I promise to visit more often then leave for a month...

So it seems that I finished the last post saying that I was going to try to visit more often, then I go and disappear for a month... Yeah... My bad on that. I swear I posted something two weeks ago, but it seems to not have made it up here...

Anyways, this is a pretty busy week. Midterm week = midterm weak!! I realize that from now on most of my posts will mention me being busy or something about how busy its been down here, so I might just leave that as a given.

We found out that our vet school was granted an Official Visit by the AVMA COE, the group that accredits vet schools in the US. It would be a HUGE deal if we were able to secure their approval. We have made a lot of progress since the last time they visited and we have a student body and faculty that is ready to do what is needed to make it happen! Luckily, everyone realizes the *massive* and immediate impact the accreditation would have for us, so it will hopefully unite everyone in a common goal. So needless to say, I'm pretty excited for this coming April, but I acknowledge that the real work is truly about to begin!

The University football team, which I play on, starts the big national tournament a week from tomorrow. For a group of guys that practice once a week, we have a pretty decent shot of doing well and making it pretty deep into the tournament. But its tough against the local 'professional' teams, with them getting to play a regular season and practice during the week, while we have basically taken two weeks off for exams! And in a 36 team bracket, we of course drew the #2 team in the Grenadian Premiere League, with a possible second round match-up with the team the won the tournament last spring!! Looks like we kind of have the odds stacked against us... But no matter, underdogs aren't automatically out of it!

Should be a couple fun weeks. Will let y'all know how it turns out!

My Last Month Would Make a Bee Look Lazy!

Between the travel and the start of classes, its been quite a month!

Made it down to school on the island of Grenada safe and sound with no delays or issues. Got back to an amazingly spotless house. I can't say enough about how much I appreciate my landlords here! Its not that I left my part of the house in total shambles... but lets just say that after a week of final exams with the last one ending ~12 hours before my departure flight took off, not 'a lot' of cleaning got done.Classes and club stuff started up very quickly the day after I landed and have all been rolling since! We also found out that the University had decided to put an end to the use of pigs in our Junior Surgery and Anesthesia Lab... Which is fine even though we made amazingly proficient and prolific use of the pigs, but it bumped our first surgical experience up two weeks and made our first surgical patient someone's pet... Which definitely served to take the adrenaline up a few notches last week!
Speaking of that we did our first surgery of veterinary school last week!! It was just a simple neuter but with it being the first patient where the care fell squarely on our shoulders... we were prepared like we were going in for a much more invasive and involved procedure. Everything went really well through the surgery and we even had the chance to have the visiting veterinary dentist come in and remove the little dog's deciduous teeth. He recovered perfectly and we sent him home happy, healthy and without the ability to make and more unwanted puppies to roam the island as strays.
The next couple weeks should be just about as busy as the past few. We keep doing surgery about every ten days for the rest of the semester and we are also kicking off a lunchtime lecture series through our local chapter of the Student Affiliate of the American Veterinary Medical Association to highlight all the varied veterinary experiences that our students have while they are here at SGU. So there have been a couple of us working very hard behind the scenes to get that program rolling and off the ground. The first lecture is in two weeks, so hopefully we provide funding by then or else it will be a lunchtime lecture without lunch!!

Well, I hope everything is going well for anyone that still happens to be readying this blog. Shoot me an e-mail let me know what you're up to!! I promise to update more often!

All Packed Again...

So I have managed to fit 4 months of my life into one 50-pound suitcase again... Still think that I have too much stuff!

Its off to Grenada tomorrow bright and early. More to come upon arrival there!

Perpetual Motion

Ok. Finally settled into the AVMA Convention in Atlanta. It should be a pretty busy time here. I've already missed a couple of the things that I wanted to see, but there are still plenty more to come.

I'm amazed to see so many of my colleagues from SGU here at the convention. People seem to be coming out of the woodwork.

But as seems to be my traveling luck recently... I showed up to the airport after driving 2 hours from the beach, only to find out (at check-in) that my flight was... the next day. D'oh.

Once I managed to arrive on the correct day, things went much smoother.

Atlanta is hot. Humid and hot. I've been in Africa for the balance of this summer and this place still feels hot...

Ok... off to dinner.

Home! Sort of...

Whew... Made it.

So after spending last Friday morning in the field, Friday afternoon driving to Kisumu to catch a short flight to Nairobi, and Friday evening flying from Nairobi to London Heathrow, I finally hit some travel snags...

Knowing that I only had two hours between my arrival at Heathrow and my departure for JFK, I had to hustle from the HUGE British Airways terminal to the equally huge international terminal. After catching the tram and arriving at terminal 3, I checked the boards to see which gate I needed to head to so I could board... Then I saw it: "American Airlines 115- CANCELLED" Uhoh... Looked at the rest of the board... Saw something promising- "American Airlines 215 New York(JFK) @ 11:30" Great! Ran over to the ticket counter to rebook.

Little did I know... Apparently, schools in the UK had just gone on summer holidays the previous day... so every flight was booked/overbooked! And the 1130 flight to JFK was no exception! (nor was the American Air flight from the previous night that was overbooked by 10 people all of whom were then put on stand-by for my flight that was canceled!). So... after reviewing several contingency flight plans that would at least get me to somewhere in the US, we tried a couple different options:
1)Stand-by on the 1130 flight to JFK. While it would have gotten me in too late to make my connection to Baltimore, I figured I could just take a train home from there. Well again this was not to be... The flight was overbooked by probably 10 people, plus the people who were on stand-by already from the previous evening's flight, plus the people who were there from my flight... When they closed the jetway doors, there were still about 50 people standing at the gate... Some were less than happy about the prospect of missing the flight...
2) Heathrow --> Edinburgh --> Newark --> Baltimore... Close but the guy standing next to me booked the last seat from Edinburgh...
3) Heathrow --> Chicago --> Baltimore... Great! But... couldn't get confirmation on the flight from Chi-town to Baltimore... So we decided to pass on that one.
4) Heathrow --> Boston(on Virgin Atlantic) Overnight in Boston, then Boston --> Baltimore on Sunday morning... Ok, at this point, I figured this was about the best I could do beyond waiting til Sunday to leave London. So I took it.

So, when I finally arrived in the United States and was passing through Immigration, the agent asked me "So which flight did you end up coming in on?" I was confused. "Excuse me?" "Well, sir, we have you entering the United States on 4 different flights to 3 different cites today..." Ah... yeah, that makes sense. Anyways, I guess he found it funny and let me back in the country.

Then I headed over to the baggage claim so I could make my way through Customs. I wasn't really in a hurry at that point, I knew I was spending the night in Boston. Even if I had wanted to hustle at that point it was a non-started, it was about 2am to my body at that point... So everyone is grabbing their bags and slowly the baggage carousel becomes distressingly unpopulated with baggage... Thats the point at which a Customs beagle dog comes and sits down next to my carry-on bag... Little son of a gun sniffed out the second half of my chicken finger BLT from the Heathrow TGI Fridays... My dinner was promptly confiscated... Also by that point I realized that my bag was not there and would not be magically coming out either...

Going through customs after being out of the country for 7 weeks without luggage attracts some attention. Especially when when the forms indicate that I had been on 'farms' and had 'exposure to livestock.' The agents were nice enough, but began to give me the 3rd degree about my level of exposure to livestock and 'soil' in Kenya... Luckily, when I explained to them that I was there working with a research group and we did all the rig-amoral associated with biosecurity, it became a much easier ordeal.

The lost luggage lady from Virgin Atlantic wanted to buy me a beer for having the weirdest itinerary and future travel plans... First of all I had a bag that was tagged for British Airway since I had flown with them from Nairobi. Then I was supposed to fly on American, but instead flew Virgin Atlantic, and in between those flights I was standby for a couple other flights on a couple different airlines... My bag could have found its way onto any of those flights by mistake... So she looked in the computer and couldn't find the bag anywhere... British had scanned the bag in Nairobi, but there was no other record of it elsewhere, she said it was possible that since I was bounced around flights that the bag had gotten set aside somewhere in London... So whatever... Next problem... when they do find my bag how should they get it to me...? Well, I couldn't register a lost baggage claim in Baltimore since I would be checking into a flight to Baltimore on a different airline without baggage... So my bag would have to be sent to Boston once they found it. Ok- Well where is my permanent address to which they can send the bag? Um... well I wasn't really heading 'home' at that point. I would be stopping by my parent's house to pick up some clothing, but then I would be heading down to the shore to see them for 4 days... Then I would be flying to Atlanta for 5 days, then Baltimore for one night, then back to the beach for 4 days, then Baltimore for 5/6 days, then I would be heading to my 'permanent' school address on the island of Grenada in the Eastern Caribbean... The poor lady... She had to try to put all that info into the computer for my claim... So we just agreed to have it sent to my parent's address and have one of our neighbors drag the bag into their house until I had the chance to swing by and pick it up...

Anyways, the rest of the trip was fine. The airline put me up in a hotel room that night. It had a bed roughly the size of the room that I had shared for the past 6 weeks with another person, so I was pretty happy. But didn't really get to enjoy the room cause once I sat on the bed, I used all my energy to call the front desk to arrange a wake-up call for 430am the next morning!

Fast forward 24 hours- I'm at the beach with my family. Enjoying the 'heatwave' that happens to be the lead story on the news here. Virgin Atlantic's computer system still hasn't located my baggage, but I am almost resigned to the fact that it may never be seen. There isn't much in there that holds too much value to me that can't be somehow replaced. Such is life! Anyways, I'm glad to be back, but I already miss the work we were doing in Kenya.

Couple days to relax before I head out to Atlanta!

6 pigs, 4 Cattle and

17 more cattle tomorrow down in the swamp!

From Sunday's Nyama Choma

Its looking like I'm gonna manage to keep myself pretty busy right until I get on the plane here in Kenya. I guess the one good thing about having a trip home that doesn't start til 630pm, is that I can still manage to fit in a half day in the field and an hour in the office to fill in any missing data!

I am racking my brain to try to find a way to get back to here (or elsewhere in Africa) again at some point. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time here and I would absolutely love to do some more in depth work here.

But meeting the people I have met here have also made me want to go see other parts of Africa too... They say some places are 'in the same Africa, but on a different planet.' The adviser of the grad student that I am working with just returned from a conference in Tunis, Tunisia... Sounded like a totally different and interesting place, actually all of North Africa sounds like such a mix of people, cultures, styles... As does West Africa... But I guess I have to find a 'job' at some point after I graduate too!! Keeping my fingers crossed I can find something that 1) I will enjoy and 2) that might allow me the chance to do something 'crazy,' like Veterinary Medicine in some far flung, less seen places on this planet!

As I sit and contemplate my time in Kenya, my mind is putting logs on the fire in my mind that fuels a desire to see the rest of the world...

Almost Forgot...

I hate ANTS... alot. More than mosquitoes, tse tse flies and gigantic moths... combined.

I survive nearly 6 weeks with NO bug issues... then on the hike back from a homestead yesterday I tried to step lightly around a HUGE trail of ants that twisted across the path... Should have stomped the crap out of them!! I guess the hugeness of the main trail that I avoided masked the smaller trail that allowed several of the intrepid adventurers to start their own trail up my leg underneath my pants...

They had the decency to restrain themselves from biting into my flesh until we were in the Land Cruiser, completely buttressed on both sides by thorn bushes... That was when they launched their attack... I noticed the first one as it sunk its rather large pinchers into the base of my thumb... Then I realized that they were all up on my leg... I was able to calmly ask James to STOP THE VEHICLE as Fred who was sitting next to me began to explain that the ants preferred to bite... 'more sensitive areas'.... Only one thing in my mind at that point: SH*T!! I literally dove out of the vehicle and started swatting up and down my leg hoping to kill as many of them as quickly as I could before the ALL started biting!!

I managed to kill all of them but several had already latched on leaving a couple little welts... Nothing a little Benedryl can't fix... But all and all pretty funny, with me throwing myself through scrubby sticker bushes out back of the Land Cruiser while the team stared out the back not sure if it was alright to laugh or not... It was.

Slow Day of Data

With the GPS problems from last week preventing us from booking homestead visits for this week, I was left with an 'office' day today (and most of yesterday too!!)

I wish I knew more about Microsoft Access or better yet had the program! Its pretty expensive to get the version of Office that has Access included so as it stands I am exporting the data I have from the study to Excel... Its an ok system. Since I know Excel pretty well, I can use it to look at the data... But everything I read online about Access say that it is the best for looking at databases... Also I lose some of the connections with the data in the switch from Access --> Excel, so it becomes a matter of manually matching up results in the spreadsheet... That has been what has occupied most of my day...

I also managed to try to plan ahead for the lectures next week when I am at the AVMA Conference. Never imagined that there could be 20 hours of lectures on reptile cardiology!! But I think I have a pretty good mix of subjects to check out when I am there! I'm pretty excited to get back for it and to see all my fellow SGU students that will be headed there.

Anyways, sorry about the boring post today... If anyone is great with databases, let me know when I get back.

Wow... this was a lame post. Oh!! I almost forgot, I saw a Mongoose yesterday! It was dead on the side of the road. Thats all I got...

Great Weekend and....

... the beginning of the end?

So... didn't really end up going on any of the trips that we were thinking of taking this past weekend. When Fabrice woke up Friday morning, he felt a little ill... He thought he had Malaria, which judging by the fact that he and I routinely killed a dozen mosquitoes a night in our room before bed, it might have been a pretty good assumption (luckily he doesn't have Malaria... probably just exhausted from working the long hours in the bush and swamp country).Anyways, I really made the most of the chance to stay around Busia. I had been checking with Charles (the Project House's cook/cleaner/handyman/everything or as they call it here in Kenya- houseboy) to see if there happened to be anything going on locally over the last few weekends. But there was a trip here or a trip there that always stopped me from hanging around town... I wish I had stuck around earlier!

Big Ups

I was pretty lucky as it was a really busy weekend for high school sports here in Busia. Charles told me about one of the local high schools that was 'hosting' the men's and women's volleyball and soccer district championships. And Saturday was our chance to catch the preliminary rounds... I would have never thought that I would be spending ~7 hours watching high school volleyball, but these guys were pretty good and the atmosphere was electric. It was held outside and there weren't stands to speak of. Everyone was so CROWDED around the court that when a ball would go up and head out of bounds the players would run/dive through the crowd to get to it!! Charles and I each picked a team that we liked and we managed to follow them around for the day (it wasn't hard, there were only 2 courts). The team we picked won all its games on Saturday and qualified for both the Provincial playoffs and the Championships that would be happening the next morning(I didn't get to take any pictures cause I was too into the match!).


When the day's volleyball was over we jogged over to the local stadium to catch the end of the men's soccer semi-finals. But we only managed to catch a couple minutes of the tail-end of the match. So we started the journey back home. The Project House is at the far end of town from where we were, so we caught a boda-boda (motorcycle taxi) home... Again, it scared the living daylights out of me, but we somehow made it 'safely' through the rough streets, traffic, tanker trucks and potholes.

In the words of Carl Spackler from Caddyshack- "He's got a beautiful backswing - that's - Oh he got all of that one!"

Sunday morning I met back up with Charles after he went to church and got his hair cut for a day of Championships! First up was the volleyball finals. If there were a lot of people there watching the day before, there were twice as many watching the finals. Like I said above, the match was too exciting to try to take pictures. I'd rather not watch it through a lens if at all possible, so thats what I did, figuring that the pictures from the day before would suffice! In the end it went 4 matches with our pick winning 3-1.

Not the best keeper, but managed to keep a clean-sheet...

From there it was off to the stadium to get a seat in the small set of concrete stands that faced off at an awkward angle from the soccer field... Strange that we went straight there from volleyball cause the soccer game wasn't slated to start for another 2 hours or so... But again Charles knew what he was doing... Over the next hour or so, the stands filled up and then over those two 'long' hours, the perimeter of the field started to stack 5 people deep on all sides with spectators! By the start of the match there had to be 2000 people huddled in the stands and all around the field (Charles claims at least 3000). Overall it was a decent match. But it was sort of the 'typical' African football style, a kick and run/north-south/route-1 game plan. However, the team that we picked to win was at least trying to put together some passing out of the back field and to build an attack... It was tough going as there was kind of a lack of grass on the field, so a good deal of passes were running very long and even when the passes were there, the finishing was admittedly sub-par. None of that however took anything away from the excitement and the tension as the match went to extra time and on to penalty kicks to decide a winner.

After all was settled and the celebrations that were blocking the only exit died down, we headed off to catch another boda-boda ride home. We had tried to look around on the walk to the main road for some fresh fish for dinner that night but we couldn't find any without umm... the 'air' of suspicion (if you know what I mean). We were thwarted at all turns... So we returned home defeated, only to find out that Fabrice had been in town earlier and had bought some goat(yes, goat... and it was delicious) to roast and had invited some members of the research team over to the Project House for an impromptu Sunday dinner. The rest of the team arrived later with some more meat and some of the local Tusker beer(decent enough stuff) and we proceeded to have a little nyama choma (Kenyan BBQ). It was the perfect end to what turned out to be a great weekend. Kind of like the days of the week previous, the adventure was had in the journey, not in the destination. Going nowhere turned out to be something great!

Sadly it *is* my last week here in Western Kenya... I arrive back to the US on Saturday, spend the night in Baltimore then its off to the beach until Thursday afternoon when I head to Atlanta for the AVMA Convention. I'm there til the following Tuesday, then its back to the beach with the family until Friday... Then Sunday, its the annual river tubing trip to Harper's Ferry with the Gang. All before heading back down to Grenada on August 14th for the start of the semester... Long couple weeks, but I'll be glad to have them! Hope to see you all at some point during them!!

A day of adventure turns into....

Pictures from Tuesday's BIG sampling

...nothing accomplished... But it was pretty fun.

We were out again on Thursday to do some recruiting for next week's set of locations. We ran into some problems...

First, when I flipped the GPS on the four GPS points that we had to locate were actually the ones we used last week... When James and I started to scan through the next set of points(thinking perhaps they were mislabeled), we quickly discovered that the points were in a different sub-location (basically a Kenyan county) than we thought we were in... Bad news- mostly cause we had picked up the sub-location Chief. And then when we checked the back-up points, we discovered that they had all somehow gone into the GPS unit as the same point... Add in the fact that the indicated point was 600 kilometers away and we knew we were working with some bad data (I looked it up today and it would be in the middle of a forest in the Congo...)!! So we called the grad student who I am here working with to try to adapt a solution.

Luckily, she was on the way to an area near where James and I were working and happened to have her computer with her. She could use it to generate new GPS points and get us back on out way. So we met up with her on the side of the main road between Kisumu and Busia, and she decided just to hop in with us in case we came across any other problems. She replotted the points and while it still looked like we were headed to a different sub-location, she chalked it up to a redistricting that had happened since the map we were using was made. So the three of us headed off with the Chief of the wrong area in search of adventure. The Chief still knew the way around the other area and since it is REALLY swampy country, we were glad to have him.

After a couple turns and ever narrowing roads to trails to tracks, the Land Cruiser finally reached its point of exhaustion. As 'bridge' construction halted the vehicle and the countryside began to look swampier and swampier, we abandoned the Land Cruiser for a pair of rented motorbikes. The drivers of the motorbikes seemed quite happy to drive all 4 of us, two on each bike with the driver, towards the southwest on whatever trails were available. I have probably never held onto anything so tightly in my life. On the back of a motorbike with two other people, riding down single track footpaths was pretty exhilarating... Then came the bridge... If anyone has ever been to the Baltimore Zoo, they have a rickety-sort of bridge towards the end of the Children's Zoo section that sways a little bit, enough to make it fun for the kids but not enough to make it dangerous. Imagine that sway, but 20 times as much... Exposed to the environment, God only knows when the thing was built there... Lets just say that there was quite a bit of give in each of the boards...

When we got to the end of the bridge, there were about 4 kilometers more before we hit total swampland... Realizing that we still had another ~14 kilometers to go before reaching the point, the boat trip that we were facing was unfortunately turned down as we opted to circumnavigate the 'small' Lake Kanyaboli at the head of the swamp. In order to get southwest of the swamp, where we needed to be, we drove two hours around the lake and a bit of the swamp. Of course at the other edge of the swamp is Lake Victoria... Our points appeared to be about 1800 meters out in the water... They were supposed to be nestled nicely on land... Opps... We tried our hardest to get to one spot that looked like it might be on a peninsula... No luck there either, which I am kind of glad cause in the 200 meters I walked to get to the shore, I encountered more mosquitoes than I have EVER seen in all of my years combined. The sound was not unlike the sound that you would get if you swatted a huge hornet's nest...

So.... Lian (the grad student) had to bust out the computer and re-plot the point again. While she was working, we were attracting quite a crowd of children from the little village we had passed through... Soon enough there were 25-30 kids climbing all over (and some into) the Land Cruiser. Lian was stressing out a little, so I figured I could distract some of the kids since one of them happened to have a little football made of plastic bags and fishing net. It was like a 20-minute long revisit to last summer (I ran a summer camp)... As the computer battery died, a set of points was uploaded to the GPS unit...

Again they were 8oo meters into Lake Victoria. We only discovered this after hiking up a rocky cliff and bouldering for a couple hundred meters to reach the end of what was another peninsula...

So with no battery remaining and a faulty set of GPS points (turns out to be a faulty layer in the mapping softwear) we decided to call it a day...

But as the saying goes, the adventure is not found in the destination but in the journey (or something like that). So if that holds true we had a GREAT adventure, in spite of getting little accomplished for the project.

Tired as a dog...

And after last night might end up acting like one and try to kill the project house's cat!!

So Sunday night I wake up in the middle of the night to find something biting my toes through the bed sheet. Somehow I didn't swiftly kick whatever it was in the side of the head then stomp on it... Good news for Bucati, the project house's cat. At some point in the evening he must have stolen in through the open window (6ft above the ground outside) and managed to work his way under/around the mosquito net and onto my bed... I really feel like he used up one of his nine lives by coming into my bed that night cause I was milliseconds away from not recognizing the black patch of fur he has on his face and walloping him one good...

You would think that a cat which lives in an area of the world which is known for its many poisonous snakes would want to conserve as many of its lives as possible... but not little Bucati... Last night, he decided to hop onto the window sill and CRY and MEOW and SCREAM til his little heart was content (aka- from 3am til 6am...). I know most people would say 'well, why didn't you do something about it rather than being lazy and just laying in bed?' Well you have to understand that I am in a 10ft by 10ft room with two twin beds and luggage on the floor and must negotiate all that plus two big frames for the mosquito nets before I could even get to the window, which doesn't open all the way (just enough for him to sneak in and out), to access where he was sitting... And if I had decided to use an outside route to him, I would have had to stumble through the room, down the hallway, through the living room, find the keys, unlock the house lock(trying every key on the key ring), sneak past the dog, unlock the porch lock (again trying every key on the key ring) and walk all the way around the house without disturbing the several chickens that roost in the bushes around the house before I could have gotten to him... I told him how I felt about him this morning but my Swahili isn't good, so I am not sure if he got it. Then again its a cat, so even if it did understand, it wouldn't care!

In other news, the plans for my last weekend in Kenya are up in the air at the moment... There had been discussion about a weekend trip to Mount Elgon (perhaps known best for the elephant caves and the Marburg Virus, a close relative of the Ebola, that traced back to those caves), which I am pretty keen on, but the grad student I am here working with has too much stuff going on right now to head out for the weekend. So it could still happen with just myself, Fabrice and the other summer student... Or I could end up sticking around Busia to get some work done too... I had kind of wanted to go over the border to Uganda to a town called Jinga, which is the 'source' for the Nile River. It would just be a little day trip as its pretty close to here, but a visa for an American to enter Uganda, even if just for a day, is $50USD... Its a steep charge for what would only be a day trip... Interestingly enough, Irish citizens get a complimentary visa in Uganda...

Who knows... this time next week I will again be a mix of emotions counting down the hours til I head back to the US of A!! Miss you all!

The Weekend in Kisumu

Fabrice and I spent the weekend down in Kisumu. Stated to be the third biggest city in Kenya behind Nairobi and Mombasa, but you wouldn't know it from looking at it. We got a much longer, more in depth view than our brief stop-over here last weekend to get the Land Cruiser services on the way to Nakuru last weekend.

Kenya is interesting in so many ways. No matter what you read in a guide book, no matter how surprising it is to read, you will still be amazed when you actually see it. After we arrived in town we passed through the city center with Fred and James(two of the Kenyans that work on the PAZ project with us). On the outskirts of the city center lies the Kisumu Market. A place where they sell everything from avocados to sunglasses and bootleg DVDs to mattresses. While driving along the edge of the market we noticed a large, rather rowdy crowd massing and walking past us on the other side of the road. Walking away from them in front was a young man, terribly bloodied and stripped down to his underwear... Sudden introduction to mob justice for a thief or pickpocket. Sadly in a country where a nominal bribe to a police officer is often enough to avoid a date with the justice system, the mob mentality frequently takes over and this sort of sight is apparently not an unusual happening (I read in the local paper last week where a local thug was hung after he was caught breaking into a business by a mob...). I guess I was just most amazed that 100 yards down the road we passed a police officer... and how people watched but no one seemed concerned or even interested...

So.... We searched around for a decent hotel. And discovered that a decent hotel in Kisumu did not necessarily come with a decent price tag! We visited three places and were pretty well surprised how expensive they each were. We finally settled on the middle of the three places (called Kisumu Hotel), as it seemed be best (perhaps only) balance between the cost and what you actually got for the cost. Luckily for us, James happened to know the Manager of the place from some work he did with the Red Cross some years back and was able to arrange for a little bit of a lower nightly rate for our stay!

After settling in, it was off to dinner for Fabrice and I. James and Fred left us to met up with their families, so we set course for basically the only place we knew in Kisumu in search of a decent meal... The Mon Ami... Ended up having the same butterfish and chips that I did the week before. Nothing beats a decent fried fish and french fries... (with the possible exception of whatever I eat in two weeks when I get home!) But all joking aside it was a pretty good meal and if you happen to pass through Kisumu sometime (which will be increasingly possible when the new international airport is completed) I would definitely recommend the place.

We came to find out, as we had assumed that Mon Ami was a pretty hip hangout for whatever mzungus happen to be around the Kisumu area. There is a HUGE campus set up and run by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) located just outside Kisumu and its also a base for several church/outreach organizations. So mzungus while still not too common, aren't as surprising of a sighting as they are most other places. Its funny. In the field, I have found myself to be almost as inquisitive as the kids I mentioned a couple weeks ago, when I see white people. What are they doing here? Who are they with? What kind of white people are they? That last question I think I am pretty good at accurately guessing. I nailed it this past weekend, calling a group of Brits, two Americans and a German couple. The closer to their 20s people are, the easier it is to do correctly.

Anyways, we ended up hanging out there after dinner when they clear away most of the tables and turn the floor over to dancing and loud music. It wasn't all that much different than a dancehall anywhere in the world, I guess. The music was similar or in some cases, the same and when I woke up my ears were ringing just as all the other.

The next morning I discovered that there were only 6 channels on the TV. Two were in Swahili, one was showing the local Saturday morning rip-off bootleg cartoons, one was Al Jazeera (which didn't actually seem as terrible as I thought it would be) and two that were WALL-TO-WALL World Cup Coverage. It was my saving grace, as Fabrice had a long night the night before and unlike me, wasn't up for answering the bell at 6am...

That afternoon we met up with Fred for a little adventure on Lake Victoria. Fabrice was in search of the infamous Nile Perch that in habit the lake, and Fred happens to own a little boat. So away we went around 3pm to drive to Fred's family's home near Kisumu to embark. There we were greeted by Otis and George(pictured above with Fred and myself) who rent Fred's boat during the week to fish while he is in Busia working. In spite of Fabrice not catching any Nile Perch and his only 'bite' being a tangle with a net, it was a fun trip. Normally this type of boat would throw up a little sail and power itself that way, but in the late afternoon the breeze on Lake Victoria has a tendency to die down. Saturday afternoon was no exception. So it was up to Otis and George to power us around for the nearly three hours we spent out on the lake. I wasn't paddling and I was tired, so I could only imagine how it was for them! But they seemed none the worse for wear, as I think our little jaunt around the lake wasn't near their daily journey in search of Tilapia and whatever other harvest they find on the lake.

From there we moved back into Kisumu with Fred as our 'guide.' Fabrice wanted some good live local music and I wanted to try to catch the World Cup Third Place match. Fred was able to guide us to a favorite place of his, that had set up a tent outside for showing the WC matches so that it could continue to play music inside. There was also an assortment of 'caterers' outside the place that served the local dish ugali(basically a cornmash dough) and roasted goat... Having not really eaten much meat since I have been in Kenya, I was ALL over the goat. The sauce it was bathed in was great and the goat itself was delicious (disclaimer: shoe leather may have been delicious too after 5 weeks without meat). I got to watch yet another team which I thought would win, fall victim to the curse of my confidence... It was early to bed after the match so we could walk the town the next day.

Not much happening in Kisumu on a Sunday morning, so we just strolled about and I took a couple pictures. We weren't really all that hungry after breakfast at the hotel, so we never managed to find any other places to eat in the area. I watched some more World Cup coverage and then we picked up the Fred and James in the afternoon and headed back towards Busia.

13 Cattle + 21 people = Exhaustion!

Whew! So the team managed to survive a HUGE day of sampling in the field today! The homestead from which we sampled swelled in size it seemed since we last visited and the 18 people that we expected quickly turned into 21 with the addition of some folks that weren't expected to be around. Luckily we had just enough post-sampling snacks(Coca-Cola, white bread and glucose powder) to make it to the last rather relieved child.

As always we attracted a huge crowd. One of the cattle we wanted to sample was mistakenly lead out to graze before we got to sample it. So when we finished the rest, we hopped in the truck and headed out with the calf's owner to where he had it tethered. By this time, it was the period of the day when the school-aged children are let out of school for lunch... and we happened to be in a field right between a school and a cluster of homes. I think there were more than a few children that missed lunch today on account of standing in that field to watch us wrestle with and examine the calf!

Tomorrow would seem a short day now with only 7 people and 7 cattle!! I can only hope that their cattle are as well behaved as the ones we worked with today. Except the one that was trying to lay down during its blood draw, they were pretty good. For that heifer, I was about the only thing between her and the ground for a good few minutes... Thank God I brought Icy/Hot to Kenya.

Not much to say today...

As all of Africa shines and revels in the success of hosting the mega-event that is the World Cup, some extremist group goes and blows up 2 cafes filled with everyday people just hanging out watching the final...

While I hate to see tragedy like what happened last night no matter where it happens, sitting just across a porous border about 2 hours away, it hits a little closer to home. Then I find out that the American killed in the blast at the Rugby Club was a UDel grad... He was in Uganda working with an aid-group that aimed to help child soldiers. Saying that the world was a strange place wouldn't begin to express the sentiment...

Anyways tomorrow I will post the blog I wrote for this past weekend.

I had to say something...

Just when I went and said something about how the animal side of the project was going through a little lull in numbers... We did recruitment yesterday and after hiking through some swamps, brush and corn fields, we booked 20 cattle for next week. Two of the four homesteads we booked didn't have animals, and the other two had 7 and 13 respectively... Its gonna make for quite a busy Tuesday and Wednesday next week!! Just glad we ended up with those homesteads rather than the one where the local chief said that they owned 50-60!!

This morning we hit the slaughter slabs again and it was back to the place they call me Rooney... I wore my Man Utd jersey today just to drive home the point. Ended up sampling 3 pigs at that location and manage 5 more at some of the other local slabs. It was the best day of slab sampling that we have had yet and we still managed to get back to the lab for Friday morning tea!

I am heading off this weekend to the town of Kisumu. Its the town that we stopped in last weekend before we headed off to Nakuru. Since a couple of the people working on the project actually live down there on the weekends with their families, Fabrice and I decided to head that way with the benefit of having our friends as local 'guides'.

Three Days, 2 pigs, 30 people...

"Rivals the porch in Grenada"

So, this has been a pretty slow week for animal sampling... One of the problems with having randomized selection is that we go where the randomly selected GPS point is... and sample whether there are animals or not... We were pretty close to a few places that had a ton of cattle and some pigs, which would have been perfect, but it is what it is. We managed to finish 11 people today in record time (including one 88-year old man and two 75-year old sisters... incredible). Its really interesting for me to see the human side of the public health/food safety issue. All the diseases we are investigating in the people are diseases that are zoonotic (can be passed between people and animals). Seeing the wide reaching effects that these 'minor' (ie- not AIDS, cancer or any of the other big ones that get a lot of research money and interest) diseases can have on people is very enlightening.

"This ape wants to kill me"

Sadly, there is not much I can offer to the human-medical part of the team except sample processing. My grasp of Swahili is 'limited' and my even then its sometimes secondary to the local Luo/Luiya language...(which, interestingly enough, is the people from which Barack Obama draws his Kenyan heritage). The road from Kisumu to Busia actually passes by Obama's grandfather's home. They really do love him here. The local people seem to smile extra once they find out that I'm from the United States. That revelation is usually followed with the 'where in the US are you from?' question. Unless you answer with California, New York City or Washington DC, there is little chance of anyone actually knowing where you are from. In fact this afternoon on the way back to the office from the field, we passed a coach bus plastered with Michelle Obama's picture. And the number and variety of businesses that are in some way alluding to Obama is startling. From Senator Beer and Senator Butchery to Barack Obama Teacher Training Center and Obama Travel Company... Its all there.

A couple more interesting facts about where I am in Kenya:
-Celine Dion's career is alive and well here in Kenya. A Celine Dion song from YEARS ago was on the bootleg CD playing in the Land Cruiser today and I was the only one that didn't know all the words and that didn't really want to hear it again.
-Bootleg/Counterfeit football(soccer) jerseys are pretty popular. I am sure real ones would be more popular, but since they aren't available, people will settle for a pinstripe Arsenal kit, a green Man Utd jersey or blue Liverpool jersey with Liverpool scrolled across the front rather than Carlsberg.
-The max number of people you can fit on a motorbike is 5 people. Yes, while in most places things like safety and the law would prevent more than say 2 people from riding the same motorbike, here its totally kosher.
-The max number of people you can fit in a 12-passenger van is 25(22 with luggage). This is accomplished most of the time by not closing the sliding side door, having people hang out of the door and by stowing cargo(including animals and people sometimes) on the roof. I really need to snap a picture the next time I see one loaded to the hilt.
-Bicycling here is an important means of transport. Not just of people around town, but also of goods over long distances. Some of the bike loads that I have seen pedaled around here are the most amazing feats of balance I have seen since I saw Cirque du Soleil in Vegas...

"Rush hour"

Well, its time for me to sign off. Gonna relax at home after a long day before dinner and the Germany-Spain game. Enjoy a couple more photos since the internet isn't crawling today

"Grasslands tick control department resting in a tree before the start of a long day"

"Just saying, I'm pretty sure you're too old for that..."

"Stark contrast"


"One more step and I will literally rip your arm off"

Catch-up again!!

Apologies for the long winded update yesterday! Only made it up through Saturday night too!!

Sunday, July 4th- Survived the night! No baboons came near the camp that I was aware of. Only problem any of us had was that the other summer student placed her tent on top of an ant hill and ended up having to sleep in the car.

The morning found us awake well early to pack-up camp and ready to roll as soon as the prohibition on night driving expired at 6:30am. We took off towards an area where we figured that there must be some lions. On the way, I spotted a couple of Hyenas crouched in the grass, so we watched them for a little while and took some pictures then decided to continue on the search for the lions. We made it a couple hundred yards more and saw some Jackals scampering across the road and back towards the area where we saw the Hyenas. From there our search for the lions proceeded. We passed a Land Cruiser with some tourists coming out from the area where the REALLY expensive lodge is located (it has its own air strip in case driving there was not your style). They slowed down and waved and their guide asked us if we had seen anything good (I thought all of it was good but I guess he meant any carnivores) thus far that morning. So we told him about the Hyenas and the Jackals and he mentioned that they had spotted a Lion when they were first starting out near the lodge (which is protected from Lions and Baboons by a tall electric fence). The decision was made to scrap our original plan and to head in the direction of the lodge on the chance that the Lion hadn't moved along before we got there.
It was a pretty quick trip to the lodge but we still managed to see a ton more Buffalo, Baboon and Zebra on the way. When we arrived there was no sign of any Lions so we drove around to the back side of the hill were the lodge was located and found an expansive grassland area with a bordering scrub forest. Just near a track at the edge of that forest, there was a lone Antelope. Unlike most of the Antelope in the park that would turn their heads and prick up their ears when a vehicle came near, this one stood stoic, staring at a section of grass between itself and the forest... Surely, this had to be a sign that SOMETHING must be amiss in this Antelope's world. We parked and shut off the engine in hopes that at any moment we would see the thing that the Antelope was praying that it did not see. I peered out the window and could see in the dust a large paw print... Paws with no claws... A pretty good indication that it was a large cat as they have the ability to retract their claws, where the other carnivores(Hyenas and Jackals) can not and would have left telltale claw marks.
We watched and waited... and waited... but we didn't catch sight of a Lion... Sadly this time of year is right after the end of the rainy season in Western Kenya, so the grass can be rather high... While great for all the herbivores to eat, it makes seeing them very hard, which I guess actually makes it bad for the herbivores (and summer students on safari trying to see a big cat in the wild!!).
After a while we decided to try a couple other trails in that area and to see where they lead us (in Kenya, maps are not necessarily up-to-date and signs are sometimes non-existent). We didn't end up seeing Lions or Leopards, but we were able to get to a stunning viewpoint on the hill next to the Lake. If not for the mosquitoes, I could have spent the rest of the morning there... But considering that we had to be getting on our way back on the ~6 hour journey back to Kisumu and then on back to Busia, we couldn't take any more time for our search. As nice as it would have been to see the big cats, I still managed to have an amazing time and saw things there that a lot of people don't get the chance to see anywhere.
The drive back was smooth and unremarkable, except to note that I was a little more comfortable with the death-defying antics of some drivers here in Kenya... It makes driving in Grenada look like box car derby. Passing 3 oil tankers, uphill, on a blind curve, at 110kph is nothing out of the norm... Some folks lack a sense of self preservation when it comes to driving here... The motorbike drivers are just as bad when you get closer to the towns, granted at lower speeds, but the concept of 'your side of the road' is also missing in some cases.

I have added some of the pictures from the weekend Safari. Trust me, there are a TON more where that came from... I filled one memory card and polished off half of a second one. With the internet being slow here and my netbook not being the ideal platform to edit, I will have to wait til I get home to get everything posted.

Anyways, hope everyone had a great 4th of July! Shoot me a message if you wanna let me know about all the fun you're having without me!!

The weekend!! LAKE NAKURU!!!

I have to write this off-line so I don't forget everything by Monday night when I can finally get online!!

We started off early in the morning to drop one of the research group's Land Cruisers at the garage for its tune-up. And as goes with the size of the town where we are located, the nearest Toyota service center is in Kisumu which is two hours away! But luckily it was on our way to Ngoro and Nakuru, and turned out to be a pretty cool little town. We arrived at the garage with plenty of time to spare before they opened, so we milled around until the first couple people came into work and were able to check us in. Once we were checked in we got dropped off at a little coffee shop called "The Laughing Buddha." Well... It turns out that in Kisumu its not unusual for a coffee shop not to open til 10:30am... It was 8:35am... Since we had all been up since 5:30am and ran out the house without breakfast(and also my jacket, hat and sunglasses), we all decided to bust out the guidebook and find another place to go. At that point, with hunger steadily taking over, I agreed that the local vegetarian place would work fine. And it was. Note to self: when visiting Kenya and ordering tea, you need to be very specific if you don't want milk in your tea... I guess it’s a remnant of British colonization or perhaps just my own ignorance, but having never tea that way, it’s a little strange. Anyways, I was specific, but still ended up drinking my tea with milk (I was told that having milk in tea used to be a sort of status thing, more for the upper class who could afford it, so that at many smaller towns/stores, it would always be assumed that I wanted the milk).

After a decent breakfast of chipati(Kenyan flatbread), Fabrice and I took off to check out the Port. We kind of figured that since Kisumu was not only a port town on Lake Victoria but also an end terminal for a rail line that runs all the way from the coast city of Mombassa and on through Nairobi, that it would be a busy place... Nope. There was only one ship being actively loaded(with soap and cooking oil), a couple small Kenya Revenue Authority ships and three ships that probably hadn't moved in a couple months. The reason, as our little 'guide' told us, is because currently the taxation rates and fees on goods shipped via the port are so high, that it makes it more economical to drive the goods ALL the way around the lake. It was a little sad to see the rail lines overgrown with scrub brush. But with the recent ratification of terms of the East African Community (an agreement to facilitate/ease the movement of people and products between Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania) and the improvements/expansions to the Kisumu Airport, they are preparing the area for a renaissance of sorts. Fabrice was also able to get the opinions on the best locations around Kisumu's part of Lake Victoria to catch Nile Perch(possibly next weekend's adventure).

From there we decided to explore the town a little and since we had just heard from the rest of our group that the car wouldn't be ready til 2pm at the earliest, we had plenty of time. On a Friday morning, Kisumu is a pretty hopping town. Complete opposite of the port. There were tons of vendors on the streets, selling everything from avocados and sunglasses(which I picked-up a pair since I left mine at the project house) to bootleg DVDs from Dubai and solar-powered radios. I was able to haggle down the price of the sunglasses from 500 schillings (about $6USD) to 400 schillings($4.80). And for that price they served their purpose well, but I doubt they make the trip back to the US...

We browsed the shops and vendors til right about 1pm or so and decided to duck into one of the side 'mall' areas for a bite to eat. And we absolutely hit the jackpot. We took the stairs down to the courtyard and were headed to one place at the far end, when Fabrice spotted a little something different. Of course the first reason he spotted it was due of it's French name, "Mon Ami." But inside it had all the wood paneling and Premiere League swag befitting a proper pub in foggey ole London town (or maybe more aptly in Liverpool since the guy that owned it was a HUGE fan). They were showing replays of World Cup matches on the TV and had a menu that was a mix of English-pub food and Indian food. The butterfish and chips were great(either that or I had eaten so much ugali and greens over that last three weeks that it seemed like it!).

The car ended up being done around 2pm, so we caught a toot-toot (a weird 3-wheeled motorized cart that’s used as a taxi) back to the garage, met up with the rest of the team and headed off.

We (myself, the other summer student and Fabrice) dropped one person from the research group off at a nice plantation on the outer area of tea-farming country and another off in Nakuru so she could catch the 4-hour shuttle to Nairobi. We finally made it to the 'hotel' that Fabrice had 'sort of' booked online but had forgotten the name of it (after searching and searching and almost giving up and heading back towards town). It again turned out to be a semi-jackpot (in this case, jackpot means only that the room had a toilet that flushes...). Actually, it was a pretty nice little place. There was a pool (that we didn't use), a sauna (that we never got a look at) and a reasonably priced bar/restaurant where we were able to check out the Ghana-Uruguay match. By the beginning of the match the entire staff from the hotel was in the room with us watching the match (the hotel is also a 'conference center' so it has a lot of rooms and it seemed to have a lot of people on staff, but we seemed to be the only people there so I guess they had nothing better to do than hang out). The place erupted when Ghana took the lead and was on cloud nine until Forlan pulled Uruguay equal. I couldn't believe the ending... I felt so bad for Gyan. I could literally see the pressure that was on him from the whole of Africa and when he missed the disappointment in the air was so tangible. But unfortunately thats how soccer (football) is sometimes... The better team doesn't always win.

Saturday, July 3rd- Finally got a chance to sleep in a little! Up at 730ish for breakfast. Which I thought was just gonna be some juice and buttered toast, but turned out that they had a couple burners set-up and were doing omelets and also had bacon, sausage, sweet potatoes and cereal. Quite the impressive little spread and totally unexpected.

First stop was Menenghai Crater. From the guidebook, it was said to be a viewpoint from the edge of what was an ancient volcano. I guess no matter what they had written or how eloquently they wrote the section, it wouldn't come close to being able to do the place justice. From the edge, which falls out towards Nakuru town and then further on to the Lake and National Park, we were afforded a ~300-degree view from 2200 meters for which the absolute vastness can NOT be described. I have seen a couple amazing vistas in a couple different regions of the world and this easily stands as the most awe-inspiring. I will let the pictures speak for themselves. Except I will mention that the one guy at the little souvenir shack tried to tell us that the crater was 'over 200 years old.' Pause... Us- '200 years? You mean 200 million years?' That guy- 'Ah, yeah, over 200.'

Then we took off from there to head into Lake Nakuru National Park. We didn't even make it in through the gates before we had a Verveet Monkey climbing around on top of the car, staring in at the corn cob on the dashboard. After grabbing a soda outside the gates and shooing the monkey off the car, we paid our admission. It was $60US, which is very expensive(since the admission to the crater was $1.15!), and despite my/our best efforts to convince the attendant that we were all temporary residents but that the organization that were working with wouldn't mail us the cards and we had to go to Nairobi to get them... she wouldn't budge. We took a clockwise route around the lake and quickly saw tons more Vervett Monkeys, antelope of several types, zebras and HUGE water buffalo. These were mostly at a decent distance since the trail in that direction initially runs a little farther from the water and the grasslands… But it didn’t stay like that for long. Soon enough we were driving on a trail across the grasslands, so close to those water buffalo which already seemed so enormous from a distance that we could totally realize their gargantuan proportions!! I mean, there were times when there were no more than 5-10 yards between our Land Cruiser and the impalas, waterbucks, antelope, water buffalo and zebras. But as the saying goes, there can be too much of a good thing. As we were making our way across a trail in the grassland, we spotted a troop of Olive Baboons hanging out and relaxing in the grass. We slowed to take a couple pictures and the big male patriarch of the troop decided to come check us out a little closer… A little closer doesn’t really capture the sheer terror of this ~140lbs creature jumping onto the hood of the car, especially once he saw that same corn cob that had previously attracted the little monkey… Fabrice was worried that the thing would try to pull off the windshield wipers, so we tried in earnest to get it off to no avail (it just sat there trying to figure out how to get to the corn and yawning, which exposed its HUGE canine teeth….). Finally, after Fabrice popped the car in neutral and revved the engine, the baboon decided it had had enough of us and that we had drifted far enough away from his troop that he ambled off. We drove through the grasslands for a good while, and then took a path into the forest area in hopes of seeing a leopard hanging in a tree. Well… we weren’t that lucky BUT we did manage to see several giraffe nibbling on Acacia trees on the edge of one clearing. Then we got REALLY, REALLY lucky. The giant grey rock some 40 yards away in the clearing was in fact a White Rhinoceros… I could have drove out of the park right then and left a VERY satisfied onlooker.

Since it was getting late, we decided to start to make our way to the campsite where we would be camping in the park. I guess I don’t really know what I was expecting when I arrived, but it certainly wasn’t the totally empty campsite with a water faucet and restroom facilities that consisted of a hole in ground, that we ultimately found. Well, actually that was pretty much exactly what I was expecting and I must admit I was fairly happy with that. Oh… did I say totally empty?? By that I mean that there were 40-50 baboons walking around, climbing trees and walking towards us… A quick look on the map showed that there was another campsite sort of near us and a backpackers’ campsite back in the north of the park near the entrance… We took off towards the nearer of the two other campsites, hoping to find some strength in numbers with some other human beings… But none was to be found. So I decided to call the warden’s office to see what they said and to see if they eventually sent any sort of Kenya Wildlife Service(KWS) officer around the area… The woman that answered the phone didn’t seem to have any idea what we were talking about when we said that there were baboons all over the place… Anyways, none of us felt comfortable with the prospect of camping in prime baboon territory, so we elected to hightail it to the backpackers’ campsite near the entrance, in hopes of making it there with enough light to comfortably set our tents and spark a fire.

We ended up making it in plenty of time and even saw a couple Rhinos on the way(and a wayward troop of baboons a couple hundred meters from the camp!!). The campsite had a bunch of people from different camping tour groups and overlanding groups. We were the only non-corporate campers there! One of the KWS officers there haggled with us over the price of some wood for a fire and after a little negotiation, we managed to spark a pretty decent little bonfire! We boiled some water, cooked some noodles and slathered on the spaghetti sauce (and bugspray too!! The skeeters were terrible!!). Luckily the blanket that I had wrapped myself in, not unlike the pictures you see of the Masai guys, did the trick to keep me warm and keep the mosquitoes off of me! We polished dinner off with a dessert of bananas with pieces of chocolate shoved in, wrapped in tin foil and heated in the fire… Perfection.

One of the things I never imagined I would do in my life is spend a night in a tent in the middle of a National Park in Kenya. And if I had I don’t know if I would have seen myself not sleeping for the first hour because of the noisy (possible drunk) overlanders or for the second clutching a knife and a flashlight because of the howls of the baboons!! Either way it was AMAZING.

So… its time to head home (its Monday evening now that I am writing this) I will finish the story when I get online tomorrow!!

Week 3 Complete

Strange that I am technically done almost 1/2 of my time here in Kenya...

This morning we split the team in two halves and James, Fred & I headed off to slaughter slabs, while the rest of the team ventured south to swamp area near Lake Victoria. We managed to get two pigs to sample this morning and narrowly missed another 2/3. One of the pigs we sampled was at the slab where the one worker insists on calling me 'Rooney.' He swears that I am Wayne Rooney(he also says the only way he is able to be so awake in the morning is to 'take heavy tea'). He had a couple buddies stop by to confirm it. The one guy had the good sense to say that I was in fact not Wayne Rooney, but certainly must be his brother... I guess the TV broadcasts of the games are pretty grainy...

I also can't be happier that I brought along my big headphones since the cord that plugs into them also plugs into the radios in the Land Cruisers. Somehow we lost the aerial antennas off of *both* of the Land Cruisers... Exploring through some pretty thick, rugged and remote areas at some point managed to rip them out of place... It beats the radio too. When it was working, the one big station seemed to rotate the same 10 songs over and over(like the US!) and the only other is the BBC branch out of Nairobi(which I did actually like quite a bit). Anyways, Black Eyed Peas- I Gotta Feeling has been a big hit with James, where as Fabrice loves the mixes with Matisyahu. Zydeco has gotten a good reaction, but try explaining an accordion to someone who has never seen one... Not easy(same goes for explanations concerning lacrosse...).

So for this weekend, I should be pretty well out of contact. But the cell phone here does allow me to go onto Facebook. So if you have any pressing need to get in touch with me, you can shoot me a line there!! Catch you all on Monday after the giraffes, lions, zebras and rhinos(hopefully)!!!

Last Day of June

Time flies when your having fun.

I have a chance to make it home this evening before the sun sets, so I am gonna take it. Suffice to say it was a busy day, sadly without the chance to take any good pictures. We visited one homestead for sampling and two for feedback today.

I miss two things when working with the cattle here.... Headgates and polled cattle(dehorned)... A fair percentage of the cattle thus far have been pretty flighty and love to kick. Luckily, the owners haven't been bad about having them semi-restrained... but nothing beats a good head gate...

Anyways, like I said, we finished up 'early' today and I got done all the SGU stuff I had to do, so I am off!! (And there isn't even a World Cup match to watch!)

My Birthday in Kenya

Spent a great birthday in the Kenyan bush with the research team. Sampled the people from 2 homesteads and the cattle at 1 of those homesteads.

So no update over the weekend, mostly cause I didn't do much other than read, write and watch football... So far in the World Cup Round of 16, I have picked South Korea, USA, England, Mexico and the Netherlands... Finally this evening one of those teams managed to pull off a win!! Sadly of the 5 teams, its the one that I care the least about... I think some of the people around here got a kick over the weekend out of watching as every one of my teams went down... Now they are all praying that I don't throw my support behind Ghana!!

So speaking of my birthday, my little birthday gift to myself is going to come this weekend: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_nakuru#Lake_Nakuru_National_Park I am incredibly excited! Leopards, lions, white & black rhinos, cheetahs, giraffes and tens of thousands of flamingos... If I only see 4 of those species I would still be incredibly happy. There is also an abundance of birds and of all sorts of other animals. So anyways thats my plan for this weekend... A great deal more peril than two weekends ago when marauding monkeys would have been my only worry!!

Anyways, its been a long day, but feel free to shoot me an e-mail (bmoulder43@yahoo.com) to keep me in the loop of what is happening in your neck of the woods!!

And I've Fallen Behind Once Again!!

Missed a few days there!! Couple rather long days in the field didn't allow for me to get online yesterday or Wednesday.

So where to start? I guess I would like to talk about what an attraction/curiosity I represent in some of the places that I have been this week. I have had the fortune to visit some pretty remote places where tourists (read: white people) almost never go. This has lead to some amazement amongst the children that we drive past and in the villages and homesteads we visit. The reactions span the spectrum from wide-eyed staring and silence to yelling MZUNGU and the favorite HOW ARE YOU. The reactions are typically amplified at at times due to the general nature of the work the team is doing, specifically when sampling pigs... For those of you who haven't spent much time around pigs, you should know that handling them can be a little stressful (to the handler). Pigs absolutely hate to be restrained and are not quiet about their dislike for it. In fact, if you ever talk to an older vet that used to do swine work you probably need to yell at him cause he is near deaf from his time spent working with them. They SCREAM and SCREAM and SCREAM when you are holding them. And the tone varies from a from a shrill howl to a piercing siren... Needless to say, the combination of the sound of the pig and the presence of a vehicle and a mzungu are quite enough to bring young and old around to investigate. Luckily the Kenyans that are on the research team are able to do a great job explaining to on lookers and the local 'contacts' that people generally understand what we are doing.

Yesterday was an especially long one. I went out with Omoto(a Kenyan on the team) at 630am and we sampled pigs from several different slaughter slabs all over the central part of the district. Got to meet one of the local meat inspectors along the way as he rode his dirt bike from slab to slab. We ended up back at the lab around noon, which was just enough time to drop off the morning samples and grab a quick bite to eat before we headed back out. This time we were headed down south towards Lake Victoria and were joined by the geographer, Fabrice. We were going to have a proverbial 'kill two birds with one stone' afternoons. First, we wanted to check out one slab in Port Victoria that slaughters their pigs really early in the morning to provide meat for the fishermen that go out on the lake. Second, Fabrice wanted to get a firsthand view and understanding of the landscape in that part of the study area, as his research interest focuses on the Tse Tse fly (vector for African Sleeping Sickness). Luckily, we were able to score on both accounts. I was able to sample a pig at one of the slabs on the road into Port Victoria and we were left with enough time for Fabrice to do a good amount of exploring. We traced a river back from Lake Victoria to a swamp and further upstream towards a much smaller(though still impressive) lake. Fabrice was able to get the information that he needed to effectively categorize and map the area, and was also able to show me a great deal about Tse Tse flies, their environmental requirements and the other factors that could contribute to African Sleeping Sickness in the area.

We finally called it a day just before the rain started to fall. Not at all a long rainstorm but enough to make the 'shortcut' that we were taking back to the lab treacherous if not near impassable. But as earlier in the week, I am amazed what these Land Cruisers can do... It wasn't until we got back to the lab that I realized that had we gotten stuck, we were in the one project vehicle that did not have a winch...

Anyways, today was a nice little respite from the long days. We were finished sampling by 10ish and were back to the lab early enough to have morning tea(a delightfully retained remnant of British colonization). I plan on coming into the lab tomorrow for a couple hours before the US play Ghana(10am EST) in the World Cup. So if you're up early tomorrow and happen to be on Skype shoot me a line!!

Caught -up FINALLY!!

So with tonite's entry I am finally back up-to-date. Its so weird for me not to have internet access at the house. Makes it harder than it already is to communicate with you all than it would be otherwise!

Anyways, today we were out looking for pigs at the slaughter slabs again after we dropped the human medical part of our team off at a homestead location that didn't have any animals(in fact by some strange 'luck' all the homesteads scheduled this week lack animals!). So while they were working we hacked through some trails to one slaughter location, where we were told that there was a pig to be slaughtered. However, upon arrival we find out that the owner has had a few drinks(or something) and the animal that they have to slaughter is in fact, a goat... No good.

So we drove back to the location and met up with the human team. While there one of the village elders kept trying to convince one of the team members to let him have their phone. And told the team member that the boss (me), should buy him a better one anyways... Luckily no one went for it. That was before he told me that if I wanted, I could take a wife from his village. It would only cost me 12 cattle and 5 goats... After I initially said 'no, thanks' he told me not to worry, that I could pay over time. Perhaps a few cattle and a goat each month... He had it all worked out.

Well my ride is heading back to the project house and since its been a long day, I may pass out watching World Cup on the couch again. And I will take the African view on picking a team.... GO MEXICO.

Monday, June 21st

Went out with James (one of the Kenyans working with the project) in the morning but we got a little late of a start because we had to go to the base to stock up and get ready first. So rather than being on the road at 6:30 as we normally were, we didn’t get rolling until after 6:45. Consequently, 2 of the 3 slaughter slabs we were attempting to sample had already slaughtered their pig by the time we had gotten to them. Only the first one we visited still had a live pig there for us. But on the upside of things, the sample locations were in and around Port Victoria, a small shanty town on Lake Victoria. Got to take some good pictures at the fishing ‘docks’ after signing their visitor ledger. The first few boats that were out catching Nile Perch had returned and were off-loading their respective catch. They were separating out the smaller ones for local consumption while the larger ones were put on ice then in the back of a truck to be driven to the airport then flown to Nairobi and on to destinations in Europe.

After I got back I spent the day processing samples... Fecal samples... But it was alright, I knew when I signed up that microscopes and feces would be on my agenda.