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.

Since Friday

What a couple of days!! So I will try to go in order then add some up-to-date stuff at the end, so bare with me.

Friday: My 2^nd day of PAZ. But unlike the previous day, we weren’t doing any actual sampling, it was a recruitment day. On these days, the team heads out with GPS in hand, starts heading to a randomly selected set of coordinates, and picks up the local area chief to help ‘guide’. Once we get to that spot, we look for the nearest homestead. Then after it has been identified, we go and explain the project and various tests we do for both the people and animals. Well… The one GPS point took us to the middle of a HUGE rock formation and National Monument called Kakapel National Monument… But with the population density being what it is in the region we still found a homestead 19 meters away from the coordinates. Anyways, the Monument was there because of some cool ‘cave’ paintings(the internet is too slow to post pictures so I will have to either post them on Facebook or show them to you in person)… But unless you are actually going there for some reason like we were (which in all likelihood there is very little chance), the paintings aren’t really that much of a draw.

Then came another US soccer match that evening… By the time I arrived the US was already down by one… The US looked pretty good for the next ~25 minutes before Slovenia stole one on a quick counterattack. I also thought the referring was CRAP. Findley gets a yellow for ‘something’ and because of that card, he has to miss the final must-win game against Algeria. And then there was a very positive second half in which the US scored three goals, but somehow managed to have one disallowed for ‘something.’ The Kenyan announcers were pretty unable to explain what had happened or to come up with anything that sounded remotely reasonable…

Saturday: I headed out early in the morning with the other summer student and the visiting geographer for the project. The geographer luckily got here two weeks ago and was in Nairobi long enough to pass a driving test to allow him to drive the project vehicle. So we borrowed the Land Cruiser for the weekend and plotted a course to Kakamega National Forest and Kakamega National Forest Reserve. We hit the northern area of the National Forest Reserve first. We got in some good hiking (great pictures from a tower on the top of one of the hills), saw some Black and White Colobus Monkeys and after a torrential downpour saw a big Bongo on the road as we were heading out of the Reserve. (The Reserve was alright. We probably should have taken a guide but since they had already charged us $20 each to get in the Reserve, we didn’t want to pay anything else.)

After that we drove down to the southern end of the Forest to find the guesthouse where we were thinking about staying. Since the road was not good and since it was getting dark out, we decided that the guesthouse which was without electricity, warm water or comfortable beds would be good enough for the night! To be honest, the accommodations weren’t bad. They were elevated about 20 feet off the ground and faced the forest where we could hear the monkeys and birds. The room was larger than the one that I have at the project house and even had a little table that we sat around to drink some wine that the geographer bought from old cut-up water bottles that we had lying around the vehicle. And on top of that I was exhausted from hiking so I passed out pretty quickly once I got into my bed.

Sunday: We were up early for the park’s sunrise walk. Our guide, Patrick, met us outside our rooms and we started hiking @ 5am. By 6:20 we were in the middle of the forest with the monkeys waking up and screaming all around us. After another half hour we made it to the summit of a tall formerly volcanic mount in time to watch the sunrise over the edge of the Rift Valley… Pretty breathtaking and incredible stuff. After that was all settled and the sun was up, we headed back into the forest to try to see the monkeys that were screaming at us on the way in. Over the next ~3hours, we saw more Black and White Colobus monkeys, some Red Tailed Monkeys and a couple Blue Monkeys (at least that’s according to our guide… when I get a chance to sit and compare to Wikipedia, we will see for sure). Overall the southern part of the Forest was pretty cool. Its really hard to see much wildlife there because: first, there isn’t much left there and secondly, with the forest being so dense its pretty hard to see stuff even if it was 10 yards in front of you.

As I write this I am back at the project house settling in to watch the Italy-New Zealand game. It will be an interesting week coming up. I am moving into the main house at the project house, rather than the small housekeeper’s quarters outside in the yard. Its not as great of a switch as one would think. The housekeeper’s quarters was quite nice and I was the only person in there, now when I move inside I will be sharing a smaller room that contains only the two beds… I will have to think of some way to unpack and get my stuff out so I can actually settle in for the next 5 weeks. The hidden blessing is that over the next two weeks, the geographer who will be my roommate will be heading off to Uganda for a few days and then back to Nairobi for a weekend or two. So it shouldn’t be too bad.

Its kind of funny. The geographer was born in the Ivory Coast, educated in France and resides in Burkina Faso. So he speaks French, some West African language and a little English. Even more so his sparse English has a heavy accent, as does the English spoken by most of the Kenyans. So more often than not I end up translating from English to English for him. I also have to make a conscious effort not to use so many expressions that don’t carry a word for word literal meaning. English is also a funny language with the way that one word can mean a great many different things. But the language barrier aside he is great to talk with as he presents a different perspective from both the veterinary and human medical that are part of this project. His specialty is the human geography of African Sleeping Sickness and he is part of the project here to help develop geographical links in the work that we are doing so that if patterns are identified they could be easily extrapolated to other similar areas.

I have a Kenyan cell phone now. There was an extra cell phone at the research institute so they let me borrow it for the time that I am here since there are days when I will be in the field with smaller parts of the team and might need it. All I had to do was buy the credits to make calls (I only got ~$10usd worth since I don’t plan on making any major calls). Soooo… that means that if you want to use Skype to call me on my cell phone you can!! If you have Skype credit and want to call, please do!! Just remember that I am 7 hours ahead of you all!! Its 071-762-9436. I am usually up and out of the house here around 630am local time and in bed by 10pm local time (unless there is a World Cup match of interest!). So that would be anytime between 1130pm- 3pm on the east coast. Miss everyone!!

First Work Week Over

I really wish I had gotten on here and written about yesterday... So much incredible stuff that I couldn't do it justice to try to recall it all today! Suffice to say it was my first full day in the field with the research group doing the actual research at a homestead.

Hopefully I can better describe the project to everyone now that I know what I am doing and what it is doing here in Kenya. BUT.... Its 5o'clock somewhere and that somewhere is Busia, Kenya..... And that means that I have to run down the road to the place with the TV to cheer on the Red, White and Blue!!

I'm heading out to explore Kenya some this weekend so I probably will not write til Monday! Later!

First Day in the Field

So today was the day. After a little preview of a different aspect of the project, I finally got to go out in the field today! Granted still not part of the PAZ project that I am here for, but very cool non-the-less. We made visits to two homesteads as part of the IDEAL project where they are tracking a group of calves from birth to market to assess their disease burden. Pretty interesting stuff.

It was kind of crazy getting to these houses... When you go from a well paved road to a not-so-well paved road to a pothole laced road to a dirt road to a dirt road laced with potholes to two tire tracks through grass and trees, I didn't think that there was much farther that you could go.... And I was wrong. Toyota Land Cruisers will even take you down footpaths through some pretty rough country. And understand that when I say potholes, I don't mean the ones where the top layer of asphalt is missing in a spot, I mean where the ROAD is missing. Just randomly in the middle of a section of road that you had previously been flying across. And we also got to a point on one of the roads where we had to start collecting rocks so that we could make a bridge through the mud... I really wish I had taken pictures of this but I was too busy grabbing rocks along with all the random people that stopped to help.

Speaking of random people.... There are ALOT more people here than I thought. Its weird cause while its certainly not an urban area by any stretch of the imagination, the population density in the area is through the roof. And the area that this density spans that goes with out running water and electricity is absolutely mind-boggling. As some of my pictures will show, the 'main roads' will just flood with people on there way to market or school or wherever. The literally come out of the woodwork. Its pretty incredible.

How 'bout that ride in?

So I have made it to Busia, the place I will be for the next 6 weeks. But only to the office so far. Its a busy day today since we go out into the field tomorrow and needed to get everything ready before heading out tomorrow. But I did get to cross the equator and they were kind enough to let me do the touristy thing and take a picture there!

I got to go to a couple of the local slaughter slabs to see what they were like while my supervisors were getting some stuff done and handling some business around the compound. Anyways, its kind of what I expected. Although I didn't expect to see a 4-5ft monitor lizard chilling out behind the first slab we visited!!

I'm interested to see what the project house is like. There are quite a few of us here working at least for this first week so it will be kind of crowded... Luckily, I'm exhausted so I could pass out anywhere they put me at this point!!

Everything I thought and more...

So.... I'm in Kenya!!

After what seemed like days of traveling(well it WAS days of traveling) I made it to Nairobi last night at 9pm local time. You know what the worst part of an 8-hour plane ride is?? Figuring out what to do with the last 4 hours after wasting the first 4 hours... But luckily everything has gone smoothly so far. I can't begin to describe my relief when I walked out of the terminal and saw "BRENDAN MOULDER-ILRI" printed big as life across a little sign. We quickly headed off to the hostel/guesthouse/campsite and I was quickly reminded of my first trip to Grenada, when the driver was flying past cars, stopping at random places to avoid ditches, etc.

When we got to the place where I was staying, I was a little worried. No lights, save a couple lanterns.... Luckily come to find out that it wasn't standard operating procedure, just that the generator that normally kicks on when the apparently unreliable Nairobi power-grid fails, had also failed. Anyways, within about an hour they had it back up and running. This is the point at which I realize that Kenya was a British Colony and therefore adopted the British 220v system... not the 110v system that ALL my electronics are set up for... (So if I don't do much writing that may be why!!)

Finally, started out today bright and early... or at least early. It was pretty misty this morning and there was a decent chill in the air. Three different people told me how chilly it was and were asking why I wasn't wearing a jacket... One guessed that I was used to it, another guessed that I couldn't feel the cold. Kind of funny, trying to tell that that I was accustomed to summer weather this time of year and that the upper 60s and lower 70s were by no means all that cold.

So at this point I am just chilling at a visiting student desk at the International Livestock Research Institute just outside Nairobi waiting for my health and safety induction training session... I am working under a couple different organizations so I have to do paperwork and 'training' for all of them... Once I finish this, I am free for the day and might try to make it to the National Park right near Nairobi. Then tomorrow morning I am flying to Kisumu then boarding a bus and heading to Busia... Jambo

~12 hours to go. And no more mixed emotions, its straight nervousness now!! Judging by the pictures, I think I am decently packed... No matter what I pack, there isn't really much I could wear that would allow me to blend in a little better when I get there.

WC 2010 Prediction- USA-2(Findley, Dempsey) England-1(Rooney)

Cliches and Contradictions

The cliche of 'mixed emotions' really applies at this point in my trip preparation- Nervous, excited, antsy, optimistic, worried, paranoid.... And so on.

~60 hours to go... And I can't wait to get on a plane but I have a sneaking suspicion/feeling that there is 'so much' more I need to do before I leave. But in all honesty, I think I could throw some pants and shirts in the bag at this point and manage to survive. I think yesterday is gonna be my last day working, especially considering that its 2:30am at this point.... And with the title of this blog, I am too excited to sleep but once I'm out I will not be awake til later tomorrow morning... I *should* be trying to adjust to the 7-hour time difference, but that just doesn't seem to be in the cards. Def not making the map above that hopefully looks good in this format.... Anyways, thats where I will be for the next 6 weeks. If there is internet access there, hopefully I will be able to use this to keep everyone semi-updated... cause we all know how well the e-mails worked out after I first went down to Grenada.... Jambo