Let The Research Begin

Termite mound outside the park

Alright, so I admit. I’ve been a little lazy with my blogs lately.  I’ll try to be more punctual from now on.  We are now comfortably settled in Tarangire National Park.  At the moment, I am in a Safari Vehicle with Jen, Colleen, and Dave and we are collecting our first round of data (well, Jen is).  We drove to the park this morning in hopes of getting ranger who could come along with us, since you need a ranger to leave your vehicle while in the park, but there weren’t any rangers to be found so today we are only able to do research from the car.  Jen’s project is looking at vigilance behavior in zebras, so she was able to successfully capture a bunch of photos for analysis later this evening.  Dave and I found a bunch of termite mounds that we are interested in, but we will have to wait until Monday to get out and look at them closer.  And Colleen is collecting seeds from acacia trees so she will have to wait until Monday as well. 

So far, things here at camp have been pretty chill.  We have had a lot of down time (and I mean A LOT).  The 1000 piece puzzle is well on its way to being finished, and many of us have already read several books.  It’s way too hot to do anything during the day.  The tents are like greenhouses, and even walking outside or being in the sun is quite unbearable.  So we spend most of our time in the concrete pavilion where we have meals and often waste away the time playing chess, cards, or checking email.  We’ve had some pretty good meals lately.  Yesterday we had quiche, potato salad, and a vegetable salad for lunch.  And for dinner we had pasta, beef, and green beans.  They don’t  quite cook green beans like back home, but they were still delicious! 

Yesterday morning I walked into town to buy a toothbrush for Jen and some rope to hang up my hammock.  I also purchased a ruler, which I used to make a homemade protractor when we got back to camp.  I’m pretty proud of this protractor, it’s legit.  Dave and I needed a way to measure the termite mound angles, but had no protractor so I figured I would just make one.  It was actually quite simple.  When I got back, I found some adorable children by our campsite and invited them to color with me.  By the end of our coloring session they were calling me “mwalimu” (teacher) and I was showing them how to write each of their names. 

In the afternoon I took a shower (they feel so nice when it’s hot out!).  And then I read and figured out how to work a compass.  Lauren, Brennan and I went for a walk and gathered some followers.  The children here came out like vultures and would not stop asking for gifts and money from us.  Now normally, I would be friendly to children who I just met on the street.  But these kids just wouldn’t levae us alone no matter how many times we told them that we had no gifts or money.  At one point, one of the girls fall down in  a heap in the middle of the road and started fake crying just so we would give her money.  So, we decided to turn around and charge them (run at them screaming at the top of our lungs).  That worked to disperse them for a while, but they did eventually return.  Anyway, Dave and I have found that the best tactic is just to ignore them.  They get satisfaction in eliciting a response from us, so if we don’t do anything, they eventually get bored.  I almost lost it today with some kids in the village who started hitting me with sticks when I wouldn’t give them gifts or money.

Last night we were greeted by a wonderful surprise: James and Chelsea returned from Nairobi.  Unfortunately, the airport had been closed all morning for Kenya’s Independence Day, so they weren’t able to get on a flight until later in the afternoon.  But, all is well and Chelsea is officially healed.  It’s nice to have our ACM director back too!

Last night ended in one of the most epic boxing matches ever.  Hah, we have so much time here in the field that we go a little crazy at times.  Apparently yesterday Zach mentioned that he just wanted to punch something, and Lauren said she felt the same way, so they decided to tie pillows to their hands and have an official boxing match.  We were all laughing hysterically and it was a great time.  Plus, I got to spend some quality time with Liz in Siri’s hammock J 

Today was our first official day of research, and we got to take a car full of biology students into the park.  Even though the ranger wasn’t available today, we still got to help Jen watch her zebras!  And Dave and I found some termite mounds outside of the park and went to take some measurements after lunch.  The sun here is so hot and we were soon sunburned and sweaty.  But, we managed to get angle measurements on 14 different mounds.  Hopefully Monday we will have a ranger so we can take some measurements in the park.  Well, that’s all for now. I’m all typed out.  Hopefully I will be able to post some pictures of our camp soon!

Erin

Swahili Word of the Day: Twiga [TWEE-gah] = giraffe