community presentations

Yesterday was a big day here in Kenya. We gave presentations to the community about our directed research projects, the culmination of all that we’ve learned and done here in East Africa. The presentations went really well and we had a huge and engaged audience. We were asked some hard questions by Maasai. The coexistence of wildlife conservation and pastoralism (the main livelihood of Maasai) is a big concern and there was genuine interest in our findings and recommendations concerning how to balance livestock grazing in the wildlife sanctuaries that we studied. Even though I would not usually be a fan of speaking in front of 90+ people, I actually really enjoyed it. This is mainly because everything we said was translated into Maa so that our guests would understand what we were presenting. I really liked having to pause after each sentence so that Daniel could translate – it was definitely the most composed public speaking I’ve ever done! Other highlights of the presentation were seeing all of the local guys who we worked with when we collected our field data and hearing from major stakeholders in our research after the three groups completed our presentations. It was very informative to hear what people’s main thoughts and concerns are about the area, and also nice to hear from people who were truly appreciative of our work and excited to use the information we collected to implement improvements. here is a photo of my DR group and our advisor Shem.

Today we are packing, completing program evaluations, and receiving grades. It is hard to believe that we leave KBC tomorrow morning. It seems like just yesterday we were making the switch from Tanzania to Kenya! I’m excited to return home and see my family and friends, who I have really started to miss these past few weeks! But I will be very sad to leave East Africa, and will especially miss all the amazing people that I’ve spent the semester with. I’m not sure how I’ll handle all the alone time that I will return to in the US – we are constantly surrounded by people here and I am used to the constant presence of 27 best friends! We will definitely all keep in touch and are already planning reunions. In the meantime, though, we all have to welcome the close of one chapter in our lives and the beginning of another. It’s very bitter-sweet, but I think I am ready for a change. I look forward to reconnecting with many people when I get home, and sharing stories about what we’ve been up to all fall. Best of luck to all the people who are finishing up their fall semesters, wherever they are! Kwaheri, Catherine

DR is almost complete!

Yesterday we turned in our final DR papers and gave presentations of our findings to the faculty. It felt great to finish and I finally slept in past 6 am this morning! Here is a brief recap of my DR experience, done with numbers just like what we’ve been obsessing about for much of the last month:

days of field data collection: 7

sanctuaries surveyed: 5

kilometers walked: over 40!

elephants seen along our transects: 29

times our car got stuck in mud: 1

dreams I've had about DR: 4

cups of coffee I've drunk (my first ones ever): 4

pages of final paper: 28

Now we are preparing for the community presentations that we will give to the community tomorrow. We’ll present to the people who we interviewed and worked with, as well as to community leaders, sanctuary funding agents, Kenya Wildlife Service officials, and anyone else who is interested. Everything we say will be translated into Maasai. It should be a crazy day – about 90 people should be here! After our presentation we are on the home stretch – we leave for Nairobi on Saturday and all go our separate ways on Sunday morning. It has been a crazy last month in Africa. These last days are sure to be the same! I can’t really place what my feelings are right now about everything, but I know that I am looking forward to a huge salad and clean clothes when I get home. 

Happy Birthday, Mum!

Here is a map of the five sanctuaries that we performed animal counts in. There is no title or labels because it will appear in the middle of my paper's results section. We used a grid system to determine the extent of spatial overlap between wildlife and livestock within the sanctuaries. Livestock should only graze in sanctuaries during the dry season, but we saw huge herds of them during our data collection, as well as lots of other human activities, i.e. farms and bomas! Sanctuary management is not very strict and our overlap info is one way to show that there is potential competition for the resources between wildlife and livestock. 

"It will haunt you in your sleep..."

The end of semesters always feel crazy, and in Kenya it is no exception! We finished our data collection on Friday and since then we have been doing data analysis, GIS work, and starting our papers. I always underestimate data analysis, and these past few days have reminded me of how I definitely don't enjoy statistics. My brain has been full of species richnesses, Simpson's diversity indices, Jaccard's similarity indices, t-tests... Nevertheless, I am still enjoying myself, and am especially proud of the work I've been doing on GIS. I've got the most GIS experience in my group and have been heading up all the visual stuff we need. In terms of learning GIS, it has been kind of like learning to fly once you are pushed off of a cliff. I will try to post a map that I will use in my paper, I'm quite proud!

We have a day off from DR work tomorrow and we'll be going to Amboseli National Park again. I'm excited to have a break from staring at a computer screen! We'll do a game drive and spend some time at the lodge (swimming!). Then it will be back to the grind of paper writing - everything is due by Tuesday and we present our findings to professors and to community members and officials next Thursday.

Happy December, and also remember that today is World AIDS Day!
Catherine

news from the field

The past few days of DR data collection have gone well but have left us all exhausted. We wake up by 6 every morning and are out in the field by 8. My group spent the past two days in Elerai-Rupet, a large sanctuary that is dominated by dense vegetation, some elephants, and giraffes. As we did our transects we'd have to battle chest-high grass, acacia mellifera (a very thorny and painful plant), ticks, and, of course, the African sun. When the vegetation is thick, like it is in Elerai-Rupet, the visibility of our transects is extremely limited, which means the width of our transects is small and we have to do quite a number of 1 km transects to reach our goal of surveying 40% of the sanctuary area. So we've walked at least 21 kilometers in the past two days - it is pretty cool that I can go hiking in late November! 

Both yesterday and today we only saw one species in our transects - Giraffa camelopardalis. We saw 13 in just one transect yesterday and saw a herd of 20 today. You would think that giraffes are incapable of being discrete, but actually all of our sightings have involved seeing a few and then realizing that they are joined by a bunch more that are hidden by trees and each other. It is fun to giraffes because they all turn and stare at us for a long time as we approach them, the they finally turn and run off in a line (watching a giraffe run is quite entertaining). 

One more note about today, which is unfortunately not very pleasant. After we had finished our transects, we were walking back to the main road, following our armed guard because he knew his way through the sanctuary. We came upon the carcass of an elephant, which we later learned had been killed by poachers about one week ago. We saw how large it had been and that the face was gone - the tusks are taken for ivory and everything else is left. This is the reality that wildlife conservation faces in Africa. Conservation is at the center of a struggle between the needs of humans and the needs of animals. We hear many stories from our guides and armed guards about incidents with poachers and always are disgusted by what we hear. But, the sad truth is that poaching is what some people have resorted to in an attempt to make a living in this undeveloped area. We also have to remember that the elephant we saw today had most likely ruined numerous families' crops and maybe even killed people. We’ve been exposed to these inconvenient truths all semester and all of us wish we could think of a panacea. That is definitely out of our hands, but I am so glad that our DR projects will be providing information that can be utilized by community officials and researchers to improve the problems. As we continue to work on our DR projects I'll try to write about the other two projects - all three of them are really interesting and pertinent to what we've learned about all semester.

I hope that everyone has wonderful Thanksgivings! We will be celebrating tomorrow because we have a non-program day. We have a 5k Turkey Trot planned for the morning, as well as an American football game and dinner complete with turkey, stuffing, etc! Enjoy your time with family and be thankful for everything that you have, even Maine's cold weather (I miss it)!

Kwaheri, Catherine

DR continues

Today was a non-program day and we all tried to relax and save up energy for field work. Our second and third days of field work went really well but we all needed a day to recuperate. On Friday when we did animal counts in Kimana, we had 6 elephants in our transects and also encountered some frustrated buffaloes. Never a dull moment in the field! Yesterday we were in a sanctuary called Kilitome and we didn’t really encounter many animals because my group’s transects were straight through thick vegetation, but we did follow elephant tracks most of the way.

This morning a few Maasai mamas came and taught us how to make beaded jewelry  - we have a lot of respect for their patience and talent now. I spent the rest of the day working on DR (reading literature to use in my final paper). I also spent a large chunk of the afternoon working out, so now if I am too exhausted after walking transects in the field in the next few days I won’t feel as guilty. Tomorrow we will work in a wildlife sanctuary called Osupuko and on Tuesday and Wednesday we’ll be in Elerei-Rupet. I am excited to go back into the field and also for Thursday, when we have a day off to celebrate Thanksgiving, Kenya-style. We aren’t sure whether we’ll have a turkey or a goat roast yet, but I know we will have pumpkin pie! Just one more note before I head to bed – the moon has been close to full and extremely bright these past few nights and we’ve been able to see Kili lit up in the dark. We can see the silhouette and the snow shining on the peak!