10:59, Saturday, 9 June, 2012

Happy birthday to my godson Adam!  I love you very much, and I hope your day is wonderful.  Think about you often, pray for you always.

Fun-loving, or at least something akin to it, must be in the job description of a balloon pilot.  A few days ago, right before Steph left, we had Ellie, Milton, and Andrew over for lunch.  Ellie is very bubbly, Milton wittily funny, and Andrew like a big grumpy bear with a fitting sense of dry humor.  Ellie brought us a coleslaw salad – it tasted SO GOOD.  We don’t get salad out here past sukuma and other assorted vegetables that definitely don’t include leafy greens.  She also brought CHOCOLATE.  If there’s anything I miss about home right now, it’s the ice cream.  Ellie’s chocolate got me halfway there, biding some time before I am forced to faint for lack of mint chocolate chip in a cone.

Thursday night we extended our association with the pilots by going over near Tipilikwani Lodge to have a poker night.  Ellie and Milton live in a lovely little house – a house, I might add, with a flush toilet.  The luxury!  We had to trek at least a mile around a huge fenced-in field of some kind to get to the house, a Maasai man escorting us with his spear.  About halfway through, Kay exasperatedly exclaimed something to the effect of, “This is madness.  There must be a way along which we are less likely to meet Magenta for heaven’s  sakes!” in a voice that would cause even Mona Lisa to crack a genuine smile.  (Magenta’s GPS points show that she is hanging out in that very area.) Upon arriving, we met three more jolly balloon pilots named Sebastian, Sean, and Steven, and ate grilled cheese with tomatoes and chips and scrumptious bean dip.  I had forgotten how to play poker, but soon remembered – I like to think it was merely the cards’ fault that I was the second one out of chips.

On our return trip we all unknowingly stepped in a line of safari ants, save Eli.  We were crossing the foot bridge just before reaching the car, when Kay all of a sudden yelled “ow! ouch!”  About a minute later Ali was hopping up and down, and I knew I was next.  It was like walking a plank of unknown distance with your eyes closed, waiting for the splash.  Sure enough – the first little bugger had made it all the way up to my bra!  The car ride home was rather comical (however painful), filled with intermittent “Ouch!”’s and “Ow!”’s.

21:50, Sunday, 10 June, 2012

The following day Kay, Eli, Ali and I set out to fixing camp’s electricity.  My tent and two of the others lacked a working bulb – kind of hard bumbling about half asleep in the morning, trying to get dressed with only a headlamp.  Having never done anything electric, it was a learning experience.  Yet we didn’t have to be near as careful as you normally would since our power reaches 14 Volts at most, supplied by the sun alone (which for the record works splendidly).  We pulled up all the wires and scrubbed away corrosion; Kay showed me how to properly tighten connections and Eli how to apply toxic-smelling silicon afterward.  And all of this against a background of vervets jumping up and down on the top of my tent like circus clowns.

Speaking of vervets, we have friends old and new in camp!  When the balloon pilots were here for lunch, a whole troop of banded mongooses ba-bumped along out of the bush, at least 10 of them.  We discovered they trill like tenor dwarf mongooses, and are very fond of chipate indeed.  I sincerely hope they return.  I’m very envious of Kay, as she saw a small rock python on the way up to her tent – she said it was beautiful. Someday I am going to see an impressive snake!  It sounds like the numbers have been down lately, which worries me ecologically, but should probably make the place a bit more attractive to my parents come Christmas.  I awoke from a nap to a pretty woodpecker on the fallen log just outside my screen, very similar to a larger version of the downy woodpeckers back home, except with gentler colors such as a sandy brown.  The bushbabies are at dinner every night now, eagerly reaching for the things we offer.  Often I look down to find two enormous eyes looking up expectedly at me.  The other night I gave the littlest bushbaby a piece of chipate so large that its vision was obstructed as it hung from its mouth; it went to do its normal bounds back into the trees only to leap right into a tent post, momentarily confused but mostly unfazed as it regained its track and hopped around the post undeterred.  Then just tonight I got it to venture up onto the chair next to mine – it has come a long way since the days it huffed like an olympic athlete due to mere proximity.  Although Kelsey hadn’t been around for a while, making me worry, three genets were at the table tonight, and I’m certain one must have been her.  And so cute – when genets come into contact, they raise their necks and sniff one another in the air, making light chuffing noises and the most adorable squeals before parting ways.

Out in the field, the widow birds are lekking, jumping ridiculously up from the weeds before immediately descending back down as though on pogo sticks, so that when scanning the plain you see these black birds popping up and down like whack-a-moles.  I chuckle every time.  Two gorgeous storks of a kind I’ve never seen storked about the grass last night, bright yellow at the top of their beaks between their eyes.  A family of bat-eared foxes lives by the landmark Paul’s Tree; we see them near every morning and evening on the drive out/back.  We also have two new 1-horned antelope to go along with Derrick the impala: Jude the hartebeest and Sheila the female grant.  As for our hyenas, they are doing very well; I am going to free myself to write solely on them next post.  

Went down to the river a couple of days ago to check out my old crossing spot.  I jumped across to the little sand island, but the water on the other side was running too fast for comfort, and I got the crocodile heeby-jeebies and ran back to the safe bank.  There was a lone shoe sitting on one end of the sand island that didn’t help my wild imagination;  perhaps it belonged to the last person who tried to hop over!  I still haven’t managed to see a crocodile – much though I want to, I think it would result in my running along the fire break for weeks on end before finally working up the courage to cross again.  I ended up crossing by where we cross to play soccer, this time using some steeper rocks that offer a drier route.  It was nice to move outside of camp some, especially with the mountains as a backdrop.  I dreamt of climbing one of those mountains last night, and now I’m itching to do so while awake. 

When the laundry mamas came the other day, I was out reading on my favorite rock outcrop above the river.  I heard them laughing and chatting away as they jumped over, something you don’t hear much from Maasai women, who tend to have a silence embedded by their culture.  It made my heart happy to hear them so free-sounding when alone.  Once one of the mamas saw me, she got a huge smile, and ran over to warmly shake my hand and inquire as to how I was.  It was enough to make my entire month.  And just as quickly as they had come in their colors and cheer, so they left me to quietly read, except this time with a new smile to keep me company.

Ali has been gone for a few days now.  We were sorry to see her go - something I really liked about her is that when she talks she talks to everyone, looking even at the people such as me who don’t necessarily care to talk a whole lot.  Now the grad student named Nora has come for her two month field season; she is so fun and kind, easily amused and always hungry like me.  A kindred spirit.