Pursuing praxis

Well, close.

I have the awesomest lab and labmates. My natural inclination (with anyone) is to decline social invitations to lunch, dinner, etc. in order to "get work done." Which may or may not happen as envisioned. But still, the drive to work is very seductive, especially when I’ve made the resolution to leave blocks of time - whole days, in fact - to "focus on my research."

But, for the price of an enchillada, I learned the basics of how to procure, maintain, and use a dermestid beetle colony, at home or at work. Dermestids are the beetles used to clean up carcasses and leave a nice clean skeleton. I also learned about some rather ignoble people and practices surrounding institutional colonies, mainly resulting from a staggering degree of irresponsibility and failure to be considerate. And I learned that the dermestid beetle colony housed at the Smithsonian has been reproducing in isolation for so long that those beetles now can’t breed with non-Smithsonian dermestid beetles. Evolution in a test tube, I’m telling you. Or bathtub or cardboard box or other container, context depending.
 

Here’s some stuff I’ve come across lately. I’m low on post-inspiration today.

Unbelievable: Pride and Prejudice not good enough to be published today. I suspect more publishers sniffed a problem and, like the last agency quoted, chose not to stir up emotions and simply be done with the "author" - though it’s still damning, because cracking open the first page of that book would have revealed much more than close ’similarities’, so that’s negative points on intellectual integrity for them.

Way believable, and way cool. A beautiful … music video?? … of the 17-year cicadas and their life cycle, set to music by Enya. Funny how the right music can make one favorably regard a classic pest. The time-lapse photography showing them crawling out of their nymph shells and unfurling their wings is really neat. 

And, along with my purchase of HP7 at Fry’s Electronics this weekend, I strolled past the first book (Vol. 1, Issue 114, No. 247, I think) in the Haggis-on-Whey World of Unbelievable Brilliance Series. Yes, it’s as good as it sounds. I was torn between my two academic loves: things with split hooves and four stomachs, and human anatomy. Ultimately I chose Giraffes? Giraffes! over Your Disgusting Head: The Darkest, Most Offensive and Moist Secrets of Your Ears, Mouth and Nose. You know, lunch reading material at work.

Oh, and if you think the cosmology of Scientology is some of the best fodder for stand-up comedy (Dave), you should check out the book on giraffes. I suspect Tom Cruise would have some choice words for the giraffe population of Terre Haute, Indiana, but I think their belief system stands up just as well as that devised by L. Ron Hubbard. Really, he should check them out. I think it’s healthier to fixate on giraffes and Neptune than be a scientologist, anyway. Plus, L. Ron Hubbard never got a doctorate. So Dr. (and Mr.) Doris Haggis-On-Whey must have it right.

I’m sorely tempted to go get that second one and lobby for using one of their figures as part of an extra credit question for the anatomy lab final. Only eight bucks at Fry’s (hardcover, new, and only a buck more expensive than the cheapest ones on Amazon). Think I can hold out? Yeah, me either.

Well, inspiration problem solved. And I think I should have titled this post ‘Believability".

In unrelated and present news: This rockin’ coffee shop I’m in at an ungodly-early hour of the morning usually plays straight up classical music, unless it’s closing time, and then they blast Brazilian mariachi music or something equally intrusive. It took me a minute to recognize the music just now - and it was the theme music to Jurassic Park by John Williams. (If you like his music, he took a lot of cues from Dvorak. Check out Dvorak’s 9th Symphony, "From the New World." Really.) (PS: as a favor to those who don’t know the missing accents on Dvorak’s name and what they mean: it’s pronounced like Duh-VORE-zhock, where that "zh" is like a cross between "sh" "z" and "j" sounds. It’s Czech.)

Wow. It’s been a long time; I’d forgotten how awesome that music is, and it still evokes the giddy awe (and visuals) of the scientists arriving at the island of dinosaurs, "pristine" jungle amid state-of-the-art technology. That was a great movie. Great music, great graphics, decent book, cool dinos, scary dinos, scientist-heroes, a man in black, the lawyer gets eaten while sitting on a toilet, and you’ll never look at rings in a glass of water quite the same again. Plus the follow-up book was kinda heavy on theoretical math (for a high schooler, that is). I’m kind of a wuss when it comes to suspence and scariness, but if I had to pick, getting hunted by Deinonychus in a stainless steel kitchen, or having a piece of plexi-glass between you and the business end of a T. rex is the way to go. 

Who’s Deinonychus, you say? Deinonychus is "Velociraptor" in Jurassic Park. They combined the real  Deinonychus’s scary body and wicked-cool claws with the spiffy name of Velociraptor for the movie. I mean, it’s Hollywood’s schtick to rewrite the facts of nature and science for box-office sales. Real Velociraptors were, if I remember correctly, about knee- or hip-height, and had fingers about as long as their forearms, with smaller claws, and were more snatchers than eviscerators. The morphology of their wrists, as well as the proportions of their forelimbs, are "adaptations" previously thought to only be part of the package-deal for flight in birds. Turns out the proportions of the forelimbs and shape of some of these wrist bones (and probably other stuff) is needed for both flight and snatch-n-run predation. The rest of their bodies was very obviously unrelated to flight; they were made for dog-eat-dog (Deinonychus-eat-Deinonychus?) life on the ground. So you get this piece-mealing of very purposeful traits "leading up to" or even concurrent with the emergence of powered flight capability in birds, and in close-but-separate branches of the family tree, rather than a clean, exclusivist monopoly of useful-for-flight morphologies marching towards the acquisition of avian flight. Being bird-like in some very key morphologies was not the sole province of birds. [Note to self: double-check this with labmates for any slight errors]. [Self: See Sarah’s comment below.]

Of course, as I recall it, the over-riding message of Jurassic Park was "Don’t mess with nature," which I disagree with. You gotta mess with nature in light of nature, and not dictate your terms to it; but messing with nature is critically important in general. As Sir Francis Bacon emphasized, "Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed." It’s the purpose of that bubble-shaped boney structure sitting atop your vertebral column, the latter which also broadly supports a body that is the bipedal, terrestrial version of sushi. I like "Man tames Nature" themes, not "Nature tames Man" themes.

Still, fabulous music. Makes my cd-buying sense start to itch. Really badly. Argh!

And where the devil is the soundtrack to any of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies? That too is half the appeal of the movie (the other three-quarters being an amalgamation of ships, bad hats, heavy eyeliner, and subtle, witty retorts). 

[June 30: Methinks I spelled Caribbean wrong? Surely not Pirates. In any case, my labmate helped me fix this hole in my music library. And I’ll be watching Pirates 3 tonight. I’m looking forward to Pirates 5 and 9 and 24 and however many they make.] 

—
From Sarah:

Sorry to go all dino weenie on you(and even worse, I\’m about to correct your theropod comment, and even even worse, I\’m talking about dromaeosaurs), but velociraptors were very similar to the JP evil beasties in most aspects but size. And Deinonychus was, alas, also too small to be the nasty raptors in Jurassic Park. Deinonychus was about 4 feet tall at the most.

However, there was a dromaeosaur about that size, Utahraptor. It was named in 1993 and was about 6 feet tall. It\’s also one of the three dinosaurs that appear in every day\’s installment of Dinosaur Comics at http://www.qwantz.com

Some good reconstructions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Velociraptor_skeletal_by_Scott_Hartman.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Deinonychus-scale.png

http://www.marshalls-art.com/images/ipaleo/paleopg25/utahraptor_final300web.jpg

http://www.qwantz.com/archive/001019.html

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… 

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!

… till we were in sight of the front end of the herd. Then he turned off the car and we waited. About 45 minutes, while the bovines trickled across the road (towards the creek a short ways away). I got about half a gig of photos, all told. I also learned that they travel fairly close, within about a minute and 15 seconds’ walk of each other.

By the time I decided we could go, there was a rather disturbing rustling in the bushes, and huffing, and other signals of buffalohood. Damn, I thought. But, the critter(s) weren’t getting any closer, or sounding pissed, so I said let’s go. Andy turned the key in the ignition, and… click, click. Double damn. He slid out of the car with a suave smile and scooted around the front of the car, like he was trying to be inconspicuous in New York City an not the Kenyan bush. In 10 seconds he dropped the hood closed, and 5 seconds later he started the car and we were off, without catching the especial attention of any buffalo. We passed a couple bulls chilling out under a tree about 20 yards from the truck, which are the ones I assume were making the noise, and then a few stragglers hanging out in bushes on the left of the main thoroughfare to the creek farther up.

Driving north through the park we passed the creek area where the buffalo had gathered. But, the view being mostly blocked by trees, I only caught glimpses of single buffalo here and there. I got some good pics of one in the water, framed by trees. I looked closer, and what first had looked like nothing, and then junk in the water, slowly started looking rather hippo like. I fiddled with my camera a bit, and then at Andy’s exclamation I looked up to see a hippo chasing a full sized buffalo out of the water, water going everywhere, and trotting after it along the shoreline under the shad of those very African looking umbrella trees. That was pretty cool. Two of the most dangerous (and herbivorous) large animals in Africa, and the one lacking sharp pointy weapons, a hundred companions, and foot speed totally won the contest. It’s like saying: Sausage 1, Swiss Army Knife, 0.

From there it was pretty much a straight shot out, and middle of the day. I considered going to Nairobi National Park on the way back in, which guarantees game viewing a fair bit more than the distant Tsavo Parks. But, plains game can be had other places as well, and I don’t exactly thrill at the $40 entrance fees for foreigners. So, I got in earlier than planned, picked up my computer from work, and headed back for an early breakfast-for-dinner, a shower, and work.

And tomorrow: BONGOS!!  

I’m staying just down the street from a Hare Krishna temple and school. And the Aga Khan hospital is very close. There’s a noticeable minority of East Indians here, and I’ve seen one young girl (18?) in a burkha. Pity. But most young people dress as in the states, and at the more upscale shopping areas (though not mind-blowingly five-star or anything) it’s obvious that Nairobi is the place for very hip, trendy, beautiful rich young people, however many (or few) of them there are.

Perhaps I’ve unknowingly dodged a majority of US bureaucracy, but I came face-to-face with the Kenyan kind yesterday. I had a minor errand to do - show up at the Ministry of Education at 11am with my receipt to pick up my permit which they had started processing the day before. Relatively little problem on that front - except that I show up to office #1 and wait 5 minutes, then get funneled to Office #2, where after waiting 5 minutes, talking to the Under Secretary of Science and Technology, am told to wait (another 20 minutes), I explain my case, wait another 5 minutes, he tries to funnel me back to Office #1, I resist, I wait some more, then upon finding my file discovers that he does remember my application, there was a problem with the photos (I have them), but wait - the secretary didn’t type a letter for it like she was supposed to, I must come back after lunch (an hour and a half later, 2pm). I ask if I can pick it up tomorrow morning, easier for everyone, and am flatly told no, I must come back at 2 o’clock.

So, that pretty much shot the best part of the day, and I sat at a deli counter and wrote philosophy stuff - compelling, but not the research I came to do. Oh, and the hassle doesn’t count the guards at the parking lot gate, which incidentally is the only way into the building, the necessary visitor’s pass, the pea-green uniformed and bereted soldier to tag and watch my luggage, the massively overcrowded elevators, the noise and clutter of on-going construction, or the fact that all the toilets lack seats and toilet paper - I guess they don’t want you hanging around too long.

Things got a little better when I headed up to Sarit Center, a pretty inclusive shopping center a couple kilometers from the guesthouse. I think this is where the white people shop. I didn’t see a single white person in all of downtown Nairobi - but race doesn’t seem to be much of an issue here, not compared to crime and poverty. When I’m not advised to go places, the explanation usually includes a clause of "Not even people living in Nairobi go there, it’s not safe for anyone." What stares I get are more the curious kind any apparent oddball attracts, and not malicious or derogatory (in my experience yet).

Sarit Center has quite decent, if expensive, internet (4Ksh/minute, which amounts to a little over $3/hr). I’ve hooked up with a travel agent there who has given me great advice, and has been the middle man for getting me a Kenya cell phone (people aren’t likely to call my south african number because it’s so expensive to call internationally), and a taxi to Hell’s Gate this weekend. The phone thing in particular was pretty much under the table, as I haven’t technically bought anything from the travel agency yet. It’s quite evident that people, in an effort to get ahead, do a lot of business "on the side." Apart from the fact that it was a personal transaction, it was quite on the up, and he gave me the receipt for his purchases, and I paid him back with a tip. Beats the pants off me trying to figure out all this stuff myself. The approach to cell phones is foreign to me, the whole concept of taxicabs was utterly opaque to me at first, and I’m quickly learning the best way to get something done - cheaply, safely, and quickly - is to ask if someone knows someone. Transactions between strangers are apparently a huge risk for getting ripped off, stranded, or whatever. If someone suggests a vendor to you, it’s a kind of insurance if something goes wrong - you rattle their social network, and that’s bad for them.

I’m on the fence as to whether I think this is a society based on pull or not. Relations and reputations are valid considerations. On the other hand, if there’s not an objective product, endpoint, or standard at the end of the day, some aspect of reality you’re dealing with, it’s all a house of cards in the sky. I think the government people fall into the latter category, with some exceptions. I think most people on the street, being closer to hard money and needing food today, are closer to reality, but tend to move away from it as they climb the ladder.  

Here, "Taxi" = guy with a car who’ll take you where you want to go if you pay him. And they’ll go pretty much anywhere, and depending on the trip, they’re happy to wait for you. For example, a taxi to Hell’s Gate Nat’l Park, about 1-1.5 hours north of Nairobi, will cost me US$125. That is, a trip there starting at 6am, he waits for me all day, and a trip back before sunset. Renting a car and driving myself would cost $135, not including the hassle and risk of driving myself. Insane, the way that works. 125 bucks is still quite a bit, but I’m happy to shell out for a safe and secure first trip out of the city, and when I figure things out a bit, I’ll work on saving money.

Oh, and I get to hire an armed ranger at the gate to walk around with me - more for protection from wildlife than other people. Hell’s Gate is one of the few parks where you can walk around on foot - the predators are largely absent for some (natural or unnatural) reason. But, there’s still the odd chance, plus old buffalo bulls are nasty critters, and I won’t mind the company and assistance.

Oh, and the national parks here aren’t fenced - critters come and go as they please. Which also explains some of the trouble with poaching. Critters quickly learn what’s park and what’s not, and the non-migratory types take up residence. Elephants seem to be a major problem here. On the one hand, it’s good to make sure elephants continue to exist, which means fighting poaching and protecting habitat. Being a keystone species, they are also vital for the survival of many other kinds of organisms. On the other hand, they move around a lot, have a penchant for seasonal migration, eat a ton of different things, and are devastating to their environment. Naturally, that’s a good thing - that’s part of their role as keystone species. Next to farms and ranches though, it creates huge animosity between farmers and the elephants and wildlife service. Farmers are as likely to bump off a pachyderm because it’s destroying their crops (by eating or trampling or both) as someone after its ivory. But anyway. Not my present concern.

Funny thing: yesterday, crossing a street with John the Travel Agent to meet my cabbie Francisco, we were predictably hassled by street vendors peddling wares. That is, guys standing on the dotted yellow line trying to sell you stuff as you walked by or drove by. I was approached by one grimey looking man who, one hand holding his jacket closed, eyes shifting left then right, held out his cupped hand to offer me a… palm-sized white fluffy bunny rabbit. A live one. I shook my head and held back a laugh. I asked John if he was selling bunnies because Easter is coming up. He said no, they sell them all year, but the guy would get in big trouble if a cop caught him. How there exists a black market for bunnies is beyond me. You probably burn more calories cleaning it than that thing packs in its entire body. I’d buy one if I had a pet boa constrictor.