viKariously

Howdy folkss

Currently situated on the southern coast of Zanzibar. Been on the island since the 18^th. Pretty nice place, waters are light blue, sun has constantly been shining, I have a sunburn, my mom and my hair is frizzen crazy, lots of sailboat fisherman, not many tourists because it is the low tourist season. We will return home in Seattle in exactly one week, holy cow!! We just arrived at our new hotel yesterday, which is called Breezes. It’s a resort and spa kind of place; they offer lots of fun activities like scuba diving, sailing, kite boarding, snorkeling, surfing and more. I’m thinking about taking a sailing class depend on the wind that just picked up today. Before arriving here we were staying at a hotel in Stone town, the main town of Zanzibar. People on the island are predominately Islam so most women are covered in Burkas and wear different cloths from head to toe. There are no indigenous Zanzibar people so the culture is very worldly mixed. The locals are quite annoying to tourists and try to get your attention for a taxi, city tour, to sell different shenanigans or even just to be creepy… Especially because it is the low season and they are low of mula. Tourism seems to be their main source of income so they bug the hell out of you to buy things. A couple days after we had been staying in Zanzibar, mom set up a town and spice tour where we went to the countryside and visited a spice farm. We were shown many spices such as cinnamon, tamarack, ginger, cocoa, coffee, vanilla, curry, lemongrass, black pepper and many fruits, even ones I have never heard of/eaten before like jack fruit and custard apple. The next day I went scuba diving and my mom went snorkeling at around 930am. There wasn’t anything out of the ordinary that I spotted, but I did notice a lot of dead coral L it was actually quite bare down there I though. But I am comparing that to Indonesia, so nothing compares. Prior to Zanzibar I was in Tanzania with 2 other students from KSP, Libby and Tyler. The rest of the semester had already left for the States, but we decided to stay and climb Kilimanjaro.  

We left for Tanzania on May 10^th, spending a total of 7 nights. 5 nights hiking then a night at the hotel before and after our climb. During the afternoon on the 10^th, we arrived at our hotel in the town of Moshi. We met with a man named Castro, the manager of our backpacking company, that evening at 5 and went over the basics of the hike and he told us about renting/finding last minute equipment. The next morning we met with him again at around 9ish and met our head guide whose name is Kush, tehe. We were shown thick mattress pads we could use that the porters would carry instead of using our sleeping pads (score!). We then headed to the gear hiring shop, which was a small room with lots of classic camping/hiking gear. I just needed to hire snow pants and trekking poles, bit Libby and Tyler rented some more. After this we stopped by a small supermarket, grabbed some bottle water then headed to Machame gate. When we arrived, we waited for about a half an hour until we had to sign in with our passports then waited some more while Kush got a permit. The porters already started hiking. We began away from the gate just a little after them. It was a nice hike, a bit muddy, but it was entirely on a trail that is taken care of. It only took us like 3 hours then we arrived at our first camp, around 3,000 meters called Machame Camp. The climate was a bit damp and the trees were still thick and very green. We did however surpass the level of rainforest vegetation. Sometime after we arrived, the porters finished setting up our camp. So we ate dinner and finally went to bed. The next morning I was surprised to have the sun wake me at around 7 and it was extremely bright as I packed up my gear. We enjoyed bfast outside of the food tent, which I highly enjoyed. OH and at this time we were able to view Kilimanjaro’s peak for the first time! It was very beautiful. After breakfast we began our hiking on day 2.

Pretty straightforward hiking, nothing strenuous. It was simple for us 3 and we cruised along. Soon enough we arrived at camp #2, Shira camp, which was a very open site with small amounts of trees. It was pretty foggy, misty and quite rainy. The three of us spent most of our time in the tent from when we arrived until the sun went down. We were even served dinner in there. A whole five-course meal, it felt like they were never going to stop serving us food. I was amazed. The food was good for backpacking. Soup, fried chicken, rice, fruit and vegetables. Then of course hot drinks after. I was sure FULL. The next morning it was still kind of cloudy and moist, but the sun did clear up briefly before we began hiking. A little past half way through the hike, we ascended to about 4500 meters to a point called Lava Tower Camp where you could camp, but we did not. We were served a hot lunch here. More fried chicken, hot vegetable soup, fruit and tea and coffee afterwards. It was pouring rain and very chilly during this lunch and we barely had a cover, which was annoying. The crew just set up a cooking tent, which we went into for a little, but it was us 3 with 5 others, so not very comfortable. All together the hike continued to be pretty simple and it only took us about 4.5 hours. Didn’t feel the least bit tired afterwards. We arrived at our third camp named, Barranco Camp. The peak stood behind us, but our view was hidden. It was on and off windy and again, very cloudy so we lounged in our tent. Being wet and very cold, our sleeping bags never sounded/felt so good. The next day we casually woke up around 7ish, packed our gear, ate a huge breakfast as usual and began our trek. This trek would carry us to our tallest campsite, Barafu Camp.

It would begin to get even colder and snow will be more common. The hike was simple until the last part of is which was uphill in the freezing rain. Oh I forgot to mention we rented ponchos from our Outfitter Company, which made us super stylish. Mine was greenish turquoise with a green striped trim, I felt quite trendy in the rain. When we arrived it was very windy on top, but thankfully, the sun was actually shining. We took this time to dry out any wet clothing and covered most nearby boulders. Our tents were set up and we had a clear view of Stela Point and the sister peak, Mawenzi. It was tonight that we would be woken up around 1130, to prepare ourselves to hike to the peak. We were served dinner a bit later than each of us intended, but that seemed to be the theme of these porters and guides, being late. Africa time I guess, but on Kilimanjaro— really?? So we ended up getting like 4 hours of sleep, wonderful. When we woke up from our nap, we suited up in our warmest clothes, snow pants and warm jackets, hats, gloves, thick wool socks, balaclavas, and headlamps then began our ascent. And boy this was the toughest trek I had ever attempted. I was walking uphill as slow as a snail, I couldn’t believe how challenging it felt. I tried my dad’s tip of using the rest step by counting to six every step and locking the knee to rest. The climb felt never ending because it was dark most of the time and the shadow of the peak was unrecognizable. We were walking in snow the entire time. While climbing, Libby began to get affected by the altitude. Her stomach was constantly churning and she felt like puking. She also had a mean headache. I spotted her on her hands and knees a couple of times, gross. I luckily felt nothing from the altitude. Just that it was harder to climb uphill at such high elevation. Our guide, Kush, stupidly decided to change his hiking shoes because he said his other ones broke (but he use his originals for the hike down?) so he used these Timberland clunkers that must have belonged to one of the porters. Poor Tyler had to lend him one of his trekking poles and was helping Kush up every couple of steps. Kush’s new shoes had no traction and he was slipping and sliding like he was ice-skating. Ridiculous, why would you decide to change shoes for the summit attempt? Tyler acted as his railing and caught him every time he slipped. Kush was sort of an odd fellow, he would answer yes to every single on of our yes or no questions, but we soon learned to change the structure of our questions. He also never learned our names and called me Dada, which means sister. That pissed me off, its not like we have complicated names. Shows how much he gets close to his clients. I think he just climbs for the money, doesn’t appreciate the hiking. Anyways well we kept climbing and climbing uphill, the sun eventually rose at around 630 and the sunrise was very pretty. It was blocked by a mountaintop and sadly we weren’t going to reach the top in time for it. But about and 30 minutes later we reached the first part of our peak, Stela Point. That felt like a huuuge relief, I felt more accomplished reaching this spot than the peak because it marked the last of our strenuous uphill climb. We stayed here, took pictures for about 15 minutes, and then continued on to the peak. There was a little bit more of an uphill, but not much. I sped up my pace and just wanted to get there. There were a couple of other groups that were just leaving after reaching the top. There were also some people behind us. We finally arrived at the top by 730am. HALLELUJAH! There we were at Uhuru Peak, the top of Africa. 5,895m. How incredible. I arrived with Tyler and Kush then about 7 minutes later Libby arrives with our 2^nd guide, Simon and falls onto her hands and knees to the left of the peak sign and hurls. Lovely, I thought. But I did love being at the top, it was beautiful, I could see all the glaciers surrounding the peak and even the crater in the middle. I was kind of windy and cold, but not too overbearing. We only spent about 15 minutes up there and then the group insisted we go back down. Libby was feeling really sick so all she wanted to do was go down in elevation, but we worked so incredibly hard to get up here, I didn’t like rushing back down. It was not fun. The downhill from the peak was brutal. Lots of snow and wet gravel and very steep. I liked running down in the snow, it was tiring, but enjoyable. If I fell, it didn’t matter. Tyler and I were keeping up with each other and Kush was leading us. It took us around 2 hours to walk down. This began to make my legs soar. Once we finally arrived back at Barafu camp, I took off my warm and wet clothes, then climbed into my sleeping bag. Libby eventually arrived when I was sleeping, and then we all slept for about an hour and a half.  I woke up to Tyler’s voice, “uh you guys are you gonna eat lunch?” I answered yes we’re coming. I exited the tent, but Libby continued to sleep. Lunch was pancakes, soup, and tea, same old grub. After lunch we had to pack up our gear in order to begin our trek down to our last camp, Mweka camp at 3,063meters. It was hard for Libby to pack because she was so sick and weak. I felt bad that it was such a struggle, but she will soon feel better as we go down in elevation.

We started hiking downhill then our porters quickly caught up with us. They zoomed downhill, couldn’t believe it- they were practically running. I really enjoyed this hike downhill. Partly because it was downhill, but also the scenery was nice. We were walking on small streams and the vegetation was very lush and mossy. It was misty and foggy, but wasn’t raining thank god. Tyler and I walked ahead of Libby and Kush and we took off pretty much all of our layers. I was in a tshirt and long underwear bottoms with shorts. After about 4 hours of downhill scrambling with lose and broken rocks, we had finally arrived to our foggy campsite, Mweka. It was a huge campsite because in the high season there would be hundreds of tents, but now there were only around 20. We signed in as we had done at every site then entered our tents and figured out our tipping amounts for the porters and the guides. The company suggested 5 USD a day for the porters and 10 USD for the guides. So we converted that into Tanzanian shillings then planned on giving it to them at the bottom gate. For dinner we had pancakes, soup, rice and fried chicken then tea of course. We were all pooped and went straight to bed afterwards. In the morning we didn’t end up leaving until 9. We packed up our gear before bfast, ate the usual porridge, hotdogs, eggs and toast then finished the last 2 hours of the hike down. This hike was very wet and the small streams that we were walking on now turned into rivers. Lots of mud and I felt I was gonna slip and fall on my face at any step. I was relieved to finally get down to the bottom.

We were given a ride back to our hotel where we all showered and rested for a little. It felt great to be back, dry and relaxed. Libby brought her laptop so I was catching up on the internet downstairs in the lobby when a couple from Vancouver approached me. They told me they had been stocking us with the hotel employees to talk about our experiences with Kilimanjaro. So they pulled up two chairs and locked me in. I called up to Libby and Tyler for them to help me out. They interrogated us all about the littlest details like the kind of camp shoes we used. I could tell they had researched a hell of a lot more than we did. They knew all the campsite names and had the trail completely memorized. All their gear seemed new and the best of the best. But who knows how they actually hike. They were worried about being bored of each other and lonely at the dinner table because the porters and guides do leave you for yourselves at meals. Really, that was their main concern? They asked us a million other questions about the weather, clothes, walking pace, other groups, wake ups, food, water, and altitude sickness. They would have finished their hike by now, I wonder how it went—?!!

That night Libby, Tyler and went to a nice Indian restaurant for dinner, ate some great ice cream than when we arrived back at our hotel we each had a Kilimanjaro beer in the bar. The next morning we were to be picked up by a bus at 6am! We drove through the Tanzanian/Kenyan border then drove through Nairobi then finally arrived in Karen. Not much traffic at all, very nice. Libby, Tyler and I arrived in earlier than we had anticipated. We stopped by the compound one last time; picked up our phone deposits and I did some last minute emailing. I called my mom at her hotel where I was to spend the night with her because we were not allowed to sleep at the compound since the semester is ovvverrrr. When I arrived at Mackushla, the Bead and Breakfast, Millie was not there. But the hotel was VERY nice and VERY cute. I absolutely loved it. It was sort of vintage Indian, bohemian inspired. It was extremely cozy and I adored its entire set-up. I would have stayed a couple more nights there if I could. We were pretty much the only ones there. That night we had dinner served for us, I had a fish curry. The next morning we had to leave at another ungodly hour of 5 o’clock- grrrr. We also had to pack up/reorganize our belongings. When the cab arrived it was still dark and we were given an easy, no traffic ride to the airport. We then flew to Zanzibar.

 It is currently cloudy here, which is a bitch. I just got a manicure and pedicure then tomorrow I am getting a massage- oh lala! While my mom gets a body wrap thing. I really hope the weather clears up this will be my last time seeing the African sunshine and I don’t want to leave it like this. Alright I need to get off this computer, my eyes are starting to hurt, but ill check back in with you guys once I return stateside!!! I have 2 more days here until I leave this continent. Africa, you’ve been awesome, but my time has come!!! Miss you all and hope to see you soon!

-KARI 

WOWie Zowie I can’t believe we depart this compound tomorrow! I am leaving at the crack of dawn at 645am with two other students to head to Tanzania. We will stay at a hotel the night before we climb Kili. Then we’ll leave the hotel early in the morning and make our way to the first camp. I am all packed and ready to go. I can’t believe I fit my all my crap in pretty much one bag! I have all my hiking stuff in my hiking backpack of course, which I am lucky enough to not have to carry. We are about to eat a huge taco dinner with our coordinator, our co-coordinator/biodiversity professor, and some of the other staff who live on the compound. Everyone else is flying out tomorrow evening on the same flight to Heathrow and then JFK. Ah I’m very nervous, but It’s gonna be amaaazzinnggg! My camera is all charged and ready to go yayay so i will take plenty of photos and post them after!!! Okay so I have to go, I don’t want to spend the last night on my computer!!! i gottaaaa dannnccceee!!!! Ok so ya I just wanted to post one last thought before i go! Hopefully i’ll be back in a week to talk to you again! wish me luck!! 

xoxoxo Kari

———-

We will defeat you!!!

Hello friends! I am approaching my last week of interning here at Mpala Research Centre, which also means that my semester abroad is coming to an end :( I can’t believe how incredibly fast it flew by. My experience was all I wanted and more. I have been very lucky with the people I met and the work I have done. Four months was just enough time to begin to understand Kenyan culture and attempt to live like the locals. Its unfortunate that I will only have four days remaining with my group, but for the first time I have also felt excited to return to the States. Well first I will climb Kili then relax in Zanzibar but I’m talkin about after all that.

This week at Mpala, Margaret casually informed us that we will have to repeat a third set of transect surveys. Ah man she dropped that one on us out of the blue, Enock and I thought we were finished surveying in the field. Guess not, looks like we’re gonna have to look for more elephants! We will get a driver, which is nice because during the second set of surveys it was just Enock and I. I was the only observer then and I feel like my eyes weren’t as sharp as Enock. But with our new driver, Tenai, we are able to be efficient with even three sets of eyes because Tenai is an Askari so he constantly watches for wildlife. Surprisingly, we didn’t see that many more herds of elephants this week. I think we were just surveying transects at the wrong place and the wrong time. We were able to re-sight some herds, which is one of the purposes of doing these surveys, so thats good. Let’s see.. I’m thinkin of the highlight of my week. Oh right, the hippo pools. So on our way back, from being in the field I asked Enock if we could visit the Hippos pools because we haven’t been and I was told I must visit. It was just on our way back so it was reasonably convenient. When we arrived I could see a number of hippos relaxing underneath the water. There were also other animals around like monkeys, impala and Kudu. We drove next to the river/pond then looped around to head back to the main road. As we were turning, I noticed something laying on the shore next to the water- a Crocodile! I immediately told Enock I see a crocodile and he says, “No, that’s just a log.” “Are you sure?” I asked. He then examined the creature again and sure enough it really was a huge, 12-foot long crocodile. “That is a crocodile! I saw it myself, but I just thought it was a piece of wood.” Pshh he’s so full of it sometime, ill tell ya. He said he has always heard about this big guy, but has never seen it. I felt very lucky. He said that if we spoke to an askari about the crocodile on the radio, everyone would come running, even Margaret! Must be my luck, duhh.

On Saturday, I climbed up the tallest point of Mpala, which overlooks all of their ranchland. I was the only one accompanying a Taiwanese family who are studying grey-capped social weavers (little birdys!). The hike up to the top took about 15 minutes, felt like a casual strole actually. 3 askaris were also with us also because dangerous wildlife can be spotted here with the thick green vegetation. The view from the top was very impressive, the weather was a bit lousy, but it was cool to see the rain approaching off in the distance. I could see a couple herds of elephants roaming the grasslands below. After we drove back, carefully avoiding getting stranded in the mud (we slid, slipped, and skidded!) we nearly made it back in time for dinner. Sunday was pretty uneventful, but as of right now I’m sitting in the library, attempting to work on my final paper (unsuccessful) and I’m also trying to avoid getting infested by these beetles who are literally taking over all indoor living areas that light up at night with windows. There are thousands of these things that attack any light, get stunned, fall to the ground, then lots of annoying ants take over and attack their bodies. It’s really gross I know, but I thought I should just let you know the insect invasion I am currently dealing with. They are all in the bathroom floors, not in my banda thank god! Okay so I need to get back to work, actually I should go to bed, enjoy my pics (I’ll post more don’t worry)and I will get back at you next weekend when I’m back at the compound, woah!!!

Peace out girl/guy scouts!!!

-Kari

Hey Guys and Gals, 

I am now embarking on my second weekend at Mpala Research Center. Last week consisted of more transect surveys with the elephants, nothing I can complain about. We are currently onto our second round of the surveys, which we will use to track movements of elephant herds when re-sighting them in different transects. Instead of giving you my daily log of last week, I will only talk about my highlights—

On Monday of last week, just before we were about to leave for the field, Enock was told by security that there was a report of a dead elephant on the neighboring ranch. So he chatted with the director, Margaret, for a bit and they both agreed that we should head out to the site with security and make our own report of the death. It took about 20 minutes to find the head of security so that we could leave the research center with him. Then we had to drive to the main office to pick up another security guard. Enock and our driver, Francis exited the car and were chatting with the staff up there. Meanwhile I sat patiently inside the vehicle twiddling my thumbs, wondering if we’d ever leave Mpala. Finally, the car was filled and we drove away. After about 20 more minutes of very bumpy car riding, we met another security guard to get details of the initial report. He said that we have to get the coordinates of where the carcass lies and the tusks have been removed, but we don’t know by whom. So off we slowly went while stopping every now and then to talk with different ranchers. Finally we crossed a big river in the car then arrived at our neighboring ranch’s main office. Of course the director was not in so we talked with someone who brought us to someone else who found a man to search for one of the people we were looking for. After about 25 minutes of sitting in the scorching sun, a man arrived on a pikipiki (dirt bike/motorcycle). The Mpala guards, Enock and him chatted more about the elephant and he told us that the tusks have been removed and they are sitting in the director, Tom’s, office. He gave us Tom’s phone number, but the call did not go through. The motorcycle man also didn’t know the elephant’s GPS coordinates. So we were to either find Tom or head back to Mpala. We decided to leave, but as we exited their land, we happened to run into Tom on the road. He asked, “Why didn’t you call first? It is not in the protocol to just arrive expected to see the carcass. You should have called before coming here.” Enock told him we didn’t have his number, but he stated that, “Someone at Mpala does.” He said he would email us the GPS coordinates and we should go back to square one by calling first. What a jerk! So sure enough we drove all the way back to Mpala, failing our mission. Dang I really wanted to see this dead elephant. Enock later told me that returning to the carcass is not even worth it now; we’ll just do with the GPS coordinates.

Okay so the next day on Tuesday, during the first couple of surveys we had no elephant encounters. But our first encounter was with a herd called AV. Right as we approached them; Enock had mentioned this family was not afraid of cars or humans. I didn’t really know what he meant by that, so I decided to ignore the though and continue with my photographing. When we stopped near them, one by one the herd began to come closer to us. I didn’t think anything of this; elephants seemed to have been this close to us before. But once we were done monitoring/photgraphing their family, right as the car engine started and we began to move, the head matriarch of the herd stared us down then began to charge after us! I panicked, feared for my life and hid under the car seat. Even though the car could outrun her, I was petrified especially because Enock has had his car rammed by an elephant before. She began chasing us down the road getting closer when we slowed down to avoid potholes in the road. Eventually we turned off the trail because I guess there was a huge mud puddle ahead that would delay our get away. We finally lost her when weaving in and out of acacia trees. Thank the lord. After it took some time for me to get over that dramatic experience, we were ready to continue our transect surveys.

On Thursday in the afternoon, we headed to the southern region of Mpala’s ranch to continue our surveys. After we finished with our 7^th transect of the afternoon we were driving to the next when all of a sudden the car sounded as if it was backfiring, then it began to slow down. Enock and Lamoja were speaking really fast Swahili when soon enough the entire car had died. “Great”, I thought. “We’re goners.” “I think we may have run out of gas,” Enock exclaimed. We were pretty far out into the field. Lamoja lifted the hood and agreed, “Yup, looks like we’re out of gas.” Our Land Rover is old so it doesn’t accurately show the gas gage— we need to be more cautious about this. Luckily, they have a security radio, which they used to call a mechanic and an askari. After an hour later of sitting in the hot sun, hiding from any dangerous wildlife, our friends came to the rescue. However, they showed up thinking it was a mechanical issue, without bringing any gasoline. Awesome. So they drove the three of us plus the three of them who showed up in a teeny tiny mini white Suzuki back to the research center. I was bouncing all over the place while sitting in the back, of course without a seatbelt, they all just laughed, especially Enock who was cracking up most of the time. I glared. The mechanic and someone else would have to drive back to our car and refill it with gas. Sorry guys… When I returned I went to fill up my water bottle when one of Mpala’s researchers, Laura, asked if I wanted to join her for Sundowners at the lookout point. I guess Sundowners is not just a Saturday night thing and I answered, “why not?!” About 10 of us researchers chatted as the sun went down, singing songs while a Princeton research student played guitar. After it was completely dark we drove back to the research center just in time for dinner. What a perfect ending to a frustrating day.

This week was quite eventful as you can see and as I write to you, its pouring rain and thunder is roaring in the sky. I’m thinking it might be a good movie day. Enock went into Nairobi for the weekend so I entered in some of our data onto an Excel spreadsheet. We will hopefully finish up the last of our surveying on Monday then spend the rest of the time creating codes from elephants’ ear and tusk identifications and make a database where people like me who don’t know the elephants are able to differentiate the herds. I need to start thinking about my IDS 8-10 page paper, the last work I have in Kenya, which is due by the end of the semester. Also, when I return my mom will be staying with my program at the compound from May 6^th to the 10^th- very stoked about this.

I miss you all and happy Saturday!!

Your temporary elephant researcher,

Kari