Hadley here, back in camp! After eleven months away from Fisi Camp, I returned a few weeks ago, with tears of joy in my eyes (and let’s face it, running down my face…I couldn’t stop them.)
As all of you reading our blog know, the camp I returned to was not the camp I left. Everyone here that had survived the flood and endured the weeks of rebuilding were exhausted and worn thin. I was told when I arrived that fresh energy and an optimistic outlook would be the most welcome and I had them both in abundance.
Before exuding that however, I tried to sit still long enough to absorb and respect how much the camp went through, and what an amazing job everyone did building us back up to a ‘normal’ (as ‘normal’ as you can get when you live in a bush camp.) On the outset, it just looks like the folks here decided to feng shui our camp a bit and rearrange a few tents – our lab tent sits where our laundry used to hang for drying, we sit by a bonfire each night where our old lab tent used to be, and there are two tent-sized bare patches of dirt awaiting an inspired idea from a new RA or a resurgence of plant growth from beneath the packed soil, whatever comes first.
While only time will fade the memories of what happened and what we lost, gratitude to be returning to normal in these past couple weeks has steadily emerged. They have been a flurry of excitement, energy, teaching protocols to new Research Assistants (Jared and Ciara) and dedicated efforts to collect as many samples of poop, blood, DNA, and saliva before Kay returned to the States. (Fun fact: In the past twenty days, we’ve collected at least one poop sample for each day except three.) We’ve been observing hyena behavior and clan dynamics (they be a changing!), taking cars into town for repair, attending Market Day for fresh produce, darting hyenas for blood and saliva collection, finishing the impressive re-organization of camp, and enjoying Joseph’s cooking after long days of hard work. Fisi Camp living can be quite saturating, but in the end, we all love it.
When Kay asked me if I would be willing to come back to the field to assist for three months, there was not even a moment of hesitation before I agreed and started looking at tickets. I have loved managed the lab in Michigan, learning another side of how science operates and understanding what happens to the data we collect in the field; however, nothing beats being in the field, collecting the data first hand, living in a tent and spending at least six hours a day out in the Mara observing the hyenas. It was through heroic efforts that Talek Fisi Camp is back to our stable routines and what a joy it is to be back : )
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
Monday, July 13, 2015
Postflood Day 15: New kitchen tent!
Today is our final day of rebuilding! We got the kitchen
tent back from the tailor in Talek, where it was repaired post-flood. This
meant it was finally time to move from the temporary kitchen tent on the
firebreak to the real kitchen tent. We moved the stove, tables, and food
supplies, and that evening we were finally able to eat dinner at the dining table
in front of the new lab tent.
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| First dinner at the new lab tent! So many happy faces! |
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| Wilson & Joseph chatting, finally back in the kitchen's home |
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| Benson cooking lunch inside the new kitchen tent! |
We need your help! To donate to our flood relief efforts and our "wetting" registry, please visit:
Sunday, July 12, 2015
Postflood Day 14: Nairobi trip returns!
Rebuilding was starting to wind down today. We finished the
odds and ends of wiring, did some organization, and got ready for Hadley and
the new Talek RAs, Jared and Ciara, to arrive from Nairobi. They arrived with
Eli in the late afternoon, bringing with them much needed food supplies, as well as morale-boosters in the form of delicious American snacks.
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| Eli, Jared, and Ciara getting ready to come to the Mara! |
We need your help! To donate to our flood relief efforts and our "wetting" registry, please visit:
Saturday, July 11, 2015
Postflood Day 13: Set up solar power in solar tent
We got the solar tent back from the tailor today, after he repaired the damages and rips caused by the flood. That meant we were able
to finally set up the solar systems and batteries for the personal tents! Joseph and Wilson
helped me to wire the splitters, set up the solar controllers, and check for
power in all the tents. Finally, we had lights in our tents at night again, and
things were starting to feel slightly more normal.
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| Joseph & Wilson wiring the batteries in the solar tent |
We need your help! To donate to our flood relief efforts and our "wetting" registry, please visit:
Friday, July 10, 2015
Postflood Days 11 and 12: Splice and triage wires to personal tents
Today, we began the enormous task of rewiring all the
personal tents in camp. Each tent in camp has the luxury of having a small 12V
light, which enables you to read before bedtime and to see when you are getting
ready for obs in the morning. With a total of 10 personal tents in camp, the
wiring is a veritable maze, and the work of testing and splicing wires took us
two whole days.
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| Benson, Dee & Kay covering the wire joins with silicone (to keep the water out) |
We need your help! To donate to our flood relief efforts and our "wetting" registry, please visit:
Thursday, July 9, 2015
Postflood Days 9 & 10: Darting challenges
On these two days, we took a break from camp rebuilding to
resume the important task of darting hyenas. We drove out to the Double
Crossing area and met up with Kay’s alumna Steph and her children. We were
lucky to finally get a good darting on the second morning, which allowed us to
collect much-needed blood samples and body measurements for our database.
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| Kay & I taking blood and saliva samples from the hyena Photo by Steph Dloniak |
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| An adult female spotted hyena as measured by a five-year old Photo by Steph Dloniak |
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| Beautiful bone-crushing teeth of a young adult female Photo by Steph Dloniak |
After our morning darting, we went to a nearby camp and did
a hyena talk, teaching the guests about hyena biology and Mara ecology.
We need your help! To donate to our flood relief efforts and our "wetting" registry, please visit:
Wednesday, July 8, 2015
Postflood Day 8: Resume obs!
Today, we did a camp-wide trash, or “taka taka,” pickup. Doing
so greatly lifted our spirits – it was very depressing to pass trees with
peanut butter jars caught in the branches or to see a bush filled with muddy
playing cards.
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| A spice jar in a tree |
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| Nkoitiko and Sasine with a wheelbarrow full of trash |
That evening, we were finally able to go on obs again! We were so happy to be able to see our
hyenas, and to check that they had all survived the flood. One of our dens was
situated right next to the river (Riverbend D), and we were worried about how
the cubs would have survived. However, everyone came through the flood just
fine, and the den scene was hopping!
We need your help! To donate to our flood relief efforts and our "wetting" registry, please visit:
Tuesday, July 7, 2015
Postflood Day 7: New storage tent!
Today, we put up the storage tent, which had been repaired
after the flood, and were finally able to move everything inside. Like the lab tent,
we moved the storage tent to higher ground in case of another flood.
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| The storage tent on higher ground |
We completed a new inventory so we would have a sense of
what we had lost and what we needed to replace. Unfortunately, the list of what
we had lost was very large, but luckily we had saved many of the supplies
desperately needed in camp.
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| Newly-cleaned inside of the new storage tent |
At the end of the day, it was a relief to feel like all our
supplies were in safe, known locations.
To donate to our flood relief efforts and our "wetting" registry, please visit:
Monday, July 6, 2015
Postflood Day 6: Clean and triage storage tent
Today, we unpacked the storage tent for the first time since
Day 1, when we dried and then repacked a bunch of items. After spreading things
out on a tarp in the sun, we began the enormous task of cleaning and triaging
the remaining supplies. It was pretty upsetting for us to see how much we had
lost, and to see the large trash pile generated next to our smaller tarp of
salvagable supplies.
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| Cleaning and sorting storage tent supplies |
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| Some of the trash created by our storage tent triage |
To donate to our flood relief efforts and our "wetting" registry, please visit:
Sunday, July 5, 2015
Disaster Relief
Almost 3 weeks have passed since camp was inundated with
flood-waters when the Talek River jumped its banks on 13 June. Camp has largely
been rebuilt, and tents have been repositioned wherever possible on higher
ground. The riverbed changed dramatically during the flood, and camp is full of
sand washed in by the water. We are still finding weird items like spice
canisters and shoes up in trees, but the slimy black mud coating on everything and
the enormous mountains of soggy trash are gone from camp, and things are slowly
starting to return to normal. But I’ll tell you what: 13 June was one
terrifying night for all of us! The students in camp and all our Kenyan staff
members worked heroically in what quickly became waist- then chest-deep muddy
water to save our data, samples, themselves, and everything else they could in
the brief time we had before the rising water made further efforts futile.
Everyone watched helplessly when our large
wooden kitchen cabinets swirled past as the water rushed them out of camp. Our
heavy metal wheelbarrow floated by next, as did a 200-lb tent still new in its
bag.
It has taken quite a while to determine which things were
totally ruined and which could be salvaged, but we finally have a pretty good
handle on that, and we have started a crowd-funding effort to try to replace
some of our lost equipment and supplies. My current grad students have set up a
site where folks can donate whatever they can afford to our efforts to resupply
camp. The site is at:
We are calling the site a post-flood “wetting registry” and
we hope that the readers of this blog will donate what they can, and encourage
their friends and families to do the same.
The new look of Fisi Camp (taken from the rain gauge, looking east out the driveway): the new lab/dining tent on higher ground beside the driveway and the solar panels across the way.
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