Sun-downer

Since it was Sunday and I didn't have a field asst to help me today.  I went on a couple game drives with Tom, Kirsten and little Morgan.  We saw a giant dung beetle rolling a ball of dung.  Other new species I saw today were Hippos, heartebeast, bushbuck, and oryx (which are beautiful horned antelope)

The group of grad students went out on what they call a sundowner where they go to some sort of look-out rock and drink beer (Tusker Lager is the preferred) and talk.  I'm lucky b/c it's a very fun and nice group, and just the right size. Supposedly sometimes they do sunuppers at 5am and then drink mimosas, champagne, and bloody marys.

On our way to the sundowner we went buy a hyena den that had three little pups playing around and nursing on their mom.  Quite cute.  We also saw a slender mongoose slink by.

I wrote and email to Mom and E, so to save time, instead of re-writing in my blog, I'm just pasting here.

Hey Mom and Elisha,

Today is Sunday, which is kind of an off day for most people since the field assistants have off, but not necessarily for the grad students.  So we had a longer breakfast.

The talk was mostly of Todd.  He's sort of a celebrity and character here.  I think I am lucky to have him as my advisor!  Everyone just loves him and thinks he's so funny and nice.  They were trying to guess his age (I think mid 40's), especially since all the young girls here seem to think he's so hot.  I told him on ratemyprofessors.com he was listed as chili pepper hot by the students and they got a kick out of that.  But apparently he's the life of the party here.  Most the other professors stick to themselves at meals or don't even come to them and Todd sits at the grad table.  He also hosts the biggest parties (he usually has the nicest house here...Jenga House, though he might not this time b/c he'll be at river camp). It will be interesting to see how much he is around the Research Centre this time since he will be spending most of the time teaching.  They also said he leads a group called Todd's Bootcamp where he leads people in all sorts of physcal fitness stuff that apparently is quite tough.  And Kirsten said when he's here without students he goes on game drives most nights and will jump rope for an hour up on the old airfield where a lot of the animals are.

One of the best things about Todd here is that he seems to have a lot of clout and can get what he wants and needs.  There has been lots of issues with the permits for research in Kenya this year.  Mpala Research centre has been denying anyone to come who does not have a permit, so there are several researchers stuck in Nairobi or Nanyuki unable to come here.  Everyone is amazed that I was able to come without my permit in hand yet.  They all said Todd is really good at getting what he needs and bluffing until he has what they want.  I feel like Todd has been in Kenya long enough that he knows what's going on.

Everyone is excited that he is still with Kat, who he brought last year as they said Todd seems to have a new girlfriend everytime he comes, but they really liked Kat.  They told of a funny story back before their was internet here how he was having relationship issues with his girlfriend back at home.  He'd have to type up an email, save it on a floppy disk, send it to Nanyuki, where someone would wire it back to the states.  She'd then reply and they'd print out the response and send it back here, so everyone sort of knew what was going on b/c the guys bringing the letter back would read it.

I also found out, though he'd probably never tell me, that he pays for his field assistants' kids to go to school.  High school is not free in Kenya and is quite expensive, especially on a field assistant salary, so he does some special things for his employees' kids.

Anyways, people are pretty excited for Todd to come, and they all think he's just a cool guy.  So it kind of makes me feel good to know that my advisor is such a rockstar here.  And of course he's been super supportive in helping me deal with my stresses rightn ow.  Just like at UF, I am again feeling quite outclassed by the other grad students here.  They are here from some pretty big-named schools.  There are a couple from Yale, a few from Princeton, Stanford, the Smithsonian, Dartmouth, Columbia, and UC-Davis (Davis is probably the best ecology school in the country...it's where Todd did his PhD.).  Kirsten and her husband did their PhD's at Notre Dame.

There are a couple of people here who have a bit of a mountain west background though.  Jake has a few students here (he's a prof in Laramie), though they are from the east originally. 

Elisha, there is a gal here from CDA who I believe is going to the U of I, but not sure.  She is very excited to meet you b/c she can't wait to have someone who understands how awesome N. Idaho is.  She says people here give her a lot of crap for being from Idaho saying it's just potatoes, mormons, and neo-nazis.  Everyone here is excited to meet you, but I think she especially is excited.  I think I told you the girls here are big into watching Game of Thrones, and she's hoping you will like it so you can hang out with them when they watch it.


Hakuna Matata!

I'm a boss...

I hired my first field assistant ever today.  As I mentioned before, it was an interesting experience and ordeal.  I ended up choosing a guy named Zachary.  I think I was biased since he shares my brother’s name.  I think it was a good choice b/c he seems quite enthusiastic, smart, and seems to know his natural history quite well.  Aflred, Zachary, and I spent the day practicing some methods in the UHURU plots.  Alfred and Zachary are both very good with safety and were teaching me lots about how to make sure there are no animals in the area and what to do if we should see a buffalo or elephant up close while we’re away from the vehicle.  Alfred is amazing b/c he can smell elephants even when they are quite far off.  Alfred and I have bonded quite well, and I think he wishes he could work on my project.

Saw the usual animals today including a large heard of elephants.  New species included a family of warthogs, a plains Zebra, and a puff adder (very poisonous snake) on the way to dinner tonight.

Pretty much all the grad students and researchers went to Nanyuki today to go to trivia night and karaoke.  They’ll spend the night with some researchers who live there and then come back bright and early.  I would have liked to go, but I had a skype meeting with one of my collaborators, Kath, this evening, so I stayed here

Todd and Elisha are coming soon!  Very excited for that!

5-24

Went out this morning to practice more field methods with Zachary.  On the way back from the field station, I saw a couple new species:  cory bustard (largest flying bird in Africa), Grant's gazelles, Thompson's gazelles, gerenucks, and a male ostrich.

This afternoon, I accompanied Kirtsen and her husband Tom and their daughter Morgan down to Nanyuki to get some supplies.  They also took me out to eat at an Irish pub right smack dab on the Equator

Zoey and Kermit

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I got to take Zoey out for a spin today.  My first time!  She’s a bright orange Land Rover Defender, which has always been my dream car, but I figured I’d never get to drive one b/c they are so expensive.  She’s fun to drive on the rough roads here and a challenge with the steering wheel and stick shift being on the other side of the vehicle.  I’ll also probably be driving Kemit while I’m here as well.  Kermit is a neon green extended trunk land cruiser that Todd owned even way back when I was in the field with him in 2004.

I had to drive down to River camp in order to meet a potential field assistant in order to interview him.  River camp is where I stayed with Todd way back in 2004 and lots has changed.  When I was there, it was only a few army style tents, with a dining tent.  Now there are fancier tents, a fancier dining tent, and even some bandas.  They have also built an electric fence around the camp, which takes some of the fun out of it.  I remember having elephants walk through our camp and a lion brush up against my tent one night.

Down at River camp I met Jake Goheen, who was Todd’s post-doc back when I took the class.  He’s a really cool guy.  We’d stayed a bit in touch over the years, especially when I was a field assistant for Roger Baldwin the bear guy as they were grad students together.

I had my safety briefing today by the head ascari (guard).  They have guards that patrol 24/7, mainly for safety from wildlife that may get through the fence.  But I think the reserve also has guards stationed throughout to help prevent poaching too.  He gave an interesting piece of advice.  If all of a sudden you find yourself surrounded by elephants, don’t scream or make loud noises b/c the elephants that have been involved in poaching incidents and witnessed family members killed tend to react violently to loud noises as the guns the poachers use are loud and the poachers are often yelling as they try to coral the elephants.  Elephants have great memories, so they tend to remember things like that.  Elephants actually return to elephant graves to mourn the loss of their family members when they have died.

Kermit had been in Nanyuki being worked on but was returned today.  So stories about Kermit were being told today at lunch (tasty lunch with chapati, Moroccan style chicken and fresh passion fruit and mangoes) by Todd's post-doc and some people who have been here for a long time.  Kermit's been through quite a lot, and it's amazing how it's still going.  The exciting thing I remember about Kermit during my previous trip involved Elephants.  Todd was driving a group of us students back to River Camp going through a fairly narrow road due to trees on either side when we suddenly rounded a corner and were face to face with a bull elephant and his family.  Todd immediately flipped the car into reverse and did some amazing driving in reverse as the elephant charged at us.  But my story pales in comparison to its other stories.  Todd was driving Kermit quite fast one time in order to get to town for a deadline when he flipped it on the rough roads.  Another time, one of his post-docs got stuck in a river.  The guy tried to avoid telling Todd about it as he was driving it for his own personal use and not on research time, so he tried to get help elsewhere to pull it out.  But it was difficult to get help and before help could come (in a few days) a flash flood came through and carried poor Kermit downstream and covered it in 4 feet of sand.  Needless to say, the post-doc got fired for lack of communication and recklessness.  Most recently, one of Todd's field assistant flipped it.  His brother had just died, and he had been driving fast at night under the influence of alcohol.  Todd found out about this personally from the field assistant who called to tell Todd that Todd should fire him.  Todd has a big heart and is willing to forgive if people are up front and honest, so that guy still works for him to this day. 

I've been trying to find a field assistant to hire to help me...someone who will help out a lot, but more importantly functions as our guide and guard and lookout for wild animals.  It's been this drama filled project.  Two of Todd's field assistants (who are awesome) brought a guy along they said would be my field assistant.  But he hardly spoke english, didn't seem to know much about science, and looked to be about 17.  I said I would like to interview some other field assistants and it caused all this drama, b/c of course the original field assistant was a family member of one of Todd's assistants.  I interviewed a guy today, Zachary, who seemed like a pretty good options.  Good English, good science knowledge and experience.  But I got a text from him this afternoon that said, "don't allow anybody to interfere with our dealings b/c there are some people who are selfish to my position".  He also wanted to meet with me again to make sure I understood this, b/c there were other assistants who wanted their family or friends to get the job, so they will tell you bad things about the others.  I emailed Todd about this and his reply was funny "sweet..i'm super glad to hear about zachary-- that's awesome news. the text you mention is classic kenya. i love that stuff."

Kirsten's husband is visiting for a few days to pick up their daughter, cute little 2.5 year old Morgan.  So Kirsten took us on a game drive tonight in Kermit.  When we were leaving the research center, there were some kids playing on the soccer field outside of the electrical fence.  The fence where the cards drive through is lifted up with dangling electric wire coming down that scrapes the top of the cars as they go through, but keeps the elephants out.  Well, the little kids came running up to say hi to Morgan.  Kirsten stopped right under the fence so that the wires were draped down on the vehicle.  The kids came up to wave and say hi to Morgan, but one of them touched the car door, which was full of electrical current being that the fence was dangling onto Kermit, so the little girl that came to shake Morgan's hand got quite the shock.  Very sad, but she perked right up when Kirsten gave her some chocolates.

We got a late start on the game drive b/c of a big thunderstorm, but it was a pretty good one, nonetheless.  Besides the usual, we saw some Elands, which are pretty rare to see here.  We also saw a giant herd of buffalo with calves.  We passed by a herd of Elephants with several little ones on tow.  We also saw a herd of highly endangered Grevy's zebra on the airstrip.  The highlight was probably seeing a hyena den with a mom and a cute little pup

Mpala Research Centre

Mpala Research Centre is a pretty cool place.  Nice and laid back and with people who seem friendly.  There is a large (15 or so) group of undergrads, but other than that there are about 25 grad students/researchers.  Then there are the field assistants and staff.  I've had just 2 meals so far, but they were both tasty.  Lunch was a tasty local bean and corn stew with chapatis.  Dinner was a very tasty chicken stew with rice.  They also seem to always have a green salad (they made roses out of the tomatoes tonight for dinner) and fresh fruit.  There is chai (like Indian chai..milk tea), coffee, and milo available at all times.  And for dinner they even baked a chocolate cake.  They have ladies here who do your laundry (except your unmentionables) any day you want.  There is even hot water for shower as there is a guy who heats up the water by way of fire.

The area is cute and quaint with the little bandas and the small labs, library, and cafeteria.  There is a parking lot chock full of Land Rovers and Land Cruisers (btw, Subarus are super popular in Nairobi.  I found that interesting).  Todd has 3 vehicles.  A big green land cruiser named Kermit.  He had Kermit when I was here back in 2004.  Then he has Zooey, a bright orange Land Rover.  He also has Betsy, a bright blue toyota truck.  But she is getting repaired as she sunk into mud doing a river crossing.  Todd paints his vehicles bright colors so that you can easily find them in case you have to make a hasty escape due to a buffalo or elephant.  Though, mom, don't worry, Todd says no researchers have ever been injured by a wild animals.  But he just likes to be prepared with safey.  But I'll have a Masaai field assistant out there to help.  And he said there'd be no problem as long as I don't get lazy and monitor what animals are around.

There is a little ring road that goes around the camp that we can run on if we want (they have a gym too and Todd also has a bike trainer set up)  The road is just on the inside of the electric fence that protects the camp from the elephants and buffalo.  There is a soccer pitch on the dirt runway for tiny planes, which is outside the fence.  But it's open, so you could see if there were elephants around.  The fence doesn't keep the smaller animals out, so you see dik diks and monkeys around.  The leopard researcher said that she often sees on her gps that the leoapard walked through mpala.  But leopards are quite scared of humans and they only pass through when everyone is sleeping.

I am sharing my room with a guy from UC-Davis, a guy from Kenya, and a guy from Taiwan, so that's cool.  But they have all been here for a long time, so will be moving on by next month and will get a new set of roommates.

There is power in the bandas from 6am to 10am and 6pm to 10pm; however, the labs have power at all times.  They have wifi in the library and kinda sorta wifi in my office and labs

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5/20/14

Started the day off with breakfast.  They serve cereal and eggs for breakfast, which you eat outside and enjoy the view of giant Mount Kenya (17,057 ft. high) in the distance.  Today at breakfast, one of the girls wasn’t paying attention and a vervet monkey snuck up and stole her banana.  The funny thing is that the gal studying vervets can tell the difference between all the different vervets at the station and so could tell us the name of that one and that it has a tendency to misbehave.

Today Todd’s field assistants—Lemboi, James, and Alfred—took me out to show me the UHURU plots.  There is a south plot with higher rainfall just a 15 minute drive from the research centre, and then a north plot about an hours drive from the research center (all on 4WD type dirt roads through the acacia scrub land).  We were out all morning until tasty lunch at 1.  We checked out the plots and we walked around through them.  I am definitely stressed about this project.  Seems like there is so much I don’t know and, more importantly, that I just don’t have enough time to do it all and that I won’t do it right.  So, yea, just definitely feeling uber stressed.

I’ve been trying to make some connections to help Elisha get the chance to go out and do some cool things while she’s here so that she can have the opportunity to get out and see some of the awesome wildlife.  I’d really like her to have the chance to see the Maasai Mara (part of the Serengeti ecosystem) because that was my favorite part of Kenya.  Some of the field assistants talked about taking her on a Sunday to see this place called Sweetwater, which they said has some cool wildlife.  I talked with a guy, who is friend’s with my friend Isabelle from UF, who is studying Zebra/Lion population dynamics and he said that he could probably take her on some game drives and maybe even on some field days where they tranquilize the zebras and put tracking collars on them.

But she’ll get to see a lot of cool things just helping me with my field research.  Today I saw lots of wildlife on the way out to my sites: a herd of giraffes, a couple of solitary giraffes, lots of impala herds, a herd of elephants, a couple large leopard tortoises, a waterbuck and fawn, a bushbuck, and lots of dik diks.

While standing up peeing in the lab bathroom, I was looking out the glassless window when suddenly a vervet mom and her baby clinging to her stomach dropped right down to the window, inches from my face and watched me pee.  Pretty funny!

I've started to mingle  a bit with the other grad students/post docs/project managers.  They seem like a really cool group.  Very friendly, and they all have some very interesting stories and experiences and cool things they are studying.  They invited me today to watch the game of thrones which they watch weekly.  It seems like a fun group, and I will enjoy getting to know them and hanging out with them and hopefully making some connections.

Jambo Kenya

There wasn't anything overly exciting to blog about during the 1st year of grad school at the University of Florida, so the blog has been on a bit of a hiatus.  Okay, well, not entirely true, the main reason for not blogging is is complete lack of time.  A few highlights from the 1st year of grad school: Elisha moving down to Florida, snorkeling with Manatees, springbreak trip to the Everglades and Florida Keys, where we hung out on a sailboat that a friend from high school lives on and ate fresh fish, a couple gator football games, several gator basketball games and the gator run to the final 4, a couple trips to the beach at St. Augstine, a kayak trip to the keys on the gulf coast, a trip to Port St. Lucie to see Rick and Shannon, and a couple trips to Jacksonville.  Christmas break of course brought some good family fun and skiing on visits to Crested Butte and back home to EP.

I just got finished wit a 2 week break in Estes Park.  I got lucky and the Rockies treated me to several days of snow so that I got several backcountry ski days in with a couple feet of glorious fresh powder.

Now that I'm in Kenya, I might blog from time to time.  At the moment, I have a bit of time as I wait for some things to get organized.  But I am likely to not have time later on.  Though I'll be encouraging Elisha to keep up a blog like she did in Antarctica, so she might do that.

I started my trip in Denver, flew to Newark, and then on to Switzerland.  It was amazingly clear weather and you could see the glaciated alps even from Zurich airport.  On the flight from Zurich to Nairobi, we flew over the alps and the dolomites, which was pretty awesome as they were plastered with snow. 

When I got to Nairobi, Todd has arranged to have someone pick me up and take me to a hotel where I spent the night.

Today, I got up early for the 4 hour journey from Nairobi to Mpala via Nanyuki.  A hired driver drove me from Nairobi to Nanyuki and then Kirsten (Todd's post-doc) picked me up in Zooey, Todd's bright orange Land Cruiser.  The drive to Nanyuki was nice going from the very lush lands full of coffee, mangoes, bananas, and other fruits to the more arid land in the rain-shadow of Mt. Kenya.  Along the side of the road in the lush areas, everyone is selling various fruits and vegetables but in the dry areas they are herding goats and camels.  Right before Nanyuki is the Equator, and the driver stopped for me to take a photo and to see the demonstration of the Coriolis effect: water drains clockwise in the northern hemisphere, counterclockwise in the southern hemisphere, and straight down on the equator.
 
I am grateful to have Kirsten here as she knows the ropes and showed me around the place.  On our way into Mpala, I already saw several animals: Grevy's zebra, Impala, gazelle, and a couple of dik-dik's.  They have a little outdoor cafeteria where we had lunch and then she showed me our little lab space and our office.  I'm staying in a banda (thatched hut) with 3 other guys.  When Elisha gets here in a week, she will be staying in the dorms, which at the moment has a group of undergrad students.  The male-female ratio here in terms of researchers is 4 to 20, which is quite the shift from Antarctica!  Kirsten, since she has her young daughter here, has a very nice house.  It has an awesome view over Mt. Kenya, and she says she can often see giraffes.  The research center itself is surrounded by an electric fence to keep the Elephants and buffaloes (the two most dangerous animals here) out of the campus, but out my office window I have already seen a family of vervet monkeys (the infamous blue balled monkeys known for their bright blue genitalia) with a few babies and some rock hyraxes (a close relative to the elephant, even though they are about the size of a rabbit).  The research center is organized similar to McMurdo except on a much smaller scale, and of course everything is open air instead of in a heated, insulated building.  But there is a classroom, a couple labs, a library, and even an exercise room.  There are scheduled meals at the cafeteria, which will take some getting used to getting back to a set schedule of eating as opposed to being in school when I would eat whenever I got to a good stopping point in my studies.

There are of course researchers doing some very interesting things here.  At lunch I met a gal studying the highly endangered wild dogs, and another who is studying baboons, vervets, and leopards.  She has gps and radio collars on some of them, so she goes around tracking them.  Hopefully, I can go out on occasion.  Kirsten says that the group often goes out for evening game drives or out to certain lookouts, so I am excited for that.

I mostly spent the day unpacking, setting up my office, and getting organized.  Tomorrow, I will probably be heading out to UHURU where my research site is to take a look around.  A couple of Todd's Kenyan research assistants will be taking me.  A vervet monkey just tried to get into the office, and I had to shoo him away...looks like it could be quite the interesting office!

I am definitely feeling overwhelmed and unprepared for what I have to do, but I guess that's part of grad school and field research.  So we'll see how it goes!  Super grateful that Elisha will be here in a week (arriving on my birthday..a great birthday gift!) to help and give me support.  Todd and his girlfriend, Kat, will also be arriving about the same time as Elisha, so he should be able to help me get on my feet as well.