Fisi Camp: Luxury or Basic? You make the call.

Hello from Fisi Camp in the beautiful Masai Mara National Reserve. After a one year hiatus from field work, I am back in the Mara and thrilled about being back. I have been working primarily in the lab (Hello to the Linda Mansfield lab and Jean Tsao lab) most of the summer and have been itching to get back to the field work for the past month. My research focuses on the ecology or wildlife disease and the immune response to infection. I will not elaborate beyond that at this point, but if you want more information about my research, you can visit my website at: https://www.msu.edu/user/fliesand/index.htm.

Many of my friends ask what it is like living in a tent for an extended period of time. For my first post on the blog, I thought it would be fitting to introduce everyone to camp the way I see my home for the next six months. To do this I created a simple map to give blog readers an idea of what the camp looks like. The map is a bit crude and geographers may be apalled, but I think you will get the idea. To supplement the map, I have also made a brief photo tour of some of the important features of Fisi Camp. By the way, for new readers, Fisi means hyena.

When I first arrived at Fisi Camp last year it exceeded my expectations. I thought living in a tent in Africa would be hard, but camp has proven very comfortable to me. The biggest adjustment for me is not being able to eat meat regularly, since there is no refrigeration in camp. We have outstanding cooks in camp that work wonders with an old butane range/oven and I probably eat better over here than I do back in the states. The lack of running water is one of the other major adjustments of living in camp.