Lewa is amazing

Hey all.

Mambo? I am doing "very fine" here in Kenya. I love it. The wildlife is completely amazing and the people are all super friendly and helpful. It seems everyone wants me to learn as much as possible and is very willing to teach me about things. So far, I have seen a long list of incredible animals, including black and white rhinos, giraffes, hyenas, wild dogs, dik diks, tons of impalas and gazelles, gerenuks, waterbucks, elephants, lions, warthogs (one of my favorite animals, seriously), hartebeests, oryx, baboons, buffaloes, plains zebras, and of course... the best of all: Grevy's zebras. I am having an incredible time here and hope to add a few more things to my list of animal sightings, including the famous "three brothers" (cheetahs) and some sitatunga that supposedly hang out by the swamp. Vervet monkeys are like pigeons here, but I like them anyway and enjoy coming out of my room to find them lounging on the porch furniture or licking the table. As I was typing this, one of them just came into the office, sat on my desk, and looked at me curiously. They are gutsy and I dig it.

I am going to try to learn as much as possible about everything while I'm here because I definitely want to come back. So far, I'm doing well with dung identification, but in every other category my skills are still lacking. I have too much to learn and too little time here!

My research is going well. I have been collecting grass samples with a ranger named Mike, who is super knowledgeable about Lewa and the wildlife here. He doesn't speak much English though so our communication is pretty funny sometimes. We get by quite well with a few words, hand gestures, and a lot of laughing. I even laughed like crazy when we were stuck in the middle of nowhere with a broken car and I stepped into a giant aardvark hole and fell over. My luck got much better after that because my leg was surprisingly fine and the car was fixed quickly and for very little money by the chillest Kenyan (mechanic) I have ever met.

I am going out to look for Grevy's foals tomorrow, which I'm excited about. I've already seen about 5 or so spread across Lewa, and I'm looking forward to seeing more.

Here are some pictures and captions, I have a lot more but I think this blog is only letting me put this many up. I will try to add some more later, but my digital camera battery is shot so it might not happen.

EB

Giraffe in the morning.

Male Grevy's standing his ground.
This is where I live! It's fancy.
A monkey I played hide-and-seek with....

A bunch of beautiful Grevy's! Check out those goofy ears. I didn't realize how impressive and dynamic those ears were until I saw them in person. They move in all different directions.

An elephant approaching the area where Mike and I were collecting grass.

Giraffe and some plains zebra. There is an awesome warthog somewhere in this group too but I don't think he made it into this picture.

A bunch of buffaloes and elephants in the background at the top of the hill - it's probably hard to see them but there was a group of about 14 walking in a line toward the water.

Elvis the subadult black rhino eating right near my porch at dawn. The story I got was that he was hand-raised because his mom was blind and kept losing him (and his sister too, who was moved because she was getting attacked by other rhinos). He is nice enough to humans now but the rangers think he is going to start charging. I've heard him referred to as a "big boy" which I think suits his personality for now.