Saturday May 17, 2014
After two full days of traveling to different ranches it was nice to have a more relaxed morning today. However, there was still work to be done. After breakfast we were working hard on studying for the practical exam which was Saturday at 4pm. We would help each other identify trees, mammals, reptiles, birds, grasses, and dung. The practical took about an hour and for the most part everyone knew most of the questions except for a few questions that Ryan through in to surprise us. After supper we had the optional game drive which everyone went on. We were able to see quite of bit of wildlife. We saw two oryx, hartebeest, a genet, zebras, and a lot of impala. One of the cars saw eyes behind a bush that looked like it was from some kind of cat. They tried to get the animal to come out of the bush but it never did so no one really knew what animal it was. Seeing all the wildlife was amazing, but the night sky was so beautiful. The sky was completely covered in stars and the moon had a bright orange color. It was the most beautiful night I have seen in the savanna so far.
– Abby Flickner – Environmental Science, GC 2016
Sunday May 18, 2014
Today being our last Sunday in the savanna we have to revisit some of the words we learnt from the Maa community: supa means hello, ngare means water, gishu means cattle, nditugani means a person and many others….Its has been a long week with many activities mainly involving a lot of driving. So we had to use this day differently. We took our breakfast as usual and we broke into our respective groups to discuss our data analysis with great help from Prof. Ryan who tirelessly helped us to figure out what exactly we could do with our data.
At around 1 pm we had to obey the law of research in savanna which states that `behind every successful glade there is a warthog’ this meant that we had to break for our lunch. We had a two hours break then we went back for our discussions pertaining to the human story in relation to the savanna. It was an interesting discussion since we could really talk of evolution of human beings right from its initial home. This took a short while then we had to go for the favorite game in this region which is soccer.
We had to play against the royal team of the people living in Mpala. The play was wonderful since we could enjoy the evening jam as sun was setting down in the far horizon and we could no longer see the ball. This marked the end of the match. We walked back to our rooms and prepared for dinner at the common dinning place as usual. We eventually had exchange of ideas about different views about evolutionary theories in the savannas and the creation theories while some of us went to work on our research projects. This gave room for more research that needs to be done to know much as to why things are the way they are today and the effects of global warming towards evolution in savannas.
Oh! Hyenas are laughing too loud that I am getting too scared but according to the guards they are saying that crocuta crocuta are happy because they have eaten much. This reminds me that tomorrow we shall have more activities to do. ASANTE!! (THANKS)
-KIBET JONATHAN, BSC.NATURAL RESOURCES WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT KARATINA, KENYA.
