Moving to Mpala

Lisa and I were supposed to be staying at Ol Pejeta until next Monday (July 26th), but we just found out the research center is overbook and we have to leave this Thursday (July 22) instead. So we will be moving up to Mpala on the 22nd. Lisa is a little upset because that gives her 4 less days to work on her project and try to get some more trials of her experiment done. But oh well, nothing can be done. KWS (Kenya Wildlife Service) will be coming on Tursday followed by another Earthwatch group on Monday.

The Earthwatch group that was just here for 2 weeks left yesterday morning. We got to know a few of them really well- mostly just the two guys in college, Kenny and Saagar. There was a bit of drama toward the end of the trip where Saagar felt like he was getting really sick and told his dad who freaked out and called Earthwatch and they called Geff, the guy running the trip, and asked what was going on. So the older volunteers in the group got pissed at Saagar for starting something and unneccessarily stressing out Geff. There was a confrontation at dinner time with yelling and then a fake make-up hug. But then to make things worse, a couple days later Saagar woke Geff up at 3 am saying he thought he was dying and asking to be taken to the hospital. When they got there the nurses couldn't really find anything wrong. He came back to camp the next day for a few hours and then asked to be taken to the hospital again. He had strept throat. But do you really need to spend multpile days in the hospital for that? The Earthwatch team was leaving to drive to Nairobi for their flights yesterday while he was still at the hospital so they just left without him... He came back on his own later that day to get his bags and then find a taxi to Nairobi. It was so much drama for a few days, it was like we were living in a reality show.

Chayant, the guy working on the computer program to barcode ID zebras got here Sunday night and drove around with me monday. We saw so much wildlife for one day. I will put pictures in the next post. Then yesterday Dan came to see how it was working-- turns out not very well. So Chayant is trying to work on the program and get it functioning before we leave here on Thursday. I am now also trying to go through all of my data before I leave. If there are any questions I have or Plains zebra I need identified, I need to do that with Rosemary before I go. And then I want to leave info about all my sighting for her in a useable format... but that I could always email if I don't get it done now.

The trip really feels like it is getting toward the end now that we will be leaving Ol Pejeta in 3 days. Then I will have 2 weeks at Mpala before heading home.