Learning to be hospitable and stuff

(A huge baobab at a school ground. They are such cool trees!)



I guess it’s been a while since I updated this, it has been a busy couple of weeks here at Mwamba!

Last week was Dave and I’s first full week of looking after hospitality at the center (we started June 8). On the weekend of June 12, we did a little touristing in the area to celebrate our anniversary, visiting the Bio-Ken Snake Farm outside of Watamu, and had a lovely getaway to one of the beach resorts in the area for the weekend. The snake farm was very interesting, as they are the main provider of antivenin for all of East Africa, and have over 60 species of snake living at their center! We got a tour, and our guide Dickson was fantastic, telling us all about different kinds of snakes, how poisonous they were, and their habits. He even let us hold a few of the non-poisonous ones. The snakes were really beautiful, and so much less stinky than the garter snakes at home.



We went crow counting at Malindi again, as well as our normal Tern count at Sabaki River Mouth, with only one hitch... a lunar eclipse! Once a month (on the full moon), we go to Malindi and do crow counts. There is a native species (Pied Crow) and an invasive one (Indian House Crow) so they are collecting data on the numbers of each to see how the local population is holding up. Not well, as we usually count about 50:1 House to Pied crows. From there, we go to an estuary, the Sabaki River Mouth to do roosting counts of the wader birds there. The reason we go on the full moon is because it is so dark and in the middle of nowhere (20-30 minute hike in to where we count, across all kinds of mud and sand) that we need the moonlight to count. Last Wednesday , even though it was a full moon, it just wasn't that bright and we couldn't figure out why! Then, as we were looking, we saw that it was an eclipse, and we got to watch it progress all the way home (walking and driving). It was very beautiful. Though it meant our
wader-counting objective was a bit of a fail!

(Albert and Lydia, two of the people I went crow counting with. We are on top of an abandoned hotel)

After that, it was full-time guest house duty, as well as trying to fit in our other projects around here. We have had two big groups in; the first one was from Aga Khan Academy in Mombasa, Kenya. They were here for four days, and it was amazing how different things seemed with 8 extra people around (think one 4-slice toaster for eight guests and six volunteers!). They were very easy to have around though, and we really enjoyed their stay. They left Sunday morning, and we had another group of 12 coming in from Minnesota that night!

There are two housekeepers on staff here, but we felt it would be nicer to have us volunteers put some time in than to get them both in to work all day on Sunday, so at 9:30 am we began. There are 6 guest rooms here, which may not sound like that many compared to a hotel in Canada, but it was a lot of work! Each room needed the bathroom cleaned, bedding changed, sweeping, mopping, and cleaning up of any garbage. As well, we did not have enough sheets for a full changeover, and had to wash sheets and some towels and hope that they hung dry before the next group came in! Not such a big deal to wash some sheets at home, but here where all of our laundry is done by hand, it was a bit gruelling. By lunchtime at 1pm, we were mostly done and just waiting on some sheets to dry. Perris (one of the housekeepers) came in after church and looked over (fixed up!) the rooms we had done to make sure they were up to Mwamba Guest House standards, and by 4 we were done and off to the beach to cool off!

Since then, the week has been a little calmer. The current group is from the Minnesota Zoo, and are all university age and very interested in biodiversity and conservation. This area is a really fantastic area in terms of cool conservation projects, so I think they came to the right place. Some of the projects are:

Bio-Ken Snake Farm
Kippepeo Project – A butterfly farm where farmers can bring collected live butterflies and pupae to be raised to sell elsewhere. A positive incentive to keep from exploiting the nearby forest, as it’s their main habitat
Watamu Turtle Watch – a group that monitors turtles, rescues and rereleases sea turtles, and protects nests all along the beach here. Visiting their center is still on my to-do list!
Arabuko-Sokoke Forest- a really amazing and ecologically significant forest with a few endemic species (Sokoke Scops Owl, Golden-Rumped Elephant Shrew)... I’ve been helping to maintain a blog for David Ngala, one of the key conservation workers in the forest, check it out: davidngala.wildlifedirect.org
As well as the A Rocha boardwalk at Mida Creek and Tree Platform at the Gede Ruins! The last bird ringing pictures I posted are from Gede.

Environmental education is really important here, as conservation efforts are doomed to fail unless you can get the people in the surrounding communities on board. One of the things A Rocha does is school visits, where our EE coordinator Stanley Baya and intern Naomi do presentations. Often when they go, they take trees to plant to promote "farming" of trees, as opposed to chopping down ancient ones from the forest. We got to go on a tree delivery and here are some pictures:


(kids love being in pictures here!)

(unloading from Duma, our trusty old station wagon)

If you want to read some stories that Naomi and I have put on the ASSETS blog about Environmental Ed, take a look at assets.wildlifedirect.org

In other news, I am feeling kind of satisfied with my computer maintenance lately... all the computers here have antivirus software now, and aren’t passing Trojans around on the network anymore! However, the salty sea air wreaks havoc on all the connections, so I’m perpetually responding to “Hannah! ___________ isn’t working...” to find that cleaning/reseating the cable is all that is necessary! Ah well, when I got here, I wouldn’t have even thought of that, so I guess I’m learning.

Sorry for the novel, hope this gives a bit of a clue to what we’ve been up to lately!

to Tsavo and back

Hello Everyone!

Dave and I had a very full week this week, and I’ll try to fill you in a little bit...

Last weekend we went on a safari to Tsavo East with Nat and Laura, the other two international volunteers here, which was a lot of fun! We left at 7 am Saturday morning, and drove a few hours in a large van over bumpy gravel roads until we reached the gate. (Fun fact: in Africa what we usually would call “washboard gravel” is referred to as “corrugation.” Took me forever to figure out what people were talking about! Whatever you call it, we saw and felt a lot of it). Our guide, Albert, works here at the center in the research and monitoring area and guides on the side. Our driver, J.B., also used to work at A Rocha until recently, when he chose to focus on his safari business. They were a very fun team to go out with. When we go to do field work along the coast here, Albert has been teasing us about certain “local” varieties of the safari animals that live along the highway, such as the Sabaki Impala or Gede Zebra (both are pictured below!). But he assured us that on safari, we could take him very seriously.

The drive within the park was very beautiful, and we saw many amazing animals. Tsavo has an elephant population of approx. 3000, so we were fortunate to see many of these humongous creatures. We also saw giraffes and zebras, the two I was most hoping to see! The giraffes were very beautiful and gentle-looking, and the zebras were very cute and plump. Dave was commenting that it was no wonder lions liked them compared to all the skinny gazelles and antelopes around! There were many cute grazers, varying in size from knee-high (the awkwardly named Dik Dik) to the Waterbuck (like a bigger, stockier white-tailed deer). There was a variety called the Giraffe-necked gazelle which were particularly cute and gangly. The scenery was quite amazing, very vast and open with mountains in the distance. We also saw a very hilarious family of baboons, scratching and looking and scampering around. They had some very cute babies that were just learning what they could do too!

We pulled in for the night about 6pm, once it starts to get dark, and stayed at the Leopard lodge for the night. It was a very nice comfortable stay, and we really enjoyed the food. They had a pool, and as it had rained and was a cool evening, the water felt just like the Guenther pool at home in the summer! We enjoyed it, but it was not as appealing for those who favoured hotter climates! It was quite refreshing to take a swim, as we had gotten quite warm and dusty during the daytime.

The next morning we were off early, and experienced a beautiful sunrise as we were driving out. We saw a giraffe that was taken down by a lion the night before (which was a sad sight), and waited a while to see if the lion would reappear. Though we saw a few silver-backed jackals, we concluded the lion was probably enjoying a siesta after its big meal and carried on. As our pass was only valid for 24 hours, we drove a little quicker on the way out so we could make it to the gate for 11, and after a quick bathroom break we were on our way home again.

On Monday, it was work as usual, though we started getting some training from Henry and Belinda, the center managers, to take over some of their responsibilities while they go on their yearly holidays. I am taking care of guest bookings and some of the hospitality aspects, and Dave is sharing that with me. He is also the “on call” guy for some of the maintenance concerns that may crop up. We’re hoping that there won’t be many. It has been very different since Henry and Belinda left on Wednesday, as our workdays are not quite so defined as they used to be, and we’ve been finding it a bit stretching at times! Coordinating people’s schedules can be difficult even if you have the same mother tongue and culture, so when you start mixing second (or third!) languages and different cultures in, it can be challenging. But everyone here is patient and helpful, and we are learning. I will certainly be glad when Henry and Belinda are back though!

We are taking a brief hiatus though, as it is our anniversary this weekend! It is hard to believe that this time a year ago we were having a wedding, and now we are here in Kenya. We are hoping to do some snorkelling and some of the “touristy” things around here that we don’t often get a chance to do because of our volunteer hours.

Well, that is about all from here, there are more pictures of the safari on my facebook if you would like to see them!

Talk to you soon,

Hannah

a nice day off

Hello everyone!

Here it is, June 1! It’s hard to believe we’ve been here for almost a month. We have been keeping busy, both with our own projects and other things. Today is a national holiday, so things are pretty quiet at the center as all of the staff have the day off.

Some highlights from the last week:

Bird ringing at Gede Ruins: We set up the nets on last Wednesday night, and then woke up at 4:30 for the next two mornings to see if we could record any Spotted Ground Thrushes, which are highly endangered in this area. We finished up around 11am both days. Unfortunately, we didn’t get any Spotted Ground Thrushes, but we got some other cool birds (everything is so much more colourful here!) as well as a Little Sparrow Hawk, which is quite unusual. No one wanted to get near those claws!

Blogging! Not just this one, I have started working with Bimbo, a fellow who works full-time with ASSETS, to start updating their blog, which was sorely neglected! ASSETS is a really cool program, recognizing that since most of the forest damage had been occurring when people would make charcoal to pay for their children’s school fees, it made sense to start an eco-tourism scheme that would allow children to go to school as a result of conserving cool habitats. Feel free to check out the blog: http://assets.wildlifedirect.org/ which also has links to the main ASSETS website.

Nature Trail: This has been Dave’s main project, and I’ve been helping: monitoring 15 species of indigenous trees along an interpretive trail here. He’s also been working to get some more information put together for people who come to visit, as well as upgrading the benches and amenities—in this climate, wood begins to rot almost instantly.

It’s definitely interesting working as a volunteer, as there is always so much that needs doing, yet we have a lot of flexibility if we want it.

Things I’m looking forward to:

Safari! We are going on an overnight safari with Nat and Laura, two of the other volunteers here, this weekend. It should be pretty amazing, we are going to Tsavo East Park and I am hoping we will see lots of animals that I have only ever seen in pictures! Our guide will be Albert, an A Rocha employee who has a guiding business on the side. He knows so much about the natural world around here, so I am really glad we can go with someone we know!

Our first anniversary is on June 12^th, which is coming up soon! Hopefully we can get out for a nice meal or something J

Well, its 10am and already quite warm today, so I think I’m going to head out for a swim!

Hannah