The most recent outing or event that I wrote specifically about was my trip to Marafa for Farming God's Way. That was on March 7, now it's March 24. I haven't done a whole lot of exciting things between then and now, but I have gotten out on a few little things. On the 10th, we went to Malindi for a crow count, which is where I got to see that nice new apartment building that is pictured in the previous post about the middle class. We also went to the Sabaki River Delta that night to count gulls and terns, but were unable to do the survey because it was too cloudy so the moon could not light up the area.
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Attempting to count gulls and terns, but too cloudy. |
I also never mentioned that I was house sitting for Colin while he was been away to South Africa to work a bit on his PhD. I got to take care of Bonga and Jongi, two obnoxious but sweet yappy dogs. So in the mornings I walked the beach between there and Mwamba (about 2.5 km), and most nights I walked back after dinner. It was good exercise and nice scenery since I've been mostly sitting at the computer doing data stuff all the time! The only annoyance was having to fend off beach boys and men dressed in Masai garb trying to sell bracelets or give you a tour. One weekend morning I walked south instead of to Mwamba to visit the rock pools that have really neat inter-tidal life like starfish, sea urchins, eels, and tiny brightly colored fish. Peter, a local beach boy, decided to show me around and find various wildlife to show me. He was very pleasant and I enjoyed his company, and he did not even ask for money (which I didn't have, anyways). He showed me a big starfish, and also got the eels to come out of hiding by tempting them with a crab on a stick. Only problem was that the next bunch of mornings I would walk to work, he'd be there and either want to chat or walk with me the whole way! So that is one reason I'm glad I don't have to walk to work in the morning, even though he was pleasant and not dangerous in any way, I tend to prefer no human contact before I have my breakfast!
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Eel being tempted by a crab. |
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Big starfish. |
A fun thing I've had the chance to do is help two of the Kenyan volunteers with their resumes. Neither of them had an electronic version, and neither of them (that I know of) had any written record of their jobs or the things they did at various jobs. So I was really glad to help them write down their work experience, and put it into a format that will hopefully allow them to get a job in the future, or apply to university. Even though a lot of Kenyans didn't grow up with computers like I did, I think that the culture is definitely changing to be more electronic (i.e., applying for jobs over e-mail). As far as I can tell, getting access to a computer is not too difficult if you have a bit a spare cash to spend at an internet cafe. Although sometimes I wonder if these two would even think to go to an internet cafe to update or send their resumes, because computers are not really on their radar like they are for me...
On the 15th I went with Stanley, the Environmental Ed coordinator, and Festus to the Nyari Primary School for a meeting with the nine Wildlife Club teachers, who also manage the ASSETS program for their schools. The meeting was pretty boring (it was mostly in Swahili), but the field trip after the meeting was fun. Nyari means "depression", and the spot we visited was really just that. The land had slid away and eroded from the top of the escarpment, and there were trees hanging on to the side of the cliff, likely to be swept away when the rains start in a couple weeks. At the bottom, there is a dry creek bed now, as wide and as tall as me, and I can imagine the water that rushes through there during the rains. The view of the forest beyond was also quite beautiful.
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On the brink at Nyari. |
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Nyari Depression. |
On the 17th, a bunch of us went across Mida Creek to a place called Manfridays, which is a little slice of paradise. Benjo wanted to do something fun to celebrate his last days in Kenya for a few months, and he was able to get us a deal to spend the day there. We took kayaks out to the coral reef and went snorkeling, swam in the pool, had the most delicious lunch and calamari I think I've ever eaten, and spent the afternoon relaxing poolside. It was a really restful and beautiful day.
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Poolside at Manfriday's. |
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Beautiful view of Mida Creek from on of the guest rooms. |
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The kayaks we took out for snorkeling. |
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Lay of the land at Manfriday's. |
On the 20th we did a bit of bird ringing here at Mwamba beach over night, we caught 13 birds. There was a group of students here from the Rift Valley Academy where Andrew also went to school. It's basically a school for international students near Nairobi and they teach in the US format for high school so that the students can attend college in the states. The group was really great, well-behaved, and they were very interested in what we were doing here.
During all the rest of my time when I was not doing fun things, I was working on Colin's bird ringing database. Fortunately, I finished entering the crucial data on March 13th, and now I get to do fun things with the data like pulling out averages/min/max on wing length, correlating some of the data, and possibly getting a small paper out of it. That is, if I can pull something together in the next two weeks I have left! Even if I don't though, I think it will really make Colin's life much easier having all his data entered, especially since he wants to use bunches of it for his PhD. I'm glad to have contributed in a meaningful way to the conservation of Kenyan birds.
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