Talek, May 4th

Wow, what a long day! I am now in Talek camp where Wes and I are spending the night before going the next 2.5 hours to Serena camp where I will be spending the next year. We started off the day with last minute errands and managed to hit the road by 10:30. Its about a 6 hour drive into the mara but with stops/traffic we got in about 5:10. Talek camp is great- there is a genet that comes up to the dinner table to take scraps. Adorable! 

Speaking of adorable the hyena cubs are about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. One of the grad students is looking at reaction time of the different cubs to the loud noise of a cap gun. Evening ‘obs’ usually start at 5 but luckily they were running late so Wes and I got to ride along with Julia and Kay. Kay seems super cool and all the other RAs and grad students seem cool. Hope I don’t come off too shy and awkward. Maybe I’ve overcome the shy, but I suppose I am intermittently awkward and quiet ha ha. There were 5 black cubs and another 5 older cubs with most spots visible. They make all sorts of little squeaks and squitters and whoops. The cap gun scared the shit out of the little guys but the bigger cubs barely batted an eyelash. 

We have real beds inside huge camp tents that are big enough to walk around in, very nice. Dinner was delicious, they have guys to cook for them and we had burgers- very American! I can hear some hyenas whooping now in the distance. On the drive into the mara saw topi, hartebeest, grant’s gazelle, impala, thompson’s gazelle (tommy’s), dik dik, giraffe, zebra, and wildebeest. Just about everything that eats grass! Driving over the escarpment was stunning, Nairobi is somewhat up in the mountains and though we went uphill some I think it was more downhill, though at dinner Kay said we’re at about 6k here. Anyway it was just like driving down out of Kodai, huge drop off and beautiful view. Nairobi is very jungly but down here it is mixed jungle areas (like in camp, mostly wooded) and huge open plains. Stunningly beautiful especially since we got blue skies mixed with huge puffy clouds. 

In Narok we stopped to get potatoes and I followed Benson around as he looked for some clothes for his one and a half year old son. Benson is married with one son so far. At times he seems very serious and mature, a maasai man, and it is very helpful to have someone fluent in Swahili to help us around. Other times though he is the same age as me (one month younger), goofy, and playing around, just being young. (He grabs the bag with the shit load of money that Wes got out of a bank and hid behind a bush in play). And he loves to play Frisbee- woo! I saw a Miami U shirt at the open market amidst piles and piles of clothes. I got a lot of mgungu! White person! There are not very many whites in Narok. Everyone is very friendly though.