Lyanda: Some folks have asked what “hotel” we are staying in, so I thought I’d add a word about our accomodations. We’re not staying in a hotel at all, but at the Colobus Trust office, which includes the main office/computers, a kitchen, dining room, education classroom, four volunteer bedrooms, two baths, and a couple hanging out places for volunteers. It’s all pleasantly simple, and a bit run down in the classic East African way. Currently, after this day of heavy rain, the roof is leaking in several places, and we have been running around with mops and buckets–Helen’s room is particularly puddled, but ours is mercifully dry. Our room consists of just two bunk beds (Claire and I below, Tom above, and the second high bed serving as a shelf for all of our stuff–all well-netted, of course, though as Tom says the mosquitoes are not bad at all), a desk, and a sort of closet with a few hangers in it. Also a creaky ceiling fan, which actually works, and is nice in the evenings. There are no windows–or rather no window panes–as with most homes there are only grates to keep out the largest primates (baboons and humans), and screens, though I see that on the little village houses and shacks there are no screens, which is unfortunate given the malaria rate (also in the hills today there were tse-tse flies–it turns out that while mosquitoes prefer Claire, tse-tse flies prefer me, and though they bite hard, they don’t seem to leave any itchiness, and ideally no tse-tse sleeping sickness either!). The five of us volunteers share the two bathrooms, with temperamental switch-on hot water. The place is kept quite clean by Esau, the keeper of things, a lovely quiet man with very little English. He’s super-diligent, and even does our laundry for us. Jared is our cook, and those of us that are around and awake eat together. He always provides plenty of vegetarian dishes for Claire and me, and specializes in chapatis that are absolutely oil-drenched, and totally delicious. We feel very at-home here, and are happy that we’re staying another week. Oh, and the grounds are gorgeous–leafy, green, secluded, crawling with monkeys, and with a forested walk to that beautiful beach.

Today we explored the Shimba Hills preserve (joined with Helen and Egbert to enlist a pop-top van and a guide, totally necessary–he arranged the required AK-47 toting ranger to take us on the hike to the falls), as Claire mentioned, and had incredible encounters with elephants, also saw Sable Antelope, Cape Buffalo (complete with flocks of oxpeckers on their backs), the park’s only two giraffes, and incredible birds, my favorite being the Long-crested Eagle, probably because it looked so great wet. Its crest, which really is very long (maybe seven centimeters), was drooping over its brow. So funny. Oh dear, look what happens–once I start blogging I don’t stop. Off to enjoy the quiet dark. xo

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