Nancy Drew's lost file: crimebusting, Maasai-style

There are three things you should know before reading this post:

1. This is easily one of my all-time favorite stories from living in the Mara. Right up there with the cobra slithering across my foot.
2. Because of #1, I am unwilling to compromise on the level of detail, and this story is therefore QUITE long. So if you’re in a rush or have a short attention span, this post is not for you.
3. The idiocy I will display at one point of this story is truly baffling. I do not need you to point this out to me (commenters on the last post, this means you).

Okay, now that those are out of the way, I can begin.

So as you may recall from my last post, I lost my phone while peeing in the middle of the open savannah just over a week ago. Wednesday the 5th, to be exact. Here is the sequence of events that followed:

Thursday: I call a friend in Nairobi and ask her to try to buy me a used phone of the same model, which I need to connect to the internet. It can’t be any old model, unfortunately—it has to be this one. She calls that night and informs me that she has succeeded in procuring this phone for me. HOORAY.

Friday: I have my most trusted taxi driver pick the phone up from her apartment and drive it across the city to the house of another friend, who is driving down to the Mara over the weekend. Meanwhile, I ALSO need to replace my “sim card,” which is a small chip you insert into your phone that contains all your contacts and is basically YOUR line. (So you can insert your sim card into someone else’s phone and use it as “your” phone.) In order to get my old number back, I have to get a new sim card, which can only be obtained at the nearest city, two hours away. (I know this is a little confusing. Stay with me, people.) So I call one of our staff members, James, who happens to be on leave at that city. James goes to the phone company’s shop, gets the replacement sim card, and puts it on a bus leaving for my area that evening. The driver drops it off at a nearby bar, and one of our night watchmen, Steven (remember him, he’ll appear later), picks it up and gives it to me that night. But when I insert it into any phone (and I try several), it won’t work. I call customer service and they tell me technical services will get back to me by Tuesday. This sounds like an eternity to me.

Sunday: The friend who has the phone in Nairobi drives down to the Mara and drops the new phone off at Fisi Camp. I am excited but can’t do much with it until I get my sim card working.

Tuesday: Technical services finally gets back to me, and fixes my problem. I am now able to make and receive calls, and more importantly, connect to the internet. I yelp with joy and do a little Happy Dance all around camp, blissfully touting the wonders of email.

The reason I am telling you all of that is so that you fully appreciate the time, effort and coordination (not to mention cost) that went into getting me this replacement phone. You need to recognize that in order to really comprehend the rest of the story.

Wednesday: It is now exactly one week after I dropped my first phone, and less than twenty-four hours after I got my new one working properly. I no longer keep my phone in my back pocket, but instead in a deep pocket of my vest. We stop in town on the way home from morning observations, and as we’re leaving, an old Maasai mama and a young girl beg a ride from us. When we get to their neighborhood, I stop and get out to open the door for them. You can perhaps see where this is headed.

We get back to camp, not ten minutes after dropping them off, and I conduct my routine inventory of my belongings. Headlamp, check. Digital voice recorder, check. Sunglasses, check. Phone…no phone. NO PHONE. This cannot be happening. I panic and begin calling it from another phone, and the line is ringing, but we can’t hear it ringing at camp. I do some mental calculations…I had the phone when we picked up the mama and girl, that I remember. I only got out of the car once, to let them out. It seems impossible that it could have fallen out of my pocket—I didn’t bend over, and the other things I had in that pocket are all still there. The phone would have had to practically LEAP out of my pocket, defying gravity, to escape me. And yet….

Steven hasn’t left yet for the day, so I beg him to come help me and we hop in the car and return to the spot where I dropped off the mama and girl. No phone. I call it again, and it rings a couple times and then I get the message “line busy,” the way you would if someone hit “ignore” when you were calling. I call again, and this time I get the message “This phone has been turned off.” That means someone must have it.

Let the crime-solving begin.

First we drive to the nearest group of loitering men, and ask them which mama I gave a ride to earlier. They tell Steven they aren’t sure, but a bunch of mamas nearby might know. Two of them hop in the car and we drive to those mamas, and they tell us they don’t know either, but they do know the girl that also got a ride. When we find her, she says he hasn’t seen the phone, but knows where the mama lives, and she hops in the car too. At each leg of this investigation, we seem to acquire more detectives. It’s not clear whether this is just because they are bored or because they might actually be able to help with our investigation. I am too distraught to care.

We finally track down the mama, who comes out of her manyatta along with six or seven other women and countless children. Steven and the other men begin interrogating her. (All these conversations are in Maa, but one of the men speaks English and kindly translates for me.) She says that she never saw the phone, and when they ask if she saw anyone else nearby, she says no. This is where it turns ugly, because the girl pipes up and says that that’s a lie, she saw many other women in the area, and this old mama even talked to one of them. The men begin yelling at the mama to tell the truth, pointing out that I was kind enough to give them a ride home from town, so the least she could do is help me find the phone. She yells back and suddenly many raised voices are all talking at once. In the meantime, another mama comes out of the manyatta and decides this is a good time to shake everyone’s hand, amidst all the yelling.

It is eventually determined that lie or no lie, the old mama really doesn’t know where the phone is. So the girl, the men, Steven, and I pile back into the car and drive to about a half dozen other manyattas, asking everyone we see if they know anything about the phone. No one does, but at this point half of the village knows I’ve lost it. Given how small a community it is and how much people love to chat, by evening the other half will know too. This is part of our plan.

We realize that anyone who has found the phone and intends to use it will have to charge it. Since the manyattas don’t have electricity, there are stores in town that will charge phones for a small fee. So we head into town and stop at as many shops as we can think of, telling them what has happened. We describe the phone to them and tell them that if anyone brings in a phone like that, please call us immediately. I won’t lie—at this point, I’m so angry at myself, embarrassed at my own stupidity and carelessness, that I am crying. In our small Maasai community, the only thing more gawk-able than a young white woman is a crying young white woman, so I am quite the spectacle. But everyone we talk to is incredibly nice and assures us they will try to help. I am convinced that my phone is halfway to Nairobi right now to be sold, and now I’m out a bunch of money and have to go through that hassle of getting a new phone all over again. I decide this is definitively the worst day I’ve had in the Mara.

But wait.

The next afternoon (yesterday), Steven gets a call from one of the shopkeepers, who says that a man just brought in a phone just like mine, wanting to charge it. The shopkeeper didn’t have the right charger, but he cleverly told the man he would get it and to come back later. Then he called us and told us to bring him the charger, and we’ll catch him. A sting. I love it.

So we drive into town, with the charger and the receipt for the phone (complete with the serial #), me trying not to get my hopes up, Steven grinning widely, Ben (another research assistant) driving and translating for me. The shopkeeper has told us to park around the corner so the thief doesn’t see our car, which says “hyena research” on it. I ask how he knows the phone belongs to a Fisi Camper, and Ben says that everyone knows, that the whole town has been talking about it and looking for it since yesterday. (If that doesn’t sell you on small-town kindness, you’re hopeless.) So we send Steven in to drop off the charger, and anxiously wait around the corner for the man to come back with the phone.

As we wait, we get a call from a different shopkeeper, who says the man was also at her shop, again trying to charge the phone. The man works at a nearby lodge and she even knows his name. Taking a different approach than the first shopkeeper, she tells him, “This phone is stolen, it belongs to a Fisi Camper. Return it to the security office of your lodge at once.” Whether or not he plans to do this, at this point he at least knows we are onto him.

We go to see the shopkeeper, who says the man has left and is walking back to the lodge. So we begin driving that way and see him walking with four other men (it really helps that Steven knows everyone in town). We quickly work out a plan—first approach is just to ask for the phone, no harassment, second choice is to threaten calling the police—and stop, casually offering them a ride. They gladly get in, seemingly oblivious to our cause. We drive to the lodge, making small talk, and when we park and get out, the man’s friend turns to us and says, “We know why you are here. Rather than involve other people, let’s just settle it right now, here.”

And with that, one man pulls out my phone and I pull out the receipt with the serial number. The men compare and agree that it is indeed my phone, and the man readily gives it back to me. I do the Happy Dance once again (reunited and it feeeeels so gooood!) and tip everyone involved, especially the man who had my phone. It turns out that he is NOT the thief—he bought the phone from a friend the day before, so THAT guy is the thief. And wouldn’t you know it, he’s also walking to the lodge right now (seriously, I said it was a small town). In fact, we passed him earlier on the road. So we all get back in the car and track him down. The men get out and begin talking very quickly with the thief, but we decide to stay out of it and thank everyone and go on our merry way.

Case closed! Mystery solved! Private Investigator Steven proves he really is the “head of Fisi Camp security,” as he often reminds us.

If you happen to be taking issue with my use of the word “thief” (ahem, Daniel), considering it’s not exactly like he swiped the phone out of my bag—he found it on the ground, after all—please consider the following things this man could have done:
1. He could have turned it into the police.
2. He could have answered it when I called it several times.
3. He could have called the most recently dialed numbers to try to track me down.

Now consider what he DID do:
1. He hit ignore when I called the first couple times, then turned the phone completely off.
2. He took out my sim card and threw it away.
3. He sold my phone to his friend, even though he most likely heard from people that I was missing it.

I have learned two very important lessons from this escapade:

1. From now on, I will be zippering the pocket in which I keep my phone.

2. The kindness and selflessness of a community that genuinely desires to help someone can overcome one bad apple. That being said, you can count on that bad apple being the one to find your phone if you drop it. Which you should really try hard not to do.

Mara Hazard #712: Loss of phone whilst peeing

One lovely part of working out here is that we never have to “hold it”—since there are no official bathrooms, everywhere is our bathroom. When we have to pee, we just stop the car, hop out, look around for peeping-tom tourists and hungry-looking lions (fat lions are okay), and pop a squat. It’s quick, it’s simple, and it’s very liberating.

But apparently it’s also perilous. You all probably know someone who has dropped a cell phone into a toilet. (Right now my mom is thinking, “No, no I DON’T know anyone who has done that…what kind of friends does my daughter have?!?”) Well, as is true for many aspects of a modern American life, we have an unconventional equivalent here in the Mara. Last week I had to make a pit stop during a long morning observation session. I stopped the car, hopped out, dropped trou, took care of business, and off we went on our merry way. Unbeknownst to me, my cell phone had fallen out of my back pocket. The very phone that is my lifeline out here, my connection to my loved ones, my boss, the world at large via the internet…all gone with one emptying of the bladder.

I didn’t realize this until about an hour later, at which point we were in a different area. We went back and drove around, furiously calling it while driving with our heads out the windows, searching with our eyes and ears, but alas, to no avail. Somewhere out there, a hyena is happily reconnecting with his friends and family from the Serengeti at the rate of three shillings per minute.

If you’re thinking that it couldn’t possibly have been THAT difficult to find the phone, take a look at the photos below. Where would you even begin?

Displacement Behavior

In her recent post, Kay described how conflicted males feel when courting females and how they do what we call "approach-avoid" ("I want you...but I'm scared of you...but you're cute....but also dangerous..."). I once watched a male hyena approach-avoid a female for literally half an hour. He would take two steps toward her, then freak out and back up as if he had hit an invisible wall. Then a minute later, he would shuffle forward again, only to hit the wall and reverse. This went on and on. The best part? The female was facing the other way, sleeping, and had no idea it was even happening. My heart really went out to that guy.

One other way this conflict is expressed is through "displacement behavior," which is when a motivational conflict in an individual results in a behavior that is completely irrelevant to any of the potential goals. The best example I can think of is how when I was an undergrad and had a big exam coming up, I wanted to do well—that's one motivation—so I needed to study, but I also wanted to be rested—that's the other motivation—so I needed to sleep. What I would actually do was clean my room, which clearly accomplishes neither goal—classic displacement behavior. Curiously, now that I'm a grad student, my displacement-behavior-of-choice has morphed into baking. Whenever I have a bazillion papers to grade, for some reason I decide that that's the appropriate time to try a new recipe for peanut-butter fudge brownies.

Okay, tangent over, back to the hyenas and THEIR displacement behaviors. So when males are doing the approach-avoid thing, it's very common for them to stop and begin vigorously grooming themselves, particularly the forelegs. Recently, we watched as a male pursued a female who was in estrus for over an hour, trying to get up his courage to copulate with her. He would scurry up behind her and just when it looked like he would mount her, he would chicken out and begin grooming his forelegs. During the course of this saga, he stopped to groom his forelegs a whopping thirty-six times(!!) before finally successfully copulating with the female. I think by that point he had the cleanest feet in the Mara.

NSS Episode Three: Moving Day

In a land where Elf (the dominant female) is queen, and clashes with lions are the norm, we bring you a clan. Located between the beautiful Oz Valley and the famous Mara River, this is where the drama unfolds. Known to many as “fisi,” we just call them “North.”

This is the North Side Story.

Episode 3: “Moving Day”

All of the fan mail, post cards, and requests for autographs have really gotten to our cast members of the North Side Story. Just the other day, they decided that the current den they were living in was not receiving the spotlight as well as it should have.

Abandoned den with new resident mongoose.

Thus, they moved to a den that would garner just a little more attention.

Ok, they moved to a den that would encourage a whole new fan base. They moved to a den that is right off the main road near Serena Lodge. Now every tourist, visitor, and guest of the Mara Conservancy can’t go a single day without acknowledging our new blog-stars.

New den just off the main road.

My guess is next week we’ll see them on MTV-cribs. Hopefully they’ll make sure to clean up nicely before the film crews arrive.

Courtship -- hyena style

Although it is perfectly clear that adult male spotted hyenas are sexually interested in adult females who might be getting ready to mate, it is equally clear that males experience rather dramatic emotional conflicts during courtship.

On the one hand, a male hyena wants to mate with the female, and for this he obviously needs to remain in close proximity to her, but on the other hand he clearly fears biting attacks by the female, and this appears to make him want to keep a safe distance from her. Thus courtship interactions in this species are therefore characterized by extreme male ambivalence. They are also characterized by apparent indifference on the part of the female, who generally seems to ignore the male’s courtship gestures altogether.

The other day I watched the male (standing) in the pictures at right expressing very strong sexual interest in a female dozing near the den. He would repeatedly tiptoe up to her while she napped, but as soon as she lifted her head (even if she was not even orienting toward him), he would dash out of range of her jaws. You can see from his posture, with his front foot elevated, that he was always ready to flee even as he approached the female.

You can also see how aroused he was, because he was sporting a phallic erection that actually flipped up against his belly. He engaged over and over in this sequence of behaviors, in what we call an “approach-avoid” display. Obviously male spotted hyenas must overcome a very unusual set of motivational challenges in order to court large, aggressive, well-armed females.

Hyena watching in the western Mara

Just over one year ago, we set up a new carnivore monitoring station and research camp in the western part of the Masai Mara National Reserve. Here are some shots I took this week of the camp as it is now (complete with resident wart hogs foraging among our tents), and one of Dave and Jeff out on morning "Obs" parked (in our one good car!) at the den of the Serena North clan.

Car woes

Here's a dilemma: as two of our 4-wheel drive bush vehicles are REALLY on their last legs these days, awhile back I asked our program officer at the National Science Foundation, the federal agency that supports most of our hyena work, whether we might be able to get a supplement to our current grant large enough to allow us to replace one of our ancient decrepit cars with a new one. The program officer wrote back today to say that they can give us some money toward a new car, but that all they have available right now is $15,000. Well, that's problematic because we need about three times that much to purchase a car that can hold up under bush conditions. And since our university, like most universities these days, is in the midst of a financial crisis, I figured I might as well ask the readers of this blog whether they have any ideas how we might raise the funds to supplement those NSF is offering us right now. The rub is that, if we don't figure out how to supplement the NSF offer by 15 July, we are likely to lose even the $15,000 they are offering us right now. Unfortunately at this point, that's probably the likeliest scenario.

Why do we need a new car so badly? Well, because once you leave the major cities, most roads here are pitted with ruts and potholes so deep that driving into one at any speed higher than about 10 mph can break your axle. And those roads beat cars up pretty badly over time. Two of our current cars (see photo) are so old that they now cost us a fortune to keep running. I bought one of them in 1995 and the other in 1999. That means parts for those cars are not only expensive, but also hard to find. Although we do weekly maintenance and small repairs on all our vehicles, these old cars keep breaking down with problems so severe that we can't fix them ourselves. To get your car towed from the remote Kenyan bush back to Nairobi costs us $500 each time it happens. And these cars are so old that this is happening a lot these days. The other day we broke down near our striped hyena study site in Shompole and had to be towed all the way back to the capital. That took all day and cost 29,000 Kenya shillings! Most importantly, because we study larege carnivores that would find any of us to be a delicious suppertime treat, we need to monitor them from inside cars, and those cars really need to work well!

So, if you miraculously happen to have some cash lying around that you want to donate to a good cause, please consider giving it to us (and soon!) so we can avoid losing the NSF funds and get ourselves a car that will allow us to do our work without having to spend endless hours diagnosing car problems every day.

Giving birth though a soda straw: ouch!!

One of the most mysterious and bizarre characteristics of the spotted hyena is the heavily masculinized genitalia of the female. Here you can see adult female Gucchi (wearing the radio collar) investigating the genitalia of adult female Carter (who has her butt toward the camera and her tail raised) during a greeting ceremony at the den (that's Gucchi's cub, Alfredo, scratching himself while his mom greets). Notice that Carter has a male-like pseudoscrotum and a male-like phallus. It is not known why female spotted hyenas sport such unusual genitalia. However, one of the most amazing things about all this, in my opinion, is that the female is obliged to give birth through that narrow tube. Cubs weigh just over two pounds at birth, so imagine introducing a baby that size to the world via that route. It has GOT to hurt! In fact, the female's pseudopenis tears when she bears her first litter, and this natural episiotomy leaves a neat strip of pink scar tissue on the posterior surface (see blow-up). Thus, even if her first cubs die before we can ever see them, we can tell that a young adult female has given birth based on the presence of that scar tissue.

Look Out Poachers

The Mara Conservancy has just made a giant leap forward in anti-poaching efforts. Just this week they welcomed eight dog-handling rangers and two new “officers” into their ranks. After an intensive four-week training with two professional dog trainers from the Colorado police department, these dogs are ready to assist the Conservancy and surrounding lodges.


Using their amazing bloodhound sense of smell, the rangers will bring these dogs to poachers’ camps and follow individual tracks left behind as people flee. For Mamusi and Murani (the dogs; meaning “something we’ve been waiting for” and “warrior” in Masai) following the trails left by the poachers is the easy part. For the rangers, keeping up with such strong dogs that enjoy every minute of tracking, is much more challenging.

Jeff and I had the opportunity to follow along on a training exercise and boy can these dogs run! To prepare the rangers for extreme all-night tracking, each ranger had to go through (and continue) rigorous conditioning. This includes running multiple kilometers around the camp daily, all-encompassing weight training, and being able to traverse the nearby escarpment in under seven minutes!


We ran about a mile and a half following the dogs in our practice run, and I cannot imagine what it must feel like during the real thing. Running through the dark of night with no lights, surrounded by grass that is at least eight feet tall, all the time searching for people that you know have no remorse for breaking laws.

After lightly jogging behind these dogs, I know there is absolutely no way I could out-run them in the middle of the night.

Good luck poachers when they are at full speed!

What else is out there at night besides hyenas?

Here are a few photos from our Shompole camera traps to give you an idea of the diversity of life-forms wandering around there at night. See if you can identify all these animals. I'll post answers in my next blog entry.