A Night in the Museum

10/17/14

I had to go back to Nairobi to do some more work at the museum.  As it’s an expensive ride into Nairobi, I was able to convince almost everyone at the Centre (Matt, Julia, George, Colin, and Ann) to come down with me.  They all had things they could do in Nairobi as well.  Sally was the only one who couldn’t come

On Wednesday, upon arriving to Nairobi, I went around to a couple parts of Nairobi to look into some things about shipping my insects home via either DHL or Fed-ex.  In the evening we all went out to this amazingly tasty and very cool Ethiopian restaurant.

I spent most of Thursday in the Entomology department of the museum working with Laban who is the head of Invertebrate Zoology for the museum.  When I got done in the evening, I ventured down to the mammalogy section of the museum where Colin was looking at ID’ing rodents (he’s doing a study on rodent parasites in villages) with Julia and Ann.  While we were there we got a tour of the mammalian section as well as the herpetology and ichthyology section.  They have lots of stuffed wildlife in their maze of rooms (everything from leopards to lions to rhinos to bongos to whales) and lots of different reptiles and fish in jars.  When I was in the rooms with all the huge stuffed animals, I was imagining what it would be like at night there if the Kenya museum came alive at night like the museum in “Night in the Museum”  In the evening we went out to a really good Indian restaurant in westlands where everything was served on top of flames, which was cool.

Today I worked all day at the museum again.  Everyone wanted to leave in the early afternoon, so I couldn’t go with them.  Thus, I’m staying one more night at the hotel before taking a matatu back to mpala tomorrow.

On the way to Nairobi to, we got lucky and saw a cheetah as we were leaving Mpala

the oldest insect specimen at the nairobi museum of natural history

ID'ing insects

big ole beetles

gorgeous beetles

a cheetah we saw on the way into Nairobi