Arrived Takaungu village safely. Limited internet but nice house + Claire’s excited to attend school here.

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.

Colobus mom and baby Tumaini

Photo on Flickr by furtwangl

(Tom here:) Dear friends, thank you for all of your comments, it has been nice to stay connected these first couple of weeks. The Colobus Trust has been really good to us, with friendly staff and volunteers, very comfortable accommodations, great food, and best of all, really amazing nature literally at your doorstep. Yesterday a school class came, and we helped Hamisi teach about the monkeys and the local ecosystem, which was good fun, followed by soccer on the beach. And Claire has been a big help around the vet clinic, cleaning the place up, collecting flowers and fruits for the Vervet monkeys they are preparing for release, and working with John on their care.

But by far my favorite activity is just to watch the monkeys. There is a troop of nine Colobus monkeys here, the house is smack in the center of their relatively small territory. Yesterday I watched them for much of the morning, and again today all three of us started watching them in the trees right outside our door, and over an hour or two, followed them gradually across the property to the beach road. Colobus all look really similar so we have been working hard to do an accurate census of the troop, confirming the sex of the eight mature monkeys (done by seeing if there is a small stripe under their tail), looking for any marks or features that will help tell them apart, and most especially, watching the baby.

Baby Tumaini (means “Hope”) was born in early April. Colobus babies are all white when they are born, but at two and a half months old, he’s growing up and changing color gradually. After a lot of observation we are pretty sure he is a he, but it is hard to tell because he spends most of his time in his mothers’ arms, peeking around. It’s quite a sight to see mom leap from branch to branch just above your head with her baby hanging onto her belly!

We’re making slow progress with the identification, we have noted a mole under the left eye of one subadult male which makes him somewhat easier to identify. We’re hoping to get in at least another day of watching them, if they are close by. The assistant manager here, Gwili, has been kind enough to lend me his Nikon so I can take better photos since all I have with me (unfortunately) is a (really nice) point and shoot.

And then there are the bushbabies. Last night I went with Helen up the road and we spent hours sitting in the forest, rich with night sounds, and illuminated by the full moon. Given the choice between going to a bar to watch a European soccer match, and going into the woods at night to sit quietly and wait for bushbabies, I have to confess it was not a difficult decision.

So there we sat, in the middle of the kilometer-wide strip of precious and fast-disappearing coral rag forest, between the coastal road and the sea. The sun set, you could hear the surf in the distance, twilight brought a little wind swishing through the canopy, the fruit bats came out and flitted in silhouette, and the insects chirped all around. A family of Hadada ibis settled for the night in a nearby tree with a giant cacophony of squawks and honks. Bushbabies made their weird call to each other, getting responses in the distance.

Sitting quietly, every so often we would scan the trees with flashlights, looking for the characteristic eye shine of the bushbabies who might be tempted down by the banana we had put out. They are VERY shy and elusive. Eventually we found one far above us, and watched him for a while by flashlight, tracking him as he sprang through the dark trees, until we lost him in the leaves. But we were unable to get a good photo, which is the focus of Helen’s research. Tonight we’ll try again, especially in search of the tiny little, very shy coastal species, which is about the size of a hamster, but an extremely shy tree hamster that, when you get it in your flashlight beam, suddenly springs through the dark to another branch, jumping with surprising strength, speed and accuracy, and is gone. In the moonlight, sometimes you can see its dark shadow scampering up the branch before it disappears. Wish us luck tonight, and I’ll post any photos we manage to snap of this rare and secretive creature!

Bush Baby

Originally uploaded by furtwangl

(From Claire:) Hi! We’re alive! Last night me and my mom went outside after dark with Helen (from Scotland) who is a volunteer here, but she came to take pictures of bush babies for her studies. Helen brought out bananas, watermelon, and other fruit, so the bushbabies would come down from the trees. They came down, and we got to see them–they’re a lot smaller than you think!!! They have giant eyes, giant ears, and their tails are very fluffy. They are super-CUTE!!! Suddenly you’ll just see something falling from the tree, and a bushbaby will appear down with the food. They’re like giant raindrops!!! Bushababies are SO AWESOME!!! I feel sorry for my dad, who didn’t come out with us. We’re having a blast!!!

(Editor’s note - the Dad is off with Helen to help her tonight, at a site further down the beach.)

Leopard paw print

Originally uploaded by furtwangl

Tom: So… Claire blogged about the python (they grow big enough to take small antelope!) (hi Tauna!), and Lyanda blogged about the sleeping sickness-carrying tse tse flies (sleeping sickess is not endemic in eastern Kenya, no worries). It falls to me to blog about our wet, wet hike to beautiful Sheldrick Falls at Shimba Hills park, and reassure you that we had an awesome day despite the grandmother-alarming nature of all of these posts. I’ll add the leopard paw print as my photo just to round out the “wild Africa” picture.

Shimba Hills is a second-tier Kenyan park about 45 minutes up into the hills from here, and today we seemed to be almost the only visitors. The weather was intermittently rainy (it is one of Kenya’s last coastal rainforests) but the clouds brought out the animals for us; we saw 100% of the park’s giraffes (there are two) and impalas (there is one), as well as a number of elephants close-up (they often are in the woods or only seen on distant hillsides), some amazing birds (eagles, vultures, bee-eaters, kingfishers, guinea fowl), and the incredible sable antelope which, in Kenya, can only be seen in this park.

After a game drive we collected a ranger (and her AK-47), and drove to the trail head for Sheldrick Falls, a 2km hike. On the way down the ridge we had a hopeful moment of sun but by halfway there it was showering. We spent a nice few minutes at the foot of the falls, and as we turned to leave the downpour began… and never let up, the entire way back. We were DRENCHED. It was warm enough (maybe 75 degrees today) but really, really wet, and by the time we got back to the car we were all completely soaked. We did our best to wring out, and parked Claire in the front seat by the heater vent, but our heart had kind of gone out of game-driving, so we didn’t tarry in the park too much longer before heading back.

Of course when we came back here, after a hot cup of coffee and a change into dry clothes, the troops of colobus and sykes monkeys were swinging chattering through the trees above our driveway. Oh, and I found a new kind of millipede, with red legs (lots of them!). It’s pretty incredible right outside our door, and we didn’t even make it the 200 metres down to the beach today!

A couple of asides — We’ve mentioned Helen, the bush baby researcher staying here. She was kind enough to share a few of her bush baby photos, though we have not see one yet ourselves (they are nocturnal and very shy). And we won’t keep blogging at this pace, we’ll settle into a routine here next week and only post substantively every few days. But for the moment, our excitement is making us verbose!

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

Central african python

Originally uploaded by furtwangl

Claire: Today we were going on a hike in Shimba Hills wildlife preserve (it was very rainy) when we came up to a baby python!!! It was about one yard long, and six or seven inches around. You don’t know how cool it was! For a moment I was a little scared, but when the ranger said that it was only a baby, and wouldn’t hurt me, I thought it was awesome! But since it was a python, the ranger still thought it would be a good idea to walk around it, through the wet grass (but we were still only a couple feet from it). Can you believe that this python is the largest snake in Africa, and it can grow to be seven meters long?! I’m actually kind of glad the snake wasn’t full-grown, even though I do love snakes! Well, all in all this has been an amazing trip so far, and we’re having a blast!!!!!

Lyanda: A wild day–I went off with the two other volunteers (Helen from Scotland, and Egbert from Holland–I suppose Tom has posted photos of them somewhere, and I truly like them both), and Peter (on the Colobus trust staff) to do a Colobus census about 15 miles down the road, though it seemed like 50, riding Kenyan-style in the back of a pickup down the dusty, bumpy trail in the hot sun–totally gorgeous, through the coastal forest, views through the trees of the beach, and local people bent over their fields. The road ended at the most beautiful beach I’ve ever seen–more astonishing even than the beach here–edged in mangroves, yellow-billed storks, an islet full of egrets, and that amazing turquoise water. I had rather imagined us leisurely wandering some nice nature-trail, looking treewards for monkeys, but instead Peter took us bushwacking straight through the tangled forest for 2 1/2 hours. SO much fun–I later found out that Helen was pretending to be Jane Goodall, just like I was. The forest here is both unique and endangered, a coral rag forest, covered in a layer of fossil coral, and populated by trees with shallow root systems, since the coral is so hard to penetrate. Tangles of enormous boabab roots reach across the forest floor–they have giant trunks in which God is said to live (they also say if you walk around one seven times, which would be a long walk, you will change sex!–I told Tom to be careful), and spreading branches, with large green-velvet-covered fruits hanging all over them like jewelry. Eleven endemic animal species. Really an astonishing, wonderful place. Egbert is an entire foot taller than me, so crawling through the viney forest was a little difficult for him. The going was slow enough that I could observe the many butterfly and dragonfly species, and even make a few sketches whenever Peter stopped to wield his machete and hack us through a particularly impenetrable patch. We emerged drenched in sweat, twigs in our hair, and decidedly sans monkey (though on the drive out we found several). A great way to spend the morning.

In the afternoon we completely shifted gears, as volunteers get Friday afternoons off–One of the Colobus Trust board members is associated with an atmospheric, European-tourist-catering hotel down the road. Not overly fancy, but very nice. So the Colobus volunteers are allowed to use the pool whenever we like. We get there by mutatu–rickety small buses that sweep you up from the side of the road. It’s a beautiful pool, and felt so refreshing after the hot morning–after a dip we enjoyed beer and wine while Claire swam to her heart’s content, and then had a glass of fresh pineapple juice. Vervet monkeys everywhere.

And now, in the quiet cool evening, I’m completely exhausted. I’m not a good blogger (prefer paper and privacy), but Tom is doing such a good job with it, I am trying to do my part! Thanks again, everyone, for keeping us in your thoughts.

Curious sykes

Originally uploaded by furtwangl

This morning we went our separate ways - Lyanda went with a group on a hike, and Claire was put to work on a project making paper mache balloons to hide food in, for the monkeys they are rehabilitating for release. So I decided to wander the little forest trail here in search of the property’s two resident troops - sykes monkeys and colobus monkeys. The colobus troop had come earlier, sitting right outside the house in the tree above the driveway (see photos), and then heading off across the property but not before affording me a quick shot of their new baby. But then, after some quiet walking, I found the sykes monkey troop in the forest, and watched them in a baobab tree with my binoculars for 15 or 20 minutes as they fed on leaves and chattered to each other and peeked down at me.

I was completely happy, but eventually my arms grew tired of holding up the binoculars. So I put them down for a moment, turned to stretch my neck, and this is what I found on a branch directly behind me, almost within arms reach. Primate observing primate observing primates. And none too shy either, happy to keep watching as I took out my camera, and took several portraits, before climbing up into the tree with the rest of the troop, and swinging away out of view.

Cousins! Baboon skull

Link to all flickr photos: furtwangl

(From Claire) Baboons! Sykes monkeys! Colobus monkeys! They’re everywhere! We’ve been here at the Colobus Trust one night and it’s absolutely marvelous! There’s a short tiny little walk to a beeeeeeeautiful beach with warm water and white sand. There are palm trees on the small short cliff that runs along the beach.

At the guesthouse there is a cook named Jared, a lady named Helen who takes pictures of bushbaby faces for a masters research project, and another volunteer from Holland named Egbert. Also really nice staff.

So far no baboons have tackled us or bitten our heads off! And we are doing well. Today we went in a truck to the forest and collected food (branches and fruits) for the vervet monkeys that they keep in a cage because some people took them from the wild to keep as pets which is illegal. They are now trying to get them ready to be put back in the wild.

Other things that the Colobus Trust does are: they make rope ladder bridges called “colobridges”to hang from trees across the road and so the colobus monkeys that need to cross the road won’t have the danger of being run into by a car, and can just climb easily on the colobridges across the road. They also remove snares from the forest that people set to catch antelopes, but that also catch the monkeys, and they teach children in schools about the colobus monkeys and about what the Colobus Trust does.

Once again we are having a marvelous time, we are happy and healthy!!!

(From Tom) Yeah. What she said. The Colobus Trust is exactly the kind of place I wish I had spent about six months in my early twenties, so we’re making up for it now, and giving Claire a jump-start. And she has settled right in, and loves it. Large-ish compound (5 acres) set between the beach road and the beach, with a former home turned into education center and volunteer housing with 10 beds in 4 rooms. Though with the recent troubles in Kenya (overblown in the media) all their winter volunteers canceled, so they’re pleased to see us (we’re paying to stay here), and have plenty of space, with just two other volunteers here at the moment. In the trees, though, monkeys aplenty! A troop of sykes monkeys and a troop of angolan colobus monkeys call this little patch of earth home, and so monkeys can be dependably found by wandering the property, with baboons around too, and bushbabies hiding in the trees (they’re nocturnal).

Today it rained hard and we basically just got an orientation and settled in, we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

Just a reminder that clicking on a photo on the blog’s left sidebar takes you to that individual image in our flickr.com account, but clicking the furtwangl link, either on the blog or on once you are on the flickr site will show you our whole “photostream” of images

And speaking of photos, to give you a sense of the place, the photos of the Colobus Trust house, sykes monkey, snail, millipede, and beach are all within about 200 yards of each other, on the little path from center to beach. Not bad!

Power and internet here are a bit intermittent; we’ll keep posting at least once a day even if only the short phone text messages, just to let everyone know all’s well. Lyanda’s on deck for the next substantive blog post, hopefully tomorrow. We have our usual division of duties - I am picking up new Swahili words from everyone I meet, while Lyanda has put her nose promptly in an academic tome on the biology of colobus monkeys, found on the shelf here, and can tell you all about their four stomachs and lack of cheek pouches.