Monkey Chasing

I am back in Nairobi again for one more night before heading out to Thailand tomorrow. (I hope... see post below.) I am therefore going to deluge you with posts while I have the chance (IF the power stays on... it has been going off about every half hour for 5 minutes or so all day, and was pretty sketchy the last few days).

I spent the last 11 days on the coast of Kenya (honestly, I didn't even know Kenya HAD a coast, and certainly never realized what a tourist hot-spot it was, especially with the Italians. Kids would smile and wave to our bus and say "Ciao!") doing my Earthwatch Monkey Chasing trip (I think it was officially called Kenya's Forest Monkeys or something unexciting like that). THANK YOU to those who made contributions to my trip and helped make it possible for me to go there. Know that your money was well spent (or donated rather), and that I was the Queen Monkey chaser (dubbed thus by myself, just this second... my fellow monkey chasers might choose to disagree, but I'm banking on them losing my blog address before they read this).

This will likely be a long post detailing all the exciting things that the monkeys did for 11 days ("Resting.... Resting... Resting... Moving..."), so get a cup of something warm (for I think most of you are in cold weather places, unlike me!) and settle in for a good long read.

The Earthwatch trip began when I arrived at the Nairobi airport three hours before my flight to the coast (traffic was totally non-existent, for the first time in Nairobi's history, I think). I was just wondering what I was going to do with myself for three hours (the Nairobi airport is not filled with bookstores or shops or anything really, except people offering to get you a taxi or safari), when I heard my name. At the time I was wearing my Earthwatch t-shirt (which my mother kindly sent to me across the ocean), not because I wanted to advertise where I was going or what I would be doing, but because it was absolutely the only thing I had that was clean. (I’d just gotten back from a week’s safari at that point.) So I was pretty easy to spot. I looked up and saw a somewhat bedraggled (jetlagged) older white couple looking at me, so I wandered their way, and yes, they were Earthwatchers, too. (My first thought was “Of course… because everything I do seems to involve people 20-40 years my senior.”) They were a couple from San Francisco, who were doing their third Earthwatch trip. We spent the three hours together, finding a little restaurant and getting to know each other. (They immediately became my favorite people in Kenya when they gave me their copy of the Sunday NYTimes Crossword puzzle. I gobbled that down much like I did the chocolate bar that I had just yesterday for the first time in ages.) We spotted another guy who was travelling alone as a possible Earthwatcher, but I decided he was much too young to be on the trip (he seemed to be about my age). When our flight arrived in Malindi and we were met by our leaders, it turns out that this child WAS actually on our trip. In fact, when we all gathered, there were LOADS (relatively speaking) of younger people. We had four Brits (all young… although one did turn out to be 49, but she looked young) and three Americans. (So I guess my taste in activities is appropriate for Brits my age, or retired Americans… Not sure what that says.) We had two Kenya leaders, who were fantastically nice, but one was unfortunately named Lucy, so I spent 11 days thinking people were talking to me and asking me questions I couldn’t possibly answer.

Until then I had been surprised at the reputation that Africa had of being hot. I had been on the EQUATOR, for god’s sake, and hadn’t broken a sweat. I assumed it had something to do with it being the Short Rains (although it almost never rained). And then I got to the coast. To sea level. Apparently everywhere else I’d been had been quite elevated, and therefore cool. Not so any more. Hot and humid and sunny and filled with really nasty malaria-bearing mosquitoes. Good times! The Brits all promptly started to melt. (An aside—as if everything I write isn’t an aside already—Let’s say you were among the pastiest people on the planet and you were going to a spot that was near the equator and hot and sunny, and you were going to be outside all day. Now, let’s say you need to choose a malaria pill to take while in this environment. Would you take the one that makes you sensitive to the sun??? Three of the four of them were doing just that. Seemed a bit odd to me, but whatever.)

The place we were staying (in Watamu at the Mwamba Bird Reasearch Field Station, although I never saw one birder—or bird for that matter—while I was there) was fantastic. It was very simple… three of us shared a room (of course, I was with Lucy!) with an attached toilet (that sort of worked) and shower (that did have hot water, I discovered three days later… but didn’t use much because I was so damned hot anyway!), and we all ate together with bowls of stew or rice and beans balanced on our knees. The beach was just down a short path, and the sand was white and ocean green and blue. Not too shabby. And not an Italian in sight! (They were all further down the beach at the resorts.)

Our days entailed getting up at 6 (which, believe it or not, I did without much of a fuss… but don’t fret, this will NOT be continued in my normal life!) and being in the van at 6:45, so we could start chasing the monkeys at 7. AM. In the morning. (Those of you who know me well, why don’t you go splash some cold water on your face.) We then had to track through the woods (next to some ruins) for up to an hour trying to find the monkeys. (I was on a team which studied the monkeys whose range included the office, so sometimes we saw them as we pulled up.) Once we found said monkeys, we had to find one that we would be able to identify as it moved through the woods. (I usually used the tail… I wasn’t so good at using their nipples to ID them.) As we followed the monkey, we had to record what it did every minute for half an hour (we had a watch that beeped every minute… I wondered if this wasn’t actually a study of US to see if we could be conditioned to respond to beeps). We also had to note what the monkey was eating, and if it pooped, we had to either mark it with a flag, or pick it up (much like walking a dog), so that they could look for seeds in it. (The focus of the study had shifted from “the effects of human encroachment upon the stressors levels of sykes monkeys”—say THAT three times fast!—to seed dispersal of provisioned vs. non-provisioned monkeys. (Mine were the provisioned group, and boy could they move fast when they heard a bus of tourists coming to visit the ruins!)

Chasing monkeys was easy when they were resting (the males were particularly good at this), but when they were in the canopy and you were in the brush it was a bit harder. We were warned to look down a lot to make sure that we weren't standing in a line of safari ants (a line being about two inches wide!) or about to step on a snake (puff adders and green mambas were especially to be avoided). The leaders said that the monkeys would tell us if there was a snake near by. One day Lucy called out to us to see where we were, because our monkeys were making the "There's a snake right there" chatter, but we didn't recognize it. They chatter and all circle around and look at the snake. (That day it was a puff adder.) I did recognize the chatter on our last day when they all started chattering and looking pretty much directly at my feet. Needless to say I froze, and was relieved when they nipped to a point about 10 feet behind me and circled up. (It was another puff adder.) We also spotted a couple of green mambas (so beautiful) climbing up in the trees, but the monkeys weren't worried about them.

We did these morning and afternoon, day in and day out. (At some point during the trip I decided that I was glad I had never taken a biology class.) We had two afternoons off (I did some snorkeling at the reef just off where we were staying one of those days), and we also had the weekend off. Four of the seven went on safari to Tsavo, but I was kind of safari-ed out, so I stayed behind with two others. We had a lovely weekend though. On Saturday we went to the snake farm and found out just how many poisonous snakes were in the woods with us (but don’t worry, because they made anti-venom there), and then had a nice dinner. The walk back from dinner in the dark was kind of amusing, for every twig, oil spot, or anything else that my two companions saw sent them into hysterics. Well, mostly just the guy from the plane, who did admit that he was a tremendous scaredy cat. (Of course, he was the one who had a snake fall on his head in the woods!) On Sunday, I spent a glorious day doing nothing but reading my book and swimming in the sea. (Not bad for late November!)

We never did get to find out what the results of all of our hard work was, because as we were about to be given a presentation on the computer, the power went out. (Again.) So we crunched the numbers that we could, and then just hung out for the last few hours before we all parted ways.

I went down to Mombasa with two others (driven by Sammy, our faithful driver, who was quite a character! He wants to be mayor of Malindi someday. I think he already IS running the seacoast), ditched them at the airport, and then I was dropped off at the train station for the overnight train back to Nairobi. (One of the hottest experiences of my life.) The train (and I mean THE train) goes from Mombasa to Nairobi every other day, and it is a 15 hour journey. (The Brits we dropped at the airport in Mombasa were already in bed in London by the time I got off the train.) I took first class (because when else will I be able to afford first class?), so had a fancy (Kenya fancy) dinner and breakfast, and a bed all made up for me. I had a compartment to myself, and possibly even a whole carriage to myself… I had been in a carriage with other (white) people, but the porter decided my room was “no good” so moved me to the next carriage, which seemed empty. I’m guessing he didn’t like the security in the first compartment, because he then gave me strict instructions on how to lock the door from the inside and to close the window when I went to sleep (hence it being so damned hot), so that no one could climb in (the train moved along slower than the vehicles on the road next to us, and stopped about every half our all night long, so it would be totally possible for someone to climb aboard). I actually slept relatively well, and had a pleasant journey.

Coming into Nairobi we drove through one of the shanty towns, which finally got to me. When I first arrived in Kenya I was amazed at how people lived, but it quickly became commonplace and seemed normal. But going through the slums, seeing children in rags lined up along the tracks, with huge smiles and happily waving to us, brought tears to my eyes as I wondered about this crazy world we live in.

I'll try to get some pictures up at some point (but not in this country, apparently!).