4-25-11
I realize its been a while since I blogged and I didn’t even post the beginning of my last blog, but I’ve been really busy with not that great of internet. We have started our Directed Research projects which are basically a thesis that you have to do research, and write in 3 weeks or less than present your findings and solutions to the community. It is very stressful and we are working all the time. Last week we spent every day collecting data. My group, environmental policy, is researching water management and usage in the Amboseli Ecostyem and its effectiveness. This means that we have two forms of data collection: a GPS group that goes out and walks along the rivers and maps all the farms that utilize this river and a questionnaire group that interviews farmers at random intervals. I was doing GPS for the first three days and it was so painful. I walked at least 45km in three days, that’s a lot of miles. For those who have working google do the conversion and let me know how many. Then on the fourth day I was in charge of inputting data. It is such a pain, we don’t have a cord to connect the GPS to the computer so we have to input by hand every single coordinate into the computer. It takes forever, and at every GPS point we recorded different information which also needs to be inputted. The questionnaires go by faster because there are less numbers. While out GPSing I’ve fallen in two rivers, waded through a knee-deep swamp full of dung-water, gotten the worst farmers tan of my life and walked really far. Its kind of worth it and cool that we are doing this because this is the first time its ever been done. No one has mapped the water usage before in this region or have farmers been interviewed to this extent. We are also interviewing officials that control the water management which I can’t wait for. We had to write a proposal as a group, but the rest of our paper (over 30 pages, in the past has been 60 pages on average) will be written as individuals. Our proposal is 9 pages single spaced. This DR has consumed my life to the extent that I barely have time to blog. I also have such terrible internet that I have for the most part given up on writing blogs. I guess I should continue describing Tsavo. That will be another time and place though. For now I will describe Tsavo as a great camping experience, but I was disappointed by the wildlife. Since it had recently rained a lot and the vegetation as super dense we barely saw anything. No man-eating lions, no rhinos in the rhino sanctuary, not even snakes. I did kill a scorpion ready to strike by the fire. Oh and my flashlight and headlamp are both broken and the flashlight died while walking to the bathroom the first night. Austin had a light that we shared, but it is a lot harder to do things without a light. I think I am cursed with flashlights. The light I was borrowing from him is now broken, we thought it was just dead batteries but even with brand new ones it won’t work. Then back at camp I borrowed Christina’s extra flashlight and now that won’t work…. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?? I’ve been using my cellphone’s flashlight and I can only hope that doesn’t get broken either.
Yesterday was Easter, and we also had a non-program day. Will organized a 5k for the Aids clinic that we visited a couple weeks ago and we raised a couple hundred dollars for it just from student donations. Sarah raised money by doing chores and errands for people for money. She raised over $150 that way. So impressive. We did the race around the camp. Our camp has a mile perimeter that includes a running trail, so we raced along that. I am terrible at running and finished around 34min., but the fastest person finished in 23:19. Afterwards we had an awards ceremony and the two people that raised the most money got Nutella as a reward (all the way from Nairobi) and the fastest people got their choice of fruit that Will was given while interviewing farmers. Then we all showered and changed into church attire and most of us attended a church service hosted by one of our guides. My group has this guide that leads us around while doing GPS, his name is Pastor Peter and he is this short, very round man with a metal wire glasses that look very tight on his shaved head. He walks SO FAST!! Its incredible, everyone who knows me knows I walk fast, he walks ten times faster than me. It was painful to keep up with him. But he invited us to his church for Easter in Kimana so we all wanted to go. We showed up with 26 white people and completely filled the church. He and another pastor led the service. It was really intense, they were super emotional, but the singing and dancing was so much fun. They get so into praising the lord that they are all dancing with all of their heart. It was really fun. After church we returned back to camp for lunch. While everyone else was eating Christina, Sarah and me hid easter eggs. Christina had filled 70 plastic eggs with candy from town the night before and she recruited me to help her. We hid them ALL over camp and then at 1pm we released everyone to go look for them. It was hilarious, people were running and fighting over eggs and looked really comical searching. Only 60 eggs were found, so ten are still out there. LOL After the egg-hunt some people went into town to the bar and the rest of us stayed and did beading with some Maasai women. They are called Mamas and they taught us how to make beaded jewelry, SO COOL! I made an anklet, a bracelet and two rings. I will probably make this my new hobby since it is so much fun and really easy. We were beading straight till dinner. Dinner was so good, Christina and Sarah had baked red-velvet cake for Easter with yummy frosting. And Molly had made no-bake cookies which are made of melted butter, sugar and milk, then mixed with cocoa powder, oats and peanut butter. I had lots of sugar yesterday; I even had a sugar crash from it because I haven’t had candy, cake, soda, and lots of chocolate all in one day in MONTHS. Then I watched homeward bound, so cute, with my friends and went to bed. Overall a good day. Today will be dedicated to DR work. AHHH. So if you don’t really hear from me in the next two weeks it’s because all my time is being dedicated to writing a 30-60 page paper.
Read my other post right before this (posted the same day)! Wish me luck on my DR.
I'm home in three weeks!
-Julie
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