Nakupenda kama nyama choma!

I actually wrote this yesterday but the internet has been really bad. Since I wrote this I haven't really done much...we'll mostly be doing schoolwork the next week and a half, unfortunately. But I did go into Kimana town (K-town as one of our Maasai staff, Sipaya, said today) for market day. We ran into some staff who had the day off, including Daniel who bought us all Cokes and Fantas. We got some chapati and chatted with mamas and other locals. A fun escape from the boring drudgery of writing essays and being back from Tsavo in general...

Tsavo was fantastic. In a good way it was different from what I expected. I just laughed when I reread my last entry. We saw no rhinos or big cats, although we visited a black rhino sanctuary and heard lions roaring outside our camp every night. And in terms of the maneaters, yea they are still at it, though not to the same terrifying extent as they were about 100 years ago when the Uganda-Mombasa railway was being built around where we were just camping (google it!). Scary? Yes.

The days started off cloudy and cool, often with patchy rainfall. By the middle of the day the sun was so strong that even the wind was often hot, like walking into the city streets from an air conditioned building. Each day was different. Tuesday was mostly traveling to Tsavo and game driving to the camp site. Compared to Tsavo, Amboseli was simply a zoo. Amboseli was so open and more populated with tourists that the animals practically pose for the flocks of vehicles. Tsavo, on the other hand, is so dense with vegetation and huge (it’s the size of Massachusetts) that you really have to be vigilant to spot wildlife. Plus there is so much more vegetation that it supports a higher diversity in animals, so although there aren’t animals every where you go, you see more species.

Wednesday we went to Chyulu Hills. Beautiful. With its high elevation, it is an important dry season pasture for the Maasai’s livestock and wildlife as a whole. We had a field lecture at the top of one hill and then hiked up a larger one. Maasai perform burning in the hills to benefit their livestock, so we got covered in charcoal from the ground and shrubs. Every view was breathtaking. With herds of livestock scattered throughout the hills, it looked liked a painting of the Alps.

Thursday we stayed at the campsite for most of the day. We had a guest lecture which was overall uninteresting, but then we had a big discussion with the whole group and our three professors. We discussed problems facing the Amboseli-Tsavo ecosystem and possible solutions. Although it was frustrating to have such a large group, I definitely enjoyed hearing what our peers had to say and seeing how genuinely interested our professors were in our opinions and ideas. I need to mention how incredibly cool it is to go camping with your professors.

Friday we did another field exercise of counting large mammals. This time our data was just for lab purposes. Again, we had to look really hard just to see wildlife. The best that we saw were two warthogs fighting and a hippo on the verge of death. Then we climbed a hill of volcanic rock for lunch, followed by a trip to Mzima springs. Mzima means “life” as it supplies water and, well, life to the region. There were hippos and monkeys, including Sykes which we hadn’t yet seen, fish, hyraxes, mongooses, and a crocodile that waited at the rapids with its mouth open for fish to land in. It was a bit like a zoo – there was a path to follow and an underwater viewing tank, but it was still fantastic.

Friday we had a guest lecture at the Ngulia black rhino sanctuary. Again the lecture wasn’t too interesting (KWS guards do not lecture as well as they serve) but, like many other lectures here, it was amazing to see everything that was being discussed. For example, the lecturer mentioned how the current drought will affect the already vulnerable rhino population. Sure enough, by the end of our Tsavo expedition, we saw three hippos either dead or dying because of lack of water. Although we didn’t see any rhinos, I still enjoyed hearing about what the sanctuary does. After, we went to another lodge for a less spectacular, but still fulfilling, buffet and swimming (and showering!!)

Game driving in Tsavo has easily been a highlight of this program for me. Just standing through the hatches of our Land Cruisers, feeling the wind and smelling the air, watching the sunset, scouring the landscape for wildlife…the feelings I get on these drives are unexplainable.