Going a little Bush, now, are we?

“I think you guys are probably gonna want to see this...” I love when people start conversations with sentences like this. Especially in the wild African bush, the second half is usually pretty good. Today, when Dave (an up-and-coming graduate student studying fire monitoring here) came into the office and said those words, he finished the sentence with, “There are elephants in the kitchen...”

If I had to guess why we have had a recent explosion in the amount of wildlife that is entering our camp , I would say that it is because all of the nearby water sources are drying up, but I can’t say for sure. Not only are the elephants roaming through camp, feasting on all of the trees...Each night we go to bed hearing loud, carniverous animals very, very close. Four nights ago it was a leopard (tracks spotted no more than 10-15 m from our tent), and the past three nights it has beena combination of hippos, hyenas, and lions. Many, many lions in every direction. And one left tracks just a few feet from our friend Sarah’s tent. There were 4 water buffalo across the river when I was brushing my teeth the other morning, a monitor lizard was acosted by some large water-birds, and the other night in the middle of dinner an enormous splash next to us in the water caused two of us to run for our lives towards the nearest shelter. Chris and I have taken turns having irrational reactions of terror regarding the predators just outside the tent (mostly lions)... Some of the reactions have involved hyperventilating and forcing our way through partially-unzipped tent walls. And the tension has followed us into our daytime activities. Yesterday Chris looked at me, and out of nowhere stated that literally every time he got out of his chair that day he knocked it over. I’ve picked up the habit of clicking constantly on everything when I get on the computer to do work, and any time we hear a sound in the distance we run to the window with out foot-long mag-lite flashlight to investigate what kind of frightening beast might be approaching. Some people use the phrase “Going Bush” to describe these strange habits that people pick up, and I definitely think that we are working our way towards earning that title.

While we are going a little nutty, we are making progress in the work that we’re doing. We’re done with the website! (Except for the photo gallery if you are about to go look at it) You can see it at: http://www.ruahaconservation.org. If you notice any problems, you should let me know.

Someone recently asked me to give a little more detail about the place that we are living. Let me start with this... Other than the office where we work, which is full of skulls and computers, none of the buildings really have any walls. There are 2 “bandas” where people stay (we are not staying in one- we’re jst staying in a canvass tent). The bandas are basically just wooden decks with thatched roofs and straw mats that you can roll down on two sides as “walls” if you want. Dave and his girlfriend Ashley are staying on one banda and Pete, our boss, lives with his family on the other banda. There’s a school banda- with a tent full of bookshelves, art supplies, and insect collections- where Pete’s two children are homeschooled by their mother. There’s a dining banda, which is basically just a thatched roof on sticks, a bunch of choo’s (bathrooms) and showers, a supply banda, and a kitchen banda (with the most walls of any building- 2), that has a solar-powered refridgerator, stove, a big cooler, and a few cupboards that the monkeys occaisonally raid. Just outside of this last banda is where the elephants were located. And when the elephants were right outside the kitchen banda, we were located inside the banda, some of us partially under the table, and one person perched atop the refridgerator.


Okay, I hope all is well in the homeland. Chris and I will (hopefully) be leaving in the next week or so to go on a trip to Malawi!! Although we recently found out that the horseback safaris that we thought were offered have been temporarily cancelled due to some government corruption scandal, something we hear a lot around here. I think instead we’re going to go do something called “absailing” down a waterfall and kayaking on Lake Malawi... neither of us know what absailing means yet, but it sounds fun whatever it is. Baadaye kidogo.