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.