Runnin from Lions’s Weblog

Alright, its been around 3 weeks since I updated and for that I apologize. Many of you haven’t been able to hear about my semester. But I have my schedule in hand and will write down all that I have been doing. If I mention a name, you can look them up on the SFS website…

So I’ll just go in chronological order…

The 15^th and 16^th were just class, nothing too terribly interesting occurred. On the 17^th, we went to Olosoito in the morning and Loitokitok in the afternoon. Olosoito was the hill we visited the first week. While there Patrick was stalked by a hyena, though it was scared off when we accidentally knocked some rocks down the hill. Loitokitok was fun; we just wandered around the town and then went to a bar. It was a lot of fun and I met some locals in town and talked to them about conservation strategies in the region.

On the 18^th I had community service, on that day we planted trees with highschool students and planted tomato crops for the neary town. However, none of the mzungus were allowed to do any work, so we just sat around and watched African highschoolers do our work for us. I picked a really shy kid to partner with and that was a mistake. Most questions he just responded to with “Yes” and if he responded with more than that he wouldn’t speak loudly enough for me to understand (Damn you drumming). My highschooler had a crush on Haley because everytime I lent him my camera he would take pictures of her (badly angled). She found it very flattering I think. Other students had interesting interactions with the African students. Siena was asked about American sex practices and skeeved out by her partner. Manuel’s partner was very boisterous (like manny himself). After that we went back to camp, but got stuck in a giant hole in the road. I have pictures. We had to drive around the hole through farm fields. WOOO.

Exams were the next few days. Exams are hell. 3 in one day. Ugh. I had a giant hand cramp.

I managed to survive by joining a study group and we just crammed for 3 days straight. Again, 4.5 hours of exams in one sitting. SFS can be cruel at times.

The next day we left for NPS and got introduced to the site. Its beautiful here. Green and rainy, its so much nicer than KBC. The proximity to Nairobi is cool because we have slightly different sets of animals around us like Kongoni and Rhinos!  The first we were there I shaved a girls head down to a mohawk and shaved my beard down to a goatee.  The picture was before it got cleaned up a little…

Our first day was a non-program day. We went to a grocery store in the morning and I split a wheel of cheese with my friend Mary. It was amazing. Dutch cheese. Gouda. Yum… After that ostrich farm. I rode an ostrich and ate an ostrich burger. The burger was pretty good, filled with onions and peppers. It came with delicious chips. It was also 3 birthdays, so we all pitched in to get them as drunk as possible (It worked…). About the ostrich ride. The bird was kind of worn down but he was more than strong enough to support my weight. I got videos and lots of pictures.

The next few days consisted primarily of classes and hanging out at KBC doing homework. One class consisted of practicing controlled burns. So we had cans filled with ½ diesel ½ petrol to set a plot on fire. We also had giant rubber mop/brooms to beat the fire out with. It was awesome.

We also went to Nairobi national park where I saw rhinos in the wild (not at a lodge). I also briefly saw a cheetah in cage, which will probably be my only cheetah of the entire trip. But not to worry, I’ve seen wild dogs. While we were at Nairobi np I got some chicken fingers, nothing like homes.

Because of the large amount of work I have (3 essays, 1 identification chart consisting of around 40 mammals and a final) I’m going to talk about expedition to Lake Nakuru later. But hopefully this keeps ya’ll interested for a while! Sorry for the delay.

Keep leaving me comments!

Family and friends, hope you enjoyed Halloween and hopefully your candidate wins the election.

S- I love you and miss you bunches, I’ll see you in Paris.

Kwaheri

-Spenser