Wow. Yes that really happened

Day 65 (11/8)
So we are all getting ready for the Directed Research part of the course. There will be lots of reading, writing 40 page papers, and field work. I’m excited.

Day 63 (11/6)
Today was a non-program day, first stop…recycled glass factory. The most amazing place ever. Sculptures everywhere, absolutely fantastic and beautiful. There is no way to describe it except like a dream of a magical world. I wish I could post pictures but the internet it too slow. They made so many things, all hand made and it was crazy. The best part is it is totally environmentally friendly and they only use recycled glass
The place is called kitengela glass factory, this is the website: www.kitengela-glass.com/ . They even ship to the US…check it out.

Next stop…ostrich resort. And it is just what it sounds like. An ostrich farm in resort farm. They have 700 ostriches and some are trained to be ridden. Others are slaughtered to turn into ostrich burgers. It was so awesome. I rode an ostrich, they have these blanket/saddle things on the ostrich and 2 men are holding either side of you, and they sort of hold the ostrich too. There is this round pen, and you get on, go around once and you basically have to go where ever the ostrich goes. They are SO strong, and fast. He started to run in the same spot each time around, and you have to lean really far back so you don’t slide down their necks. But it was a lot of fun!

And…we got ostrich burgers, ostrich tastes like beef. It’s a red meat, the burger almost tasted like meatballs. It was really good.


Day 60 (11/3)
Today I was MOD, so I was responsible for helping the professors if needed, and run RAP, which basically just lets everyone know what goes on for the next day/announcements.

We woke up at 5:45 for cook crew…and then left camp by 7 to get to Hells Gate. There we went to Lake Naivaisha, first stop was at a Kenya Wildlife Service base and we had to walk down the muddiest, slippery trail to get to the lake. A lot of people got there, and had to walk right back because it took them so long.

We got to Hells Gate, and took a tour of the geothermal plant they have there…which was really interesting because its in the middle of the National Park and the ways that they keep it environmentally friendly.

The geography of the park is also really interesting with cliffs everywhere. We really only saw buffalo.

It rained the whole day and it was really interesting trying to game drive and then it would start to pour and we would have to close the hatches, which isn’t the easiest thing in the world, especially while we are moving…you have to basically shift the roof around, that are slabs of metal, and they connect to the roof in different ways.

Day 59 (11/2)
We had a few guest lecturers this morning, and then in the afternoon Arthur (one of our cooks…he is hilarious) gave us a cooking lesson as a group. Then we went on a game drive.

First stop was Baboon cliff…one of the girls put down her Nalgene on a bench and out of nowhere a Baboon ran in-between all us and grabbed her Nalgene and ran down the cliffs. He brushed up against some people and I could have reached down to touch him. About a second after he grabbed it, some of the staff started to sprint with rocks in their hands ready to get him…the whole scene was hilarious and it happened in about 2 seconds.

We drove around, and saw lots of baby zebras, rhinos, buffalo, and everything is so brilliantly green and beautiful. There was also a ton of flamingoes, and marabou storks which are HUGE and sorta creepy with red faces and like 9 foot wingspan. We could walk up to the lake and take pictures which was pretty cool.

On the last part of the game drive we saw a LEOPARD. Officially I have seen the Big 5. Elephant, buffalo, rhino, leopard, lion…traditionally the 5 hardest animals to kill. It was so cute, just sleeping on a tree branch, got up, looked at us and then went back to sleep. It blended in so well that it was hard to see even when we knew where it was. But they are so magnificent and beautiful that he was breath taking.

We also saw zebras fighting, black-backed jackals tearing apart a carcass.

We brought some staff with us...Ki-Pez is my favorite. He knows very little English but he knows my name, and he says “verrrry good America” for everything, and sometimes wears a cowboy hat to compliment his Maasai outfits. And Fred came with us too…he knows a lot more English and comes up with the funniest stories about lions and elephants.


Day 58 (11/1)
We left for Lake Nakuru, and stopped twice on the way. It was cold and raining so our first stop was an overlook, that we couldn’t see very far out into, and the second stop it was raining so hard we didn’t get out of the car and had a little mini lecture over the car radios haha.

We went through Nairobi, sort of on the outskirts, but we could see a lot of the city, and it’s a lot of large buildings, parks, and it looked like a nice city…except for the level of violence. They have a lot of round-a-bouts, and surprisingly this time there was no traffic.

Cecily played a little boma game that included everyone. The men competed for status, and then they randomly picked wives, the number depended on how they well they did in the competition. And then the wives randomly picked the number of children they would have. And, the family was given cows based on the husband’s status. The whole thing was hilarious. And it got even better when the girls were given “children” made out of tape and sticks…we had to have them with us all day and if Cecily checked and we didn’t have them we would lose them. Also, other wives were allowed to steal them if we left them out. Some “babies” got stolen, and the wives also had a little contest…we leg wrestled haha, I can’t even describe it.

Lake Nakuru’s base had Baboons and Vervets crawling all over it and the Baboons all had babies. So adorable but some were HUGE and a little scary but they were more or less harmless.

We stayed at a “hostel” which was actually a campsite. With a kitchen, running water, electricity (except when there was a country wide black out…twice within 3 days). And of course the trash pit had a troop of huge Baboons.

Long story short my family ended up losing the Boma game.