15:09, Tuesday, 12 February, 2013

One quick interesting tidbit that I have neglected to mention: I had a conversation with Dave a long time ago concerning African history, and he told me of a theory that Africa never became industrialized because the zebra could not be tamed.  In a way, maybe we have zebras to thank that large wildlife like there is here, near extirpated in America, still exists.

We saw a nursing elephant on the way home from Thanksgiving.  It and its mom were right by the road, and it reached its long trunk out asking to be fed, trying to keep up as she walked along.  Finally she decided she’d stop for it, and we were treated to watching a member of the largest land animals guzzle some milk right next to our vehicle.  Elephant mammary glands resemble those of humans an astonishing amount, present up front on the chest .  Fascinating how evolution picks different routes; hyenas only have two nipples as well, but they are present in the back, like a cow’s utter.

Vervet monkeys: always distracting me from my work.  One late morning or early afternoon a couple months ago, they decided to jump all over the top of my tent.  I don’t think they knew I was inside, and  I could see the shapes of their little hands indenting through the canvas.  Eventually I stood up and traced the perfect black shadows with my finger, only canvas separating my hand and the monkeys’.  They didn’t notice at first; but then I got a little greedy.  I pushed up on a small monkey, lifting it on my hand, and I couldn’t believe how long it sat there, its little weight heavy on my palm.  At long last it decided something was up, moving to the side and causing me to chuckle at its assumed confusion.  A game of chasing the monkeys with my hand from within the tent ensued.  After a minute or so they must have gotten creeped out, perhaps because a few back on the ground had begun bobbing their heads back and forth while peering through the screen, trying to discover what creature was hiding inside and daring to join in their fun.  Their thick vibrato croaky trills alerted the others, who came down from the canvas.  But they didn’t stop playing amongst themselves (I tried not to be insulted at being left out).  One little tyke eventually became tired of playing, and ran off into its mother’s arms.  She hugged it, and then rubbed its back.  It wasn’t nursing, it just sat there with its head to the side against her chest, and she moved her hands up and down its back several times exactly like a human mother trying to comfort her child.  Unreal.

I had never seen a group of hyenas seriously hunt until the morning Charlie, Wilson and I saw Helios and her daughters, along with Ted (very randomly, as she is Aqua’s daughter and not of terrifically high rank) try for a zebra.  They had been bristle-tail social sniffing with noses together on the ground, parallel walking in affiliation and pasting on stalks all morning long, fatiguing poor Wilson who had only just begun transcribing.  All at once they loped together toward a lone zebra.  In one of the most impressive national geographic-like sights I’ve ever seen; they massed around the zebra as it ran, closing it in on all sides so it appeared as though the zebra was running atop a sea of hyenas.  I was afraid for it, even as my mind insisted our hyenas must eat too.  For five minutes we chased them through a maze of bushes, trying desperately to get some data on video, the hyenas all the time right against the zebra’s front, shoulders, sides, flanks, and tail.  I was sure of the zebra’s impending doom, but all at once it found a group of five other zebras. That was too much for the hyenas, who slowed and dispersed.  Slightly relieved that I didn’t have to watch a zebra disembowelment, yet also slightly disappointed for the feast Helios et al. lost, I took a deep breath and watched the zebras run off.  Strength in numbers successfully demonstrated, and I bet that zebra didn’t wander off by itself for a long time thereafter.

16:14, Monday, 25 February, 2013

We may study hyenas, but it’s nice to know that the local herders don’t think less of us.  In fact, thanks to Benson and Wilson bridging important gaps between our understandings, one herder came to us for help when one of his cows went missing.  She had been pregnant, and wandered off to give birth somewhere unbeknownst to her owner.  We told him to hop in the car, abandoning our pursuit of Tilt (at the time we couldn’t figure where she had hidden little Blanket), and drove around shining the bushes and luggas.  It seemed funny, driving around a herder in a car plastered with hyenas looking for a cow lost within park boundaries, and yet it was a wonderful sort of funny.  We were working together, easing toward even further understanding.  I feel within the past year something lovely has blossomed in the hyena project: we aren’t as separate from the Maasai anymore.  We didn’t find the man’s cow; adding to the obscurely excellent relationship, he asked us the next morning if perhaps our hyenas were bloody or showed signs of having eaten a cow.  No, we replied, they rarely have cow for dinner.  He later found the cow, and thanked us very much for our help. 

In the same vein, there were several nights during which our guys left their beds to help with lion attacks, more common since the migration left.  Hungry lions will attack cattle– to them, they’re just walking beef patties, but these beef patties are accompanied by the all too unpredictable Homo sapiens, and therefore best avoided.  But nothing is best avoided when you’re hungry.  For several nights in a row, cries for help either woke me or entered my dreams.  Our guys are wonderful, and always run to help regardless of the hour.  One morning, Wilson told us he had helped chase a lion away from some cattle.  Once things had settled down and everyone had moved off, he, Joseph, and Jackson knew of the lion’s whereabouts right next to their vehicle.  When the herder asked them where it had gone, they sent him a different way: “I think it went over there.”  Not only do the herders owe our guys their cattle, and the cattle their lives; that lion probably owes them its life too.

The hyenas may not be stealing from the Maasai, but in a crazy turn of events we watched a bunch of them (low rankers no less) steal from a lioness.  We predict that perhaps the hyenas are becoming the top predator in these parts due a decrease in the lion population; recently they seem to be harassing the lions more than vice-versa.  Charlie, Wilson, and I had just left Hendrix when we noticed her suddenly perk up and begin loping with purpose to the south.  Before long we came upon Mork loping toward where Hendrix was disappearing into the bushes.  I don’t understand what sort of sixth sense these hyenas have; we had heard nothing, but somehow everyone knew that a lioness had killed a topi.  It was Aaliyah the lioness; she was still breathing hard from her catch, and I felt sorry it had been stolen.  She lay off about 30 meters from where Hendrix and several other hyenas were now absolutely tearing the topi to pieces. Other hyenas loped in from all directions, until there were about ten to fifteen present.  The rate at which that topi body was strewn into several parts and assimilated to become hyena mass is one of the most amazing things I have ever witnessed.  It took ten minutes at most for there to be only bits left, no form whatsoever. What a sight, what sounds of giggling, what smells of stomach contents and digestive juices (thanks to Allstar popping out of the bushes with the stomach, of whose wall she proceeded to open...rank), what a feel of exhaustion as I narrated nonstop.  It was phenomenal.

15:30, Thursday, 7 March, 2013

There are more reasons than the overwhelming amount of work that I find it difficult to find time to do something I love doing, which is writing this blog.  They are good reasons though, and reasons that I decided it’s time to completely surrender to.  Like stopping my transcribing to play soccer with Wilson’s little brother Dickson when he comes to visit, trying to kick the ball into a wheelbarrow stood on its wheel against the big tree-like bush by the kitchen tent, while Joseph cooks a delicious Maasai food called ge (pronounced gay) on his little grill nearby.  After soccer, Dickson and I get to try some of the ge, and it tastes like a mixture of bacon bits and corned beef, except in a perfect way, umame defined.  I cannot regret taking time to do these things.  One afternoon I sat and ate lunch with the guys as they took a quiz on Kenya out of a little book.  I participated, but literally the only question I knew was the one about which animal has females bigger than and dominant to males.  Yet the atmosphere was perfect in every way, and something so simple but such that I will never forget.  Or there are the nights when I decide to relax my mind and more fully take in the surroundings, letting my constant writer’s thoughts of how am I going to describe this for the people I love who cannot be here, how can I possibly make them see? go loose and I simply feel.  I feel the lightning jumping between the clouds with my eyes, absorb in pure elation the new area of Fig Tree I have never visited full of bushes and bounding juveniles of the rarely sighted side-striped jackal through tall grass, sink to a level of calm cognition with the rolling lioness wise enough to have known to take such times of joy by the wings without question, rhyme or reason. 

As the time nears to say goodbye to this place I cannot get enough of, I need to truly feel, absorb, and sink to levels of calm cognition.  Things feel okay as long as places like this exist, and I need it to exist somewhere other than my mind while it still can.  Last night, driving along, Wilson asked me when my leaving date is.  I told him, and suddenly had to turn my head because my eyes were welling with tears.  He comforted me, and in the typical Kenyan optimism told me not to be sad because I will return.  Probably true, but I won’t be 23, my family here (Joseph, Benson, Wilson, Jackson, Stephen, Lesingo, etc.) will likely be scattered, who knows how the Mara will have changed and whether I’ll ever be able to drive around, sometimes alone, and experience the deepest magic of this place and if any of the hyenas I love will still be alive, if some of the species (I’m a hopeful idealist, but that doesn’t put me past being scared by our persistent refusal to acknowledge what we are doing to our planet, much less to do anything about it) will still be alive.  It plain and simply won’t be the same.  And so I came to the decision then and there to do away with my new year’s resolution of writing three times a week (something I clearly haven’t kept up with), and in fact to make a new one until I get home.  I will continue to keep detailed notes in the notebook of happily colored elephants, flowers and suns – daily notes.  And when I get home, everything worth writing will be written.  It’s a promise I’ve made to myself, for myself, to keep this place as it is now alive for posterity.  But for now, I need to put aside something I love – this writing – for something I love even more, and that is this place.  It will all be written, but until mid-May, as the thunder rolls in conviction above and the raindrops fall on my home that is a tent and that I half wish could always be a tent, kwa heri (goodbye).  Kwa heri for my Kenya, kwa heri so that I can write more fully of it when the time comes.