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

-->

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.