I realize from my last post, it would be difficult to
discern what I actually did at Ol Pejata.
You probably just think Ol Pejata is a hut with bats, bees, and ants
flying and crawling about. Well,
that was our sleeping hut, but that was far from the actually Ol P. experience.
As a nature reserve, Ol P. is geared towards tourism. Tours come in and out of the game
reserve everyday and some people choose to stay inside the reserve at one of
the many luxurious accommodation options (read: not the research camp). Because it’s a tourism cash cow (it
also herds cattle, but that’s off to the side) they go to great lengths to make
their animals come out of the bush.
Expansive plains sweep across the landscape, punctuated by gullies with
natural (and man-made) water holes in the form of dams and marshes. It was truly gorgeous stuff. In the background of every image was
Mt. Kenya, the second tallest mountain in Africa (1st = Mt.
Kilimanjaro in Tanzania). Our
first day there, we saw a plethora of animals: gazelles, zebras, warthogs, waterbuck, dik-diks, impala,
giraffe, rhino. On our second day
there, my van (six students in each van for a total of two vans) saw a lion
chilling in the shade by own of the dams.
We named her Big Mama Cat because she was most likely an old female
excommunicated from her pride because she was old. Sadly, she tried to hunt, but failed; we saw her take a poor
angle on two warthogs drinking by the water and they scurried away before she
could even get top speed. It was
kind of like The Lion King, which we also watched recently. Anyway, after Big Mama Cat, we also saw
another group of super lazy lions chilling in the shade by the marsh. It was funny because animals do warning
calls to alert other animals when they see lions. So this baboon was doing a warning call as the lions just
lay there in the shade, not giving a frack. Finally, the baboon just left and again, the lions didn’t
care. Did you know lions can sleep
up to 20 hours a day? Talk about
lazy. (Did you know giraffes need a minimum of 10 minutes of sleep a day? Talk about not lazy) Also, they often just steal food from
hyenas or leopards or cheetahs. I
mean, talk about double lazy.
Anyway, it was truly amazing.
I wasn’t in the car that saw a pride of lions crossing the street, but I
think seeing Big Mama Cat stalk and chase prey was pretty cool too. I even got a video.
So, what we were actually doing at Ol Pejata was a project
on foraging/vigilance behaviour (I know, sound exhilarating, right?). We drove around in our cars, stopped at
gazelle and zebra herds, and calculated how long individuals were foraging or
vigilant and what proportion of the herd was doing which activity at any given
time. Not going to lie, it was
pretty boring. The fun part was
driving around looking for animals.
At the research centre, there was only one dining table and the
actual researchers who worked there took it up. So we sat in lawn chairs around a fire every night and ate
our dinner. The food was decent,
but not as good as Mpala. Also,
they used cilantro in, like, every meal and I FRACKIN’ HATE CILANTRO. It’s just not an appealing flavor to
me.
I was sad to leave Ol Pejata only because I was sad we
hadn’t yet seen a lion or cheetah take down a gazelle. That is my one dream in life.
The same afternoon we can back to Mpala, we had our final
exam. Dustin “claims” Princeton
made him give a final exam, but I think that’s B.S. because the Panama kids
don’t do final exams. They just play around with
epiphytes. But we were able to
stronghold him down to three short essay questions, pick and answer two. I answered one that stated: “what is a savanna?” It was funny because the night before
as we were studying, Devika said, “what if one of the questions is ‘what is a savanna’
and I said, ‘that wouldn’t happen.’”
It did, Erisa. Luckily, the
question also came with, “describe the three natural processes that maintain
the savanna ecosystem,” so I didn’t have to B.S. for a whole page about the
definition of a savanna. The other
question I answered was about the female spotted hyena anatomy I alluded to in
a previous post. In the end, the
exam took three hours, and it was the only exam I’d ever taken in my life where
I seriously considered taking a nap.
I was exhausted. Everyday
I’m exhausted here. Luckily, I
finished the exam with just enough time to spare and then headed into lab
report mode. That’s right, I still
had two lab reports to complete before dinner of the following day. Why? Why? WHY?!? Well, I basically finished my
independent project lab report (about acacia larvae) and my group members for
the foraging/vigilance experiment agreed to go over the last bits of that lab
report tomorrow afternoon, so I was free to enjoy our farewell party to Dustin. Although we now live up at the research
centre, we all drove down to the campsite and made a fire around the fire pit
and danced and listened to music and roasted marshmallows and sang songs
(included a parody of “Party in the U.S.A.” entitled “Party in the M.R.C.”). It was great, but sad because it meant
Dustin was leaving and he’s SUCH A COOL GUY. Also, he’s a Columbia professor, so it’s not like I’m going
to see him around campus. Oh
well. Devika has already said she’s
going to go hang out with him in NYC, so maybe I’ll tag along.
Peas out,
E
P.S. In other
news, I finished The Great Gatsby. Overall, it was a good read, but the
ending seems a little too rushed.
Maybe that was the effect it was meant to have, but I thought for all
the detail and development of earlier, for the ending to just come and go so
quickly. Maybe that was the
point. If so, okay
Fitzgerald. Let’s see how Baz
handles it. Now I’m reading The Fatal Strain – non-fiction about the
coming H5N1 bird flu epidemic.
Pretty enthralling.
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