The Owl is the Devil

Today, after long hours of data entry and a nyama choma (grilled meat) feast, 5 of us piled in the car to head to Malindi Airport. Colin had received a call earlier in the day from the Wildlife Management employee at the airport complaining that an owl had taken up residence in one of the sheds. The woman made it clear that the owl was not the problem (other than a risk of colliding with an airplane), but that the airport staff was the problem. In some cultures in Kenya, the owl is a bad omen, and it is believed that every time the owl cries, a person will die. Even after trying to convince some of the staff members that the owl was not killing people ("even if the owl does not cry, someone dies!"), they still wanted it removed.

Kenya is a difficult place to get things done, especially at the pace they're done in North America. Ingrained beliefs and customs make it hard to sway people's opinions, and offending a person in charge of your permits can mean the death of your research project. I learned this secondhand recently when I went with Benjo on a snorkeling boat to survey the tourists. Benjo had already gotten permission to bring Joy, his official assistant, with him on the surveys, but because she was terribly ill, he brought me along to help. This sort of thing would normally be fine in a North American setting, as I'm officially a volunteer with A Rocha Kenya. However, the Kenyan Wildlife Service has the idea that bringing different volunteers to do tourist surveys on snorkeling boats would look like volunteers are getting free tourist activities (even though we were not snorkeling). So Benjo had to smooth things over and promise that he would never take me on the boat again, and that only Joy would assist him. Darn, because I may be doing survey work for my PhD and the experience would be good for me!

Another place that customary values comes up is with the treatment of elders. Of course elders deserve the respect of younger generations, as they do in most cultures. Here in Kenya though, it is very impolite to speak up against an elder's opinion. A Rocha Kenya often participates in community meetings, and has to deal with this situation. One example comes from an elder who believes that putting radio tags on turtles is against God's will, and that he will kill any turtles he see with a radio tag on it. It is not appropriate to disagree with this elder, at least in public, and especially for a white person to do so at a community meeting.

In this kind of situation, it is hard for me to believe that anything will be improved here. But I can see the work that A Rocha Kenya does, and there are many Kenyans that we meet that also understand how important wildlife and wildlands are, and that scientific research can help conserve these. This is where my hope comes from that every place in the world can be made better, but that it will be hard work. Whether or not this work is for me I have yet to decide. There are dire problems in North America that need to be solved, and there is no place like home. At the very least I will take what I learn here back with me as a reminder of what can and needs to be done.