lions and tigers and el shebab, oh my

6/5/14
Todd's field class has arrived.  They are staying at River Camp, which is an amazing place, about 15 mins drive from the research centre.  It's where I stayed on my field class to Kenya with Todd.

Elisha and I drove down last night to say hi to everyone.  Todd and Kat invited us over to their tent (safari style tent) for some drinks.  Tents at River Camp overlook the river and are shaded by the beautiful yellow-fever acacia trees.  They also invited us to eat dinner with them and then we met the students down at the fire-pit. 

The class had been a huge stress for Todd especially since the US issued a no-travel warning for Kenya.  But a couple of days before the class was to arrive, we got word that an El Shebab (the Somali terrorist group responsible for all the recent bombings in Kenya, including Westgate) vehicle was spotted outside of Nanyuki just 40 minutes from us.  The vehicle was an army land rover supposedly full of 6 camoflauged men.  This caused quite the stir at Mpala.  We all had to give the head of security our phone numbers, they doubled up security (which are basically just ascaris carrying sticks), and people reached varying levels of freaking out.  Kirsten looked like she may just pass out.  Kat was pretty scared and was carrying some large shears around.  Todd was joking a lot, but I knew he was nervous.  He didn't feel like his students would be at risk, but you can't take chances.  I was nervous and had some bad dreams that night about it, but I think Elisha wasn't concerned.  After leaving dinner that night, we had heard a lion roar quite close that caused us to turn around and then the 2nd roar caused us to run and get an ascari escort.  Elisha told me the next day, that it was the lion she has been thinking about.

The drama and El Shebab jokes/fear went on for another day.  Todd's group was set to leave in 5 hours and he was fretting on whether to cancel or not.  He had called UF, and they said, you're our man on the ground, you make the decision.  Then, a couple of hours before the deadline to pull the plug, after calling a bunch of higher up's, he finally found out what the whole thing was about.  It was all huge rumours.  Some guy had stolen a british army land rover and was trying to get it to Nairobi.  He had heard the police were after him, so he tried to bypass the road block at Nanyuki, which sent him on the back roads near to Mpala.  He was later apprehended in Nairobi.  So now of course the el shebab jokes are flying around.

Then as Todd's students were being driven from Nairobi to Mpala, there was a report that there was some guy at the market in Nanyuki with grenades on his belt, so Todd bypassed Nanyuki to get here.  Again, it turned out to be a hoax and total rumors.

But something that was not a rumor and was confirmed was that a villager outside of Nanyuki was attacked and killed by a hyena at night.  So I guess it goes to show, it's still the wild animals you have to fear most.  This is why we have the field guides to watch out for the most dangerous animals (during the day while in the field it's the buffaloes and elephants) and why our camp is surrounded by an electric fence.  The truth is, we are actually pretty secure if there was some threat from El shebab or something like that as we have a huge british army base right down the road and a former British SAS officer operates a fully weaponized Apache attack helicopter here (to go after poachers) to protect the rhinos and elephants in the reserves and ranches around here.

The real terrorists around here, as I'm sure Elisha would agree, are the little critters.  The invasion of the non-native big-headed ants has made life rougher around here.  These tiny little ants, not only wreak havoc on the ecosystem by attacking and eating anything in sight, but they also swarm all of our food.  If you leave any food out for even a few minutes, the big-headed ants find it.  This makes things difficult when you have to take out a field lunch and store your food.  Really the only safe place is in the one tiny refrigerator that all the researchers share.  And if the ants weren't enough, we have the rodents and hyraxes and superb starlings that can rip open sealed wrapping.  So you have to store packaged foods in sealed containers.  But then you have the vervet monkeys with their opposable thumbs who can get into most anything.  I've even had some problems with them getting into the lab and knocking down my pinning boxes.  Though, luckily, they haven't eaten any of the insects!  Inside the banda, I keep the mosquito net over my bed, not because of mosquitoes (there aren't really any of those around right now) but because of mice living up in the straw roof raining poop down onto the bed.  I also had a rock hyrax get in through the roof.  This little animal that appears be a rodent (a bit smaller than a marmot), but is actually most closely related to an elephant, is a great climber of rocks and trees.  During it's invasion of my banda, it pooped (it's pellets are similar to dear droppings) and peed on my floor and wall, and then another night it pooped in my sink and left some sort of bloody discharge in the sink.  Luckily I was able to chase it out of the banda and hopefully it won't return!