My Cup of Joy is Overflowing

The title of this post is a quote from the center director, Okello. I thought it was a great way to describe the happiness I feel for being here in Kenya. This last week was very eventful! It began with a non program day where we had the option to tour a local clinic and give blood. The clinic was part of the Mbirikani Group Ranch and was very impressive! They have modern equipment and provide free care to the group ranch and anyone diagnosed with HIV for life. The clinic was founded by a woman from Chicago and is still completely funded by her which must be an insane amount of money. After seeing the entire clinic including inpatient care wards, diagnostic lab, and the fridge with only 3 partially full bags of blood, many who were unsure about donating decided to go through with it. The whole process was very slow since there were 22 of us donating and everyone had to get their blood tested and vitals checked. As we waited, we saw a woman come to the clinic in ambulance who was having labor complications. Her screams of pain were consistent for about 3 hours before she was transferred to Nairobi. Apparently her baby was positioned incorrectly and she needed a c-section but Mbirikani didn’t have an OR and she was stuck in a cycle of contractions that couldn't be stopped. It was hard to listen to, but reminded me that our blood would be directly saving lives of the local people like her. Apparently all our blood would be used in about 2 weeks and the clinic would be able to treat some anemic patients that they hadn’t been able to help previously. It was a wonderful experience and I’m especially glad I was able to donate, since I won’t be able to for quite a while in the US (since I’m in a Malaria country now.)

The next day was our community service day where we visited a local primary school. The school consisted of one building divided into 5 rooms for each grade. There were about 40 kids in each small room with a couple chalkboards and shared wooden desks. The classroom I was assigned to was supposed to be 9-13 year olds but none of them looked older than 10. We played Heads Up, 7 Up with them and a game involving leading rhythms. Then we were taught a Swahili game where we were supposed to jump when the animal that the teacher named was something people eat and you were out if you jumped for the wrong animal. The game was called nyama, nyama, nyama (meat, meat, meat.)
Here's a picture of the kids playing:

We also went outside and played other games including frisbee and soccer. In general I was very impressed with how the kids behaved. There were so many of them in a small space and they were so quiet and polite, not at all how I would expect that age group to behave in the US. The kids were all really cute and some of the girls who were fascinated by my hair, braided it into two front braids which looked "very smart" according to them.

                                 My beautiful hair-do courtesy of Charity (on the right)

Later on in the week we performed a transect walk for our environmental policy class which turned out to be very interesting! We walked along the remnants of the Kimana fence, a fence that used to enclose part of the Kimana Group Ranch and was electric but wasn’t maintained. We began to walk along it and immediately saw a giraffe head in the distance. As we moved toward it more appeared, there were about 8 in total including a baby. It was so cool to be walking that close to wild giraffes! They let us get about 50 feet away from them. Our task was to record the landscape and interview any people we ran across with the help of our local guide. We talked to two Maasai herders with cattle who also owned irrigated farms nearby where there was a water source. There was no water source where they were grazing their cattle except for rainfall. We saw huge erosion ditches that were formed in the wet season from the water flowing from nearby hills. We also came across a boma where women were building a house. Apparently they had moved there 2 years ago following the good pasture. I really enjoyed actually seeing all the land uses we have been talking about in class and actually hearing about the resource issues directly from the local people.

                                        This is how close we were to the giraffes!

 Later that day, we had a Maasai woman come to speak as part of our culture class about the role of a woman in the culture. It was fascinating to learn about the amount of responsibility women have without having any rights to property. Maasai women are currently working towards a more equal status, helped by education opportunities. Another thing they are working to fight is the practice of female circumcision which is done traditionally in the Maasai culture to graduate a girl into adulthood and curb their sexuality. The Kenyan government has outlawed it, but it’s such an integral part of their culture of maturation that it is still practiced. This brought up a conflicting idea about whether the culture should be preserved as it is or be modernized. Many times I feel like the Americanized view of how people are supposed to live is forced onto people like the Maasai that are living a different type of life. It’s a fine balance between preserving the culture and bringing in beneficial ideas for the health and rights of the people.

                                              Part of the Maasai boma I stayed in

I was able to actually experience the life of a Maasai woman as well during my homestay in a Maasai boma. We were assigned to bomas in pairs and dropped off at around 10 in the morning. We brought our host Mama bags of food as a gift for allowing us to stay with her. Our host was Joyce who had 8 children. There was a huge language barrier because we still don’t know that much Swahili and everyone in the boma spoke mainly Maasai with a little Swahili, and barely any English. We communicated with the little Swahili we knew and a lot of charades. The beginning of our day consisted of drinking lots of chai (tea) in the house and meeting some of the other women that lived in neighboring houses. My guess was that they were all wives of one man (the Maasai practice polygamy.) We also met a couple of the men who were herding the livestock out for the day. Then we went to fetch water from a pipe in a nearby field where it was being pumped for irrigation. The jugs were carried back using a leather strap that you put around your forehead, letting the jug rest on your back. At first I thought it was somewhat comfortable, but after walking for 10 minutes, my neck started to hurt. The women must really have strong necks! After fetching the water we made lunch from the food we brought consisting of cabbage and ugali.  Ugali is a cake made of maize flour that is pinched off and eaten with the accompanying food. Everything was cooked on a woodfire inside one of the rooms in Joyce’s house. This was a very hot procedure, by the time we were done I was sweaty and hungry. This was good because we were served HUGE portions of food which was all delicious. All the children and the other women were fed as well.

                                                        Ugali and Cabbage

We ate in the main room of the house which was a lot cooler but full of flies. It was hard to get used to the feeling of flies constant crawling on your skin. I ate as much as I could and then we cleaned the dishes and swept out the house with a grass broom. After lunch we learned how to bead the Maasai jewelry. It’s pretty cool how much of it is recycled. They use strips of the woven plastic sacks twisted together as string and plastic pieces as some of the beads along with the glass seed beads. They laughed at how slow I was with the tiny beads and my inability to twist together the strips together for string. They were very skilled at the whole process since they take a lot of pride in all the jewelry that they wear. We also gathered firewood using a strap technique similar to the water jugs for carrying it back. I’m so glad I was able to actually experience living in a Maasai house and the tasks that I would be doing if I was a Maasai woman. At my age I would already be married with 2 or 3 children. One of the biggest differences I noticed between a day in my house and my day in the boma was the pace of life. Between doing all the chores of the day there was a lot of sitting around talking (or listening to them talk in Maasai), beading, and interacting with the children. These times were very relaxing which was juxtaposed with the hard work of carrying water and wood. When we departed at 5 that night, Joyce gave both of us a necklace. It was touching and I felt like I could have spent more time there learning to speak Maasai and taking care of the household.

                                                Carrying some firewood with Joyce

The next day was another pretty special experience. We went to Amboseli again to participate in the census of all the animals in the park. Each car was assigned a block of the park and we had to count everything and determine the number of adults and young. We would come upon huge herds of zebras and wildebeest with impala and reedbucks mixed in and have to record all the numbers along with a GPS position. To give you an idea, the highest number of zebra I counted was 243. This was only one section of the herd. It was kind of stressful but also fun to ride around in the car with a KWS officer directly helping in wildlife conservation. We didn’t see any animals that were different than those we had seen on our last visit to Amboseli but I don’t think I’ll ever get over the elephants everywhere.

The week ended with a non-program day where we were able to go to a lodge outside of Amboseli. We got to stuff ourselves at their buffet, relax, enjoy a few Tuskers, and swim in the beautiful pool. The only negative part of the week was the departure of one of my fellow students back to the US because she started having serious respiratory problems with an unidentifiable cause. We will all really miss her and it really emphasized to me how horrible it would be to have this experience taken away from me. I am so happy and lucky to be here!

In the observation tower at the lodge

We are Mzunguli

So much has happened in the last week! I think one of the biggest realizations this week was how much we stand out as white people, or as the kids love to scream at us, Mzunguli (my white person). It’s somewhat disconcerting to be stared at like circus animals whenever we are in the surrounding communities, but I’m starting to get used to it.

Our first trip to Amboseli was on Monday and it was amazing! As soon as we entered the gates of the park, we saw herds of zebra, gazelle, wildebeest and a few ostriches! This was initially very exciting but quickly became the common sight throughout the park. On our way to a lunch spot we stopped a few times to listen to our professor Shem, speak over the radio about some of the species we were seeing. He also would ask us to try to identify them using our field guides. We saw an oryx which is a pretty rare animal to see in Amboseli and within the first 20 minutes of driving! As we approached the observation hill where we would be eating lunch, there was a whole herd of elephants that we drove up to right next to the road. There were even some small babies that were super cute! I could have watched them all day! We continued on to our lunch spot where that overlooked some of the wetland areas in the park. We could see many elephants, hippos, and birds enjoying the water in the heat of the day. After eating and observing we headed out to see some more of the park. We stopped again passing the elephants and one bull elephant started to get upset with us and challenged our car. We quickly drove away! The other exciting sites of the day were some female lions drinking far away from the road, unfortunately they seemed to have just eaten so we didn’t get to see any chases. Then we passed a lot of sleepy hyenas who were surprisingly very cute! Driving out of Amboseli was beautiful, finally a cool wind blowing through my hair and beautiful evening light shining through the Acacia trees. I can’t wait to return, hopefully to see more giraffes and lions closer to our car.

We had a day off the next day and it was market day in Kimana We walked from KBC which was an hour long hot walk but really made me feel like a Kenyan. We met many others on the way. The market was so crowded! There were stands of foods, clothes, electronics, shoes, and lots of fabric. As we entered the market we were immediately swarmed by Maasai mamas who wanted all of us to buy their jewelry. The words of the day were hapana, asante (no, thank you) which didn’t help us out too much. The best part about the market was trying to use the little bit of conversational Swahili I have learned. I also ended up talking to a few people in English and it was interesting to hear about their lives. After the market we all went to a local bar to try a Tusker, the local beer. On our way we were swarmed by little kids who were soooo cute. They loved it when we took their pictures and I loved taking their pictures so it worked out really well. The bar was very nice and we all got to sit around in gazebos in the back patio, sharing our stories of the market.

                            The Kimana market, shoes are being made out of tires in the bottom left.

We also visited our neighboring high school a few days ago. They were having sports competitions but we missed watching all of the races and were just able to mingle with all of the students. The students ranged from 12-22 and it was very interesting to talk with them, luckily they all spoke very good English. I started talking to a group of girls about the weather in the US right now, their school schedule, what they wanted to do in the future. Most of students seemed to want to do something with tourism. Talking to the guys at the school revealed the biggest cultural differences. Among other things, the most frequently asked questions were “are you married? Why not? And can I get your number?” It was pretty funny!

                                 Location of a Wildlife Ecology Field Lecture with Kiringe

In the last week we’ve had a lot of class, but many of the classes have been field lectures. This is where we travel to a hilltop and learn about the land use and cultural changes of the areas surrounding us. Traditionally the Maasai are pastoralists and currently most communally own land as group ranches. However, as the influence of agriculture has increased, the people have begun subdividing their land to own their own farms. The biggest issue is that agriculture isn’t a sustainable use for the climate in East Africa. In order to grow crops, the people must irrigate their land since most of the year there is no rain. The use of water for irrigation then creates a shortage of water for wildlife. Also the subdivision of land makes pastoralism worse for the environment because the livestock doesn’t have a large range and their damage is concentrated to a small area, causing overgrazing, erosion, etc. It’s kind of a frustrating issue, because it would be extremely difficult to convince everyone to go back to their pastoralist ways, but it’s the only sustainable way to use the land. I suppose we will learn about more solutions.

Hope all is well with everyone and 5th block is finishing up nicely for everyone at CC!

Life at Kilimanjaro Bush Camp

So it's been a few days since my last post so this is going to be a little long. I now feel like I've been living here for weeks. We've begun classes so a routine has started to form here. Kilimanjaro Bush Camp is beautiful!

We all live in bandas, cabin-like buildings that are made of concrete and wood with thatched roofs. I share a banda with two other girls while most bandas have 4 people living in them. Our banda is named Tumbili or monkey. For meals and class we all meet in the big central building that is fashioned in the same way. The staff, who are all Kenyan, live in the camp just a few feet away. The best part about the location is our gorgeous view of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Our camp is surrounded by a fence to discourage any big animals from coming in, but the baboons do manage to make it across.We have a resident baboon troop that hang out in our camp, fighting and making a lot of noise at 4 in the morning. They also make for wonderful entertainment and I don’t think I’ll ever get over watching them. Surrounding us are many Maasai group ranches and when walking along the fence, it’s easy to see women carrying water from the river and men herding their goats and cattle in the bush.

I have done so much already! We have been into our neighboring town, Kimana to see what it was like. The town is pretty small but includes a few buildings consisting of many small shops and stands along the road. The town isn’t a tourist destination but is on the main road to Amboseli so they do get tourists sometimes. However, we were the only white people there. There is a market there on Tuesdays which I am VERY excited to attend! The experience really made me excited to learn Swahili because I couldn’t communicate with anyone! All I could say was jambo (hello) and asante (thank you). Quite a few people knew some English so we could order things and ask questions. There was an interesting mixture of people dressed in what we consider normal urban clothing and traditional Maasai dress. Most of the women we saw dressed traditionally were covered in their beaded jewelry that they wanted to sell to all of us. They are well known by SFS and are called the Maasai mamas. The particular women that interacted with us the most was named Joyce and she was a very aggressive salesperson. She would cover your arms in the beaded bracelets and insist that you buy one, even following us around the town. It was pretty funny. We were in town when all of the kids were walking home from school so we were able to speak to a lot of adorable kids. They crowded around us when we started taking pictures so that they could see the picture on the camera screen. What struck me most about the town was the laid back feel to life there. Many people were just sitting around talking outside of stores or manning their stands. It’s really a different style of living compared to the hustle and bustle of US towns and cities.

I have really enjoyed the routine of life here so far! I wake up at 6:00 or 7:00 depending on whether I have cook crew or not. We help the staff fix breakfast which begins at 7:30 and our first class is at 8:00. We have a few breaks during the day which have been used for card games or doing some of the required readings. We have another class in the afternoon and then every day a lot of us have played soccer or volleyball with some of the staff. Soccer is an especially dusty and out of control process! The field is full of plant and bumps that keep the ball going everywhere and makes for a really fun game. The staff is especially good too!

Today we went to a nearby Maasai boma and it was one of the coolest experiences I have ever had. The Maasai mamas greeted us in their beautiful and very colorful traditional clothes. They then performed a traditional song and dance. We stood in one of the animal pens where little white butterflies swarmed before the group of women. They sang and began to jump forward towards us, even bringing some of us into jump with them. It was amazing. Then we performed the dance to Waka Waka by Shakira for them which they seemed to enjoy, judging from their huge smiles. It was so nice that even though we didn’t really speak the same language, we could communicate through the dance. We were then shown some of the unique tools they use and into one of their houses. It was a small house with mud walls and a wooden roof. You had to duck into through the doorway into the dark. Light only came through a hole in the wall in the back of the house. We sat on a bench and bed in one room where we could see the cookfire in the adjacent room where another bed was tucked. It really made me think about their lifestyle and how simply they live compared to our extreme abundance. The whole house was a little smaller than my bedroom at home and a whole family lived in there. Apparently the women are in charge of building the house when they are married and it takes about 2 months to construct. After the house tour, the women set out all of their beaded jewelry and fabric for us to shop around. It was great to see all of their skill and I bought a few things, including some fabric for a skirt. I'm glad that we are exposed to the people that make up the opposing argument to conservation. It's so easy to get caught up in my love for animals that it is hard to see why anyone would be against keeping these species alive. Their livelihood depends completely on their goats and cattle and when a lion kills one of their livestock or an elephant tramples their crops, why should they not kills it? They receive no direct benefit from conserving wildlife which is why one goal of conserving these species in Kenya is to make it an economic benefit to the local people.

Classes continue tomorrow and then we go to Amboseli National Park on Monday!! I am soooooo excited! It’s hard to be sitting in a classroom talking about all these animals and issues when I know it is all so close by!

Uskiku Mwema! Goodnight!