Jaedyn's Journeys: Nanyuki!

Hi again!

Look how good I'm being about posting regularly. Josh owes me a cookie now. I would also settle for a coffee.

A sign in Ol Pejeta Conservancy

Tomorrow is out last full day in Nanyuki, Kenya. On Tuesday, we'll drive to Nairobi to catch our Wednesday morning flight to Kigoma, Tanzania.

Sunrise in Maasai Mara

Nanyuki River Sign

Giant bluegum

Nanyuki has been lovely. We started with two free days, which I spent writing two papers, calling family, and napping. The sixth was an academic day. We had a guest lecturer talk about Grevy zebras and then we went to the William Holden Education Centre (WHEC). The center itself was very interesting: they had some interesting ideas on composting, energy use, and environmentalism as a whole. They also had an arboretum which anyone who knows me will know that I LOVED. However, I found their animal rehabilitation center very cruel. The animals were in VERY small enclosures which were all much too small for them. They had lions, hyenas, a leopard, a hyrax, Sykes monkeys, baboons, and a few more animals all in cages. They said that all of the animals were either being rehabilitated for release in the wild or were severely injured and wouldn't survive in the wild. Even if this was the case, it was still (in my opinion) completely unethical for them to have the animals in as small of enclosures as they did. They had a baby giraffe, some llamas, an ostrich, and a mountain bongo just walking around on the grass right next to us. The mountain bongo tried to lick my professor. It was all very random and fever dream esque.

Albino zebra (WHEC)

Fever dream

Lioness and lion at WHEC

Anyways, the next day we went to Ol Pejeta and got a lecture on black rhinos! I really, really enjoyed learning about the ecology and rehabilitation of the rhinos. After our lecture, we got to go visit Baraka, Ol Pejeta's blind black rhino. He was very friendly, and we all pet him. Then, we had another quick lecture on the white rhinos and the rehabilitation efforts for them. Ol Pejeta has the last two northern white rhinos in the world: Najin and her daughter, Fatu. We were lucky enough to go into their extra special enclosure to see them which was an incredible experience. Then, we visited the chimpanzee sanctuary, where 35 chimps share 140.54 square miles. Chimps are a lot bigger than I thought they were. And we'll see them without an electric fence between us in a week. Finally, we went on a game drive in the Ol Pejeta Conservancy.

Najin

Baraka

Fatu

Yesterday, we had an exercise on the population dynamics of whistling thorn acacia as well as the species' symbiotic relationship with ants. I also really enjoyed this. We divided the study area into grids and recorded the height, length, damage, and presence/absence of ants on each seedling found. Then, we recorded the height, damage, presence/absence of ants, and diameter of tagged trees. The conservancy has been collecting data on this for 23 years if I remember correctly. Then, we were able to go see the critically endangered Grevy zebra in their special enclosed area. They're much bigger than the common zebras and have a lot more stripes. They got very close to us which was really cool. On our game drive later that day, we saw a hybrid Grevy-common zebra. On the game drive, we also saw a warthog mud bathing, a lot of giraffes, elephants, rhinos, and cape buffalo, and some hartebeest and water buffalo. Then, I finished yet another paper. Tomorrow, we have one class and then the rest of the day free to pack and write (you guessed it!) another paper. I've really enjoyed my time in Nanyuki and am excited to go to Tanzania!

Thank you for keeping up with my time in Kenya! Til next time!