Kwaheri Kenya

My bags are packed and my tent is empty. In 12 hours, I’ll be on a plane over the Atlantic, heading back to the US. It’s been one heck of a ride.


Coming from the hyper-efficient US, it’s taken me a while to get used to a country where “I’m sorry, I have to go drink tea” is a legitimate excuse not to do something. I’ve finally figured out that “now” and “now now” have different meanings (and neither suggests that things will get done with any urgency whatsoever).

It hasn’t necessarily been easy living in Kenya. Since I moved here, I’ve been detained by corrupt police officers, I’ve contracted some weird parasites, and my tent has been invaded by biting ants. I’ve been discriminated against for being an American, for being a woman, and for being young.

But for every hardship and frustration I’ve encountered, I’ve had a hundred amazing experiences that mean infinitely more to me than all my little grievances do. I’ll never forget having cheetahs jump on the hood of my car, floating over the Mara in a hot-air balloon, or being offered a herd of cattle for my hand in marriage (which, by the way, I declined).


And then there’s the hyenas…gorgeous Sawtooth, mom-of-the-year Archer, and the loveable (but hideous) Moss. I’m pretty sure the hyenas all think of me as “that weird human that’s always hanging around the den in the white truck,” but I’ll definitely remember all their quirks and daily dramas.


I’ve also learned a ton along the way. Some of my new knowledge may be a bit too arcane to be useful (when in life will I really need to know how much an elephant weighs at birth, or how long it takes to hard-boil an ostrich egg?). But a lot of it will serve me well – now I know how to cook some fantastic Kenyan food, I can change a tire in mere minutes, and I’ve learned how to work alongside all sorts of people.


I’m not even out of the country yet, but I’ve already started to miss the remarkable friends I’ve made, the fantastic work I got to do here every day, and the unbeatable view from my breakfast table. And, of course, my unforgettable hyenas.

It ain't easy being Maasai

With my measly 5’5” height, my aversion to hot weather, and my personal dislike for red clothing, I knew I wasn’t born to be Maasai.

But hey, in the interest of cultural immersion, why not dip a toe into the local way of life? At Dupoto Forest, a gorgeous conservation area north of the Mara, we got some lessons on traditional Maasai activities.

And – as expected - it turns out I’m definitely not cut out to be Maasai. In fact, in everyone’s best interest, I should probably stay away from most of these activities. Bow-and-arrow shooting resulted in some humorous results. Needless to say, my arrows didn’t hit the target (or come even close). Luckily, I think my clever guides anticipated my ineptitude and gave me a particularly wide berth.


In an attempt to not burn down the largest intact forest in the Trans-Mara area, I left the next activity, fire-making, to the professionals. They have a very precise method: a smooth stick (made of wood from a fig tree) is inserted into a hole in a flat piece of wood (which must be African olive). After a mere minute of quick rotation, small shavings from the olive wood start smoking.



The shavings are dropped onto dry moss, and, with a few puffs of air, the moss catches aflame. Elegant, quick, simple (as long as you’re Maasai).


However, I am happy to say that I’m beginning to get the hang of one skill at which the Maasai excel: weather forecasting. Philomen can predict - to the nearest half-hour - if and when it will rain. Who needs weather.com when you have an expert around?

Anyway, in the midst of the rainy season, we’ve had a lucky streak of sunny weather. Yesterday, something just felt off, and I told Philomen it was going to rain. Lo and behold, my predicted downpour arrived, right on time.

I may not ever become a Maasai warrior, but if I pick up any of their amazing talents while I’m here, I’ll feel lucky.

My, what big teeth you have...

A hyena's mouth is a pretty intimidating sight. But, as long as you're not a tasty ungulate, it's also a fascinating one.

Surprisingly, it's not those deadly-sharp canines (those dagger-like teeth in front) that enable hyenas to do so much damage. Instead, it's the rather innocuous-looking premolars, located farther back along the jaws, that give hyenas their bone-cracking abilities.

Hyenas will carefully position a bone on one side of their mouth and bite down. Hard. Really hard.


From measuring hyenas' teeth, we can gather all sorts of information about them. We can tell an individual's rank (since low-rankers must crack far more bone than high-rankers, their premolars are much more worn), we can tell an individual's age (older animals' teeth are more worn than younger animals), and whether a hyena is "right-sided" or "left-sided" (just like we prefer to use one hand to write or to throw a ball, hyenas tend to use one side of their mouth more often to crack bone).

Now that I think about it, maybe that's why our hyenas steal soap...it gives their jaws a nice rest from all that work.

In the Mara, expect the unexpected

Carnivores.

They're big, scary, and they eat a lot of meat, right? Well, not always. Jackals sometimes seem to be the exception to these rules.

Not long ago, I happened upon this hungry jackal who was sniffing around a warthog and her babies, looking for a little morning bacon.


Naturally, you'd think the warthogs would flee the scene to save their hide. Nope...the tiniest piggie lunged at the jackal, launching him into obvious panic mode.


Not so big and scary, I guess. He ended up slinking off into the tall grass, sans breakfast (and probably with a bit less personal pride than he had started with).

This morning, we saw a jackal who seemed to be feeding on some little bits of bone. Ever the opportunists, jackals often consume the miniscule leftover scraps that lions and hyenas may ignore.


On closer inspection, however, we saw that the jackal wasn't eating scraps after all...it seems that mushrooms were the delicacy of the day. The onset of the rainy season has caused fungi to pop up everywhere, and this jackal was feasting on a whole crop of little white mushrooms.

I'm pretty sure there's a moral to all these jackal stories...if you can't bring home the bacon, you'd better be willing to investigate other options.

in flight

As an avid amateur photographer my favorite subject is birds, particularly the very difficult: birds in flight. (Click for larger sizes)

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Uganda. In a word, in a color: green.

Green like a wave, green like a storm. No calm seas, no lucid pools. A torrent of green, an assault.

Last night, in our private tree house, I wake up to, “Joey!” Not entirely unusual as that is my name. It was one of those yell-whispers where you start out with the intention of being quiet, but end up being louder than if you had just spoken.

“What?!” I yell-whisper back, trying desperately to actually whisper, “I am already awake!” for some reason her not noticing that I had awoken one second before she said my name bothers me at this hour. She doesn’t really need to explain herself as outside the masticating has reached a serious volume.

Our tree house in Kibale Forest, Uganda is about fifty or sixty feet off the ground. Gazeebo like in its simplicity there are two mattresses, two mosquito nets and a three hundred and sixty degree view. It is located perhaps three-quarters of a kilometer from the nearest building, the very expensive Primate Lodge, which is the sole building for several hundred square kilometers of forest.

“We request our visitors to retire to their tree house before 7:30,” the lodge tells us. Send those scum to their tree house! We have a good laugh at this until we do the twenty minute hike to our isolated moss-covered aerial platform. (No one to hear you scream). The sun is just coming down as we arrive and the forest comes alive. Cliché jungle noises abound. So cliché that you realize it’s not cliché, it never has been. It’s very much real. Vines wrap the surrounding canopy in a shaded haze. Monkeys call in the distance. To the west a large clearing filled with long long grass, the sun’s apical tip just visible through the opening’s granted horizon.

The air is a-hum with the insect life just out of sight. What sounds like cicadas. A cricket? It sounds enormous. A bat flies over catching up invisible aerial hexapoda. I wonder more at what we don’t hear than what we don’t see.

The equatorial sun sets in a flash of vibrant color so short it is hard to believe it is real. To paraphrase: you feel like you are losing your mind. In the fog of the tropical forest the air lights up like neon and the colors you thought you knew now throb and pulse with new life. Even the staunchest of scientists will stop and gawk.

Kibale Forest is located in south-western Uganda. It is 776 square kilometers, it has 13 primate species, 325 bird species, 144 butterfly species, and the annual rain fall is… more inane facts like these can be found on the internet. Suffice to say that this forest isn’t lacking in biodiversity. Most important park asset for a visit: wild chimpanzees.

Getting here was no small endeavor as traveling was done entirely by rooster infested matatu. I’m under the impression that the impending Easter weekend had a direct correlation to the mobile rooster population. However, perhaps Uganda always has high ration of roosters to people in its matatus. Despite the copious cocks it took about twenty hours all together to get from Shompole to Kibale. And that’s just the travel time. This doesn’t include mental stress induced by banana eating slobber monster children that insist on groping me while I try and sleep. This also doesn’t include days of down time in Kakamega, Kampala, and Fort Portal while en route.

Green hills of glossy tea leaves roll and roll. We pass the river Nile at around halfway. Non-descript trees with enormous fruits border the roadside. Wait a bit… that fruit is enormous. Like seriously enormous. What the f--?. I soon get a chance to allay my curiosity at the backpacker hostel.

The “Jack Fruit” is both the largest and heaviest fruit in the world. This is evident without anyone telling you it. No Magritte-esque tricks of perception needed here, this fruit is much bigger than your head. The fruit I pull off weighs maybe thirty pounds, it’s ovular, green, and has a strange checkered pattern on the skin. After separating it from its host the “stem” (the point at which I severed this alien cocoon’s life blood) begins to poor out milky white latex… all on its own. This is most unsettling. Contents under pressure. My preliminary examination ends here in disgust and lack of proper surgical instruments.

Wikipedia tells us that the jackfruit was cultivated in India six thousand years ago, I presume as some sort of catapult ammunition. The fruits can reach eighty pounds and three feet in length! Don’t believe me? Look! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:JackfruitLift.JPG

And for those wondering, it tastes sort of like pineapple when prepared right (or so they tell me).

Meanwhile it’s 3AM and the leaf-crunching is deafening. Luckily it is a full moon and the clearing, the “wallow,” is bright with silver light. An entire herd of forest elephants is foraging in zeal in eleven shades of white and gray. They make no sound as they move excepting the noise of their chewing. Incredible that such a large animal can move so silently and chomp so loud. As the moonlight glistens on my dumbfounded facial expression I realize, this is the closest I have ever been to an elephant. Awesome.

Being the excellent behaviorist and observer that I am I succeeded very well in failing to note any characteristics of the group besides the fact that they were elephants and were eating some sort of plant-like material. I can, however, relate to you some things about forest elephants. Immediate questions include: what makes the forest elephant different than the bush elephant? Why are they considered different?

Most people will tell you the forest elephant is smaller than the bush elephant. They would be right. What is also true is that the forest elephant has slightly more rounded ears, straighter and more downward pointing tusks, and five toenails instead of the usual four on the forefoot. As per usual the genetic evidence shows that the differences in these two species are greater than previously thought… or perhaps the difference is smaller than previously thought? The debate continues, but as far as I know the forest elephant is considered a separate species by most. Personally I was too busy staring to see anything.

The next day they begin the chimp walk with a few warnings: you might not see the chimps, we might have to walk three hours to find them, you might die, etc. I wasn’t really paying attention. Chimpanzees in the wild? Not something easily passed on. We found the group within an hour and a half. They pant-hooted from a half kilometer off and we zeroed in on their location. We examined broken branches, footprints, and other evidence of ape appearance. Just to be sure our guide radioed the guy that was with the chimps that day to find out exactly where they were (romance = gone).

One of the most aggravating things about studying monkeys in Costa Rica was when the monkeys found a fruiting fig tree. The figs fruit at random times and only for a few days. This means that when they find one they tend to camp on it for days. Chimpanzees are apparently no different.

Do not get hopes up. There is nothing more underwhelming than staring crane-necked at some apes which are barely discernible from the surrounding foliage. No Sistine Chapel moments of gazing longingly and finger touching with our closest genetic relatives at a three foot range. I would have loved to written here that I had some dawning moment, some epiphany, of the intelligence of these nearest and dearest. No such moments, only fig-chomping.

I left after my allotted one hour of viewing depressed and drained. I felt like I was sliding down the other side of my curve. What’s there to look forward to now? Mope, mope, mope, whine, etc. etc. I think it took a few hours to finally gain some perspective.

Stepping back I see my error. The active effect of time and memory is usually one of processing, filtering, and summary. I won’t remember being disappointed. No one bothers with a sore toe, a lost shoe. I will remember the sounds, the route, the euphoria of waking up and expecting the world.

Uganda at its most romantic: a glimpse of something special. The life, the green, the throb and pulse. Arms wide and fingers spread. The space between and the space without.

(I had a good vacation).

Caught in the act

Apparently, adult hyenas can be pesky too. Every few nights, hyenas from the Serena North Clan come into camp and act like they own the place. They steal shoes, eat buckets, chew on tarps, and generally cause trouble. I decided it was high time to go into stealth mode and catch the culprits in the act.

However, I wasn’t crazy about the idea of hiding out at night, waiting for hungry hyenas to come find me. Luckily, our own Andy Flies lent me a motion sensor camera with a super-cool night vision feature. That way, I could photograph the trespassers without fear of imminent disembowelment.

And, lo and behold, on night #3, the stakeout paid off.


Sauer - a young female who’s been hanging around the den recently - decided to pay us a visit. She was even kind enough to pose sideways for the camera so that I could ID her. Unfortunately, she was also kind enough to eat my last bar of soap.


I’m off to Nairobi for a week (good thing, since I'm out of soap), but the stakeout will continue when I return...

Occupational hazard of the day

This is what happens when pesky hyena cubs decide that your license plate looks like a delicious chew toy...

Not just a pretty face

We all know that lions are arrogant, haughty jerks. (OK, OK, I’m exaggerating a bit…behind my lion-bashing façade, I'm enthralled by those gorgeous creatures. Just don’t tell the hyenas.) Anyway, the King of Beasts does have a reputation for being a bit too high and mighty.


However, in this picture, he’s not sneering at us. Instead, he’s exhibiting something called the “flehmen response,” which helps animals detect and identify pheromones. Many African animals exhibit this response around particular scents, and you may even see it closer to home in your own dog or cat.

The crazy-looking lip curl helps draw molecules toward a sensory organ located inside the mouth (side note for bio-geeks: it's interesting that although this organ, the VNO, isn’t developed in humans, we do curl our upper lips similarly when we’re disgusted).


It’s possible these guys were hitting on us, since the flehmen response helps some animals – like lions - determine whether potential mates are receptive.

Dear lions: thanks for your interest, but don't waste your time courting me. And yes, I still think you're haughty.

A proverb's worth a thousand words

Kiswahili, which is widely spoken here in Kenya, is a fantastic and colorful language. It’s also been tough for me to learn…yesterday morning I mixed up the words for “mud” and “plantain,” and I thoroughly confused Philomen. I’m pretty sure we almost ended up with a side dish of dirt for breakfast.

Anyway, Kiswahili sayings are particularly entertaining…here are some of the best (at least according to me, Audrey, and the rest of her Swahili language class):

Siku ya kufa nyani miti yote huteleza.
The day a monkey is destined to die, all the trees get slippery.

Simba mwenda kimya ndiye mla nyama.
A quiet lion is the one that catches the prey.

Mbuzi wa masikini hazai.
A poor man's goat doesn't bear kids.

Nyani haoni kundule.
A baboon doesn’t see his own backside, he only sees that of other baboons.

Fadhila ya punda ni mateke.
The gratitude of a donkey is a kick.

Majumba makubwa husitiri mambo.
Big houses conceal a lot.

Akipenda chongo huita kengeza.
A person in love with a one-eyed person calls him "cross-eyed."

Kitanda usicho kilala hujui kunguni wake.
You can't know the bugs of a bed that you haven't lay on.

Maji ya kifufu ni bahari ya chungu.
Water in a coconut shell is like an ocean to an ant.

Chime in if you’ve got other great ones to add to the list!