Wrapping up field work!

Lo and behold, data collection is done. Kenya asante sana and peace out!

Bike and Frisbee coming down low and playing on my last day of follows.

We finished collecting data at the end of March, a bit earlier than planned. Why? Because we collected at a faster rate than planned! Hallelujah. After two months of training, four months of heavy rains, and four of light rain/dry season, we followed 40-41 juvenile blue monkeys for about 1600 hours (67 full days), or 5 hours per subject month. We collected 620 urine and 627 fecal samples… and the little-solar-freezer-that-could kept them frozen the whole time. The next steps for me are labwork and lots of data analysis. Data analysis and labwork will come together to reveal how social relationships tie into physiological status during development. They'll also overlap with the entire process of WRITING UP the dissertation. If you're interested in how the chapters of my dissertation are to pan out, I've put their titles at the bottom of the page.

Awash National Park, Ethiopia (baboons on right)

Alexis, homegirl extraordinaire

Since February, data collection was briefly interrupted by a trip to Dr. Larissa Swedell’s Filoha camp in Awash National Park, Ethiopia, where I went to visit Alexis Amann, a friend and PhD candidate at CUNY. Alexis studies female reproductive strategies in hamadryas baboons, a species where a single male tightly and despotically controls the movements of his small “unit” of females (once-upon-a-time called a “harem”). Units come together and travel as “bands,” and bands come together at night to form the upwards of 250 baboon-strong “troop.” They call this a nested-hierarchical social structure. As field sites run the range of plush to rugged, Filoha is rugged. The living situation is comfortable but the work itself is hard. Hamadryas baboons are cliff-dwelling, which means humans have to hike up cliffs very early in the morning to find the massive troop before it files off quickly into the great arid unknown. Alexis basically rock jumps (see right) and cliff hangs to collect baboon feces to monitor males' and females' energetic and reproductive status. If the camp did not have a cook on staff, and Ethiopian food weren’t so amazing, Filoha would be a bonafide fat-camp. The trekking is hard and dangerous, but if you ask Alexis, the "babs" are worth it.

Racing bikes at the Kisumu arcade

At the end of March, my data collection team (and their kids!) spent a celebratory two days in Kisumu, the large city near our camp on Lake Victoria. It was the first time these four women ever visited Kisumu or saw Lake Victoria, despite living their whole lives two hours from it. They also saw their first film in a cinema (Kung Fu Panda in 3D), played their first games of air hockey and bumper cars, stayed in their first hotel, and saw their first zoo (lions, cheetahs, giraffes…). As a reward for their hard work this year, I also gave them their data collection tablets (Samsung Galaxy 3 Tab Lites). So we we spent lots of time using wifi to get them oriented with their new accounts.

At Lake Victoria

Eating great Italian in Watamu

All of April, I’m tying up loose ends and enjoying some holiday time in Kenya. I’m currently writing from the coast in Watamu, recently arrived from Kilifi, and experiencing how hot and different this side of Kenya is. Watamu and Malindi are considered a "Little Italy" of sorts, and boys on the beach call out "ciao bella" instead of "how are you mzungu?”, which is a welcome change. The pleasant "ciao's" have a less than charming origin - mafiosos started moving to this area several decades ago and set up a sex trade industry. You'll often find 60 year old men and women with their hot little 20-something local strolling the beach or eating shrimp cocktails by the pool. But hey... food's great!

After I get back to camp, I’ll head out again to two field sites of friends/colleagues in Kibale National Park, Uganda. And after that... I’m pretty much back home. Yep, I’ll be back end of April/early May and can’t wait.

Watamu Bay

When I get home, I may take moment to shake off a bit of PKSD (post-Kenya stress disorder). Just FYI. There have been so many daily frustrations, big and small, which I sometimes think have left me a little rough around the edges. I haven’t recognized myself on several an occasion, and have had to reflect on how I might have handled a situation better on a semi-daily basis . While acting as if I wanted the world here around me to change, I’ve been praying, since November really, that God change something inside me. Pretty much “God, make me less angry and angry less often!” He did, but the story is complicated and ongoing. No doubt, it has a happy ending.

I’ll miss stepping outdoors into a reasonable temperature every morning and running through simple routines of checking the freezer in the morning and before bed. I’ll miss the beauty of worshipping alongside people with lives vastly different from mine. And I’ll probably miss the monkeys… But more than that, I’m looking forward to coming back to NYC and

SEEING FRIENDS AND FAMILY! And having fresh juices, sushi, wifi, network data, reception, etc.

SEE YOU SOON!

Love,

Nicole

The write-up plan!

Chapter 1 - Literature review: how do affiliative relationships influence fitness?

Chapter 2 - How do affiliative relationships influence survival in adult female blue monkeys?

Chapter 3 - What predicts patterns in juveniles social relationships?

Chapter 4 - Are the causes and patterns in affiliative relationships similar between juveniles and their mothers?

Chapter 5 - How are juvenile social strategies influence beneficial in the short term? Do they help juveniles maintain lower stress levels and fewer infections? Do they increase access to food and help individuals avoid predators?

Pictures and shillings and sweets … oh my. Reaching out in the community.

It is mid-February of 2016. Time. flies. I’m looking forward to coming home relatively soon, seeing people, and enjoying several comforts of my norm (wifi, electricity on a grid, trains, punctuality, regular and real communication with people, the occasional cappuccino, sushi, fresh juices… I actually think I’m a pretty low maintenance girl).

I look around lately and think that much of what could have been enjoyable in this neck of Africa has been just out of my reach. Maybe that's because to enjoy this place (beyond sightseeing) is to succumb to its pace. A slow one. A pace where when people say “come at two” they mean “start walking at two and get to my place around three or four.” Real conversations come slowly, real relationships even more slowly, and if you’re trying to get more than one thing done in a day, opportunities for conversation are lost. I know this happens in any place - no one gets to smell the roses if they don’t stop to smell them. Unfortunately, I haven’t had the luxury (or the will?) to stop for so long as many roses here need time to bloom (for me).

Tea plantation at the edge of the forest and village.

Of course, it’s not just the difference of pace that sets me akilter from the people I meet here. A teacher once told me that you can only understand life in a place if you recognize it as a “palimpsest.” Literally, a palimpsest is a piece of writing where the original text is visible but has been altered to make room for new text (to clarify, this was a cultural anthropology prof., i.e. mostly well-meaning but bonkers). A palimpsest is a metaphor for life in any place: there are layers of experience of different generations and backgrounds, layers of use of the land and spaces. Depending on the place I’m in and the experiences of the people I meet, what I represent can change. I would be naive (or naiver than I am) to walk anywhere here and think “I’m just Nicole Thompson, a 30 year-old woman with no nation, no culture, no ancestors, no physical appearance, and no particular advantages in life.” I have all of those things and I am, whether I like it or not (usually not), an ambassador of them all. 

I live in a western pocket of Kenya, in a rural area outside of Kakamega town where it’s particularly poor, populated, and perhaps counterintuitively, particularly secluded (there are real statistics on this - e.g. Nick Mitchell 2009). There’s little investment in infrastructure and few attractions to give people the means and cause to come in or the means and finances to go out. People don’t busy themselves with much around here except living, and they don’t see many white people. When they were kids, locals my age probably saw white people that took their picture, gave them candy, or 10 shillings (10 US cents). As adults their impression of the picture-taking-candy-and-shilling-giving mzungu (foreigner) sticks. Their kids want those things too and more of them. Older locals probably experienced the colonial powers and seem to eye and greet white people with stoicity or rigid respect. In my humble opinion, the interactions between locals and foreigners reflect a deep dynamic - colored with colonialism, white guilt, the exploitation thereof, anti-colonial backlash… and simple, well-meant candy. A motorbike driver shouting ridicule at a white tourist could be genuinely amused with the stranger’s clothing and appearance, or he could be cutting someone down to size that his society and history have wrongly exalted.

But enough about the touchy stuff…

Teaching with SAVE: Evans presents to the large group of students.

For the past two months I’ve been involving myself more in community outreach. We’ve given S.A.V.E. Kakamega Forest (Swift Advocacy for Viable Environments… had no part in the name) a facelift and instead of a single visit to a different school each month, we’ve expanded and developed a three-lesson series:

1) Intro to Kakamega Forest’s Flora and Fauna

Ernest and Evans mark students' essays.

2) Ecosystem Dynamics and Conservation

3) Sustainable Alternatives

We’re piloting the series now at St. Gerald’s Secondary School in Shinyalu. We’re also working towards assessing students learning from the course. For now, we’ve implemented a type of reward system based on the interest and aptitude that students show in a short essay on "why is a healthy forest important?". From these essays and participation, we’ll choose 7-10 outstanding students to join our research team in the forest for 1 or 2 Saturdays in March. 

Our team of presenters is growing in organization and style. We’ve found naturalists to bring their expertise on birds, trees, insects, reptiles, mammals (when logistics/planets align and allow them to come). The group has come a long way actually since its beginning, and I’m hoping to see it continue strong in my absence.

Strong showing at the proposal writing workshop.

I’ve also been helping with a local women’s group - name withheld because I think it’s awful - that’s at the seed stage and, to be honest, will probably not advance beyond that. Their goal is to re-popularize traditional food practices to enhance health and food security in the area. I’ve tried to hold some proposal writing workshops for them, but corporate organizing hasn’t been there strong suit. For me, the small experience has been eye-opening about why home-grown change here is rare and what obstacles hold people back from self-organizing.

Love to all,

Nicole

New Year & New Knowledge... 5 common questions.

New Year's Resolutions at Church.

In the Mara: Elephant Mum and Babe.

The Paternal Unit - IN KENYA

Hello 2016... and hello to you! I’ve been off the map most of December, enjoying things like my father and his partner Marilyn's visit to Kenya, our trip to the Mara region, and Christmas and New Year in the village. 

Special thank you's are in order to several people who rocked my world this Christmas -

Sister Ivonne - sent me awesome work out clothes. Just looking this good breaks a sweat.

Papa Thompson - brought me a smorgasbord of field equipment… and kind bars.

Nicole Wolfe - went above and beyond, organizing a package of goodies. Thank you to contributors Heather Obasare, Kim Wilson, Ekene Daniel, Hilda Cheng, Lydia Roesser, and Eme Cecutti :).

SuJen Roberts - ever the thoughtful pen pal, sent me a lovely christmas letter.

Clara Cheong - her monthly gift hooked me up with the only eye shadow I have out here.

...Thank you!!!

Christmas Dinner with the legendary Imboma family

A holiday from the worksphere and time with special people did wonders for the ol’ perspective. This is partly because I started to hear questions about what I'm doing with my life that I hadn’t heard in a while… and they got me thinking.

5 common questions I get...

Sky's the limit!

1. What more is there to learn about these animals? This is kind of a big question. Animal behavior, like other sciences, is growing in stages. First, people describe what they see - almost Planet Earth style - they document what you call the “natural history” of a species. Second, people start to see patterns across different animals and groups of animals - like the importance of the mother-offspring bond to normal development in mammals, or that male birds are more colorful and ornamented than are most male mammals. After people notice patterns, they develop hypotheses like “early physical and psychological trauma in mammals leads to shorter lifespans” or “monogamous mating systems are more likely to select for showy males than are polygynandrous mating systems” (just examples, not necessarily true!). After people figure out ways to test those hypotheses, they go test them. As different fields of biology (and even earth sciences) become integrated - genetics, systematics, paleontology, medicine, psychology, neurology, physiology, ecology - the sky is the limit to what new knowledge we can produce.

2. Whoa, a 5 year program! Are you going to be some kind of super specialist?

Most of the time I feel like I'm a specialist in being told, like Jon Snow, "you know nothing." But isn't that exciting? So much to learn. Medical doctor’s take a long time to know the in’s and out’s of the human body and how to practice medicine (for which we’re all grateful). Doctor’s of philosophy take a long time to know the in’s and out’s of generating new knowledge and how to instruct at a university level. 

Yawn.

3. After all this “schooling,” are you going to try to do something more practical? Will I do something outside of academia? Maybe. Practical is a bit in the eye of the beholder. What’s more practical than generating new knowledge and transferring analytical skills to the next generation? Trust I might otherwise be doing interpretive dances at the new age community center - a very practical enterprise indeed!

Homemade sushi for NYE

4. You’re paid?? Yes, I am!
… however poorly. I’m funded by the graduate school of my university, my supervisor’s grants, and the US National Science Foundation. I support myself to live in NYC and to travel abroad. This is the norm for this level of “schooling” … our job as one prof in my department put it is actually “to think and to write… and to do data analysis somewhere in between.” I'm pretty grateful that I'm paid to do these things that I enjoy (FYI - I'm currently in the data collection phase - analysis will come). Although many entry-level research positions are voluntary (contributing in part to some of the underrepresentation in the sciences), biology is no longer a science restricted to monks (Gregor Mendel) and the independently wealthy (Charles Darwin).

 These kids are still excited
for Christmas morning.

5. It’s Summer/Thanksgiving/Christmas/Spring break, isn’t it great to be on vacation? It's kinda nice to have the undergraduates away. They're on break, but graduate students and faculty are actually busy working on their research. They’re pretty desperate to focus on this because, for better or worse, grants for research keep them hired by their institutions and during break they’re not consumed with teaching courses (though next semester still needs planning!).

Cherry on the Sundae…

6. Can you bring one of your monkeys home as a pet? Nooooope. Even if I could manage to do this, I really wouldn’t want to! First, they are way too smart to be domesticated… they would completely TRASH my apartment looking for food. Second, a note on ethics: a lot of animals that live in social groups, especially monkeys and apes, are about as intimately tied to their group members as you and I are to our families, friends, churches, D & D groups, etc.. When these animals are made into pets, they’re made orphans, kidnapped and often full of psychological problems....I would rather get a dog (or hey, a field cat).

My new house cat - Sophie :)

You can add to these questions in a comment! I have left out some big obvious ones, like "how did you get into THAT [what you do]?!?" Take me out to coffee for that one ;o).

Lots of love and I hope you're all having a great start to 2016!

Nicole