Leaving Ol Pej

I haven't updated the blog in awhile because I have been busy finishing up my last week at Ol Pejeta... and probably my last PhD field season.  The rain stopped for a few days, long enough to measure grass one last time and collect all of my camera traps and GPS units from the field.  I said goodbye to all my herders and my cows and packaged up one last round of grass samples to send for nutrient analysis. Today I drove my green Suzuki field car back to Mpala, along with all the camera traps. The hallway at the research center is suddenly a lot more empty (or finally clear of junk, depending on how you look at it).

Now I am just working on packing up all of my personal belongings.  I leave Thursday for South Africa for a week! I will be vising my good friend Keri in Cape Town, where she is doing nursing aid work for a year. We plan to have a couple nights out in Cape Town, hike Table Mountain, the go to the beach and some wineries. Even though I have been coming to Kenya for nearly 4 years now, I have still not visited any other country in Africa. So I am excited to travel around a little more, have some time to relax, and of course see Keri.

To add some color to this post, here is a Brown Parrot (which is actually mostly green, with red eyes), that visited the tree next to the research center porch the other day to eat some berries. And Mt. Kenya again, but this time it looked like it was floating in the clouds. You could see the top clearly, but not the base. When I first looked up and saw it, it looked kind of surreal.