20 minutes ago I finished my undergraduate education. Ha! More on that later, we have chronology to keep up!
Zanzibar ended well. Our dolphin trip was almost cancelled due to the beginnings of monsoon rains (so...much...rain), but the rain cleared and off we went. Not too much swimming with the dolphins, but we did see a few swimming. Abdul Sheriff and I haven't finalized my research position for this summer, but I'm under the impression that it's good to go. Leaving Zanzibar was a 30 minute plane ride to Mombasa, where we toured Fort Jesus in some seriously oppressive heat.
From Mombasa (we were there a good 45 minutes) we went to Malindi, where last minute hotel problems left us staying at the Blue Roc. The Blue Roc, while very resort-y, targetted German sex tourists (a huge industry there). As a result, in between lectures we got to watch fat old white men smoke cigars and hit on skinny 18-year olds. Weird, weird stuff. Definitely a learning experience in terms of the dynamics of the trade. That's all I'll say here, but e-mail me if you want to hear some more thought out opinions. Aside from that, we toured museums and saw the Gede Ruins (where we got attacked by monkeys...seriously). I had too much work to do, so I didn't even get to go swimming, but it was all worth it. We got back to Nairobi last night (after a 14 hour truck ride), pulled an all-nighter to finish a group project, presented it today and as of the completion of our questioning period I ceased to be an undergraduate (grades pending). Pretty exciting stuff, eh?
I plan to spend the next few days at Backpacker Hostel in Nairobi, leaving for Mkenduri on Wednsday. Two CFSIA alumni I ran into today said it was an awesome exerience when they volunteered there, so I'm pretty excited. We (myself, Pete and Ellyn) get a house (a dispensary actually) to ourselves and get to spend our days off in Meru. Sweet deal. Rwanda is still up in the air, but the two alumni are friends of my travel buddy who just returned from a week there. They seem dedicated to convincing him to join me. Sweet deal x 2. That's all I know for now, but its pretty sweet.
Anyhow, I'm off to buy top-up cards for my cellphone.
Cheers
-Dave
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Friday, March 16, 2007
Sandbars and Zanzibars
Greetings from Unguja, the biggest island of Zanzibar (and the one commonly referred to as such, since it contains the city of Zanzibar. However, Zanzibar contains not only this island, but the clove-producing island of Pemba as well! Fun facts!!!!)! We arrived a few nights ago and I think I've lost about 4 pounds of sweat. It's hot. It's sooo hot. I just left a semi-arid area in Kenya (Mpala) where I thought it was hot, but it was not. This is hot, this is eyeball-melting, shirt-soaking, "oh-please-say-there's-air-conditioning" hot. Real hot (this just in, according to weather.com it currently "feels like" 101 F. It's hot).
Mpala was fun, lots of lectures, lots of hippos, lots of stone tools (we started an archaeological dig site!) LOTS of thorns everywhere and lots of campfires. We shut off the electricity to the camp one night so we could all stargaze (awesome) and I got introduced to the informal economy, shifting through crowds at some impromptu market looking for mirra (an energy boosting stick, which I swear is legal. Seriously!). Good times all around. I even found a boulangerie, owned by a French national, that made the best pain au chocolat I've had since France. Kenya is pretty awesome like that.
From Mpala we went back to Nairobi for one night of partying, after which we flew to Zanzibar. Since arriving I found out that Freddie Mercury owed a restaurant here that serves affordable curry dishes (Mercury's Zanzibar), food from street vendors is the most delicious thing available for 80 cents Canadian and that pretty much everything I knew about the East African slave trade was wrong. I'd go into detail about my coursework, but I'm paying for internet by the minute. The highlight was yesterday, when we all got on a Jahazi Dhow (look it up) and sailed to an unpopulated sandbar in the Indian Ocean and swam for hours. We got our lectures on the way to and from the beach, and cooled off in the crystal-clear (urchin filled) water. A-mazing. Since then it's been museums, lectures and a whole lot of work to be done (5 essays, two journals and a series of sketches) due between tomorrow and the 20th. I guess I won't be hitting the beach much after all. Tomorrow (and I can't believe I'm saying this) we go off to learn some biology on a boat and swim with dolphins (should we be able to find them). Groovy, eh?
Anyhow, I need to get lunch and get to work on my "stone tools and archaeology" module.
Cheers,
-Dave
Mpala was fun, lots of lectures, lots of hippos, lots of stone tools (we started an archaeological dig site!) LOTS of thorns everywhere and lots of campfires. We shut off the electricity to the camp one night so we could all stargaze (awesome) and I got introduced to the informal economy, shifting through crowds at some impromptu market looking for mirra (an energy boosting stick, which I swear is legal. Seriously!). Good times all around. I even found a boulangerie, owned by a French national, that made the best pain au chocolat I've had since France. Kenya is pretty awesome like that.
From Mpala we went back to Nairobi for one night of partying, after which we flew to Zanzibar. Since arriving I found out that Freddie Mercury owed a restaurant here that serves affordable curry dishes (Mercury's Zanzibar), food from street vendors is the most delicious thing available for 80 cents Canadian and that pretty much everything I knew about the East African slave trade was wrong. I'd go into detail about my coursework, but I'm paying for internet by the minute. The highlight was yesterday, when we all got on a Jahazi Dhow (look it up) and sailed to an unpopulated sandbar in the Indian Ocean and swam for hours. We got our lectures on the way to and from the beach, and cooled off in the crystal-clear (urchin filled) water. A-mazing. Since then it's been museums, lectures and a whole lot of work to be done (5 essays, two journals and a series of sketches) due between tomorrow and the 20th. I guess I won't be hitting the beach much after all. Tomorrow (and I can't believe I'm saying this) we go off to learn some biology on a boat and swim with dolphins (should we be able to find them). Groovy, eh?
Anyhow, I need to get lunch and get to work on my "stone tools and archaeology" module.
Cheers,
-Dave
Saturday, March 3, 2007
Did I say Feb 25th? Tee-hee
Long time no see ladies and gents. In Kenya the internet is a cruel mistress. Whenever you have access it becomes a 50-person scramble to check e-mail, upload photos and poke people on Facebook using a slow modem, so updating blogs can be a little crazy.
So yeah, the past month has been a whirlwind. The Mara was fantastic, I saw all major animals (photos to come whenever I have a few hours with the PC) aside from Leopards and Rhino (so lions, gazelle, elephants, giraffe, wildebeast, warthog, etc and about 120 species of birds) and got my tent flooded during a freak rainstorm in the middle of the dry season. Our bags were floating in 2-inches of water.
Dear @, thanks for convincing me to get the waterproof backpack!
After that (somehow) we got a campfire going and danced with some Masai (this has since become a fairly common occurance, I've gotten pretty good at the heavy-breathing, head bobbing, jumping parts, but yeah it's a little hard to explain). The prof. I spent the most time with (being in WILD 420-Ornithology), Dr. Bird, showed me that science courses are a great deal of fun when you let them be and he may have sparked a future birdwatching hobby (I just need a pair of working binoculars). The guy was a blast to be with, hopefully he and I will stay in touch.
Moving on from the Mara we stopped in Nguruman and Elangata-wuas, easily the hardest locations to spell on this trip so far. Nguruman was a lot of farm tours, blistering heat, cool birds and more diarrhea than I'll ever know what to do with. The highlight was chasing down wild animals in a Land Rover in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night armed only with a guide, Dr. Bird and a Maglite. Even with 9 people in the Rover we had a great time. E-wuas was a bizarre experience, camping at a fairly posh place (sunset vistas, refrigerated beer, curio shop) after weeks of flooded tents, ants (SO MANY ANTS!) and brown water (from the taps, the diarrhea wasn't that bad). I started and finished a research project on the nesting habits of barbets with my friend Francois, climbed a minor mountain in the Rift Valley, visited a factory that makes calcium carbonate (which clearly appears in the dictionary right next to the word "exciting") and had a pretty amazing experience in a boma. A boma is ostensibly a Maasai household, made up of a bunch of smaller huts, a few families and a whooooole lot of livestock. Myself, fellow student Pete, translator Noah and staff-member Mukhtar spent the night with a delightful family and had a blast. We hearded goat, cooked, cleaned kalabashes and impressed kids with my headlamp. We spent the whole night talking about our various cultures (our foursome was a Jew, an Athiest, a Catholic and a Muslim. Alas, we did not enter a bar). Notable conversation topics included a 45-minute explanation of hockey (Skates? They're shoes with blades...no no no they don't try to cut each other with them), a shorter debate over the merits of big-ass potato-knife vs. potato peeler, why we didn't own cattle and what exactly "The Jewish" was. We slept on cow skins in a dung hut (of which one of the walls hadn't dried...you know, the wall by the head of the bed), ate porridge (despite it being around 50 C inside the hut) and laughed a great deal. The head of the household (a village elder and former warrior) gave us walking sticks and gave me his rungu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rungu_%28weapon%29) that he had been using for quite some time. Seriously cool stuff.
From E-Was it was back to Nairobi where I took exams (Ornithology ended, Dr. Bird left and I got sad) and started my history course with Prof. Campbell (coolest history prof ever) on East-African slave trade and the Indian Ocean world. We've gone shopping, hit up Carnivore (google "Carnivore+Nairobi" for reviews), saw The Last King of Scotland (awesome) and visited the British Institute in East Africa (http://www.biea.ac.uk/ where I hope to do some research at some point). Tomorrow we depart for Mpala, where we'll do the primary test excavation of a possible future archeological dig site (yay stone tools!) and interviewing folks about slavery (which I'm sure won't be awkward in the least). After then (no internet there, sorry!), it's back to Nairobi when I'll fill y'all in on everything Dave-like.
Oh, and the mohawk is gone, but it did not die before amusing hundreds of children who couldn't stop laughing at the white guy with the ridiculous haircut.
Peace, Love and Rock n Roll
-Dave
So yeah, the past month has been a whirlwind. The Mara was fantastic, I saw all major animals (photos to come whenever I have a few hours with the PC) aside from Leopards and Rhino (so lions, gazelle, elephants, giraffe, wildebeast, warthog, etc and about 120 species of birds) and got my tent flooded during a freak rainstorm in the middle of the dry season. Our bags were floating in 2-inches of water.
Dear @, thanks for convincing me to get the waterproof backpack!
After that (somehow) we got a campfire going and danced with some Masai (this has since become a fairly common occurance, I've gotten pretty good at the heavy-breathing, head bobbing, jumping parts, but yeah it's a little hard to explain). The prof. I spent the most time with (being in WILD 420-Ornithology), Dr. Bird, showed me that science courses are a great deal of fun when you let them be and he may have sparked a future birdwatching hobby (I just need a pair of working binoculars). The guy was a blast to be with, hopefully he and I will stay in touch.
Moving on from the Mara we stopped in Nguruman and Elangata-wuas, easily the hardest locations to spell on this trip so far. Nguruman was a lot of farm tours, blistering heat, cool birds and more diarrhea than I'll ever know what to do with. The highlight was chasing down wild animals in a Land Rover in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night armed only with a guide, Dr. Bird and a Maglite. Even with 9 people in the Rover we had a great time. E-wuas was a bizarre experience, camping at a fairly posh place (sunset vistas, refrigerated beer, curio shop) after weeks of flooded tents, ants (SO MANY ANTS!) and brown water (from the taps, the diarrhea wasn't that bad). I started and finished a research project on the nesting habits of barbets with my friend Francois, climbed a minor mountain in the Rift Valley, visited a factory that makes calcium carbonate (which clearly appears in the dictionary right next to the word "exciting") and had a pretty amazing experience in a boma. A boma is ostensibly a Maasai household, made up of a bunch of smaller huts, a few families and a whooooole lot of livestock. Myself, fellow student Pete, translator Noah and staff-member Mukhtar spent the night with a delightful family and had a blast. We hearded goat, cooked, cleaned kalabashes and impressed kids with my headlamp. We spent the whole night talking about our various cultures (our foursome was a Jew, an Athiest, a Catholic and a Muslim. Alas, we did not enter a bar). Notable conversation topics included a 45-minute explanation of hockey (Skates? They're shoes with blades...no no no they don't try to cut each other with them), a shorter debate over the merits of big-ass potato-knife vs. potato peeler, why we didn't own cattle and what exactly "The Jewish" was. We slept on cow skins in a dung hut (of which one of the walls hadn't dried...you know, the wall by the head of the bed), ate porridge (despite it being around 50 C inside the hut) and laughed a great deal. The head of the household (a village elder and former warrior) gave us walking sticks and gave me his rungu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rungu_%28weapon%29) that he had been using for quite some time. Seriously cool stuff.
From E-Was it was back to Nairobi where I took exams (Ornithology ended, Dr. Bird left and I got sad) and started my history course with Prof. Campbell (coolest history prof ever) on East-African slave trade and the Indian Ocean world. We've gone shopping, hit up Carnivore (google "Carnivore+Nairobi" for reviews), saw The Last King of Scotland (awesome) and visited the British Institute in East Africa (http://www.biea.ac.uk/ where I hope to do some research at some point). Tomorrow we depart for Mpala, where we'll do the primary test excavation of a possible future archeological dig site (yay stone tools!) and interviewing folks about slavery (which I'm sure won't be awkward in the least). After then (no internet there, sorry!), it's back to Nairobi when I'll fill y'all in on everything Dave-like.
Oh, and the mohawk is gone, but it did not die before amusing hundreds of children who couldn't stop laughing at the white guy with the ridiculous haircut.
Peace, Love and Rock n Roll
-Dave
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
