Club hiking trip in a couple of weeks! Maybe I'll bring along the pocket survival kit that my brother bought me, too; I think he's afraid I'm going to get lost in the savannah! In any case, I think it's a good thing that I will need to use some of my new purchases before July, because otherwise I would be tempted to start packing already, which would be just a bit ridiculous. :)

"Meeting" Fellow Travelers

2006-04-23T16:14:00.000-04:00

I needed a break from grading World Tour rough drafts, so I thought I would write about how I have heard from some of my fellow travelers by email this week. I have had emails from 2 other Massachusetts teachers who will be on the trip with me in July. Liz Crane teaches high school biology in Brookline and Cheryl Sanderson teachers third grade in Lynnfield. It makes it a little less nervewracking to go into this having a bit of an acquaintance with some of the other people on the expedition, even though I'm usually pretty good at meeting new people. We're hoping to meet before we all head to Kenya, and we are making plans to eat at the famous Carnivore restaurant on the night that we return to Nairobi (the capital of Kenya) from Samburu. The Carnivore has been named one of the top 50 restaurants in the world, and it sounds really amazing. I have been wanting to eat there ever since I started researching Kenya in February. Actually, it was this picture that made me want to eat there:

I came across this on a travel website (http://www.world66.com/africa/kenya/nairobi/eatingout/carnivore) and thought it sounded like fun. I'm really glad that I won't have to be eating there alone! There is something about the idea of eating meat cut off of Maasai spears that just sounds really cool! You can see the official restaurant website at http://www.tamarind.co.ke/carnivore/index.php if you want more information. I'll let you know how it was when I come back...hopefully I'll have some interesting stories about trying meats like giraffe or crocodile!

Map

2006-04-17T17:56:00.000-04:00

I can't help it, I'm a geography teacher! I have to include some maps of where I will be in Kenya.

Expedition Basics

2006-04-17T17:41:00.000-04:00

Before I decided to do this as a blog, I started creating a website that I could use to share my experiences. I thought it might be useful to share some of the information from my draft of that website here, so that people can get an idea of what the whole thing is all about.

What is Earthwatch?

As a science-based organization operating in more than 50 countries worldwide, Earthwatch’s mission is to engage the public in scientific field research and education in order to promote the understanding and action necessary for a sustainable environment. Earthwatch Institute is one of the largest private supporters of critical field research. Through Earthwatch, the public has an opportunity to become directly involved in the research process. It is hoped that this involvement will lead to a greater understanding of a need for conservation efforts around the world.

Earthwatch expeditions are lead by researchers who are highly respected scientists in their fields. Volunteers assist these researchers in the field in a variety of ways, depending on the project. Researchers and volunteers work and live together at field sites in some of the most amazing locations in the world.

For more information on Earthwatch Institute, visit the website at http://www.blogger.com/www.earthwatch.org.

What is the Kenya expedition?

The expedition I’ll be participating on is one of Earthwatch’s Conservation Research Initiatives. The program is called Samburu Wildlife and Communities. The goal of this project is to work with the local people of the Samburu- Laikipia region to assess the use of land and develop sustainable conservation strategies. Researchers study wildlife like Grevy’s zebras, carnivores like lions, water resources, and human land-use to find out where people and nature are in conflict. These studies can then help the local pastoralists better manage and protect the land and the incredible wildlife of the region. Earthwatch’s programs in the region work out of 2 locations: Wamba in the unprotected Samburu area and the protected area of Lewa.

I will be part of Team 13, which will be participating in 2 research programs at the Wamba site. The first is the Carnivores in Conflict program; the second is Communities, Water, and Wildlife. The Carnivores in Conflict program studies how large predators in the Samburu region interact with livestock and humans. By tracking animals with VHF collars and motion sensor cameras and surveying local communities about the killing of livestock by different predators, researchers hope to help local herders find ways to best protect their animals from predator attacks. The carnivores studied are mostly cheetahs, lions, leopards, and hyenas. The second program—Communities, Water, and Wildlife—studies the water resources in the Samburu region. Most of this region has an arid or semi-arid climate, so water is a limited resource. Humans, livestock, and wildlife are all in competition for this resource, which makes water the most important resource in the area. Researchers use GPS devices to map water sources, try to estimate the amount of water available at different times of the year, and test the water to find its chemical make up and how safe the water is for humans and animals to use.

For information about the Conservation Research Initiative in Samburu, click here.

How did I get involved?

I’d heard of Earthwatch before, because they were involved in research in Madagascar while I was in the Peace Corps there. However, I had no idea that Earthwatch provided opportunities to teachers until Mr. Wachtelhausen went to Iceland on an Earthwatch expedition last summer. He told me about the Education Fellowship program and encouraged me to look at the expeditions available. As luck would have it, there were a bunch of expeditions that seemed to fit the World Geography curriculum at HMS. I filled out an application (I had to write 2 essays and get letters of recommendation from Mr. Boddie and Mr. Kirkcaldy), and in February I found out that I had been awarded a fellowship. Through a grant from the Sheehan Family Foundation, Earthwatch is able to give me a fellowship that will cover the cost of the expedition to Kenya. In exchange, I will keep a journal, write a lesson plan, take pictures on the expedition, and write press releases before and after the expedition.

Introducing my students to Kenya

2006-04-17T17:27:00.000-04:00

When I found out about my Earthwatch Education Fellowship in February, I immediately told all of my students, but it was only last week that I really had a chance to really show them all the kinds of things that I might see and do in Kenya. I had been able to talk to a few students about it on the last Science Explorers trip (we saw lots of stuffed animals at the museum), but I think quite a few of my students actually forgot about my big announcement between February and April. In order to remind them, I decided to borrow a video from the science department last week, because everyone needed a break from the World Tour project anyway. All of my classes except one have now seen the video "Africa: The Serengeti," which is an amazing IMAX film about the Serengeti, especially focused on the annual wildebeest migrations. The Serengeti isn't exactly where I'm going, but it's very close. The movie was amazing, and it really kicked up my excitement level again. With three months still to go before my trip, I was feeling a little bit in limbo and my excitement level was sort of in the background of everything else going on in my life. Watching this video with the students really helped me get excited again, because they were so excited by it. I now have lists of questions to try to answer and lists of animals that I must photograph for my students. Lions, zebras, and giraffes seem to top the list. I'll have to set up a photo site linked to this blog so that everyone can see my pictures when I come back. I hope to have some more time to talk to them all about Kenya between now and the end of the year, but at the very least, this blog should be a way for me to share with them some of what I have learned, since they will have moved on to 8th grade by the time I come back.
I bought a journal this weekend to take to Kenya with me (Earthwatch provides one that teachers are supposed to use, but I know that I will fill it up far too quickly!), so I will try to start writing in that and then transfer any relevant thoughts to this blog. I think that should work well as a way to share the experience.

Getting Ready for Kenya

2006-04-11T22:25:00.000-04:00

As a 7th grade World Geography teacher at Hingham Middle School in Hingham, MA, I have been awarded a Education Fellowship from Earthwatch, so I get to go to Kenya this summer! I will be a volunteer with Earthwatch's Conservation Research Intiative in the Samburu region. What an adventure! As I prepare for my trip, I'll try to write about what I have to do before I leave so that I can share the experience with my students and with my friends and family. After my trip, I'll fill you all in on everything I did! I will, of course, include pictures as well, and I'm planning to set up an online photo album so that I can share all those photos I'm sure I will take. (After all, I already have orders from several students about what animals I MUST photograph for them!) Wish me luck!