Jambo!
I know it has been quite some time since my last update but there has been a lot going on and we have been quite busy! Part of the reason it has been so long is that I tried to do a video blog in place of this update. Jace and I brought our camera with us to a bunch of places we frequently visit (Lake Naivasha, Karagita [a nearby village], Naivasha town) and did a bunch of filming so we could show you what we do on a daily basis. However, the internet connection here is a bit slower than back home in Canada and we had no idea how long it would take to upload the videos. It turns out that it takes a week for one single video! Either way, we have some good footage to show you when we return, and back to the written updates!
We have been working quite hard, having sampled Lake Naivasha every Monday and Tuesday for the past four weeks and we have also completed two mesocosm experiments and are currently running a third that will wrap up on Monday! For these experiments, we are testing nutrient treatments in water from three different lakes, all very close to Lake Naivasha. These lakes are:
Crater Lake:
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| Crater Lake, Naivasha Kenya |
Oloidien Lake:
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| Oloidien Lake, Naivasha Kenya |
…and of course, Lake Naivasha:
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| Lake Naivasha, Naivasha Kenya |
After each experiment runs for one week, we collect the bottles from the lake, process the samples, and take some pictures of the water. Here are some photos I took after the first mesocosm experiment. You can tell the water from each lake has different chemistry and algae within just by looking at it:
Crater Lake
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| Crater Lake water |
Oloidien Lake:
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| Oloidien Lake water |
Lake Naivasha:
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| Lake Naivasha water |
We have a funny story about the third experiment that is currently running. We like to check on the experiment daily to make sure no one has tampered with the bottles and that everything is still intact. Well last night around 5:30pm, just before dusk, Jace and I visited the experiment site. From the car, we can see that the experiment is okay and has not been tampered with. Since we had some time on our hands, we decided to get out of the car and walk down to the water’s edge. As we are looking at the experiment and talking about what great and successful scientists we hope to become, we hear a large splash of water and sort of a ‘flapping’ noise. We look to our left and not 20 metres away from the very place we stand, we see:
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| The dangerous hippo, or 'kiboko' in Kiswahili |
My favourite saying in all of the Kiswahili language is 'Kiboko ni hatari sana' = the hippo is very dangerous. When you are in a hippo’s playground, all bets are off. We ran. We ran to the car, got inside, and the only thing I could think to do was roll up my window. We figure that the hippos have adopted the experiment as one of their own! Hippos are extremely territorial and aggressive so hopefully they will move on soon, preferably before we have to go out on the water to collect the experiment on Monday! In addition to the nutrient treatments, we got an idea for a fourth experiment when we noticed something happening to the lake. Here is a picture of the experiment site when we first arrived in Naivasha at the end of September:
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| Lake Naivasha, September 2010 |
…and here is what that same site looks like today:
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| Lake Naivasha, November 2010 |
Those are floating plants living on the surface of the lake and they move around the lake driven by wind in extremely large masses. The plant is known as water hyacinth and it actually doesn’t look so bad when they are flowering:
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| Flowering water hyacinth |
However, water hyacinth is not native to Lake Naivasha and since it was introduced to the lake, it has become a nuisance plant. Since the hyacinth does such a good job at covering the surface of the lake, we are planning a fourth mesocosm experiment to see how the algae are affected when we restrict light availability. We have constructed a setup that will allow us to sink the bottles to just below the water surface and with the natural water hyacinth cover; the algae in the bottles will be starved of light! This should be interesting and we are excited to get it rolling. Here is the apparatus we have rigged together:
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| Apparatus for sinking our experimental bottles. Two large rocks will anchor the entire thing to the lake sediment while rope tied to the column of metal with holes will hold the bottles at a constant depth - we are quite proud of ourselves |
Other than sampling and setting up experiments, Jace and I have been hanging around the house getting other work done. I took some interesting pictures of things around our house to show you how we are living and what we see on a daily basis. First off, what I did not know on my previous trip to Naivasha in 2007 and just learned recently about the large field behind our house, which houses many types of animals, is that it is a major site of illegal poaching. This is a major issue in Kenya because there is an illegal market for bush meat and poachers do quite well by selling this meat illegally. We have made friends with a few neighbors nearby and one is especially sensitive to the poaching issue and does daily rounds on his motorbike to look for animal traps and set snares. Just to show you how non-discrete this illegal hunting operation is, Jace and I went for a walk last week and came across an impala that had been killed by a neck snare and stripped of all edible meat. Kind of an eye-opener of how real this is:
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| Impala poached for bush meat |
Walking through the same area some time earlier, we came across a wildebeest skull that now sits high and mighty on our front porch greeting any visitors that come. Word around the lake is that a new family of hyenas have moved into the area recently and are taking advantage of the abundance of animals. There have also been recent leopard sightings!
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| Young wildebeest skull |
Other than Tim Horton’s, one thing Jace and I direly missed from home was a barbecue. Well, we set out to change that and have made one of our own! Here you can see that we made quite a nice barbecue out of stones, chicken fence, a hole in the ground, and some charcoal! Since we built this, we have been buying fresh beef and chicken from local markets – it’s fantastic!
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| Home made grill - also quite proud of ourselves |
I finally took some pictures of the house for you to see where we are living! Some interesting facts about our neighborhood: we just found out from a long time resident of the area that pythons live in our yard and have ravaged our neighbor’s chicken coop and rabbit pen. We learned this only after romping through the thicket looking for firewood. Jace and I have also been hearing hippos barking and grunting in our backyard over the past few nights, sometimes even waking us up. These suspicions were confirmed when we found the MASSIVE pile of ‘gift’ the hippo left for us – message taken – no more running around the yard at night! Here are the pictures:
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| Our right-side drive whip! |
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| Front of the house with my back to a private dirt road |
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| Back of the house with my back to the lake and the 'animal field' |
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| Our backyard facing the lake and 'animal field' with my back to the house |
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| Inside the front door living room area and dining area. To the left is the couch and sitting area where all Maple Leafs games are observed and many Tuskers consumed in the process |
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| Looking back at the front door |
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| Kitchen and sample processing lab - notice the ample supply of chicken and ice cream |
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| A great view of sunset every night, right in our own backyard |
Our neighbors are quite nice, and we recently learned they are quite important people! Jace and I were invited to a social gathering right next door to a house that we learned belongs to the Danish embassy. People at this party included the top lawyer and top judge in Kenya as well as representative from the United Nations and European Union. Jace and I aptly showed up answering constant questions about how cold it is in Canada and telling people we have to be home by 2am in time to catch the Leaf game online (we haven’t missed one yet!).
On Tuesday, Jace and I are heading off on a little vacation to the east coast of Kenya, Mombasa! This place is a tropical paradise, sitting right on the equator at sea level. The forecast for the week we are there ranges in temperatures between 32-40°C. How is the weather back in London and Toronto?! We are staying in a backpacker’s hostel and we have read nothing but excellent reviews on the place. It is rated one of the top in Kenya and is supposed to be perfect for meeting people. We are very excited for this trip and we are also very excited for the new projects we will be working on when we return. These projects will involve dissecting fish and taking lake sediment samples! I am sure we will have many pictures and stories upon our return after the 13th of November and I will definitely post an update at that point.
It is very difficult for Jace and I to get pictures of ourselves because we are the only ones here right now but I promise to get some pictures while at the coast! Before I sign off, for our mothers (Donna and Gail) who want to physically see that we are alive and well – here are some pictures of us with dangerous African animals:
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| Jace and the wildebeest - or 'Wild Beast' |
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| Ryan with some zebra and directly behind me, out of my peripherals, a male big horned water buck |
We have already been here for more than one month and we have less than one month to go! Time is flying but we are definitely enjoying every second of it. Thanks for reading and for all the great comments! You will hear from us soon,
Ry
