pundamilia, nyoka, na tembo!

As I sit here in my tent writing this blog, it is absolutely pouring outside. My little tent has held up well, considering it gets hammered with rain day after day! I’ve had a scorpion lurking outside my tent for the past couple days as well. I woke up the other night to a scratching sound on the side of my tent, and had no idea what it was. But sure enough, when I shined my light on the side, a scorpion was unsuccessfully trying to crawl up the side. Wtf. The scorpions here won’t kill you, but will ensure you 3 days of extreme pain on the extremity that was bitten.

Megan and I have now been at Ndarakwai for 11 days! We actually head back to Arusha in one week (at the time I wrote this entry). The last 11 days have been awesome, although Megan and I were both sick for a bit. I had the most ridiculous head cold/sinus issues, but poor Megan had food poisoning from sharing food with her askaris. Its not exactly that fun being sick while camping…you cant go anywhere and basically have to sit and be a bit miserable. We both skipped data collection for the day, but I was able to go out the next day. I was worried for a while, there were 3 days where my askari and I did SO much walking trying to find the zebra, who seemed to have just disappeared from Ndarakwai. Every morning we would set off and for 2 hours straight we would just walk, trying to find the zebra, finally finding two or three right before we had to head back for lunch. And even though they are striped, they somehow manage to blend in extremely well!

Our way was also hindered by the presence of a massive bull elephant in “musth” which is like heat for male elephants. You do NOT want to mess with an elephant in musth. They will charge you/do other unpleasant things to you. So we had to take a couple detours over the course of those couple days. However, we also did see a little baby elephant that must have just been born..it was sooo small…about the size of a very small pony! The last couple days I’ve gotten lucky though…although its been pouring on us everyday, the rain has been good because everything is turning green, and so the zebra are collecting in a small valley that has really green lush grass. This morning there were over 60 zebra, which is the most I’ve seen at once. Most days, I follow a herd of 8 or less around. They’ve also been running away from me less and less which is fantastic, because I’m able to sit on top of a termite mound for a couple hours and get quality scans done.

Yesterday was quite the exciting day for Megan and I. I had gotten back to camp earlier than her for lunch and was sitting chatting with my askari when one of the girls who lives at the house, Nuru, screams “nyoka,” which is “snake” in Kiswahili. And sure enough, in our toilet (which is a tin shack with a concrete floor and hole in the ground ) a bright green snake comes slithering out and starts to rise up like its about to strike. I’m practically peeing my pants by this point, but my askari, Meyshack, goes over and whacks it on the head with his stick a couple times and kills it. Turns out, it was a green mamba, which are super poisonous (related to the black mamba), and I was more scared than anything because I had been in the bathroom about 10 minutes prior, probably peeing on this snake who was I’m sure was not very happy. And then, I had to take a shower afterwards in the shower stall, which is right next to the bathroom (another concrete room) out of my little bucket, and of course I’m spazzing out about there being another snake in there, which of course there wasn’t, but it still wasn’t a very pleasant shower experience. I normally look forward to my little bucket of water every 3 days!

After the lovely green mamba experience Megan and I took the afternoon off of data collection to go visit our cook crew and all the drivers who had been with us all semester! They were cooking for another student group from Earlham College and Miami University of Ohio, and we lucked out that they were here when we were! All of them were camped at Casablanca, which is where I was for orientation when we got here in August. It was so great to see them all again, and they were so wonderful to us. They gave us chai and biscuits and Megan and I were so happy because it was like being on safari again. We chatted with them for awhile and helped chop up some onions, and then went over to visit the other wanafunzi (students). We introduced ourselves and talked about our trips a lot. Their program is essentially the same thing as ours, except they go to Kenya as well. One of the boys actually knew a girl on our trip too. We hung out there for a while drinking wine and playing dice with them, and are going back this Sunday for one of their birthdays! Megan and I were so excited because its just been the two of us for the past couple weeks and it was fun to see other students and talk with them. The cook crew wouldn’t let us leave without having a bowl of their delicious onion soup and then gave us some oranges for the road. Its weird to see “our” cook crew and drivers with another student group, but I know they are hired out a lot. As Megan and I were walking back with an askari who was escorting us back to camp, the sun was going down and it was warm and it was just one of those moments where I thought “life is fantastic right now.” :)
Will update again when I get back to Arusha in a couple days!