Sweetwaters and Amboseli, part I

Be warned - it's coming in installments. There's no other way. There's too much to write. Photo posts will be added when I have the patience to wait for the amazingly slow internet connection.

Two other notes:
1. I don't know if you've noticed, but if you click on the photos they take you to the full-size version. I didn't figure that out right away. (Fool, I know.)
2. If you've been thinking of sending me mail (like my DARLING MAX, who sent me a wonderful letter and photos which made me squirm with missing Victoria), then be warned that we're leaving Mpala on April 9th or something like that, so if you're going to send, SEND SOON! Or it'll arrive at an empty mailbox.

Without further ado:

We've returned!

We drove to Sweetwaters on the 6^th, after our presentations. Instead of heading directly to Sweetwaters, however, we detoured to Nanyuki and spent a couple of hours there, shopping. I took out my sketchbook to draw a picture of the market stalls and was immediately surrounded by a curious group of shopkeepers, who had approached hoping to sell me something and now wanted to see my drawings. After a few minutes of praise and exclamations, Patrick insisted that I draw a picture of him - and after that, Cosmas demanded I draw him as well. “Look!” Patrick shouted, “It's me exactly! It's like a photograph!” (It was, in fact, nothing like a photograph).

“Have you taken many classes, or is this your natural blessing?” a woman asked me, her eyes serious, crowding closer to look into my sketchbook.

“When you go back to Princeton,” Patrick instructed, “you must show that to everyone, and tell them that when they come to Kenya they should find Patrick! They will recognize me. It is me exactly.”

After finishing my sketch of Cosmas, Patrick hung around and we talked for awhile, about his struggles to put his two daughters through school - elementary school and junior high are free, but the last 4 years of high school are not. The tuition is equal to $300 per semester, Patrick told me. A very difficult sum for your average Kenyan to come up with. Nevertheless, Patrick was determined to find a way to get them through high school and hopefully to university. “Education,” he said, eyes intent, “education! I love education. I know it is what they need to get a better life. Myself, I would like to get some more education - take classes in the night, get a certificate. We all love education. We know it is important.” He went on to tell me about the customs of his tribe (I can't remember what its name was! He wasn't Masai or Kikuyu... He was from the coast, I remember that, but I can't recall the precise name of his tribe), which animals they will and will not eat, and so on. They don't eat any wild birds, because the birdsong or the image of a bird in flight is so joyful and uplifting to the soul. They don't eat camel meat or drink camel milk because the camel is a very mean-spirited animal and they don't want its spirit inside them.

Presently, however, he excused himself sheepishly to go off and try to sell some of his wares to the hapless Princeton student who was approaching his stall.

And soon enough, we left Nanyuki, continuing to Sweetwaters through country we hadn't traversed before. The swiftness of the change was astonishing. In the morning? Arid Mpala, grass stubbly and brown, moderately skittish wildlife of moderate density. An hour later, approaching Sweetwaters? Lush grass, bushes that are actually more bushy than they are spiky, herds of zebras that just glance at you mildly and continue chewing as you drive within 3 meters of them. Giant expanses of green pasture, herds of 100 Cape buffalo at once, soft tracks through the black cotton soil that cut between the thickets of eucleia (a leafy green bush). It was so much wetter! Every morning there was a dew - a friendly, welcome dew starring the grass and damping my feet as I walked out to paint the sunrise. We slept in little bandas divided into quarters, with electricity (!!!) and running water in the lodge/center that we ate and washed in.

Sweetwaters is a conservancy which is in the process of being integrated with Ol Pejeta Ranch, the neighboring property. A gentleman with a delightful accent is the “CEO” of the new Ol Pejeta Conservancy and has some interesting plans to make it both eco-friendly and as profitable as possible; many of the ideas he discussed with us were perfectly in line with the things we've been learning here in Kenya. We met him on the last evening we were at Sweetwaters, the night we gave our presentations of the studies we'd been doing for the week. Briefly, the studies looked at time management in different ungulates and the age structure of the zebra population on Sweetwaters vs. Ol Pejeta (which has been treated quite differently because it's a ranch rather than a conservancy) - we gathered data all week by driving around following herds of ungulates and writing about them.

We gave our presentations on our last evening at Sweetwaters, to an audience Dan had cobbled together: himself, his assistant Justine, the CEO guy, a rhino expert, and the rhino expert's girlfriend. Justine is, quite simply, a lovely young woman. She's a white Kenyan, educated in England, who chose to return to Kenya and work here. She works for Dan most of the time, monitoring the zebras in Sweetwaters and Ol Pejeta for Dan's zebra research project. She has a soft voice and a pleasant accent; I find that there is a rich variety in the accents of English-speaking Kenyans, from rolling Swahili-tinged syllables to British-with-a-twist, from the Kenyans educated in Britain. Each one is different; depending, I suppose, on their first language, their childhood companions, the accents of their parents, the age they began their British education (if indeed they were educated in Britain), etc, etc.

We spent quite a bit of time with Justine because she rode around in the land rover with us all week, helping to take down data about the zebras. I was sitting up in front between Dan (who was driving) and Justine - there isn't really an official seat up there, but I was the smallest and therefore chosen to cram in between the driver and passenger seats, which meant that shifting gears became an exercise in awkwardness. I also learned a lot by sitting up there with Dan and Justine - my zebra age identification skills are keen, and I heard a surprising amount about Dan's college days. I also head a lot about and became very interested in the hybrid zebras that have appeared on Sweetwaters: apparently the Grevy's and plains zebras have hybridized, a unique occurrence though their ranges frequently overlap. In fact, I hope to return to Laikipia this summer and do my senior thesis research on the hybrids.

I've gotten way off track! Back to the presentations...

The CEO guy, as aforementioned, has a delightful accent. He looks to be in his late thirties, has interesting and well-thought-out plans for the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, and listened to our presentations politely and thoughtfully. He was interested in the results of the zebra-age-structure group (Mark and I), which indicated that the zebras on Ol Pejeta have a much healthier age structure and that the ones on Sweetwaters are heading for sharp decline.

The rhino guy was a bit of a jerk. All agreed on this. His girlfriend was German, quiet, and quite a bit younger.