It’s been a while since I posted, so… here’s another post,
starting where I left off last.
After we climbed Mt. Kenya, we spent two weeks in a course taught by
Professor Andy Dobson. All I knew
about Dobson before the course began was that he was a disease ecologist, he
was British (Scottish actually), and he never replied to emails – he’s the thesis advisor of two
students here so they theoretically needed to be in contact during March so
they could plan their thesis, but, whatever. While they talked about how he didn’t respond to their
emails, they would call him Dobbers because that’s his netID.
Anyway, he’s actually an awesome, chill
guy, and we found out really quickly.
Upon his arrival – a day later than when we expected him to arrive – he
gave us our assignment for the course:
we were going to map the distribution of plants, animals, and insects on
Mpala Ranch. Maybe this sounds fun
to you! If so, you are probably
not a field ecologist. If this
sounds ridiculous to you, you are probably a field ecologist, or a practical
human being, who realizes that two weeks is not enough time to do a thorough
sampling. Mpala Ranch has four
types of soil – red clay, black cotton, riparian, transition (between the red
clay and black cotton) – so the hope was to see the different biological
communities atop these soils. Like
I wrote, it was ambitious and totally impractical, but it was a valuable
exercise. I had never really done
anything like ecological surveying before and I learned a lot: mostly that this type of surveying is
ridiculously tedious and annoying.
We split into four specialized groups to sample the ranch: mammals, birds, insects, and plants. I was in the mammal group with Nitasha
and my roommate Devika. We called
ourselves Mammies and formed what our other classmates might’ve called “a
clique.” I mean, mammals are
definitely the coolest things around, and to survey the mammals we woke up
every morning at 5:30 AM, went on a drive until 9 AM when we would eat
breakfast. We’d do another drive
after dinner (8 PM – 10 PM) to see if animal distribution was effected by time
and also to see the animals that only come out at night. Over the course of one week of
sampling, we drove over 200 kilometers.
It was exhausting, but really fun.
On our drives, the bird group would join us so I learned a lot about the
different birds of East Africa. The
drives were fun; the vegetation sampling was not. After our breakfast, we had to go out into the field with the
plant and insect groups and do their bidding when all we wanted to do was
sleep. By the time we got back
from the field (lunch time) we just had enough energy to eat and then lay
down. Because we were worried we’d
never actual analyze the mountain of data we were collecting, we were crabby
and resentful all the time.
Eventually, we were able to convince Dobson to let us spend one
afternoon at the centre analyzing our data, and it was much needed. Here’s a list of all the animals I saw
on our drives:
1) Dikdik (yes, it’s actually called that…)
2) Scrub Hare
3) Impala
4) Reticulated Giraffe
5) Plains Zebra
6) Grevy's Zebra
7) Thomson's Gazelle
8) Rock Hyrax
9) Vervet Monkey
10) Galago (aka Bushbaby)
11) Spotted Hyena
12) White-tailed Mongoose
13) Black-backed Jackal
14) Grant's Gazelle
15) Elephant
16) Olive Baboon
17) Striped Ground Squirrel
18) Cattle (Mpala is a research centre and commercial ranch,
so cattle abound)
19) Slender Mongoose
20) Hippopotamus
21) Defassa Waterbuck
22) Eland
23) Buffalo
24) Steinbok
25) Bushbuck
26) Domestic Dog (we’ve seen wild dogs [actually severely
endangered] earlier in the semester just not during our sampling; only domestic
dogs which are kinda boring [no offense!])
27) Fringe-tailed Gerbil
28) Leaf-nosed Bat
29) Dwarf Mongoose
30) Honey Badger
31) Lion (heard, not seen; although I saw lions earlier at
Ol Pejeta and again at NNP [BLOG POST TO COME SHORTLY!])
32) Warthog
33) Jackson's Hartebeest
34) Oryx
35) Single-striped Grass Mouse
36) Honey badger (speculative…)
Now here are some random stories from our time in Andy’s
class:
1) Rock Band.
As Mammies, we would always complain while doing the vegetation
plots. On our first day doing
vegetation, we found the work so boring, in between counting trees, shrubs, and
blades of grass, we picked up rocks and hammered out beats. One particularly popular song (only
amongst the three of us, everyone else hated our singing) was called “Countin’
Plants.” The lyrics (written by
me) are as follows:
Countin’
Plants
Countin’
Plants
Countin’
Plants
At Mpalaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Ranch
At one point I started banging out a beat that was like this
super awesome LCD Soundsystem song, so enjoy it and be thankful you weren’t
counting plants and listening to my shrill voice.
2) Q Fever.
Before coming to Kenya, we had to have a pre-departure meeting with a
University physician about Q Fever.
Basically, Q Fever is kinda like Chagas disease in that you get it, you
think you just have the flu, and, like, two decades later your heart craps out
and you die. If you catch it
early, you treat with antibiotics and it’s no big deal. But they wanted to check our heart
function before even going because it probably is bad to get it if you already
have valve problems. So… we were
told not to touch livestock because Q Fever is carried on ticks that are on livestock. But… during one particularly lackadaisical
day of counting plants, we just needed a pick me up and it was convenient that
at this exact moment a herd of goats/sheep (I really can’t tell the difference)
came through. We wouldn’t jump at
just any goatsheeps, but the Maasai herders were curious and came over to look
at us, so we looked at them and saw one of them had a baby animal hanging from
a sheet tied to his breast. IT WAS
SO CUTE! So we asked him if we
could pet lamby (that’s what we called it even though it was a baby goat [i.e.
kid]) and we did when he said yes.
We played with the lamby (that was born JUST THE DAY BEFORE!) even
though it couldn’t walk, by petting it and trying to give it pieces of straw to
eat. Eventually we went back to
our plot and their herdsmen went back to their sheepgoats. Dobson came over to us after a while
and we told him about our exploits with lamby, to which he said only, “Girls… Q
Fever.” OH SHOOT! TOTALLY FORGOT! THE LAMB WAS JUST SO CUTE! Okay, so we probably had caught Q
Fever. But actually no because we
would’ve seen a tick on us and also the lamb was freshly born so I don’t know
how it could get Q Fever that quickly.
Anyway, later that night I checked out the Q Fever Wikipedia page and
was pleasantly surprised when I read the following (straight from the
page): “Treatment of acute Q fever with antibiotics is
very effective. [CITATION NEEDED]” I’M SORRY, WHAT? You can’t just drop this vote of
confidence on me Wikipedia, then rip it away with a “CITATION NEEDED.” Whatever. But actually, we don’t have Q Fever. But the incident did breed hilarious
phrasings such as: “If this isn’t
Q Fever, I don’t know what is.”
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| Nitasha and Devika with lamby. |
3) Toad in the Road. On one of our night drives, we saw a toad in the road. I don’t know what came over me, but I
decided to pick up the toad (we named it froggy to stick with the incorrect
naming convention established with lamby). Previously, I wasn’t the type of person to pick up frogtoads. For example, my cousins would always
pick up toadfrogs and I would just pet the amphibians’ backs with one finger if
I weren’t running away from the frogtoad.
I don’t know why I was afraid (firstly, I wasn’t afraid, I just don’t
like things crawling on me…) of these creatures in the past, but maybe it was
the attempt to look like a tough girl in front of Dobson, but I hopped out and
picked up froggy and brought it into our car. Froggy proceeded to FREAK THE HECK OUT and jump around the
seat before I flung it outside again (after we had identified it). Anyway, later in the week, I picked up
another toadfrog, so, you know… this is a thing I can do now.
4) Leopard in Da Streets. Of the big cats here (Cheetah, Lion, Leopard), I’ve seen the
first two. I (along with my
classmates) have yet to see a leopard.
The one morning after we were done sampling the mammals (and thus done
waking up early for early morning game drives), Dobson and our TA Jake went out
just for fun and SAW A LEOPARD. I
curse the gods.
More Ado About Dobson:
He’s actually really cool.
Some afternoons we had cocktail lectures and he talked about really
interesting things! One lecture
was on general ecology of the Serengeti.
Interestingly, after rinderpest was eradicated (one of the only two
viruses to be wiped off the planet, the other being smallpox), animal
communities altered because wildebeest populations we no longer depressed due
to disease. This altered predator
populations, plant communities, and ultimately soils. I had never before considered a disease to have the ability
to alter soil make-up. Just goes
to show you… it’s all connected…
Another one of his lectures was about rabies. Definitely not the type of lecture you
want to have in Kenya without having received the rabies vaccine. Basically, you can get rabies from many
sources: domestic dogs, wild
animals (hyenas), bats (just inhaling their saliva can do it), etc. SUPER SCARRY CONSIDERING BATS LIVE IN
THE FREAKIN’ BATHROOMS! Also, when
the director of Mpala mentioned that once they had a rabid hyena chillin’ in
the bathroom. Basically, I didn’t
want to use the bathroom for a week after hearing this lecture. The sad thing is the week we arrived at
Mpala, a research assistant had died of rabies. This sh*t is happening all over people, and I feel like in
the U.S., we never really consider it as an issue anymore because a vaccine exists
and treatment is readily available for those bitten. Ain’t the same here.
Dobson works with a group in Tanzania trying to vaccinate pet dogs (if
you could call them pets; they live in the house but have to fend for themselves
for food) and it’s pretty successful, but there’s still so much that needs to
be done. I told him someone should
do their senior thesis work on rabid dogs and call it “The Real Reservoir Dogs.” He chuckled. I chuckled. But actually, this stuff is pretty sad. Dobson told the story of one man who
was bitten by his daughter who was bitted by a pet dog. The man didn’t have the money to get
treated. There’s only been one
successful treatment (The Milwaukee Protocol) of rabies once symptoms started
settling in. Doctors pumped her
full of ketamine to slow her neural function and limit the spread of the virus
to her brain. With the virus
slowed, her body’s immune system (with the help of antivirals) was able to
fight off the attack on its own. However,
post-first-symptoms survival is extremely rare. When someone starts showing symptoms, the treatment is, as
Dobson said, “say goodbye and chain them to a bed.”
We had another lecture about Elephants and the Ivory
Trade. Basically, China
sucks. But not really because
every country exploits a different natural resource and it just so happens one
of China’s is ivory and Americans want elephants to hang around so their
children can see them in zoos but know they exist in the wild as well. But China likes ivory for traditional
purposes, and since the Chinese middle class is growing, so goes the ivory
demand. Many countries operate a
legal ivory trade with quotas, but it’s total bullsh*t because poachers will
always find a way to cheat the system if there’s a system in the first place. In West Africa, elephants are basically
all gone. In East Africa, they’re
declining. In Southern Africa,
where they use the “legal ivory trade” to pay for their conservation
efforts. But the sad part is,
poaching totally screws up elephant social structure. I don’t really remember why, but it totally does. If you’re curious, send me an email and
I’ll look back at my lecture notes.
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| Don't tell me you don't like elephants... |
Our last lecture was on roads. Sounds boring, but it was specifically on the road the
Tanzanian government wants to build that would cut straight through the
Serengeti National Park (SNP) and straight the wildebeest migration
corridor. Hundreds of thousands of
wildebeest migrate from south Kenya to south Serengeti every year and having a road
there probably wouldn’t be good.
I’ve driven down NJ/NY highways and seen so many deer dead on the side
of the road. I guess it’s kind of
bad that I’m desensitized to deer, but if it were cheetah or wildebeest that I
saw dead on the side of the road, I’d be appalled. The funny thing is, it’s also totally more economical to go around
the SNP, but the government promised one thing and if they go back on its
promised road it will make them look weak. A government going back on it’s word looking weak… guess
Congress is pretty damn weak.
THE END. More
to come on Paula Kahumbu’s class and my experience in Nairobi National Park!
P.S. I’m
addicted to Game of Thrones. That is all.
