Welcome to DR!

Day three of DR fieldwork is over.  Just as a reminder, my DR group has 10 students including myself and is lead by our wildlife ecology professor, Kiringe.  Our DR focus of study is the Noolturesh River that runs through the Amboseli ecosystem in our part of Kenya.  We have split into several groups and are measuring several different aspects of the riverine environment.  The first group has been measuring turbidity and mapping the river.  They also take samples of the water to measure the sediment load.  The second group has been measuring the riverine vegetation.  The third group has been assessing the human encroachment and human activities along the river.  The fourth group has been measuring woody vegetation and erosion.  The fifth group has been measuring water quality. 

For the first two days, I was measuring erosion with three other girls, our two guides, and Kiringe. In order to measure erosion we split into groups of two students and one guide and did transects 200 meters apart from each other and perpendicular to the river.  We went 10 meters from the river and measured the herbaceous vegetation cover in a 2X2 meter quadrat then expanded the quadrat to be 30X30 meters and measured the sheet, rill, and gully erosion with the quadrat.  After that plot, we moved so we were 100 meters from the river and repeated the process, then moved to be 200 meters from the river and repeated the process once more.  This procedure sounds pretty dry, but I found it fun, plus I needed some practice for my methods section of my research paper so I thought this would be a good place to practice. 

The exciting part about this procedure is the hike through dense forest.  Our 10 meter quadrat is fine, but getting to the 100 and 200 meter plots requires hiking up mountains and battling thorny plants.  Basically every plant in Africa is covered in thorns or is poisonous.  It is a slow process getting to the quadrats, but it makes me feel pretty awesome.  Whenever we get whacked by a branch covered by thorns or trip on the thick underbrush, we tell each other, “Welcome to DR”.  Yesterday, there was no path next to the river, only a vertical rock face.  We started climbing around the rock cliff to get to our next transect, when we looked at the GPS and realized that it would have started exactly in the middle of the rock face.  It didn’t seem worth it to complete that transect so down we went and instead we crossed the river by walking across a tree trunk that is being used for a bridge.  Now when I say river, it’s definitely not raging or really wide, it’s average is probably 3 meters wide and I don’t think it ever goes past your knees. 

One of the best parts about working with erosion is working with our guide, Francis, or Wiper as everyone calls him.  He is called Wiper because he ran for government office in the district a few years back and was part of the “Wiper Democrat” party.  He is running again for district counselor in March so we have been talking politics quite a bit.  We have heard all about his stance and what he would do to change the district, if I could vote in Kenya, I would vote for him.  He also tells us all about the national Kenyan government and all about the corruption and nepotism and asks us many questions about the US government.  He is the only Kenyan I have heard to say that he would have voted for Romney, but he still likes Obama because he is Kenyan.  One of Wiper’s passions is helping out the orphans in the district.  He doesn’t have a family of his own so he pays for school fees and for food for 29 orphans!  He is so cool!  On top of it, he is Maasai, my favorite.  He even gave me a Maasai name:  Nasieku!  It means “sharp and fast”.  My life has been fulfilled, I get to measure soil erosion and I am now an honorary Maasai. 

Today, I switched groups and worked the turbidity group.  For the past few days, during the hot parts of the day, all I have wanted to do is lie down in the water.  However, that probably wouldn’t be very smart because the river is very contaminated and looks like a chocolate river.  But anyways, today I finally got to go in the river, but our guide, Danson, wouldn’t let me swim…

We had to follow the river and mark GPS coordinates wherever it had a bend.  Every 400 meters we would get into the river, wearing rain boots, and measure the turbidity, the width, depth, the flow rate, and every other stop we took a water sample.  We got a lot of weird looks from the locals who would stop and watch us, laughing and asking Danson what we were doing.  At one stop, we saw a mother and two children gathering water by the side and though it looked muddy, we decided we could probably handle it.  Nope.  BG, the other girl I was with today, got both of her boots entirely stuck in the mud and I had to pull her out than dig her boot out of the mud, much to the amusement of the mother and girls.  Once we were done with our measurements for the day, we had to hike for an hour through the bush to get to the closest road to be picked up while wearing rain boots that were several sizes too big and with socks that were soaked and muddy!  It was an adventure! Once again, welcome to DR. 

Danson is another great guide.  SFS has a scholarship program where local students can get scholarships and go to the summer programs on wildlife management or public health that are in Tanzania and Kenya respectively.  This summer, he was one of the scholarship recipients and spent a month in Tanzania.  He knew all of the Tanzanian staff and went to all the parks we went to, so we bonded over our experiences.  Danson is also an incredible athlete!  Farmers put acacia branches, covered with thorns, around their farms, and Danson would take two steps and hop over these fences that can be 1.5 meters tall!  He also raced against another Kenyan who has made it to the Olympics, the other guy beat him, but it’s still cool.  Danson, another Maasai, told us that Maasai are born to be good athletes. 

As you can tell, DR fieldwork is going well!  We have five more days of fieldwork left, then we will start data analysis and writing our papers.  Crazy!  I only have 23 days left in Kenya!  Weird.  But also I’m excited to come home.  I hope everyone had good Thanksgivings!  We didn’t really “celebrate” Thanksgiving since it was our first day of fieldwork, but we did go around the room at supper and say what we were thankful for, which is really what Thanksgiving is about anyways.