Ok time for another update!

So Saturday we went into town to shop for groceries and had lunch at that restaurant Trout Tree-- and it is pretty cool. It is literally a restaurant in a tree. It is even two stories, which is crazy! We sat on the top level to eat. There are usually monkeys in the tree that hang out while you are eating too, but we didn't see any that day. I'm sorry I didn't get any pictures.

Then we headed from town to Mpala for the night for Dr. Rubenstein's 60th birthday party. And it was a really good party. There were lots of people (I think I heard 60) and lots of wine. After dinner there was a huge cake shaped and decorated like the Princeton crest. Dan seemed really excited as he oped his presents. Then afterwards, most of the undergrads and grad students headed back down to the tented camp where we were staying for an after-party dance party around the fire pit. The tented camp is really cool. Above is a pic of the tent we stayed in. It looks kind of small in the pic, but there are three beds in there with room in the middle. And in lots of ways it is actually nicer than my banda at Ol Pejeta. It is totally contained, so no bugs get in, and the mattress was really nice. Plus all the tents are right on the river so you have a great view. The only downside is no running water, so there is a latrine and bucket showers. There is a nice mess tent with a long table and lots of chairs where meals are served and then there are 6 or more tents spread out on either side along the river. The fire pit is a big round stone one, with a raised bench all around that we bring cushions to. You can fit alot of people. Blair said the students have often talked about filling it with water and turning it into a giant hot tub. I don't think it would really be doable- but would be awesome if it was ever accomplished. I got to meet more new people which was also nice.

Sunday we headed back to Ol Pejeta to resume work. Dr. Rubenstein might be coming here on Friday to check in on our progress-- after he gets done with all of his meetings with the board of trustees at Mpala. Days have been getting pretty routine around here-- well as much as they can for being in Kenya! I go out everyday and drive around trying to find a hybrid, then watch it for a few hours. Yesterday we got really close to two cheetah again and took more pics. I had to stop in the middle of the road the other day to let a family of 10 or more elephants cross in front of me. Pretty standard now... but still awesome. Things are going well I think. The research is coming along. No more car problems so far, although I am still trying to buy a new tube for my tire that was temporarily repaired. Someone is supposed to be going to town today and I gave them money and asked them to get one for me. When I stop to think about it, I've only been here 2 1/2 weeks. In some ways it seems like I've been here longer. I don't know if two months will start to seem like forever by the end or not. It hasn't gotten old yet though :)

Everything runs slower on Kenya time

Sorry for the delay since my last post. I am trying to save my internet time and I think updating this uses up a lot of it.

So I had my first flat tire yesterday. It actually probably happened the evening before as I was driving home from the field. But I didn't have time to change it then because we were heading out to see the hyena den at dusk. We saw I think 5 adults and then a bunch of puppies popped their heads out of the den! Adult hyenas are not very cute... but hyena puppies are. By the time we got back from seeing them we were already late for dinner and it was almost dark.
So in the morning I changed the tire and put the spare on (yes I can do it by myself now!) and headed to Kamok to get the puncture repaired. Kamok, by the way, is the fuel/mechanic/butcher station in one corner of the Conservancy property... where you can have your car repaired, get more fuel, and buy steaks all in one convenient location. I had just been there 2 days before to get more fuel and have my oil topped off. And as I have learned by now, nothing goes quickly in Kenya. If you need something done, expect to wait. First, it takes 45 minutes to get to Kamok. Once I got there, I spent 45 minutes waiting for oil because the guy who had the key had gone out for a bit??? Then I spent another 15 minutes waiting for someone to come over and give me more fuel.

So yesterday I get to Kamok early in the morning and tell them my tire has a puncture that needs repaired. They do this a lot, so it shouldn't take too long. Well, it turns out that the puncture in my tire is not on any surface of the tube, but in the valve. They do a temporary repair job (which of course takes three times as long), but say it is not reliable and I will need to buy a new tube to really fix it. The only place to get a new tube is in town (Nanyuki). Going into town takes an hour and is always an ordeal, so I am not feeling too excited about this. Or, he says they can order one. Yes, please do that I say. Well I heard back today via a message through someone else that it appears they are not ordering a tube and I need to go buy one myself. Erg! At least we are planning to go to town Saturday anyway-- for lunch at this restaurant called Trout Tree... which gets its name because it is apparently a restaurant in a tree, like a big treehouse, and they farm their own trout. I don't really like fish, but I'm told they also have steak and chocolate cake! After that we will head to Mpala for Dr. Rubenstein's birthday party. He gets in just that afternoon and is turning 60, so it should be a good party.

Oh, and I almost forgot. After dinner last night we decided to go for a night game drive to try to find a leopard (Robin is desperate to see one). I don't think I have mentioned yet, but there is now a 5th person staying at the research center with us-- this guy Micheal who is a wildlife documentary filmmaker. He has some of the craziest stories... I will have to write them all down and post them sometime. Anyway, he has been here a lot before because he does a whole series on the running of this place showing how they manage a wildlife reserve. He seems to know lots of little spots we had not found yet and took us to places he has seen big game in the past. We did not see a leopard, sadly, but did see
1. a female lion eating a baby buffalo 2. about 20 or more hyenas in a den on a different plain 3. a mother lion and two young cubs 4. and finally, two big male lions just sitting in the grass right by our car.
It was dark, so I did not get any pictures, but it was a pretty good night of sightings.

Sundowner

We decided to have a sundowner last night... where you drive out to a cool spot and have a few drinks while watching the sunset. So we all hopped in Robin's car and went to a spot by the river with some Tuskers (Kenyan beer). The sun sets a little before 7 here, so we left at 6 to get there and find a spot to sit on a fallen tree. Here's a pic (L to R): Blair, Lisa, and Robin

Earlier that day as I was driving back from the field, the stupid blind elephant was in the middle of the road and I did not was to suprise him and get trampled, so I just had to park and wait for him to decide to walk away.

Wednesday evening right after my last post, as Robin and I were sitting at camp, we got a call from Blair saying they had spotted and were watching 5 cheetahs on Zebra Plain. So Robin and I hopped in his Land Rover to drive out there and join them. And wow, even though I guess it has had a lot of problems... his Land Rover is nice. So much better than the cars Blair and I are driving. It is huge too. So anytime we want to drive somewhere offroad or hard to get to to look for stuff we take Robin's car. There were three adult cheetahs together that we followed for awhile. At one point they stopped at this rock sign post at a junction in the road and all sprayed it at the same time. I have a really good pic of it, haha. Then their were two other, a mother and older cub (almost an adult but with still some neck fuzz) just down the road. On the drive back we really wanted to spot a leopard, but no luck. They are by far the hardest to find and see.

I also emailed Dan to tell him about my observations so far and ask if there is a better way to do the sampling. He seems pleased with my progress so far and gave me several helpful tips about what we are looking for and what is most important to note. He said to go ahead and do the scan sampling where every 5 minutes I just note the behavior of every individual in the group. I went back out yesterday and found the same female again and tried this sampling method instead.

Time to do some actual work

So today I went out on my own to start to get some actual data. I woke up pretty early, had just some fruit for breakfast and drove to Londru Plain in the Western sector. Happily I found a hybrid after not too long of drive and parked myself to start observing him. Dr. Rubenstein sent me an undergrad thesis a former student had done on these hybrids a few years ago, so for now I am just trying to follow her methods. Rosemary didn't really show me any techniques, and Dan just briefly mentioned what he might want me to do, so I am kind of winging it.

I am focusing on time-budgets for now, which is where you watch a focal animal for a specific length of time (say 30 min or an hour) and record what behaviors it is doing continuously. So every time it switches from grazing to walking or vigilant to self-grooming, etc., you have to note the behavior and the time. Each new activity ends the previous one and at the end of the sample you calculate how long the animal spent on each activity. The problem is, when they are switching actions sometimes evey 4 or 5 seconds, it is really hard for one person to watch through binoculars, check the time, write it down, and find the animal again before it has moved on to the next activity. Plus I am also trying to take photos during all of this for identification of the hybrid and to document their place in the herd and things like that. It would be much easier if I could just call out the behaviors and have someone else write them and the times down. Blair uses either a voice recorder (and then transcribes everything later) or a computer program that logs the activities and times for you. The computer would be great, but it is hard to take out in the field with you. With the voice recorder you can be more accurate than writing things down as they happen, but the transcribing takes awhile apparently. I don't have the computer program or a voice recorder... what I really need is an assistant. But that is not going to happen this time around... so I might need to ask Dan if there is an alternate way to sample.

After I watched to first hybrid male for about an hour and half, he joined a herd where I noticed a second hybrid, a female, so I switched to watching her and did another time-budget focal sample. After that I came back for lunch and to enter the data into my computer before I forgot things or couldn't read my own handwriting anymore and got confused. I tried to go back out in the afternoon to the soutern sector, but there were hardly any animals out there today. There were a ton of baboons on the airstrip, but I only found a few zebra on Scott's Plain, and no hybrids. So now Robin and I are just catching up on the internet before dinner.

ergg...

I keep trying to upload pics of these cheetahs and it acts like it worked, but then they do not show up. So I guess I will have to try again tomorrow.

We saw them at 6:30 pm just after coming back from Mpala as the sun was setting. I also have pics of a baby elephant and loads of giraffes. And zebra of course.

It rained here yesterday and I got Twiga stuck in the mud. But I called Blair, she drove over and she and Lisa and I were able to just push it out. When they got to me they said they were impressed I made it as far as I did. So I don't feel as bad about getting stuck. Note to self: do not go down that road again after it has rained. There are several roads here that are just impossible when it rains, as I've learned. Other than that I am doing pretty well. I went out with Rosemary yesterday morning just to see some more of the roads. But tomorrow I will head out on my own and try to start collecting some data.

Cheetahs!!!

Today, I was 15 feet away from 3 cheetahs! They had apparently just finished a meal because they looked fat and one kept licking his paws. The other almost fell out of the tree he was sitting in when he stood up. They must be really used to the tourists here, because they just sat there as we drove our car right up to them and took pictures.


We went to Mpala today for almost the whole day to get a cart built for Lisa's predator simulation experiment. Mpala is the other, and main, research station where most of the Princeton people are. It is about an hour drive north of here. Blair and I are only at Ol Pejeta because that's where the hybrids are and because she is studying Hartebeest and there are none at Mpala. Mpala is a research center only (no tourists). There are more people there and it is more set up for research, but Ol Pejeta has better wildlife. When I met with Dan he said Lisa and I will probably go stay at Mpala in July a week or so after Blair leaves. So at least I know how to get there now, because I will probably have to drive us over there in July. Dan gets here on June 19, which is apparently also his 60th birthday. So they are having a party for him over at Mpala that we will probably go to (assuming they have 3 extra beds for us to spend the night because we can't drive back in the dark).

more pics

By request, here is a pic of the inside of my banda

Also, here is some wildlife for now : warthogs and buffalo (Hakuna matata!). More exciting ones to come later.

Here is Twiga!

I compressed the picture size and got it to load really fast this time. So I think that was my problem... I just need to make pictures smaller first.

So hopefully I can upload more now.

A couple other things I forgot to mention about my sweet ride is that it has no RPM gauge at all... and the speedometer does not work. So I have no idea how fast I am going at any time. And there is no indication for when to shift other than listening/feeling the engine. But I have done pretty well so far I think.

I went with Blair today when she took her car to get more gas, so I know where the place is now. It is in the far northwest corner of the property, up a hill. Once they get my account set up I will need to go get gas in the next few days before trying to go out to the field for a whole day.

I also just skyped with the parents and it actually works pretty well here. It was breaking up a few times when I was in my hut, but as soon as I carried my laptop outside it worked perfectly. So I was able to give them a little tour of camp with the webcam. Skype does use up a lot of internet MBs though so I don't want to use it too often. If anyone really wants to set up a call though, let me know. Also, if anyone feels like calling me on my new Kenyan cell phone, the number is 020-2642374. I know there is a way you can call a cell phone from skype, or you could always get an international calling card. But I will try to just keep updating this blog to keep you all in the loop. Feel free to email me too... jmschieltz@bama.ua.edu. I would love to hear from people!

And wow, while I am writing this, it just started pouring rain outside! I will be driving all around the property with Rosemary tomorrow, so I hope this doesn't mean the roads will be mud and we will get stuck! eep!

Safari-land

So yesterday was my first full day here at Ol Pejeta. After breakfast I took my vehicle out for a spin... Blair gave me a little refresher course, but I had remembered a lot from the summer in Idaho where I learned to drive stick shift. So hopefully I am good to go (knock on wood). My car is nicknamed Twiga, which is Swahili for giraffe, because when Blair took it out last summer she thought it looked just like a giraffe carcass they came across. I wanted to post a photo here... because the picture tells it all... but couldn't get it to load this morning. It seems trying to upload pictures uses up a lot of MB of my internet too, so I probably will not be posting many pics here because I don't want to use up my internet too soon. I may just wait and put the best pics here and all of them on facebook when I return in August.

So for now just picture this... It is a very old and well-worn Suzuki Sierra. Think old white (well off-white now from years of dirt and sun) jeep, 2 doors, vertical back door. There is only 1 head light, the windows do not roll up anymore, the backseat has been taken out because it fell out the back on a previous trip, and the passenger seat back does not stay up. It is an extremely loud and bumpy ride. But as long as it runs, I don't care. Apparently I should expect to have problems, though, before the summer is over. When I am out driving, if I get stuck in mud or a hole I am supposed to call control and tell them where I am on the conservancy and they will come get me unstuck. Blair said it is likely I will get a flat tire at some point that I need to learn to change. If anything breaks or it starts to malfunction, there is a shop on the property we take it to. We also have to drive a little ways to get fuel, and I have less than half a tank right now, so I can't take it out for a full day until I get more petrol. We are about to get more fuel for Blair now, but they have not set it up yet for my fuel to be put on the Princeton account, so I'm not sure when I will get more.

Yesterday morning I met with Rosemary... she is Kenyan and has been working as sort of Dan's assistant for the past several years monitoring the zebras here. She gave me a rough map of the conservancy and pictures of all 25 of the known hybrids with their ID numbers labeled. We are going to go out together tomorrow to drive around so I can learn the differnt plains, start to spot the hybrids, and learn how to do time-budgets and such.

Then yesterday afternoon Blair drove us around the eastern sector of the conservancy. Ol Pejeta was formerly divided by a long fence into the old western sector that was a game reserve and the eastern sector that was the tourist side. The fence has recently been taken down, but the eastern tourist side is still the better marked and traveled half. I have not been to the western side yet, but it is bigger and I'm told there are no signs at all there, where there are at least a few a major juntions on the easter side. There are about 10 main plains (5 on each half) that all have names... Oryx Plain, Zebra Plain, Serat Plain, etc. As we drove around I started to learn the roads and track them with the GPS that Dan gave me to bring. It was like a Safari-land adventure park... so many animals all around that you could just drive right by. I also spotted one hybrid already! It was a bachelor male in a large herd on the northmost plain, Serat Plain. Blair also tried to show me on the map which roads to avoid if it rains at all because she already gotten stuck there.

There is a masters student from Britian named Robin doing research here right now too, but he was gone for the past few days. He got back yesterday afternoon. His dad is a diplomat I think, so he has literally lived all over the world, but his parents live in Nairobi now, so they drove up with him. They are all really nice. He is also really attractive which is not a bad thing at all either... He is also younger than I was expecting when Blair described him. I think he is only 21 or 22.
His parents are staying for a couple days at Sweetwaters Tented Camp, one of the tourist places on Ol Pejeta, before heading back to Nairobi. He has a really nice looking huge Land Rover, but I guess it has had all sorts of problems and been taken in to the shop too many times to count. They just finished fixing it again, so he is hoping it will last for the next 3 weeks before he leaves at the beginning of July (same time Blair leaves). So my car looks like crap, but if it can last me for 2 months with no (or minor) problems, I will take that over a constantly breaking Land Rover.

Our meals here are at 8am, 1pm, and 7pm. We have to buy the food, but then there is a cook here to prepare the meals. We bought a little bit of food in Nanyuki on Friday and then Robin and his parents brought a bunch for the next week or so. Our current cook is an older guy who only speaks Swahili and is not the best chef. But I guess there is woman who is a better cook that is coming back in a few days.

First morning

It is my first morning here at Ol Pejeta. I woke up about an hour ago at 6am and saw the sun come up. Here are a few first pictures.

The Research Center on Ol Pejeta where I am staying (there is also a swanky main house where the tourists stay, but I haven't been up there yet to see what it looks like)

My hut-- there are two rooms in this one. I'm on the left and Lisa is on the right

Kenya!!!

Oh man... so much has happened since I last wrote. I feel like I can write an essay about each of the past 3 days, but I will try to give you the abridged version.

Day 1 -- Wed becomes Thurdsay
So the flight from JFK to Dubai was actually pretty awesome. Emirates airline is great, I highly recommend it. Even though it was 13 hours, I didn't sleep at all and wasn't tired. Each seat has a TV console with a long list of New movies and TV shows to watch for free. You can just pick whatever you want. So I watched 5 movies on the way over! I was too entertained to sleep. I saw The Young Victoria, Up in the Air, both Twilight movies, and Fame. When you get on the plane they hand out hot towels and then recollect them before you even take off. They also pass out little cases with socks, a travel toothbrush, and a facemask for sleeping. We got dinner, a snack and breakfast on the flight. I wasn't even tired and we arrived at Dubai at 8am their time the next day.

Day 2 -- Thursday
Then we flew from Dubai to Nairobi. This flight was only 5 hours. The TV screens this time didn't let you pick movies, but they had several channels with movies playing that you could turn to. So I saw How to Train your Dragon and the end of Extraordinary Measures. We landed in Nairobu around 3pm. We went through the line to buy Visas and then down to get our bags. One of the girls in the group ended up having to gate check one of her carry-ons at JFK and it didn't seem to make it to Nairobi. So we had to wait around for awhile while she filled out a lost bag report. Then there was a van that took us to ICIPE --(some research center for Insect Physiology) in Nairobi. It is a whole compound with a guest center with pretty nice bedrooms. We didn't actually get there until 7pm though, because Nairobi traffic is terrible!!! You would think in the capital city the roads would be better... but everything seemed in a perpetual state of construction or disrepair. Some parts of the road were concrete but most were dirt and there were no lanes on the road. So whenever the road narrowed cars were just cutting each other off left and right and trying to merge with no organization. It took us I think 2 hours to get to ICIPE... I don't know exactly how far away it is from the airport, but not that far.
When we finally got to ICIPE we had dinner, then I showered (which felt awesome after all the plane rides), and checked my email. They had wireless in the lobby. The shower had hot water, but when you pulled the knob up for the water to come out of the shower head (which was not on a holder just laying in the tub), only half of the water came through... and only the cold half. At this point I was finally getting tired for the first time in over 24 hours, so I went to bed at around 9pm Kenya time. So it was nice to just already be on Kenya time and not have any jet lag to worry about. It was also nice to be able to lay flat to sleep for the first time in over 24 hours.

Day 3 -- Friday
We woke up at ICIPE and had breakfast. Two cars were supposed to pick us up at 8am to drive us to Ol Pejeta (the Conservancy where I and one other girl Lisa are staying) and Mpala (where everyone else is staying). Ol Pej and Mpala are about an hour apart but both are ~4 hours from Nairobi. So we were supposed to get there in time for lunch and shopping in Nanyuki, the closes town. Well, it seems things never go as planned and you should just expect delays and problems.
First, the cars didn't actually come until 9am. One nice suprise though was that Blair and Stephanie, two of Dr. Rubensteins grad students came along to greet us. Blair is also staying at Ol Pejeta. She has been here since April 2 and is staying til July 2. We got on the road, but shortly into our drive, one of the cars started having brake problems. Apparently, Blair told us, this same car had problems on their drive down to Nairobi the day before. It was over-heating and they had to wait over 2 hours for it to be fixed and they didn't get to Nairobi until late. Well we waited almost three hours while they worked on it again. We just ate lunch where we were because the car wasn't ready until 1pm. At this point we were starting to worry that we wouldn't get to Nanyuki in time to shop before things closed at 5pm. But we did make it just in time. I bought a cell phone to use if my car gets stuck or something goes wrong since I will be driving around the bush by myself for most of my research. Which brings me to my next point... the car they have for me is a stick shift and the steering wheel is on the right because they drive on the left side of the road here. I stressed out a bit, but I am confident I will master it and be ok. Blair is going to give me a driving lesson/refresher in the morning. I also bought a modem for my computer (which I am using right now) that you just plug in to the USB port on your phone and it runs the internet off one of the cell phone providers. You can just buy more minutes to add to the cell phone or MB to add to the modem.

After shopping we finally made it to Ol Pejeta around 7pm. A much longer day than originally planned. But on the way in I have already seen baboons, zebra, buffalo, gazelles, and a lion! Oh, and there is an elephant outside of my hut right now!!! There is supposed to be an electric fence around the huts to keep the elephants out, but I guess there is one blind elephant that just comes right up. They can be really dangerous, so we just need to know when he is here and pay attention.
That's probably enough updating right now. I will try to write more, and hopefully post some pics, tomorrow.

@ Princeton

Here's a quick update from Princeton...
I made it here, checked in with the grad school, and just met Dr. Rubenstein's assistant Amy in person for the first time. I am set up in a little office right now using the wireless internet while Dr. Rubenstein is at the commencement ceremony. I will meet with him when he gets back. The weather is really nice here, 75 and sunny.

I am awake right now, but considering I woke up at 4:15 am to get on a plane in Dayton, I'll probably start getting tired really early today. I have a backpack and my laptop as carry-ons and then most of my stuff is in a duffle bag I check on the plane. The duffle bag is on wheels and is only 43lbs, but lugging it from the train station around campus to the grad school office and then to Eno Hall, it felt a lot heavier. At least I won't have to carry it around the airport tomorrow since it will be checked again.

Tomorrow, off to Dubai...