Friday: My 2nd 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!!
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