That spear would have skewered a wild boar.

     So the date now is 2/23 and the camp has been without internet for the past four days. As of such I really have no idea when this post will go up. I had intended this to be a small post but as more days are accumulating I’ve just been tacking on more to the end. So I have no idea if this will end up being another book or not.

     First off kudos to anyone who knows where the title is from (rather obscure LOTR reference for those of you don’t) and yes there is relevance to it. Well sort of…there weren’t any trolls involved. In short summation, the majority of us here at KBC are now deemed mzungu murran…white warriors, as we all have recently acquired Maasai spears. Actual spears. Handcrafted at local bomas, each spear incorporates one hardened, metallic, pointed end for all throwing urges, while the other end resembles a double-edged machete, honed to a point for all one’s daily hacking and slashing needs. Suffice it to say that any sharp and shiny object meant to be thrown is quite ok in my books.

     Moving away from the army that has now formed here, we took a return trip into Amboseli National Park. This time we were conducting a total ground count of all visible wildlife in coordination with the Kenyan Wildlife Service. The joint effort meant that the land cruisers were now given free reign offroading whereas normal safari etiquette stresses on keeping to the roads or getting shot by the KWS (not entirely true but you don’t want them catching you for sure…apparently they’re more feared than the police and army combined here). The count went smoothly, with many teams and the park divided up into blocks, it only took about 5 hours. With this count and the previous records, conservation efforts can now be further fine-tuned as to the changing ecosystems.

     Yesterday was our non-program day (day off) and with it came a new string of adventures. Next to the town of Litoktok there is a gorge, and at the bottom of which is a waterfall and stream. The hike down was extremely scenic (fantastic views of Mt. Kili) and the waterfall was pristine. However, I had more fun scrambling over boulders and climbing the fallen logs while following the creek downstream. It was pretty amusing because other people were following me for a bit before they figured out that I was intentionally choosing the most difficult route to challenge myself. We don’t have too many opportunities to climb here (too many trees have thorns the length of my index finger which I’d like to keep out of my palm) so I took full advantage…and I only got yelled at for going to high on the bank/gorge wall twice. Quite an accomplishment I think hahaha. Sometimes I revert back to being five years old…

     Some random things to conclude for now. I have a spear (I can throw it). I own a sweet pair of tire sandals. I had my hair cut by a friend here (traded a chocolate bar for it) and I’m not sure if I care whether I like it or not because I am twenty times cooler now. Work has been increasing, and many people here are starting to get stressed which may be a problem in the weeks to come. We’ll see what happens with that. Sawa [Ok] that’s all for now. Hopefully this will be able to go up soon.

Jambo mzungu!

            Jambo (=Hello)! Sorry for taking so long to put up a new post but last week mainly constituted in attending class and making observations on bats for a report, so honestly there wasn’t too much to write about (excluding another secondary school futbol match). However, the past three days have been rather exciting, but before I get into that I just want to throw out some random things that are on my mind at the moment. I also realize that all of my posts turn into mini novels, my apologies (poleàpole lay =sorry). pronounced

            With wind comes dust here. With giant thunderstorms blowing in from one direction at around 3 PM daily following an 80-degree day of sun comes walls of flying debris. I wish I had my camera for one of the more recent ones, you could literally see the advancing line of dust as it quickly advanced on our position.

I can understand why the people here were not happy with sleeping under mosquito nets when they were first advised as preventative methods to combat Malaria. The nets are treated with chemicals, that unbeknownst to me, are rather irritable and seems I am somewhat allergic to. This wouldn’t be too much of a problem if I didn’t have to untuck and tuck every time I get into bed…so of course I now have what looks like poison ivy all up and down my hands and arms and on the bottom of my feet (and I cannot tell you how itchy it is).

            Alright well that’s enough of the random things for now, I think I’ll enlighten you as to some of the cultural aspects of this region as our past two days held quite a stark contrast (this will make sense in a bit). The local people living in and around Kimana are the Maasai, semi nomadic pastoralists/agriculturalists who happen to be extremely kind to our school and the program. We visited one of our neighboring bomas earlier in the semester (one of the earlier posts mentioned it…we sang Twist and Shout for them) and in the last two days we were able to see the people in a new light.

            On Wednesday, we took a day trip into Amboseli again, but the purpose of this trip was solely to be wazungu (white people/tourists) rather than wanafunzi (students). And of course, as tourists, we had to go and meet with the real Maasai warriors (cue sarcasm radar).  We visited a cultural manyatta, which is a boma set up to entertain tourism and to profit from visitors. They have routine songs/performances and prayers which were actually quite entertaining though during the prayer we had to kneel and with my perfectly healthy and relatively strong knees (ninacheza=I am joking) this was rahisi (easy). But of course, being used to tourists, these show Maasai have perfected the art of guilt tripping unsuspecting site-seers into buying little trinkets for extremely outrageous prices. Advice: know and avoid a tourist trap when you see one and know how to haggle if you cannot avoid. With my stint in Nairobi, I knew not to get singled out by anyone and made my way through the gauntlet without my pockets getting any lighter (the gauntlet meaning they had this fenced off alleyway with goods/merchants lining both sides as your guide would lead you down it saying “This is my wife…this is my mother…please buy for my family?”).

            So what is really interesting is that today, the day after the manyata, was our homestay with the Maasai in the surrounding area. We were split up into groups of two or three and left with either murran (warriors) for the gents or mamas for the ladies. Our warriors were 22 and 26 respectively and didn’t speak a lick of English and didn’t convey that they spoke Kiswahili either (good thing I took pains to try and memorize a few key, now useless, phrases). The day was interesting though: it began with chai, followed by two hours of weeding a tomato field, with chopping down shrubbery to appease the random knights of Ni that appeared (actually we used it to repair the fencing surrounding their boma but I couldn’t resist the HG reference). Lunch was ugali (African bread that isn’t really bread), a cabbage/onion/carrot/some kind of sauce mixture, and a glass of warm milk.

            More work in the field followed lunch (we used carved staves to push and roll chopped brush and plant debris into bundles in order to clear fields to plant banana trees) followed by another round of chai. I’m not going into all the details here, but what really struck me was how everyone else outside of Maasai culture (and now apparently even inside with the manyattas) tries to obviously glamorize the Maasai tribal way of life. In no way am I criticizing the Maasai pastoralism or agriculturalism, but rather the tourist industry’s and Hollywood’s idealistic notion of “savage” existence and wild people. Let me tell you, almost every Maasai warrior has a cell phone. They know how to work a camera even though they still get a kick out of photographing their buddies and showing it to them on the view screen. Yes, their condition of living may not be too appealing to many Westerners, but in no way is it not acclimatizing to the world around them. In fact, I find it terribly amazing that they can keep so much of their history and culture intact in their daily lives while the government and the rest of Kenya criticize them of being backwards and stagnant. It’s certainly a rare feat in this world.

            Anyways, sorry for another novel, though I didn’t touch upon even half of what I intended. I promise the next post will be sooner…probably Saturday evening following our third day trip into Amboseli (we’re actually partnering with the Kenyan Wildlife Service to conduct a total density count of the wildlife residing there). Most excellent. Oh and before I forget check this link out. http://www.fieldstudies.org/pages/5852_first_impressions_sfs_kenya_to_tanzania.cfm

I've had it with these monkey-fighting snakes on this Monday-Friday plane!

      Habarini.<How are you all> Just about a week into the program now and there is just way too much to type out. As a preface to this post while it is still fresh on my mind, first snake sighting occurred tonight. Baby black mamba on a banda porch…yeah it was on mine and I almost stepped on it coming back from the shower. And low and behold a second sighting just happened…my roommate just almost stepped on a full grown one that had somehow gotten onto the Chumba steps without anyone seeing it (including myself who had walked by not 3 minutes prior). Pretty freaky. So two black mamba in one night and now the entire camp is paranoid. As for myself, I am securely isolated on my bed underneath my mosquito net and I really don’t thin I shall be moving any time soon hahaha.

            Anyways, three major events in the past week that were the highlights. (in chronological order). The first was a visit to a traditional Maasai boma (a small village). The Maasai tribe in general practice pastoralism, so inevitably they constantly migrate with their livestock to better grazing areas. Therefore, their traditional settlements needed to be less than semi permanent and easily constructable from the materials that they had. All of the material is natural (thorny acacia bushes for gates and outer defenses, mud and manure for constructing houses, etc.) but because of the introduction of agriculture, many bomas have become permanent structures (like the one we went to).  I believe I’ve uploaded some photos onto facebook (they don’t nearly capture the aura of the place) but the experience was captured mainly through video and unfortunately I cannot post that.

            Prior to our arrival, we were informed that the mamas would be preparing a welcoming song for us (their way of adopting us into their community) and that it was required of us to respond in kind…uh huh. So we spent the entire day prior thinking of songs to sing to the Maasai (and yes Soldia Boy and Party in the USA were suggested) but thankfully we all agreed to the Beatles’ Twist and Shout. One of the girls here brought her guitar along (she is quite good) so we at least had something to keep us all in rhythm. The mammas went first, there were about 25 of them on a rough estimate…and just wow. There was one leader who would sing (almost chant) and the rest would respond to the point where their voices became the underlying rhythm to their song. Then once they started jumping in time, the bead jewelry added another layer to the music. It’s certainly hard to describe. And then it was our turn…and surprisingly it went quite smoothly. At one point a few of our group went over and actually pulled some of the mamas in to dance and twist. Although they couldn’t understand the lyrics you could tell they were really having a blast by trying to mimic the way our group was dancing. After that we were shown around the boma and our Swahili teacher gave a short lecture on the traditional Maasai way of life (turns out the teacher is Maasai as well; he went to the high school right down the road here and was raised in a boma in a neighboring region). Very cool.

            Next highlight…we visited the school that our Swahili teacher, Daniel, attended. Of course football was the main purpose for this visit (little did I know that it was sports day when we went) and I was totally alright with that. The field was…ok…very large with no boundaries, relatively flat, but it was mainly composed of loose gravel and rocks so there was very little traction. But that didn’t hold those guys back at all. I think the final score was 3-0 (we got our buts kicked). I do believe our team needs a little practice on 1) How to play soccer, 2) What positions there are and what the roles of those positions are, and 3) How to beat a team that is better than you. We are visiting again this Friday and I’m pretty excited because a few of the kids have actually remembered me from our first visit (they come by the camp fence sometimes to talk) and how I was the “good footballer with fancy shoes. Congratulations.” I still don’t know why they congratulate everyone constantly. The kids there though are really fun. I got into a conversation about the EPL with a few of them (one was a Chelsae fan and all he did was make fun of me for liking Man U) and others tried to convince me that they were 40 and their sons attended school with them haha. A few of them asked if I could help them find a girl from the US and apparently a few of them even proposed to some of the girls in my group. Too funny.

            But the greatest experience to date has to be our excursion into Amboseli National Park. If you ever, ever have the chance to visit, do it. The trip to Amboseli was really rewarding in the sense that it put into perspective what we are trying to conserve in terms of the ecosystems in this area. It also allowed us to see countless numbers of elephants that literally spanned the horizon  (the count at one marshland area yielded 193 elephants in sight and there were more just over the ridge behind the water) as well as many other species. The list is as follows: baboon, vervet monkeys, zebra, wildebeest, grant’s and thompson’s gazelle, impala, Bohor reedbuck, Steinbok, warthog, buffalo, ostrich, grey crowned crane, and lions. There may have been more (I don’t have the list in front of me) but it was the fastest and most exciting 4.5 hours I have ever spent standing up through the roof of a land cruiser in 92 degree weather. Apparently we are taking two more trips into Amboseli this semester and one of them will entail working in conjunction with the KWS (Kenyan Wildlife Service) in order to count the species richness and abundance in the entire park. So the conservation efforts and directions for the upcoming seasons will be partially based off our data collected.  How awesome is that? I really cannot wait to go back…it is honestly just as if you had suddenly fallen into an episode of Planet Earth covering the African Savannah.

            So that’s all I have got for now (which was actually quite a lot) and as the majority of my time is now spent reading class material and observing bats and woodpeckers (for an assignment) I believe the frequency of blog posts may drop to once a week as you might have already noticed. Pole [sorry] but I am quite busy. I’ll try to keep taking pictures but it’s so much easier to let the others take the photos and for me to just enjoy the experience…for some reason to me it’s just not the same to stand on top of a hill and gaze around via the viewscreen of a video camera. Ah well. Kwaherini for now.

Mail Address

Here's my address at the Kilimanjaro Base Camp. Only letters and postcards if you are going to send something please...packages are way too much of a hassle and could be quite expensive depending on whom is working the post office at the time of arival.

Kevin Sherman
Center for Wildlife Management Studies
P.O. Box 27743 (Nyayo Stadium)
00506-NAIROBI, KENYA
East Africa

Mama mugged.

Jambo to all. I do believe I last left off in Nairobi and a whole lot has happened since, let me tell you (prepare yourself for the book that’s about to follow).

            Started off by meeting the group at the airport, a bunch of fun people so it’s going to be a good semester for sure, and then loading up everyone into four extra large land cruisers for a four-hour drive to the Kilimanjaro Base Camp. The rules of the road that I’m pretty sure I described in my Nairobi post applied to this highway…in the sense that there were really no rules. People passing left and right, goats in the middle of a three lane pass, random police road spikes (that had nails about 6 inches long mind you), yeah it was a fun ride. At one point our driver (who happens to be the mechanic here) decided to pass on truck and as he moved over this massive 18 wheeler thing came rumbling around a curve straight at us…a quick acceleration and a swift slide squeezed between aforementioned truck and a van in front saved us from certain catastrophe.

            However, the terror of the highway (named Mombasa Highway, look it up…the facts are scary) was offset by the chance to view the country and even some wildlife. Giraffes were particularly abundant, as well as zebra, ostrich, goats, cattle, monkeys (which happen to run all over the camp), and even a puppy. I took many pictures but unfortunately due to the poor bandwidth here I can’t upload them to facebook…

            So here I am, at my home for the next month and a half. Let me tell you, this place is excellent to the fullest sense of the word. I mean, I wake up with a perfect view of Kilimanjaro through my bandha window (a bandha is a small 4 person cabin with a thatched roof) but as great as that is, it hardly compares to the nights here. The stars are so vivid and plentiful, it’s impossible to not see the Milky Way, and the sounds of everything around really flares up the ole imagination as to what could possibly be the source. So far we’ve had orientation (will tell later), many introductions to the staff, a pick up soccer game with the staff, and a trip into the nearby town for market day.

            Based on my experience with Nairobi market I was somewhat dreading another exposure without any knowledge in Swahili, but it turned out much different than prior. Because I wasn’t the only foreigner I wasn’t singled out and hounded like before and also the community knew we were students so instead of trying to sell us everything they actually talked to us and made us feel welcome. I actually teamed up with a new friend named Lee (she had taken a Kiswahili course last semester=golden) and we navigated our way around trying to detach ourselves from the SFS group caravan. Eventually we did and rather enjoyed ourselves.  There was this one guy that I was particularly impressed by (unfortunately we were advised against bringing our cameras otherwise I’d have multiple of him) because he was walking around carrying what he was trying to sell. I realize this doesn’t sound too impressive, but this guy must have had roughly 80 items to sell and they were dangling from his arms, balanced on his shoulders, strapped to his legs, you name it…but what I loved was that this guy had about 20 different types of hats all balanced on top of his head as he wove his way through the throngs of people. Yeah, the Mad Hatter (as I’ve dubbed him) was quite a sight.

            As for the title of the blog, the mothers at the market were absolutely determined to sell you anything beaded that they had made. And if you caved into one then twenty would swarm to get you to buy something else. They learned pretty quick that I wasn't going to buy (sign language is key in these circumstances) but I rather enjoyed myself watching a colleague struggle to run away from a pack of 10 constantly around him. He literally was running out of room to hold things because he kept buying hahaha. I may have even sent one or two mama's his way when they came up trying to sell to me...but mum's the word on that (not exactly kind of me but it was quite entertaining).

            Alright, I’ve saved the best for last. Orientation, or in other words, what can kill you here and what to do in case you ever have to deal with these situations. The infectious diseases and parasites were really interesting (especially the descriptive tale of Salmonella from the evil cookie dough) but I must say the snake section stole the show. Black mambas, Green mambas, Egyptian cobras, Red spitting cobras…I can’t remember any of the others. Yeah...some good stories accompanied these guys too, like the Black Mamba that found it’s way into one student’s sleeping bag or the Red spitting cobra that dropped from the ceiling of the bathroom almost on top of a staff member that had just dropped trough. Yup. Let your imagination’s run with that.

            Like I’ve said, the internet can’t really support uploading pictures so I’ll have to save them until I’m back (or somewhere with a more reliable location). There was plenty more that happened in these past two days…I’ve only alighted the better parts. Tomorrow we start our classes, which will be weird because it doesn’t feel like any classroom setting…ever. Focusing will be difficult. More to come later.