Work

Today was a pretty productive day, at least compared to yesterday, when we were supposed to help the kaya people (sacred forest) protect the land from land grabbers, as it seems that there is someone building a house right on the spot where the CT planted loads of trees. But when we got there there was no one there except the "owner" of the plot, who said that the whole kaya had been bought and sold to an insurance company some 30 years ago. Kayas aren't menat to be sold but apparently there are some shady corrupt people in Nairobi with a penchant for selling protected land, and there isn't much that can be done about that.

But today was better. In the morning we went for a Colobus check and we found loads of colobus -- 6 troops, 53 individuals in total. The last troop had 10 colobus and we got quite close to them. I got great pictures, which I will upload if I ever manage to get a decent connection.

In the afternoon we went de-snaring, i.e. going into the bush and removing snares, and we managed to find 15! I managed to spot one by myself for the first time, and ended up finding 3. One was made with string, one with insulated wire, and one with barbed wire. There were others made with rope and telephone cables too. It's a bit of a bitersweet job, because it's satisfying to find so many and remove them, but depressing that there were so many there in the first place, and that they'll just be replaced, and we'll have to go again and again, just hoping to remove them before an animal gets caught in it.

Later on there was a call for a dead colobus and we went to pick it up. It was a little juvenile who had been killed by dogs, and it was such a downer because I kept thinking it could have been one of the colobus that we saw earlier on in the day. But that's what happens, and that's why I'm here I guess. Calls for dead colobus monkeys are usually from electrocution, because here most of the electric wires aren't insulated.

Tomorrow I am going on safari for the weekend, to Tsavo West national park (yay!).

And I guess I'm keeping the blog after all.