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.