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