African Savanna Ecology and Paleoecology

Alright, I’m packing it in. I’ve peaked. There’s no getting better than this. Given that this is something that could be read by people who have the power to give me a job, I will not recount the exact terminology I used in response to seeing a wild elephant for the first time. But I have faith that you can use your imagination. ​

We woke up at around 6:15, had breakfast at 7:00, and by 8:30 we were about 20 feet away from a herd of African elephants. I was holding it together pretty well until a baby appeared and made a little baby elephant noise (again, use your imagination), and from that point on I was somewhere between crying and laughing at all times. Genuinely I think I lost it a bit. For the next four hours or so, we kept on driving and every few minutes we’d see a new animal. I was like a kid on Christmas, if Christmas was in a Toyota LandCruiser. There were some species that we saw considerably more of than others. Luckily for the class, I studied Equids in preparation for this trip, so when everyone was like “wow, oh my goodness, what animal is that?!” I cooly said to them “my dearest classmates, that is a Zebra.” They were really lucky to have me, I think. That said, I don’t have the time to describe every single encounter, but I will include a list of the species we saw as well as a number of photos I took (and if you don’t see them, it is because I ran out of time on the WiFi)

Speaking of which, I took some bomb photos today. Once again, I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but actually that’s exactly what I’m doing. The photos went crazy. Particularly, my favorite is of a Zebra with massive gashes on its rump. It was pretty metal. Anyways. Signing off x

We have officially begun the second leg of my summer long geoguessr training camp. Not to toot my own horn, but for a while I was in the top .003 percent of geoguessr players. For those who are unaware (ignorant), geoguessr is a game where you are placed in a random location on google earth and you have to guess on a map where you are. Guessing geography. Geoguessr. It’s pretty self explanatory. But anyways, I am oddly good at the game, and whenever I go to a new place it is like unlocking a new part of the world that I can instantly recognize.

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So within 46 straight hours of travel, including two flights and a day’s worth of driving, I added western Turkey, southern Kenya, and northern Tanzania to my repertoir. I was going to gloss over the number 46, but given that I’m still feeling the effects of it, I’m going to shift gears. Our travel including 45 minutes of driving to the airport, several hours waiting in the airport, 12 hours flying from Houston to Istanbul, 5 hours waiting in the airport again,  7 hours of flying to Nairobi, several hours of driving to the border, an hour and a half trying to cross the border, several more hours of driving, an hour in a mall in Arusha (about 15 minutes of which was dedicated to a bunch of kids wanting to hold my hand), and then (shocker), several more hours of driving. 

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It was, as you might imagine, completely exhausting. But between the amazing dinner we had at the lodge and the Zebras and Giraffes we saw as soon as we left the Nairobi airport, I felt I had nothing to complain about. And so here I am, not complaining. Anyways, talk soon xoxo

Hi blog. Today we went on two safaris — one in the morning and one in the evening. I wasn’t expecting to go on any sort of safari during this trip, but it was fun! I imagined this course to be much more hominid oriented.

During the first safari, we spotted a herd of elephants immediately at the start. There were a bunch of juveniles, which was exciting to see. The crossed the road right in front of us. We spotted a whole bunch of zebras, wildebeests, Thomsons and Grants gazelles, birds, hartebeests, and of course giraffes (one of my taxon groups). We saw both reticulated giraffes and Masai giraffes, and I discussed their ossicones with the other people in my car. I didn’t know the purpose of the ossicones, so I looked into it and found out that they serve a similar function as antlers on deer — males use them for advantage in combat. We ended the safari after about 3.5 hours and went to lunch, during which we had some delicious spaghetti.

After lunch we had 2 student presentations. One was on canids and equids and the other was on antelopini. They were both enjoyable, and I learned a bit from both of the presentations about some of the animals we were to see that night. I learned how to tell the difference between Thomson’s and Grant’s gazelles: placement of the black stripes on their bodies makes them easily distinguishable.

During the second safari, we didn’t see many animals, probably because it was evening and the animals were clocking out for the day. We drove up to a cliff that overlooked the savanna, and it was gorgeous. We stayed up there for maybe around an hour, and there were ticks everywhere. We originally found them within five minutes of being there, but we had to stay until the sky turned dark, so I was extremely paranoid the entire time about ticks crawling all over me. I am a major germophobe and was freaking out about getting a disease. It did not help that tsetse flies were also swarming around trying to drink my blood.

^Me and Carina on the cliff at sunset

I am currently sitting at dinner writing this because it is 10 pm and we have a presentation after dessert, so I don’t think I’ll have any more time tonight to write this before my body gives out and I pass out. I am exhausted but excited for tomorrow, and I just heard there is a 4 hour hike planned for tomorrow so I am a little anxious about that.

Staying awake as long as possible,

Kacey

Hi blog. The last three days have been extremely long. We took a flight to Istanbul (12 hours ish), a flight to Nairobi (8 hours ish), and then drove from Nairobi to Arusha (6 hours ish) and finally to the Ecolodge (2 hours). I have not slept for a decent amount of time since that first flight when I slept for four hours. I am extremely sleep-deprived, and I think nausea and hallucinations are some of the side effects of this extreme lack of sleep.

It was a lot of fun to stay in the Istanbul airport for five hours. Carina and I tried Turkish coffee for the first time, and then after we finished the coffee, we mixed cold water into the grounds and drank it. Bad idea. It turns out the water was provided as a palate cleanser, not a mix-in. We learned our lesson the hard way after we drank cold water with gritty grounds suspended in it. The airport itself was quite beautiful architecturally, and I appreciated all the greenery decorating the inside of the terminals. Carina said she wanted to find the architect who designed the airport so she could give them a hug.

^Carina with some of the Turkish coffee we ordered in the Istanbul airport

I did not enjoy the airport in Nairobi very much. Customs was a huge hassle because the family in front of me was having a lot of trouble getting their eight children through into Kenya. We ate at a cafe attached to the airport, and it was quite pleasant. Most of the Nairobi airport process took place outside, so I didn’t have the chance to appreciate the airport.

When we started the journey from Nairobi to Arusha, we immediately saw a giraffe and some zebras right outside of the airport. Since we’ve seen the giraffe, that’s â…“ of my taxon animals spotted with only two more to go! However, I’m not too hopeful about spotting a pangolin or an aardvark on this trip because they are quite elusive.

I’ve never been to Africa before, so driving through Kenya was definitely a memorable experience for me. I guess I’ve never really seen pictures of Africa before, so the layout of businesses/buildings, the commute of people to work, and the lifestyles, clothing, and language of people overall was surprising to me. I found it interesting that the majority of business signs and advertisements were in English when a significantly larger number of people use Swahili as the primary language in their household instead of English.

Customs to get from Kenya to Tanzania was again annoying. After we entered Tanzania, we went straight to a mall in Arusha for a meal. It was extremely overwhelming because as soon as we sat down, servers from all the different restaurants were fighting over which menu we would order from. Four of us chose to order chicken shawarma because we did not want to choose while 10 people stood over us and yelled at us and moved menus around so we could not read anything. The shawarma was bad. It was extremely unflavorful and way too wet, so it immediately fell apart. After we ate, we went to go exchange money, but I could barely hear the exchange worker because there were one million children sprinting around the mall and screaming. Every child in Tanzania decided to come to the mall and wreak havoc, and it was extremely overwhelming.

The drive to the EcoScience Lodge was very bumpy, but I slept on the way over and hardly noticed.

Trying to catch up on sleep,

Kacey