Galagos cocos endemic bushbaby

Originally uploaded by furtwangl

A quick note as we wind up our last evening at Colobus Trust. We heartily recommend this place as a volunteer site - they don’t normally accept families but they are very well set up for folks over 18 who are seeking a month or a few months of placement doing good work in local conservation. The setting, the staff, the food, the accommodations, and the local nature are all quite incredible.

We’ve had a lot happen in the last few days, too much to go over in detail, though you can get the idea by looking at our photos. Swahili lessons by the hotel pool, more monkey-watching, and a nice visit to the house and garden of Luciana, next door to the Trust, she is one of the trustees and a longtime resident, with a yard full of interesting rescued animals including a gigantic tortoise and a tame sunni antelope who wanders in and out of her living room. Splashing in the waves, and watching more monkeys, including surveying other troops in the area.

Under the full moon I had good success attracting bushbabies with juicy ripe mango and firing away at them with a Nikon, including getting some great shots of the very tiny, shy, and elusive local endemic species, galagos cocos. There is nothing quite like sitting in the dark waiting near some fruit you’ve put out, then hearing a squeaking call from the trees above you, shining your flashlight up there, and seeing two or three pairs of highly reflective eyes staring back down at you. If the creatures attached to the eyes weren’t so darned cuddly looking, it would be a creepy way to spend the night of the full moon, but instead I was entranced, and elated when the little fellas came down to sample the mango and let me snap their portrait, before being chased off by their bigger cousins. (Those are centimeters marked on the board)

Today we went on an outreach trip to the Mkokoni Primary School about half an hour from here. They have a great, active Wildlife Club and have planted literally thousands of trees on their school grounds; the leaders of the club took us on an extensive tour around the site to show both the indigenous and exotic trees they have planted, many of which provide some income from cashews, pine and eucalyptus timber, and from the fruits of the jatropha.

We’ve gotten interested in jatropha, a biofuels plant that grows well here. We read an article about it in the plane in-flight magazine, wrote down the name to research more, and then today here it was again, on the school grounds. With these wonderful young women in Muslim hijab spouting latin plant names and detailed facts about the efficiency of jatropha’s potential for oil production. Lyanda was quite taken with that story, and had me take photos to accompany something she might write up.

Then a lovely couple of hours with the kids, in an open-air classroom under the dappled shade of the trees they had planted.

Oops the bush babies are squawking, nobody has put out fruit for them tonight.

And this evening, to end our stay, a little party with the staff at the end of the afternoon, featuring a delicious banana cake, soda, chips, and well-wishes, and then a lovely Italian dinner out with the other volunteers, to celebrate our last evening. Tomorrow, our 11th wedding anniversary, we’ll tour Mombasa and then head to Takaungu village where we’ll be guests of the East African Center all next week.

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