Evidence...

December 19, 2008

... that some planes are bigger than others and that life here continues to be rich.

Although I am rarely a fan of US foreign policy, I am now officially a fan at least of the people of the US Foreign Service. Without the hospitality, help, and generosity of the US Embassy staff in Nairobi, I would probably be back in the states. They have taken me for dinners and parties, opened their homes, offered me rides, notarized signatures during off-hours, collected my mail, and cheerfully escorted me from room to room to room.

They are good folks.

Breaking The Rules

December 6, 2008

Of all the animals moving at dawn and dusk, my melancholia is the most predictably crepuscular in Amboseli. I rarely watch either the rising or setting sun in the states, but the two spectacles flank the most common of my days now. For those of us that see sadness in all that diffraction, then, it is just a string of grief and sorrow out here. Splendid grief and sorrow. A cyclical reminder not only that the day will end, but that it may well not live up to its promise.

I am deprived of the cocktail hours that must have evolved to soften this blow.

In short, I need a drink.

The urge to tack-down these hours of obvious Earth movement is so ubiquitous that many basic photography courses institute a rule. No sunrises. No sunsets. This protects students from inevitable failure. The whole of dusk and dawn is greater than the sum of its parts by at least an order of magnitude, and cameras can rarely do that kind of math.

Just summing the parts is hard enough. Driving east, looking for Omo's group, the daybreaking sun projects a crisp matte-black elephant silhouette. Jutting tusks and up swirled trunk, as if traced by an exacto knife. Driving back to camp, buttery magic hour rays drench the leaps and outstretched oven mitt paws of three lion cubs. It seems they are all trying to surf on the back of their mother. She has seen it all before, and remains unbothered until another adult female strikes a pose. Stealth, low, and spring-loaded. Both females disappear with purpose into the elephant grass. Dust flies. The zebra escapes.

Of course, these are just bookends on daytime surprises too. A wall of trees ringing the baboon-studded mudflats are not yellow-barked fever trees at all, but are so many giraffe, watching me watch baboons. With every afternoon shower I receive chattering accompaniment from the most appropriately named Beautiful Sunbird. And while I still cannot tell little Dipstick form the even littler Damien, I do now know that Nobel is not Noodle, that Liwaza is not Laos, and can recognize Kagame at a glance.

Onyo

November 26, 2008

It is a late morning here in Amboseli Baboon Research Camp. I jump out of bed at 7:30 like an overindulgent teenager.

Early to bed is a must here because early to rise is a foregone conclusion. If I am not up at 4:45 to go to the field, the resident Hildebrandt's francolins conspire to wake me by 6. To confirm that I have the right species ID, I consulted my Princeton Field Guides Birds of East Africa. The description of the HIldebrandt's francolin vocalization reads, "a wooden crescendo of rapid notes tunk-unkunkunk with first one loudest. May continue for long periods breaking into an insane bout of screaming, often given in duet."

May continue for long periods. Breaking into an insane bout of screaming. Yes, that's the one.

Morning insanities aside, it is the fauna of Amboseli that attracts visitors from all over the world. Giraffe are everywhere. Yesterday, in the mid-day heat, we saw a cheetah poured out under acacia shade. Lithe and languid like viscous speckled ink, she tossed out slow sultry tail flicks as the only the only sign of life. Waterbucks, warthogs, creshes of ostrich. Hamerkops, bustards, crakes, and cranes. The dusky magic hour might bring with it a lumbering family of elephants and every night the wind carries big-bellied whoops and happy cackles of nearby hyenas.

And, of course, there are baboons.

The Amboseli Baboon Research Project has been following these animals for more than 30 years. The study population includes five social groups, with approximately 300 animals. They are all habituated to human observers. The full time field staff can identify each one individually by sight and if I am to get any work done out here, I am charged with the same task. I've started in on the females.

At least one female in every group has a radio collar and I am not above using them to cheat. Nap's antennae is missing, Wifi's leans off to one side, and Flank's hooks backward. Still other females are simply quite distinct. Viva's tail is a stump, Echo's is kinked, and Mbegu's falls over to the right. Nutty has a big naked belly, Vinyl has a deep dark coat, and Micah is cute, petite, and golden brown.

By my eyes, though, subtle and often imperceptible characteristics are what differentiate the vast majority. I am taking it only on faith that eventually I will know these animals from one another at a glance. My questions to the field team about telling this one from that one from the other are often followed either by chuckles or long puzzled silences. When my mentor points out that a nearby female is Onyo, I ask how he knows. Like all Kenyans I have met so far, he is exceedingly polite. Rather than respond with what I can only assume he wants to say, he answers with a grin and simple decorum.

"Because she looks like Onyo."

Reason To Believe

November 6, 2008

Just after Kenyans went to the polls in December 2007, the country erupted in violence after widespread claims that the election had been stolen from Raila Odinga and his party (ODM) by the incumbent president and party, Mwai Kibaki of PNU. The violence was severe and fell out across ethnic divisions.

This time, the country erupted in jubilation.

Along with about a thousand other people, I was invited to watch live coverage of the US presidential election returns at the American Ambassador's residence. Best I could tell, the crowd included mostly embassy folks, scholars, business people, and students. They held a straw vote for Kenyans and, when they announced the results, I was surprised to hear that of the 500 Kenyans who voted, only 479 cast votes for Obama.

I spent some time chatting with three students from Kenyatta University who were studying international affairs. A fashion forward young woman from Western Kenya told me that she wanted to study law in the states, but that she was afraid because Americans are racist. I was in the middle of trying to convince her, and perhaps myself, that this is not categorically true when CNN announced Obama as the predicted winner. The outburst was explosive and we all did our best to keep our toes out from underneath our jumping neighbors' landing feet.

But stomped-on toes are a small price to pay for a shared sense of collective redemption.

After McCain's gracious concessions, local television stations favored a video clip of a crowd running through the Kibera slum in celebration. They danced in the streets, carrying Obama banners. One man carried a rainbow "PEACE" flag and I doubt he knows that same-sex marriage bans passed in three states.

Kibera is the same slum that rose to international fame during the violence in January. If you remember marauding bandits, bloody faces, and burning streets from the news back then, you are remembering some images of Kibera. Now replace those memories with the street song and dance of people who believe that this election represents the promise of possibility for Kenya, for Africa, and for the world.

The cynical among us mutter about assassination scares, the inevitable set-up of inflated expectations, and the un-fixable Bush mess that Obama's administration will inherit. The cynical note that many Kenyans may expect Obama to honor ethnic loyalties that are invisible to most Americans. These hypothetical obstacles, disappointments, and quagmires may certainly become real. But--in the most literal sense--they will be no more real than last night's celebrations. I had had too little sleep and too much adrenaline to join in, but was lulled into deep and happy sleep by the sounds of fireworks, deep beats, and the laughter of people who knew they didn't have to work in the morning.