Pursuing praxis

Raiding for knowledge and experience, that is. I’m off for Egypt this afternoon, and in about 12 hours I get to see Karen!!

Traveling can be a bit lonely, even for those of us with island personalities. I haven’t seen a familiar face in 3 months. But it’s gone *very* fast, and I am not consciously aware of the effects of long-term solitude, till I notice unusual behavior in myself - like being very chatty with taxi drivers and cooks and waiters and library staff.

And no work for 2 weeks (yeah right).

And I hear I can get bagels down the street from where I’m staying. How fabulous. And I’m not really a bagel sort of person. But these days corn flakes are a wonderfully familiar treat.

Cairo, Giza, Luxor and Mt Sinai, here I come! 

Monday in Nanyuki began with a visit to Morani the Rhino at Ol Pejeta Wildlife Conservancy on the west end of Nanyuki. Jennifer worked her I’m-a-resident-see-I-speak-Swahili magic on the gate keepers and we got in for under ten bucks (as opposed to forty for non-Kenyans). It’s funny, whoever does the talking, the gate people always assume it’s the exact same story for everybody else in the car. So I just sat there and handed over my 600 shillings and we were on our way.

Morani is a black rhino who was orphaned and brought up exposed to humans, thereby becoming quite possibly the world’s first - or at least only current - tame rhino. He’s now got a permanant spot on the Ol Pejeta driving map, several dozen acres all his own, and a 24/7 armed ranger to guard him and his prized horns from poachers. Sad but true. He knows his name, and his senses of smell and hearing are quite acute, though his eyes aren’t good for much and he has a crappy memory, so you have to say his name or keep moving around so that he knows you’re there, otherwise you seem him prick up his ears and head in surprise at your "appearance."

Although he still counts as a teenager, being only 24 years old or so, he apparently was in a tussle with another rhino some years ago and got a horn in the nads, so Morani won’t be reproducing. Mostly it seems he likes the bushes with berries on them. The ranger got us several handfuls, and just like that, I was standing next to a rhino with his pointy upper lip reaching for the twiggy goodies. He is really non-plussed by humans, and doesn’t care if you touch his head, horns, ears, body, feet, whatever. Hakuna matata, just pass the berries please. So we hung out with Morani for a good half hour, but he eventually got bored with us and it seemed silly to hand-prune these bushes that he could browse himself. He slowly but promptly turned around, moved off, circled in a grassy area between some bushes, and laid down for a nap. And he wouldn’t be bothered by a couple girls petting him or sitting down next to him for photos either. Totally cool rhino. On our way out we passed at least a dozen gray-haired tourists headed for Morani, and boy, we got very lucky to have him all to ourselves.

Mid-day in Nanyuki was spend on errands - antibiotics, a newspaper, and generator from the airport for Laurence, groceries and gas for us - which was slowed and complicated by bad roads (big surprise), a blockhead driver, and being in a new town. But it’s not that big either. We finally sent the driver packing around noon (as planned and agreed upon), and set out for Ol Pejeta again, this time for the chimps.

Ol Pejeta is huge, and they have a chimp santuary that’s very popular and very not-Kenyan - chimps are from west Africa. But, it draws people, including Jennifer. I didn’t feel like forking over some probably-awful amount to see child-like apes fling shit at each other, so I chilled out at the back gate of the conservancy and talked religion and responsibility with one of the guards till Jennifer returned some 45 minutes later. He was pleasantly incredulous (a typical Kenyan response) about my atheism, my support of evolution, and that I thought AIDS was a disease that affects lots of people for lots of reasons, and that people with HIV/AIDS aren’t being punished by God for past sins (or sins of their ancestors). That was a nice little conversation.

When Jennifer got back we headed north with Laurence’s directions, getting a later start than planned. This was complicated by taking the wrong road for 20km, at which point we stopped to buy him a newspaper (as asked) and turned around. Long trip for a paper. We shot north on good tarmac before coming to a crawling near-halt as it ended, the turn-off to Doldol on our right not looking any better. (I looked for Doldol on my map; it’s not there). We bumped slowly north trying to outpace the gathering clouds and receding sunlight. Jennifer said it was a solid 3 hr drive, mostly unpaved. Turns out they had paved a good chunk of highway since her last visit, and it only took us 2 hours or so, the last several turnoffs being marked with painted rocks. We passed under an elephant fence, along the edge of ranches (cows, sheep, rhinos), then finally down a hill, over two bridges - one looking like it used to be a train bridge and haven’t not the slightest hint of a railing - on up the hill, over, and back down, arrive at Laurence’s house just after sunset. I only got the 4x4 semi-stuck once, on one of the going-up rock staircases. Turns out it wasn’t in gear, so all was well.

The house was divine, but with a bit of that old-bachelor emptiness. Turns out he’s a long-term renter, and in fact informed me that he’s spent most of the last 35 years living in mud huts and tents. Still, it was nice, overlooking the (fill in the impossible name later) River with Mt. Kenya towering above the Laikipia plateau off in the distance. We had a rather late and rather formal dinner (red meat! Hallelujah!), I took the kids’ room in the adjoining cottage, Jennifer took the spare next to Laurence, and we all said goodnight.

There were/are two other researchers staying long-term with him out there. "The girls" and Laurence all had a nasty mixture of strep throat and giardia when we got there, so it was a rather mellow first night. One works on hyenas - ecology or conservation or somesuch - and the other works with the Maasai people about their lion killing culture or similar.

Tuesday I was up early for a game drive with Steven, one of Laurence’s lion trackers and long-time research assistants. The three of us piled in the Land Cruiser (sooooo much better than my feather-weight suzuki!) and looked for bovids. Saw some Grant’s gazelles, Thomson’s gazelles ("tommies"), a couple hartebeests with a calf (!), some zebra and giraffes. Pretty sparse. Actually, empty compared to normal. Evidently all the bovids were up north, and the "herds of a thousand elands" were nowhere to be seen. Pity.

We stopped by the staff quarters of the Mpala Ranch (they also have a research center I’d considered visiting), where one of Laurence’s former lion trackers is now employed, and is an old friend of Jennifer’s. That’s where the huts-with-thatched-roofs and camel pictures are from. They mostly talked in Swahili, and I was a very comfortable bump on a couch in a living room about (I’m not joking) 50 sq ft.  Jennifer understood about 50% of the conversation, me on the 1% end of comprehension. Jennifer got a pair of tire-tread homemade sandals as a gift, and I got to hop on a non-zoo non-tourist working camel. They’re so darn big and gross and wierd.

We were back at Laurence’s by 1pm with sunburns and empty stomachs. His cooking lady made a fantastic quiche, and we ate at the table out on the deck. The whole eating formality thing was a bit strange, especially since 0/5 of us were the formal sorts of people. Maybe having people to cook and clean for you changes the expectations about how you consume their services. Or maybe they just set out the table and it’s a pity to waste a well made dining table. Dunno.

Power was only available in the evenings when the generator was on. Curses I didn’t bring my power strip, so I camped out by the two-plug outlet and madly charged batteries before all went black at 10pm. My plans of "getting lots of work done" involving computer work pretty much evaporated right there.

There was a fantastic rainstorm Wednesday evening - the first storm of the rainy season, and it didn’t disappoint. Unfortunately, bovids don’t usually migrate hundreds of kilometers in one night, so my hopes that the rain would bring the bovids probably wouldn’t have any bearing on my week’s plans. I did watch the storm come in and open up while sitting on the back deck watching an elephant graze/demolish the slope below down to the river. Solitary bull, ears slowly fanning back and forth on occasion, and he looked a little gloomy with his dusty hide going black with the slanting rain on his back, and his head in a bush. Funny how a multi-ton animal can just "appear", seemingly out of no-where, right into the prime area of your field of vision. And just like that they can be gone too. Rhinos, giraffes, elephants, I’ve been surprised by all of them.

One more evening game drive with Laurence on Wednesday, saw a couple Grevy’s zebras (the really rare, nearly-extinct kind), 2 baby Tommies (hooray!), a fair number of impala, and what look to be two species of dik-dik, but I haven’t been able to figure out the other kind yet. My two field guides aren’t especially strong on dik-diks. But the pic of the two with white fluffy butts are the unknown ones. Kirk’s and Gunther’s dik-diks have much plainer, gray behinds, and less obviously red faces, smoother hair, and a less chunky appearance overall. We’ll see. 

I’d decided to move on from Laurence’s, instead of staying most of the week as planned. Gazelles are cool, but flocks and flocks of them were not to be had (as is normal out in Laikipia), and I had heard there are a lot of greater kudu at Lake Borgoria. So, I packed up and Jennifer and I headed out on Thursday morning for Leg 3 of the Great Central Kenya Adventure.

To be continued… 

Some of the most beautiful pictures captured by the Hubble Telescope. I don’t usually know what they are of, but they are in the public domain. See also the Nature’s Mighty Pictures blog and the Wikipedia commons for more awesome pics. (The wikipedia link may require access from a US server; I haven’t been able to view it myself). [Update: the originals, with info, and way cooler stuff than I can post here, are available at http://hubblesite.org/gallery. If I was at a young and impressionable age, I might consider becoming an astronomer on the spot.] Some of these I’ve found and linked to on the Hubble page, for far superior picture sizes and resolution.

Kitale is a small town in Western Kenya, near Mt. Elgon which is divided between Kenya and Uganda. Things are quite managable in this part of the country, not nearly as complicated as Nairobi - but I suppose 5 weeks of experience in Kenya also contributes.

The 5-6 hour bus ride to Kitale from Nairobi took, instead, 9 hours, and likely 10 hours on the way back. And even though it’s in the sticks, it’s notthat far away. Blame lies on the roads, of course, which around here are quite good; it’s half-way here near Nakuru where they’re horrendous. Oh wait, I haven’t gotten to the Nakuru part of my week-long journey story, so that will have to wait.

The sitatunga is a Tragelaphine (spiral-horned) antelope, same tribe as the eland, kudu, bongos etc. Their peculiar trait is being adapted for living in water and among reeds in swamps and such. They have wierd elongate hooves, when dry their coats look a little moth-eaten or baby-fuzzy, and they’re also oily, which helps being in the water. They can spend a majority of the day in the water, and when frightened they submerge all but their nostrils (or so I read).

Today I visited Saiwa Swamp outside Kitale to see the sitatunga, which is virtually impossible to see unless you live next to one. Saiwa Swamp was designed especially for the sitatunga, but land in this part of the country is a hot commodity (because it’s how you get your food each day), so the swamp is small and completely surrounded by little farms - 1-25 acres typically. You can hear donkeys braying, dogs barking, children shouting, in addition to the monkeys making occasional rackets in the trees, or doing the wierd hoopa-hoopa sounds, plus the zillion birds that make the place popular with ornithologists. I quite liked the place. It’s about 2km long, and has only walking trails (there being no lions, elephants, leopards, buffalo, cheetah, or rhinos). And, although I’m told Easter is a HUGE travel weekend for Kenyans - I was the only visitor in the whole place. I quite liked it.

And I saw 3 sitatunga, all females as far as I could tell (one may have been a juvenile). No, they’re not terribly exciting, being very cautious and deliberate in picking through the thick reeds and aquatic vegetation and around the bases of trees at the periphery. In fact, it was only after I got distracted watching birds that I finally saw one - some 30 yards from my observation platform! I got about half a gig of photos of that one, and another quarter gig or so of 2 the 1 at a great distance - 100+ yards I think. The birds and monkeys all make more noise than the sitatunga. Finally she moved behind the trunk of a half-submerged tree, and appeared to be chilling out without eating, so I looked up and down the length of the boggy reed meadow in front of me, and sure enough, once I started watching birds, there again she appeared, about 30 yards away and well outin the open, reddish-orange-brown coat with fait white spots aligned in faint verticle stripes - a tragelaphine hallmark. A few steps, pushing into the reeds, and she was gone, right there in the middle of the meadow, not to be seen again. Presumably she moved on mostly submerged, but it was kind of neat to see a 50kg artiodactyl, whose coloring was at complete odds with the environment, just disappear without a trace.

I got photos of a stuffed baby sitatunga in the park office (complete with metric ruler, with the staff as audience). I then phoned my taxi driver and walked the 2km to the first park service sign outside the gate. I got an impromptu lesson in Kiswahili from a man whose porch I passed (something-something-"safari" means "have a good journey"), and said hi to several enthusiastic kids. They basically shout "How are you!" at you as a way of saying hello, but it sounds rather aggressive the first few times you hear it. I parked myself and my backpack by the sign, and waited. One fellow also at the sign said he was going to Naivasha (pretty close to Nakuru, about half the way to Nairobi). He was clearly angling for a free ride, and I said he could take the taxi with me - for 100 shillings (the cost one way is 800 shillings). I made the offer before knowing he had only 150 for his entire trip, (my bus ticket was 650 one way, but matatus are much cheaper - and more dangerous). He wasn’t the brightest fellow, and couldn’t so much as hem or haw about the situation, just presenting difficulties as if it was my responsibility to solve his problems for him. I kept chucking the decisions back in his lap, and the others standing around were quietly amused at his indecisiveness. Finally he figured things out, gave me the hundred shillings, and we were on our way. I nearly gave him a 50 shilling refund when we got to Kitale to help him with the rest of the trip, but he didn’t say thanks or anything and he proceeded to not just ask me for money, but to claim that I said I’d give him additional, which I never did, and I told him as much (about three times, which is what it takes for words to sink in with your average Kenyan, it seems), I wished him a safe trip, turned on my heel and headed for lunch (checking a couple to make sure he wasn’t following me; oh yeah, I didn’t yet mention the disgruntled and disturbing dwarf who hounded me in Rumuruti - I didn’t like that one bit).

Lunch, newspaper, and now here I sit in the one cyber cafe open in a rural town of a few thousand people on Easter Sunday near the Ugandan border. Honestly, I was pretty surprised to find one at all! One horrendous bus trip coming up, a late start at work tomorrow, and then just a few days till I’m off for Egypt and - best of all - friends, rest and food. Well, friends and food at least; I haven’t seen Karen’s itinerary for our planned adventures yet.

I don’t know when the Princess of Mars series was written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, but it’s old enough to be in the public domain. Particular words date it considerably  (our PC culture making it unseemly to say things like, “What a long day! I’m totally fagged out!”), as do small differences in phrase and sentence construction. But mostly it’s the sense of life and values portrayed that make me guess it’s a turn-of-the-century book. John Carter, Gentleman of Virginia, Prince of Helium, Noble of the House of Tardos Mors, is a fighting man by profession, a proud American, and an unabashed pursuer of all things good – freedom, justice, pride, independence, skill, knowledge, wealth, friendship and the love of his life, the incomparable Deja Thorres, Princess of Helium.

He seeks to earn that which he wants, he looks to reality and his own past actions as the gauge of his worth, and judges each man individually, on his own respective merits. His thought on any subject is immediately translated into action, and through every bloody battle and unthinkably awful situation, we see a reasoning mind slashing through irrationality, superstition, fear, and “the impossible” to guide the way for his mighty long-sword and his superior Earth muscles which deliver him and his comrades time and again. He never surrenders (though retreating is occasionally the right thing to do), he never compromises with evil and, coldly estimating a situation to be unwinnable and unsurvivable, he boldly faces his death on countless occasions, determined to go down fighting, to “give a good account of himself,” to put up so mighty a struggle and so furiously fierce a fight that the day and manner of his death would necessarily grace the pages of history books and story books for countless ages to come.

These, and countless other instances of relentless and passionate value-pursuit despite the fact that John Carter has the as-yet unexplained trait of seeming unable to age. The narrator indicates John Carter remembers no childhood, he is at least six generations old, and has always looked and acted as a fighting man of 30. He has mysteriously died an Earthly death three times, only to find himself standing naked beside his otherwise dead self on the ground, and to be whisked to Barsoom (Mars) for the events subsequently recounted.

He is evidently as ignorant of the cause of his unusual situation as the reader, but he takes it in stride as easily as he jumps 30 yards across the ochre-colored swaths of a Barsoomian dead sea bottom. Like the inhabitants of his other-worldly home, he evidently has the potential to live indefinitely, although the fate of entire hordes of Martians on the receiving end of his long-sword, and at the hands of each other in their perpetual battles among themselves, clearly shows death is a very real possibility. As for our hero, the many instances where he is wounded, knocked unconscious, tortured, starved, sleep-deprived, almost drowned, choked, and nearly gone insane, and his experiences of pain, fear and hopelessness, show John Carter is every bit as mortal as his foes. Although he is occasionally lucky and always supremely skilled in preserving his life, he manufactures his own success with razor-like mind and sword, making him a veritable industrialist of martial strategy and a living legend within two years of first breathing the thin Martian air.

He is unquestionably a Man among both Earthly and Martian men, and in the confines of his own mind. Yet he doesn’t shrink from or apologize for the tears that spring to his eyes in response to grief, relief, joy, or bursts of pride, nor for the miseries and anger of unrequited love, nor the burdens of worry, fear, hope, and powerlessness of 10 years of separation, not knowing the safety or well-being of his wife and unborn son. But neither does he display his emotions to the detriment of his mission, or to the detriment of others he values. Even against his enemies he is deliberate, just and rational, though his contempt be anything but concealed. He recoils at barbarism, cruelty, and torture, and introduces the concepts of friendship and kindliness (to both men and animals) to the green men of Thark who, though proud, just and loyal, are a cruel people, alien to joy and love.

Thousands have fallen to his sword, gun and hands precisely because John Carter is a lover of life; he acts to protect his life and the life of those he loves from those who would threaten it for personal gain. Although fighting is his profession, his talent and his supreme skill, it is not his purpose in life, and he undoubtedly looks towards the days and years filled with peace and happiness with his matchless wife and son, to pursue other forms of productivity and creativity on his chosen home of Mars, planet of the red (and green and white and black and yellow) men, namesake of the God of War.

I don’t write as many letters to the editor as I could; mostly I am at a loss for words at the utter inanity, irrationality, and obtuseness of most major media outlets in the US. But, ideas appear more straightforward here in Nairobi. The newspaper articles are more plainly written, though rarely impressive or sophisticated and never identifying root principles at play (but when does that happen in any media?). But much of the articles on business are refreshingly clear, concrete, and unapologetic for entrepreneurship and earning money. As with American business though, the ideas discussed rarely tread into ethics proper, usually stopping with a "Crime is bad" observation and moving on. Today I wrote a letter to the editor for just such an article, whose author is secretary-general of Cotu - an organization I am unfamiliar with, but I gather it’s a labor union organization, which is unfortunate but beside the point. I have liked other articles written by Mr. Atwoli. So I gave it a go.

Dear Editor,

I commend Mr. Atwoli for his April 4th article discussing crime and business. As opposing ways of life, they take opposing stands on a basic issue: property rights.

As every honest business owner and worker knows, the products of one’s labor are his means for securing his livelihood - his life - peacefully, constructively, independently and with pride. A criminal who deprives him of his property - money or goods, time or effort - deprives him of his means for life. As crime grades up from petty theft to extortion and to murder, the relationship between property and life becomes increasingly obvious.

The root issue behind Mr. Atwoli’s article is thus the right to life, which as novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand pointed out, ultimately and simply means the freedom from force by others. And because individuals and their lives are inseparable, the right to life is inalienable and gives rise to all other legitimate rights.

Protecting individuals and their property from force and fraud - by strangers or family, foreign aggressors or one’s own government - is the only way "freedom, respect for law, tolerance and love for one another" can be consistently and lastingly realized.

This was the discovery and achievement of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Widespread protection of individual rights resulted in the unprecedented freedom, innovation, productivity, prosperity and peace of the first 125 years of the United States. The consequence was the feeling of unlimited opportunity, energy and vitality still known as the American Dream.

Of late, my form of relaxation and recharging has been audiobook mp3s of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Princess of Mars and Gods of Mars. I first heard of these books via a back-page editorial from The Smithsonian I found laying around lab late one Sunday night. Turns out it was from 1983, and how it got there and whose it was I have no idea, but the piece, titled something like “Wafted to Mars,” recounted the authors’ boyhood love of action-adventure comics and fiction, and his present (and rather ignoble) sense of duty to read more “serious,” “adult,” “deep” literature befitting a man of letters like himself. I found the two Burroughs books on librivox.org before heading to the Dark Continent, and they have been among the better “reads” I’ve sampled yet, vying for top spot with H. Rider Haggard’s King Soloman’s Mines (the 1950’s movie of which was filmed, in part, at Hell’s Gate National Park, which I visited my first week in Kenya).

Evidently though, Gods of Mars is Part 2 in a multi-part series, and it aggravatingly ended with an unresolved climax of action and danger. Now, although finding the name of Part III is no sweat with the internet, what are the odds I can find it for free on mp3, and that my connection speed can suck all those megabites of data off the net? Considering it takes a solid 20 minutes to download a mere 30meg mp3 for my online philosophy class lectures, that would make it on the order of 200 minutes to download Mars Part III.

Argh!

What of the incomparable Deja Thorres, Princess of Helium, and the devoted Thuvia, and the beautiful but jealous Fodor of the Holy Thurns? (Bear with my spelling, I’ve never read most of these names.) And the stoic and mighty Tars Tarkus, Jed-ak of Thark, and Zola, and Carthorres, and Kantos Khan, and their new fellow-in-arms of the First Born (whose name I am forgetting)? Do they escape their underground predicament in time? Presumably… but the glory lies in how! And, now that the evil Ish is dispatched (and at the hands of her staunchest believers and protectors), what of the death sentences, deriving from an irrational superstition and tradition, flying in the face of fact and justice, hanging over our heroes – all of them?

I’m also wondering if:

            1) John Carter counts as a space cowboy, seeings how he wasn’t really a cowboy back on earth, but a soldier and gold prospector, and the enormous riches, regal architecture, formal language and technological advancement of Barsoomian civilization don’t find many parallels in a frontier town of the Old West? And if so, then

            2) Is Edgar Rice Burroughs the father of the space cowboy genre of fiction? I haven’t seen Firefly or Serenity, but I understand they’re about space cowboys, and I’m wondering if they are similar and if there’s an historical connection.

Anybody?

Note: In Kenya at least, "safari" is just a general word denoting "journey," without the expensive or exotic connotations understood in American/Western usage.

Lacking the time (hours and hours) to adequately recount my weeklong adventure through central Kenya, I will simply jot down some of the more memorable and improbable aspects worth remembering. Hopefully I will post later with greater (essentialized) detail. For now, another list.

At the Aberdare National Park, I quickly surmised I could happily live there for upwards of a year (all else equal; which it’s not), it’s so beautiful and up my alley. Right on the equator, the eastern Salient portion is high mountain rainforest, very green, grading up the mountains to cold, foggy moorland bordered by bamboo and montane rainforest, home of bongos and melanic bushbucks (meaning they’re nearly black on their front half, by some quirk of evolution) and bohor reedbucks, of Sapper Falls and elephants and lions and buffalo, and friendly competent rangers packing WWI-era rifles, who get their water from the river and power from solar panels, where the management at the deceptively posh Treetops Hotel (where Princess Elizabeth was crowned queen in 1952) lets an electronics-laden researcher siphon electricity for half an hour for free, in a leather chair by the window across from the bar and overlooking the waterhole. A fellow built us a fire at our campsite by the creek and southeastern gate, and I wrote my daily notes by firelight and starlight, had a banana dinner (discovering that banana peels aren’t terribly interesting fire fodder) and jumped out of the backseat of the truck at 6am to go look for bongos with a ranger.  

At the Mt. Kenya Safari Club, the Mt. Kenya Wildlife Conservancy’s Animal Orphange proved to be the highlight of my trip. Across the valley from the Aberdares, by way of Nyeri in a prime tea-growing region, it’s lush, green, cool and high. I’m much happier in a sweatshirt than in shorts. The Safari Club was predictably posh, and I considered taking a dip in the pool (free with the daily club membership fee and mandatory donation to the animal orphanage), though at 7000 feet and with possible rain, probably a bit chilly for my likes.

The Animal Orphanage was great. I rode a 100 year old tortoise named Speedy, who (along with many other frugivores there) would do nearly anything for a bite of mango. He really did carry me, and without batting a turtle-eyelash. Oliver Twist the baby buffalo was a favorite of mine. He was very sociable, and as closing time approached and passed, our guide (I’ll just call him Manny, since I can’t exactly remember or pronouce his name) let him out of his pen and he ran around the open grassy yard, eventually following Manny around sucking furiously on his fingers. Manny played games with him, with Oliver chasing him around a park bench, feinting this way and that like Oliver was a dog. Hilarious, but I can only imagine what a danger a playful, human-friendly, energetic Cape Buffalo with a full set of horns will be in two or three years’ time. But, not my concern.

There was a baby wildebeest and a baby eland grazing the lawn also. Mala the wildebeest didn’t care for handfuls of corn, or really care about my presence at all, just persisted in trimming the lush grass. Katherine the eland is 4.5 months old, totally beautiful with her big doe eyes and cute stripes just coming out, but was quite shy, which is a tribe-level trait for the tragelaphine antelope. Jack the colobus monkey was nifty to hold, but he was a little crabby. Pretty neat to have the weight of a monkey on my arm though. The two white rhinos (behind electric fence) were fascinating, and while a bit disgusting with their wet noses snarfing and snorking at the ground, were overall quite neat (and not nearly as gross overall as elephants, in my book). Big Mama was about 24 years old, I think, and Zulu the male about 20 - still teenagers apparently, though the AO hopes they will eventually successfully breed. The pigmy hippos were hilarious. Check out my photos. They look awful and ferocious with those big teeth, but really they’d just learned to open their mouths widely and they get all kinds of food thrown in. So they stand there gaping, with smooth shiny grey hides with hay flecks stuck to their snouts. Really cute, actually, with little eyes and tiny ears and big round noses.

Jennifer asked Manny what his favorite animal was. He said it used to be elephants, and had been for years (he’s evidently worked at the AO for at least 10 years), until a couple years ago. He was out in the field with other rangers and staff when a bull attacked, scattering his group. It came after him and gored him through the back and out the front with one of its tusks, then flinging him through the air some 20 feet like meat from a kabob skewer. The tusk went through ribs, lung and stomach, possibly also liver, and (if I heard him correctly!) his stomach was hanging outside his body. He crawled behind a log and radioed for help, knowing an angry elephant won’t stop till you’re dead, and help was a good 20 minutes away. Incredibly, the elephant either didn’t find him or didn’t care to find him, and Manny spent 6 months in the hospital recovering from his wounds. That was 2-3 years ago, he appears no worse for wear to the naked eye, and now pigmy hippos are his favorite animal.

Manny kindly let us stay late, giving us a personal and narrated tour of the entire area available to the public. In addition to the critters I’ve already mentioned, we saw a mama cacaral (cat), a wild cat (different species but visually identical to the domestic cat, and well thought to be the ancestor of the domestic cat), a genet, a mongoose, patas monkeys, colobus monkeys, an ostrich, crowned cranes, two cheetahs, Pete the zebroid (zebroids are crosses between a horse and a Grevy’s zebra; zorses are crosses between a horse and the much more common Burchell’s zebra; both hybrids are sterile), eagle owls (which really can rotate their heads 360 degrees), and…

BONGOS!! The first I saw was a pregnant female, Elisabeth. Then 4-5 juveniles (it was feeding time), including a youngster with horns barely two inches long! I caught a brief glimpse of a male, and then later we visited with the two mamas who had babies within a week of each other, one right on Valentine’s Day this year.  We stayed clear of the moms, but I got to feed Elisabeth a bit. They’re also quite shy. Apparently there is a breeding herd of 38, and there have been 4 successful births this year alone. Talk about intellectual ecstacy! All these bongos! Many of which are used to people! Right then and there I decided to do what I can to link up with the Animal Orphanage and get live data on basic skull and body measurements. (Done; I’m now waiting for a response from the Board of Trustees, to whom I mailed a 2 page letter yesterday; I think I did a quite excellent job, and my proposal is quite easy and straightforward; we’ll see if I hear from them).

The next morning, after staying in Nanyuki, I discovered I was missing a memory card to my camera - the one with most of my AO pictures on it! After scouring my belongings, I concluded I must have dropped it on the grounds at the AO. Although giving up on it was out of the question, I figured the odds of finding it, and finding it intact, were virtually nil, as it could easily have been frozen, rain on, eaten, trampled or shat on by multiple sources. Nevertheless, we pulled up to the back gate, and as I explained what I was after to the caretaker, he produced from his pocket a little blue SD card, clean dry and intact, and a huge smile jumped to my face. I instantly gave him 200 shillings (paltry compared to what that card was worth, and worth to me, but most of a days’ wages in Nanyuki), and we proceeded back to Nanyuki.

And that’s just the first three days. Next up: Morani the Rhino, Laikipia District, and the Rumuruti adventure. Stay tuned!