The House
The house I'm in is pretty basic. No hot water, a lot of brown outs, and the running water's connected to the power so when that goes so does the toilet, sink, etc..The house on the left is the staff house and the other's the volunteer house where I am.
My bed. Havn't broken it yet so fairly happy despite my feet sticking out the end.
The Village
The village is very muslim. Everyone has to have their shoulders and knees covered when walking out in public which can be a pain. I've only like 2 pair of shorts that go below the knees.GVI also has a base in Mkwiro, a village on Wasini Island just across the water. The covering up thing's far more strict there. Women have to be completely covered all over except for the face. It's where the construction project is based aswell and even the women on that are covered.
The mosque is like 30 seconds down the road so we're woken up every morning when they blast the call to prayer.
The villagers are really friendly. Walking down the street everyone says "hi, how are you?". The kids scream jambo jambo jambo at you when you walk by and don't stop until you're out of sight. It was cute... at first. They're not so bad though really.
We have these gigantic millipedes running around all over the place that ink on you if you pick 'em up. A bit like a squid
What I Do
I eventually figured out what I'm doing here. The forests around Shimoni contain loads of endemic animal species and the forest's are being cut down at soemthing like 10% per year by the locals. So, GVI conducts surveys to study the animal and plant life in the forest so they can get an accurate reading on what state the forest is in. The main surverys we do are canopy coverage, human disturbance, and primate community. Basically that's seeing how much of the forest is covered in trees, human impact on the forest, and the population and behaviour of the monkeys (mainly the Colobus).This is a Colobus. They havn't been around too much since I got here but appearantly they're much more common.
These are Sykes monkeys. We usually see them more than the Colobus.
We also do education programs to teach the locals more about how to sustain their environment.
My week works out something like this:
-Days start with breakfast at 7.30 and then we leave for the forest at 8.
-We do surveys along pre-planned routes (transects) from then until about mid-afternoon when we return to the house.
-Then we do data entry which is just sticking in the numbers into a spreadsheet. Most tedious thing ever.
-After data entry is usually lesson planning.
-We run a 50 minute Wildlife Club on a Wednesday and a 25 minute one on a Friday. It involves going to the primary schools in the area and teaching kids about the environment. Litter, the animals, pollution, etc..
-We have an Adult Environmental Education on a Thursday afternoon which is informing the adults on the importance of the ecosystem they live in and how to preserve the forest and the animals and all that.
-Fridays are "Fun Forest Fridays". No surverys, we just go for a walk doing casual observations (taking note of all the species seen).
-Lunch is usually pre-cooked the night before for forest because we tend to bring it out with us and eat it in the forest.
-There's a chore rota with stuff like cleaning, cooking, and other stuff that has to get done at some point aswell with Friday being a deep clean day.
-6.30 each day is de-brief. Everyone gets together and just talk about what they did and plans for tomorrow and stuff.
-De-briefs usually followed by dinner, cooked by different people everyday.
-Thursdays we go down to Smuggler's (bar down the road) for a GVI pub quiz. We're usually the only ones there. Fridays we usually have dinner there too.
-Sunday dinner we go out to Abdul's. It's this amazing restaurant in the village that serves all this african food. It's sooooo good.
-Wednesday after dinner we go out and do a night survey.
-Weekends are your own.
Safari
Last weekend I went on safari with a few of the others out in Tsavo National Park East. It was absolutely brilliant.This was the watering hole right outside our balcony that was constantly surrounded by elephants, water buffalo, warthogs, antelope, and everything.
I took so many photos so I'll just post a few.
There were soooooo many elephants.
I think the pride of lions was my favourite.
The safari guides were pretty sure this lion was dying. She was separated from the pride and lying in the mid-day sun. There was a massive gash on her head aswell that looked infected.
Someone decided to aggravate the alpha male by growling at it. It got into an attack position and roared at us. Some people...
This guy kept following us.
We went on a night safari in the evening after dinner hoping to see leopards and stuff like that. No leopards unfortunately but there were some other pretty cool things out there.
The morning safari on the day we headed back home.
The major themes of the trip were "I wanna see Kev get chased by something" and "They'd eat you first"!
The Masai
On the way back from the safari we stopped in a masai village. They gave us a tour, showed us how they made fire and they gave a dance demonstration.That's the village chief in the background.
Their houses are tiny. I could barely fit inside and kept hitting my head on things.
Kevin make fire!!
The one in the air is the chief's eldest son Mikai. He was our tour guide while we were there.
There's a lot of jumping involved in masai dancing.
Bought a few too many souvenirs afterwards I think.
Something That Happened
One day we were walking through the forest doing canopy research. A part of it is looking backwards through binoculars and estimating how much of what you see is covered with canopy. So, I'm looking up, and I feel this kinda sharp pin prick on my leg. I shrugged it off as nothing. Then I felt a few more.I looked down and saw the equivalent of this:
crawling up my legs. (Shot of the arm is not my photo)
These little feckers are safari ants. And they bite. A lot. Turned out I had managed to stand in a whole bloody pile of 'em. After screaming a good bit and killing all the ones I could find on the inside and outside of my trousers I ran away shouting something that rhymes with "Duck, duck, duck, duck duck!!". Managed to get away from them in the end but I kept finding them on me for the rest of the survey in my waistband and on my neck. I was actually pretty lucky. Usually you have to strip down in order to get them all off.
The Snake
We had a snake in the house a few days ago. Guess whose room he decided to nest in! He slithered his way behind my roomates bunk. Turned out it was only a brown house snake which aren't venomous or harmful at all but the staff were still really cautious when removing it. The rule in the house if you see a snake is to keep 5 metres back at all times.I may have gotten a little closer. I'm never going to hear the end of that...
Dreams
One of the side effects of Malarone (the malaria drug I'm taking) is vivid dreams. The ones I've been having are less dreams more.. hallucinations. It's hard to explain. It's like I'm in the dream, then I wake up and I'm concious and can see the room but I'm still dreaming because I think all these things are happening. It's sort of like waking up and thinking your dream was real, except it's still going and you're not lucid at all.In the first one I thought two of my friends, JoAnna and Cara, were standing in the door to my room like those twins in the Shining (Emma & Ruth). I asked them what they were doing, but they just started screeching and darted to the side of my bed. Then I started screaming, except I was awake so I was screaming for real and woke my roommate Alex up. He wasn't happy.
During the second one I saw Georgia, the forest staff here (my boss), come into the room and say "Ok, guys, let's go!". I took that as my cue to sit up and start ripping my mosquito net off the ceiling and begin taking it apart. I sliced my finger open on one of the bars and still didn't "wake up". So now I don't have a mosquito net.
Language Barrier
I was teaching a section of Wildlife Club during the week that had to do with recycling and what we should do with our waste and all that stuff. Anyway, I thought the whole thing was going pretty well and they'd got what I was trying to say. They kept saying things and then the rest would laugh. I didn't really understand what they were saying because of the accent. Turns out they had no idea what I was saying either. And everytime someone said something they had been slagging my accent and that's what everyone had been laughing at.Mombasa
This weekend the other volunteers and I went to Mombasa. It's nice enough there. They drive like maniacs though. There's not really any right of way, it's kind of just whoever gets there first. I can't count the amount of times we almost crashed into a person or a motorbike when we were riding in a Tuk Tuk (kinda like a small taxi service).We stayed in a hostel called backpackers where GVI volunteers usually stay when they go to Mombasa on weekends. In the evening we went to a sort of club call Bob's. It was all outside and it was like an amalgamation of vaious bars surrounding each other. There was a loooot of alcohol. Today has not been pleasant.
Other Happenings
Just had some other pictures I wanted to put up and couldn't really think of heading for all of em.The view from the Shimoni Reef down the road.
One of the village houses. It's really hard to take pictures in the village because some of the local still believe in the whole photos capture your soul thing.
The beach where we go swimming sometimes.
There's loads of magrove trees in the water around here.
Buffalo spider are literally EVERYWHERE in the forest. I'm walking into them all the time.
A picture of a Suni I took on the night walk last week.
We painted the forest program wall during the week.
African Fish Eagle
There's goats all over the place in the village.
We went swimming one day.
I didn't notice Joseph's face in the background until after...
Alex can be broody.
It's baby goat season so there's all these little kids running around. There's a goat banda just outside the house so they wander in sometimes.
Small-eared gallago. Taken on a night walk.
Giant Pouch Rat
Hermit crab.
There's a place down the road called "The Shelf". The water's only a few inches deep and you can walk out for ages.
We've a board in the common area for a game called Karrom. Basically one of the only things to do around here.
Pictures of one of the Wildlife Club classes.
The staff trying to catch the snake that broke in.
That's all really for now. Took hours to write this so yaz better read all of it! :P
Talk to yaz soon!
-Kev