While writing this, I realized it's quite hard to "generalize" what we do on a daily basis because it varies greatly, but I have attempted! Hope yall enjoy!
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| Words can't describe this beautiful sight I wake up to each morning! Mount Kilimanjaro is visible only in the morning and night...it disappears under the cloud cover from about 10 am until the evening. Enjoying it while I can because when we move to Tanzania (where Kili is actually located) we won't have a clear view of it :( |
07:30 -- breakfast
This includes eggs, potatoes, toast, pancakes, sausage, baked beans, oatmeal, and lots of delicous fresh fruit (watermelon, pineapple, mango, papaya). Once every five days I have cook crew, which means I need to wake up an hour before breakfast and my group of 5 students helps the chef cook breakfast for the whole camp (26 students and about 10-15 staff depending on the day).
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| The baboons are active each morning until 8 ish, when they go up in the trees and avoid the hot daytime sun. They then reemerge around 5 when it starts to cool off. I guess it's mating time because we see a lot of awkward baboon action lately... this makes for some territorial males and we will occasionally see males chasing each other around and fighting in the trees--almost sounds like dogs barking and its LOUD! |
08:00-10:00 -- class
This class usually runs 8-10 but sometimes it's 8-9:30 and followed by a short break. Either Wildlife Management, Wildlife Ecology or Swahili Language & Social Culture. Our classroom (the "chumba") is an open-concept room with tables and chairs. It's nice having class with a breeze coming through and hearing the birds chirping outside. It's also the same place where we eat meals!
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| This is a view from me standing near the bathrooms. I live in the bandas on the right side (the second to last, furthest away from the bathroom) and others live in the bandas you can see on the opposite side in the distance. The large building on the left side of this picture is the chumba, which is connected to the kitchen and library. There is a large porch facing the open space in the middle of everything, where we toss ze frisbee for fun during breaks. There's also a gazebo in the process of being built (just to the right of the tree) |
10:00-12:00 -- class
Once again, WM, WE or SSC. If its a special class or field lecture, we might have one class from 8-11 if it involves driving some distance or hiking somewhere. There's usually one or two field lectures each week, but the rest are either in the chumba or somewhere outside around camp!
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| Me after a field lecture on Inkinsanjani Hill. Mt Kili is hiding behind the clouds in the background! |
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| Some young boys herding their livestock near our lecture. These are on the older end too--we often see young boys 4 or 5 years old out there on their own! |
12:00 -- lunch
Lunch starts getting prepared around 10:30/11 while we are in class, and the delicious aromas tease us while we listen to our professors lecture. It usually consists of some pasta dish, salad things (the avocados here are deeelicious), vegetables -- broccoli, carrots, couliflower, green beans, butternut squash, cabbage, spinach -- all of which rotate through in either lunch or dinner on a daily basis, fried bananas, potatoes, fruit. Everything (and I mean almost everything) is cooked in oil here, which is getting kind of old, but it's not too bad.
After lunch we have a break until 2 pm, which is great for relaxing or getting some things done. I do laundry about once a week, or will catch up on readings or work on an assignment (which will be happening a lot this week because we're started to get the work piled on us)
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| My laundry...I always say I'll do it every few days so my clothes don't pile up, but I get lazy and then am stuck washing a bunch of clothes which takes way longer than expected, especially when everything is chronically dust/dirt covered. My socks are already permanently brown so those will be going in the trash at the end of the semester rather than coming back. Shout out to my mum who has always handwashed my special delicate shirts that I can't put in the washing machine....but this doesn't mean you're off the hook in the future ;) |
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| This is me and a euphorbia tree in camp....it is cactus-like and has white milky sap that is poisonous. All the foliage here is covered in crazy huge spikes (like up to 1-2 inches long). Some have smaller thorns, but don't let them fool you, they are extremely painful if you scrape your leg or arm on them, too... |
14:00-16:00 -- class
We have a third class in the afternoon, which is almost always guaranteed entertainment to watch people falling asleep after lunch.
After class, we have free time to do whatever. We hang out on the couches on the porch or play soccer or go for nature walks either inside the fence or outside the fence if we have a guide. I make a solid attempt to do homework but it's just so hard with everything to do here!!!
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| The baboons playing in the evening. They have a field day playing on these gazebo things around camp, but will run away if you approach them because they are afraid of us |
19:00 -- dinner
For dinner, there is some sort of meat dish (either lamb, beef, chicken or goat), along with pasta, lots of vegetables, ugali (this weird, flavorless cake-like thing made of flour and water...its a traditional African dish they eat with cooked cabbage), rolls or chabatti (pita-like bread thats fried so it's really good but not very good for you). Lots of yummy fruit once again.
We wash our own dishes in some basins after each meal. On the day you have cook crew, you help the kitchen staff by washing the pots and pans used for cooking and serving dinner. It's nasty but a good character builder I guess.
After dinner, we just hang out. Once again, it's so hard to focus on doing anything productive so it usually ends up being lots of joking around and story telling, but sometimes I'll be a good student and work on assignments (or post to my blog).
22:00 -- bed
I usually go to bed around 10-11. The stars are absolutely AMAZING here, so I always star gaze while I brush my teeth and when walking to and from my banda. There's a few little bats who hang out (literally...hah) on my front porch, so I say hi to them each night when I make my way to bed. If I'm lucky, I sleep through the night, but usually get woken up by these obnoxious, huge birds at some point in the early early morning.
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| Carey, Paige and I with our dirty legs after a nature walk. No, I am not wearing leggings. The dust here sticks until you shower or wipe your legs/feet down with a baby wipe |
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| This was our excited group on the first day it rained! It's still dry season but has started to rain more frequently, in short little burts of like ten minutes every couple days. |
Well, thats the end of my attempt to fill you in on my daily life activities...Below is a little update from the last week or so!
On Valentine's Day we went to a primary school for a Community Service
day. We split into groups to teach each
of the four levels of students and planned fun lessons (or games, in our case)
to teach the kids. The school just
outside Kimana, but the closer we got, the more I wondered how the hell people
find the place! Our land cruisers traveled down the dusty road and over huge
holes and bumps. Ernest, one of our
drivers, turned down this obscure trail (it seemed imaginary to me because we
were essentially driving through the brush) and we soon saw the school in the
distance. There was one long building.
It was separated into four classrooms, each very minimal with wooden, falling
apart desk/tables and windows without panes.
There were water jugs scattered in the back corner and chalkboards in
both the front and back of the room. The kids were so incredibly sweet and
attentive. They all stood when we entered the room and clapped
enthusiastically. Their responses were
so cute and in unison and just filled with genuine excitement. We played “heads
up seven up” and a few other games with them, then went outside and played Duck
Duck Goose and soccer. It was touching
to see the eagerness of these students to learn despite their minimal
conditions and supplies. They were so quick to love us and showed it by their
friendship custom of holding hands. We brought them little work books and
pencils, erasers and pencil sharpeners.
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| gettin all artsy 'n stuff :) |
When we got back, my bandamate Taylor (the one who was sick
before) had taken a turn for the worse. I walked in our banda where she was in
bed wheezing loudly with each breathe. Being the sweetheart she is, she asked
me to make sure that her "secret valentine" got the gift she made for our exchange that night. I
told her I would, and ran to find Tara because I knew things were not
okay. She ended up being taken back to
the Mbirikani clinic only to be sent to Nairobi via ambulance, where there are more official
hospitals with specialists who would try to figure out what was wrong with her.
We were all very nervous for her, but found out the next morning she was
already doing better. However, that was not enough for her parents and the
people at SFS headquarters, so she was flown home yesterday. We
miss her a lot already! I can’t even imagine having to leave the program early
after looking forward to it for soooo long (not to mention the fact she might
have to spend an extra semester in college now and probably didn’t get any sort
of reimbursement). I'm taking probiotics and vitamins everyday, so hopefully I can stay relatively healthy throughout the course of the semester!
On Friday we had our first homestay with a Maasai family.
Everyone was very excited and a little nervous while we were getting ready in
the morning. We went with a partner and were dropped off at various bomas of
our neighbors that KBC is close with. Each of us brought a huge grocery bag
with cabbage, sugar, flour, cooking fat, cookies, bagged milk and some other
stuff, along with a large jug of water for drinking and cooking. Myself and the girl Rachel I was paired with
got dropped off last. As our intern
Jenna and our driver Sipaya said goodbye, he said to us that this was the first
time this family had hosted students and wished us well. (cue nervousness). Our mama was very kind
and had 2 very young sons and thankfully one older daughter that could speak
some English. We started off our day as traditional Maasai do: drinking chai.
It doesn’t quite taste like chai in the US but it’s similar and tolerable, so
we drank up and then headed out with our mama to fetch water. They have multiple heavy duty plastic jugs
that they tie this flat plastic cord around and sling over the head to carry. We walked almost a mile to the spring where
they get water. In reality, it was a stagnant pond of brown nasty water that
livestock walk right into to drink. The edges are mucky with poop and mud. THIS
is where they go each day to fetch water for their needs: drinking, cooking,
and washing. Our mama thankfully waded
in to fill up the jugs for us, and then proceeded to wash her legs off in the
same brown water. We then carried the heavy jugs home on our heads (wasn’t
actually that hard but my neck hurt eventually) and were greeted with more chai
when we returned.
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| These are some little boys we saw at the watering hole with their cattle....unfortunately you can't see the water thats just off to the right, but trust me...you would not want to swim or drink from it even if your life depended on it. They must have amazing digestive and immune systems. |
Now is where it starts
to get gruesome. There were so many
flies everywhere in the boma—and I mean everywhere. And I mean MILLIONS.. The children had snot running out their noses and the flies would
crawl all over their faces, literally on their eyeballs, into the corners of
their mouths, and all over their noses. It was disgusting but I tried to ignore
it and just bear with it. But the little
kids wanted to be by us, so as we drank our chai, they would come into the boma
and bring the flies with them, which would then crawl all over us, our cups and
literally everywhere. I was terrified but tried to play it cool because I knew
there were flies at the other bomas we visited.
Then one of the babies started throwing up. That’s when I really started
to freak out. So we went to go gather firewood with our mama while all the kids
stayed back at the boma. We used the
same cord thingys to wrap the piles of broken dead branches that our mama
knocked off the trees and chopped up with a machete. Carrying them back was
difficult but I didn’t mind because there were no flies! When we got back, we
went back in the boma and were given MORE chai while lunch was made. I was
internally freaking out more and more about eating and the sanitation (or lack
thereof)... We watched
as the mama and her daughter Evelene chopped up the cabbage and tomatoes and onion (on
a plastic potato sack on the ground) and dumped it into the boiling water. I couldn’t help but worry because we did not
see what water they used nor whether or how they washed the dishes we were
given. The food was actually decent but
I could not stop freaking out and wondering what everyone else’s boma vists
were like….
We ended up getting picked up a little early because we were so concerned for our health and could not enjoy it no matter how hard we tried. Literally
traumatizing. I cannot believe people still live in such conditions even though
I saw it with my own eyes. It was an unbelievable eye opener and has brought a
whole new meaning to my life and the gratitude I have for what I was born with
and what I have been given. The opporunities I have been given with school and college, and having TWO jobs is something I will never take for granted again. This is my vow to try to complain less and appreciate everything so much more after living this way for a day. I cannot
even begin to attempt to fully describe to you accurately enough to portray the
reality of their home life. But regardless of the horrible aspects and my
fears, I am grateful for having the opportunity to experience a day in the life
of a Maasai woman. It was a bit disappointing to hear from everyone else that
they had “amazing” experiences and didn’t experience many of the unpleasant
things we did -- not that I would wish that on anyone. And I don't mean to sound disrespectful or rude in the way I've described it, but it's the best attempt I could do to share with you this experience. Needless to say, it was a rough night for me and it made me miss home, but besides that one day, everything has been better than I ever imagined it could be with a group of almost all girls living together 24/7!
On a brighter note, we had another safari at Amboseli National Park on Saturday. It’s
about a 30 minute drive from KBC, most of which is down a horribly bumpy
gravel/dirt road, which makes for a loud and bouncy trip. Our purpose was
actually pretty awesome though: we were helping the Kenya Wildlife Service
with their animal census in the park! SFS started participating in this project
with KWS in fall of 2010, so we are still pretty early on in the contributions
to their research efforts! Our 26
students were broken into four groups and each assigned a predetermined “block” of the parks’
land to count any and EVERY animal we observed. Our section was quite large on
the map, which was intimidating, but the majority of the wildlife was
concentrated in the one area where they were near water. There we observed hundreds of wildebeest,
plenty of zebras, lots of elephants, some cape buffalo, Thompson’s Gazelle,
ostrich and warthogs. We got to go off-roading, which regular park visitors are
never allowed to do, and search through our area for animals to count. Turns out, our section was so large because
of the fact that most of it was barren desert land that floods during the rainy
season but was completely empty while we were there. It was definitely awesome
to get to participate in this project and go off road with a KWS ranger in our
vehicle!
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| <3 |
After we finished our block, we saw giraffes and lots more wildlife on our way to meet up with the other groups. One swampy area was literally “circle of life” style with hundreds of animals of all ages – zebras, giraffes, elephants, gazelle, wildebeest and hippos – all chillin in the same area. So very cool!!!
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| I have "The Circle of Life" stuck in my head now. |
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| We saw this guy chillin just outside the park on our way home... "You can't see me!" |
Well, thanks for bearing with me through this obscenely long post. I might start trying to do this more frequently to avoid the lengthy posts, but we'll see about that.
Hope all is well at home!!! Feel free to send me messages if you have questions or stuff to share with me :) Also, please keep my Grandpa Miresse in your prayers, as his health is failing with his old age (his 90th birthday is March 8th)....making wishes for him and other loved ones when I see shooting stars each night. Time for bed now! lala salama!
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