Written December 4, 2015
By Sierra Moen (Middlebury College)
In Maghoto, it was the hippos. Mababe, lions; and Sankuyo, the notorious honey badger. Each of our research sites has had a different variety of animals, and nocturnal visitors are no exception. Using camera traps and our newly learned tracking skills, we’ve also identified spotted hyenas, elephant, and kudu walking through or near our camp at night. My favorite, however, was when the honey badger noisily dragged a bin of dishes across a cement floor, after breaking into our cooking oil and…honey.
Sleeping can be hazardous in the bush. The experience can be easily recreated in five simple steps:
- Turn the thermostat to 100 degrees
- Inflate an air mattress
- Pop it (use an acacia thorn if you can find one)
- Pour a cup of sand over yourself
- Choose a recording, either thunderstorm, windstorm, animal noises, or a group of loudly excited twenty-somethings, and play it at top volume
The most pressing question we ask ourselves each night is what to do about the rain flaps. If they are put on, the tent becomes a stifling chamber of mildew and the distinctive odor of three weeks without showers. With the beginning of the rainy season upon us, dark storm clouds gather most nights, but it only rains occasionally. However, the risk of putting the fly on in the middle of the night is, in my opinion, disproportionately high. After lying in the drizzle debating the merits of getting rained on or getting up, leaving the tent in the dark is a daunting operation- you can never be sure which corner an elephant is browsing behind or where the nearest scorpion is lurking. Furthermore, it is almost guaranteed to stop raining within five minutes of attaching the fly.
Even if you never leave the relative safety of the tent, the wildlife will come to you. Mosquitos, praying mantis, scorpions, and a wide variety of spiders have found their way into our shelters.
For safety reasons, we often have ‘tent city,’ (see top photo) when we put all four big tents within ten feet of each other. This backfires nightly, as after bedtime at 9pm we alternate nights of staying up in hysterical laughter until 11pm.
After a restful night, we’re woken when the boys get up at 5am to start the fire. A noisy breakfast follows, but if you can doze until 6am, when half the group leaves for fieldwork, you can sleep until the heat becomes unbearable at 7am.
Naps are a fundamental part of the day, but come with their own hazards. There’s nothing like lying down in the shade of a tree and waking up an hour later in a pool of your own sweat. As I write this, it’s 2 pm, people are yawning all around me, and it’s time to find a shady tree…
This blog is only very slightly exaggerated. Despite the heat, the thorns, and the fine layer of dust covering everything from feet to binoculars, we’ve been in the bush so long we hardly notice our primitive conditions.
Even so, the things we’ve seen far outweigh our complaints: hyena feasting on an impala, hippos grazing on the bank, and elephants bathing in the dust make up for everything, even the occasional 4 AM wake-up call.