Snakes

The theme of the past few days has been rain. I have heard that the rainy season in Kenya is supposed to start sometime in April, and I was starting to believe that the rains would never come. However, the rains finally came and all the good things that come along with it. It’s been much colder (it’s all relative in the coastal Kenyan heat) and sleeping has been much more pleasant in the cool weather. Apparently when it rains on the coast, the electricity is also known to go out. This is a typical “TIA” moment (“This is Africa”-a new phrase I learned from a German friend). The combination of rain and no power leads to a standstill everywhere. It seems like not much work is done when it rains. In the monkey business, we can’t work, since we need to record data onto paper in the forest, which obviously isn’t rain-friendly, and any office work requires electricity to power the computer. So today I have the morning off. If it clears up, I’ll go in for a few hours in the afternoon.

In addition to the power outages that result from the rain, the snakes also like to come out. Like I said before, I don’t like snakes. So after the snake incident in the office on Friday I now do a thorough check of the office before I enter, and always keep my eyes peeled for anything that doesn’t belong in the office. Lia and I were chatting in the office Monday morning about snakes, and she told me not to worry about any venomous snakes in the forest because the monkeys will begin chirping at the snake, which serves as a warning to us to get out of the area. So Monday afternoon I’m moseying through the woods, enjoying my first day conducting follows on my own, feeling pretty confident about recognizing the monkeys and identifying the plants. I’ve almost made it for the whole day without getting too lost and was doing a good job keeping track of the monkey I was following. But sometimes, the monkeys are just too darn cute and you can’t resist taking out your phone to snap a photo. So I’m looking at these little juveniles playing in the trees near me and trying to get a photo, when I realize that there are many monkeys coming towards me, all chirping. At first I think this is strange, but not out of the ordinary since the juveniles are always curious and usually making little noises. But then I realize that the adult monkeys are coming too, and they are beginning to cause quite a commotion. Then I remember what Lia had just told me a few hours before, how all this chirping means there is danger nearby. I turn and look and about 2 yards away there is a big snake coiled up in the leaf litter on the ground. My heart started beating fast and I didn’t spend more than a second looking at the snake before quickly moving away from it back to where I came from. I quickly found Kalama, and told him about what I saw and he asked to see it. I didn’t really want to go back to where the snake was, but I directed Kalama there and waited until he finally saw it. He casually tells me that it’s a Puff Adder, the most dangerous snake in the forest, and that if it bites you, antivenom must be administered within a few minutes, and that amputation may also be necessary. I also learned that the Puff Adder is the snake responsible for the most fatalities in Africa, because of its venom and the fact that it can be found in highly populated areas. Luckily that snake incident happened at the end of the day, so we were pretty much done in the woods. So I was pretty happy to have the day off today so that I don’t have to think about snakes for the moment.  

Other than my most recent terrifying encounter with snakes, things have been absolutely amazing here! On Saturday I brought the McKenzies to Gede Ruins to show them around…little did they know I had no idea where we were going since we’re usually bushwhacking in the forest and not using the real trails. We ended up doing a nice loop through all the ruins and climbed the treehouse to get a good view of the ruins from above. On Sunday we went snorkeling, hiring our own private boat that brought us out to the coral reef for the morning. It was extremely windy out and we were worried that the huge waves would limit visibility and make snorkeling difficult. But somehow we hardly noticed the waves and had an amazing time snorkeling. After SCUBA diving I was worried that snorkeling would be a bit boring but I realized that snorkeling is pretty awesome as well! I went through the coral reef fish guide and here are just a few of the species I saw: moorish idol, African grouper (huge!), bicolor puller, moon wrasse, goldbar wrasse (one of my favorites), bird wrasse, bicolor parrotfish, powder-blue surgeonfish, blackspotted pufferfish, common porcupine fish, common lionfish, Picasso triggerfish (this guy hag a great name!) and the six-barred wrasse.