Kilimanjaro Bush Camp – Day 29 – 4/24/11
Today is not only non-program day but also Easter! At 8am the Easter 5k started and I was official timer. It was fun to cheer people on since quite a few have been training for this since we got to Kenya. After the race we had a short awards ceremony for the top three guys and girls who were awarded a variety of fruit. While the runners quickly ate breakfast and showered the rest of us put on our Sunday best and organized to go to church. Because it is Easter Sunday a few of the local churches are combining for the service today. It was a short drive down the road and we pulled up outside a small cement building with two tiny windows high up near the roof. The room was no more than 10 x 10 feet and crammed with chairs and benches. As we entered the choir at the front began singing very loudly and somehow I ended up in the front row right in front of them. The music was very upbeat and everyone was dancing to the beat being beaten out of an old drum by one of the choir members. It was quite a welcome. Once the song ended we were welcomed by the church officials and asked to introduce ourselves. The actual church service was not long but definitely more of the fire and brimstone variety. The pastor was very animated and at time straight up yelling. There was some verse reading and the pastor interpreted and expanded on what we had just read. I must admit his claim that he is never sick and in perfect health because of his faith in the Lord did not convince me that I was missing must by not going to church. We had another song in between the first and second service and at the end of the second service both of which were equally upbeat and danced to. By the time we left my ears were ringing but I was glad I had gone. Most of the time the people we meet here are quiet and reserved, doing their work and maybe offering a shy smile. In church they let loose singing loudly and dancing exuberantly which was fun to see and join in albeit a bit less boisterously. Back at camp we had a good lunch while three people hide Easter eggs. The Egg Hunt began at 1pm on the dot and everyone raced off in different directions to search. I look along the bandas on my side and promptly found two eggs. Despite ranging all over the remaining area where eggs were hidden I had no more luck. Each egg had five pieces of candy so I was pretty happy with my ten pieces. The rest of the afternoon I spent relaxing in the chumba while a group of students went to the tourist bar in town. Christina had been in the kitchen for a long time and when she emerged I was recruited to help decorate the chumba for Easter dinner. We hung colorful streamers over all of the beams in the ceiling, cut flowering branches off the shrubs for the tables, and arranged eggs. Molly made no-bake cookies and one of the kitchen staff had decided to spoil everyone and make deviled eggs with capers. I was not as excited as the other students about these pre-meal treat but the dessert was fabulous. Christina had been slaving away in the kitchen making red velvet cake for all of us. Molly had even brought back sugar flowers back from Nairobi so we had more flowers nestled into the frosting on the cakes. We all were stuffed like it was Thanksgiving. I took a walk down the driveway admiring the stars before heading to bed.
Kilimanjaro Bush Camp – Day 30 – 4/25/11
Breakfast was at normal time and Wachazaji gathered to begin work. We began by going over our project objectives again and trying to make more sense of the statistics we should do. This was very difficult because Shem our advisor is still not back. We heard he was at a funeral which casts a shadow on this week and so we are doing the best we can in his absence. About two hours later we had solidified our objectives to more focused areas and had worked out a plan for data analysis which we had divided between the ten of us. Erica, Nicky and I were assigned to perform an ANOVA and posthoc Tukey test on the densities for each sanctuary. These tests supposedly will tell us if there is a significant difference between the sanctuaries and which ones. I am not good at statistics probably because I find it boring beyond belief. To make this even more fun the software we are suppose to use to do these tests refused to do the tests despite us entering the data differently and trying all sorts of variations. By the time lunch rolled around we had made no progress and were in a forced holding pattern until the WE professor returned from fieldwork since he has a thorough knowledge of the program we were trying to use. The one area we did make a lot of progress in was in making the animal density maps. Using the maps we had used to plan our daily transects we laid a grid on top of it. By looking at the GPS points we recorded for each animal we determined which cell on the map it fell in and colored that cell a certain pattern depending on whether it was wildlife, livestock, or both seen inside. It is a very slow process but at least we were able to do it. The comparison tests for various things within the sanctuaries, animals, and habitats were also completed by another group of Wachezaji. Mid afternoon WE returned to camp and we got to ask Kiringe our questions. Unfortunately he recommended that we hold off until Shem got back due to his not knowing what Shem wants us to get from this data. This makes sense. We have not heard back from him about our proposal, our objectives, or any of our ideas on statistical tests. For all we know at this point we might have to redo everything except the maps. Since there was nothing else for the three of us to do we went for a run. It was not yet 4pm so the sun was brutal but the run got rid of all of my frustration. While I was taking my shoes off after I looked up and saw a kingfisher perched on the volleyball net post not 30 feet away. His bright blue feathers and red beak made him stand out as he casually looked around. He sat there the whole time I removed grass and prickers from my socks and pants almost like he was keeping me company. When I got up to go shower he finally flew away in the direction of the swamp and lots of little fish. We had salad at dinner so I was pumped on endorphins and eating cucumbers and tomatoes….I couldn’t be much happier. Tonight at midnight our materials and methods section of our paper is due. As I have already said we have had no feedback so we all are just guessing what we have planned is correct and turned in our rough drafts. I just turned mine in and am headed for my sleeping bag. Lala salama
Kilimanjaro Bush Camp – Day 31 to 35 – 4/26-4/30/11
picture is of some visitors I had to my banda the other day!
There really is not much to tell about the past five days. Shem returned, looked over our work and pointed us in the correct direction. Unfortunately this meant a lot more work for us plus our methods would need to be revised to reflect the tests we now were running on the data. Data analysis is always frustrating making these past days seem very long and unproductive. The amount of data we have from all our field work and the field work from the past two semesters is intimidating in size. Combing through lots of numbers has so far not brought any great insight or revelation of trends as I had hoped. Yesterday (4/29) was a non-program day. A group of people went into Loitokitok while another group went to Amboseli National Park to game drive and eat the fancy buffet at the tourist lodge. I would have loved to go game driving in Amboseli but instead I was stuck at camp making tables and figures for my paper and trying to draw conclusions from the data to write a good results section. I did get it written and turned in but it made for a very late night, or early morning which would be more correct given it was 2am before I went to bed. This morning again was spent trying to organize the data, this time to write the discussion. Several hours of this got me nowhere and our advisor, seeing my frustration, agreed that we should wait another day before turning in our discussion. We should get the rough draft of our results section back tomorrow morning which I will use as my outline for writing my discussion section. So this evening will be spent reading other scientific papers to cite in my writing tomorrow. As a fun side note, this evening at dinner the MOD gave out his own SFS Awards to everyone in the group. My award was Most Likely to Live in the Jungle for a Year and Survive. I must admit that I was flattered and right about now a year in the jungle without a huge paper to write sounds idyllic.
Kilimanjaro Bush Camp – Day 36 and 37 – 5/1-5/2/11
Again not much to report. I spent today and yesterday (5/1) in Shem’s office writing. I take a break when I feel like I’m going to scream from staring at this screen and to eat meals but otherwise I’m just in here. I took over Shem’s office to escape the noise of tension of the other students in the chumba and in general it has worked out well. Besides having my own space and dealing with less noise, having Tome (the environmental policy prof pronounced Toe-may) and Molly as neighbors is pretty hilarious. Molly has led such a different and interesting life that she has the most wonderful stories and they just come up in conversation. Since these buildings have burlap walls and I’m in the office next to her’s many of my breaks are me simply going into her office while she tells one of her stories. Tome also pokes his head in the door every time he passes to say “Hi neighbor” and probably make sure I don’t go insane in my little cell. I do feel slightly bad for taking over Shem’s office. Evidence of my moving in is scattered across his desk. My dusty backpack is beside the chair, my water bottle has a prominent place between my snacks and the power strip and of course my piles and piles of paper surround to the point of hiding my computer. In my defense Shem never was in or seemed to use his office and he did say it was fine for me to work there. The definite high points of the past two days have been hearing news from my wonderful track team which competed in the conference meet this past weekend, learning a brief history of plaid from today’s MOD, and printing the rough draft of my discussion about 10 mins ago. Tomorrow I will write a rough draft of my research paper introduction and begin tossing around ideas for a title, key words, and abstract. Until then I’m going to bed to try and catch up on the many many hours of missed sleep.
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