Benefits of the Primatological Pursuit...

*disclaimer* I actually wrote this last weekend. I'm lagging a bit when it comes to reporting my experiences. There's so much to tell and so little time to tell it!

A benefit of working on the Samara Game Reserve and living on Asante Sana, is that we live a safari every day.  Today, we made it a legit, tourist-y safari and went out with Richie (who is a manager here and has an awesome safari vehicle) and drove around the reserve. I can't explain how lucky I feel to be here. We are so lucky to be doing field work at such a luxurious location.

Anyways, here are a couple of photos, because I think it's a good taste of what kind of day I had:

Before the safari, we spent some time swimming and eating watermelon by the pool

Kitty and Richie have a baby duck named "Keeper" who decided to swim with us.

Safari Drive

 Muddy Rhinos

All the housemates/researchers enjoying some scenery

A journey of giraffes

Every day, I'm reminded as to why I do things like this, and it's because I love being outdoors, learning about animal behaviour, I love contributing to the pool of scientific knowledge, and I love the adventure and perks that come with the job. I'm not even a primatologist or scientist yet and I've already experienced some really amazing things that come with the pursuit of this type of career. That, and I've met some really cool people along the way.

Ultimately, I had an amazing day. I can't say it enough...

And the fieldwork begins!

We started our field work on Monday at 5am, which means we had to leave our house at 4:15am. I woke up at 3:45 to make sure I had ample time to get ready. It was the earliest I've ever had to get up for work in my life! When you go to bed early enough, it's not too difficult.

The drive is a bumpy one but we drive through the Asante Sana game reserve (where we live), the Mount Camdeboo reserve, and then to the Samara Game reserve where we work. This place is gorgeous. Each of these game reserves compose a large, flat area of semi-desert surrounded by small mountains. It kind of reminds me of being in somewhat of a bowl or a fortress. There's one way out by road, and that's to the south where there is a break in the mountainous border.

Our daily commute is nothing to complain about. We drive just before dawn, which means the air is cool, and we pass many types of animals along the way. The rhinos consistently hang out in the same area, so we see them every day. Often we'll see a bunch of different types of ungulates and ostriches and things. It's worth getting up early for.

Once we pull into the work site, we grab our bags, radios, hats and sunscreen and head out to find our monkey groups! There are 3 troops that we are mainly concerned about, namely, 1) Troop, 2) Picnic, and 3) Mob. For Monday and Tuesday, Jon and I followed Derek around while he collected *scan data. In between scans, Derek would help us learn the ID's. Basically, this means memorizing unique characteristics for each individual and their corresponding names.

Troop is the largest group, which means we need to be able to distinguish between 36 individuals. Luckily it's mostly just adults that we need to identify and not including subadults, otherwise it would be a very daunting task! After looking at their faces for 12 hours, you learn to look for physical giveaways such as the patterns of the pink below their chins, the brightness of the whites around their eyes, the shape of their hair/eyebrows, the kinks in their tails, the nicks in their ears, etc. Between Jon and I, we can probably identify ~15 consistently.

Tomorrow, I take a break from Troop and start learning the ID's for Mob, while Jon moves onto Picnic. Lucky for me, Mob is the smallest group with about 15 individuals. Jon and I flipped a coin, and I won the smaller group, however, Rich said I'll end up having to learn all of the groups anyways.

So what's the point of all this? Eventually, Jon and I will be taking over for Rich and Derek and collecting the scan data ourselves. This data collection process is part of a long-term thermoregulation project conducted by Peter and Louise at the University of Lethbridge who are corresponding with a South African uni.

There will be more details about fieldwork in further posts, but I think that's enough for now! I don't want to talk your ears off, so we'll just leave it at that.

*Our scans consist of recording the behaviour of 5+ individuals in a given moment at 30-minute intervals. We also want to collect the corresponding ambient temperature, how high off the ground they are, what type of vegetation they are sitting on, and the proximity of other individuals. Each time we record a behaviour, we need to identify which individual it is. This means we have to also be able to recognize who's who within the group.

 Started our day following Derek who was positioning the temperature-recording sensors

 This could potentially be Moritz from Troop (I'd need to see under his chin a little more)

Derek doing a scan

My ID notes for Troop. Very messy.

Until next time....

Another elephant story...

After I washed up from my run and had breakfast last Thursday morning, Jon, Karen, and I decided to venture out on our own South African walking safari. George, our cat decided to follow us as well. I can't remember what animals we spotted that morning other than some really cool birds (I got to test out my new binoculars) and a couple of ungulates (hoofed animals).

During our safari, George the cat, was completely freaking out and meowing like we were going to run into trouble. He wasn't too happy but we told him to go home as we kept on walking.

It wasn't long before I spotted the elephant, Rex, in the distance. We brought out our cameras and snapped a bunch of photos like we were trigger happy and then moved on. After reaching the far end of a pond, I looked back and saw Rex again in the distance. We had a really good view of him, since we seemed to be closer to him than we were for the first sighting.  Our journey continued as we followed the path that wrapped around the pond, a bit closer to Rex.  We ended up getting very close and took some pics of each of us with Rex in the background. I walked a little bit ahead of Karen and Jon to get a better view of the elephant, and then I saw Rex turn and look at me. He started to walk towards me and I began to get nervous. 

"I think he's following us," I said. 

We backtracked so that we were on one side of the pond and Rex on the other. He lifted his trunk and slightly moved it side to side as if he was catching our scent. The breeze was blowing our smell straight to him. And, again of course, I took a picture even though he was spooking me out.

It wasn't long before I remember Karen urgently dictating, "We HAVE to go....NOW," as she began scurrying away as fast as she could as Rex continued to approach. Jon wasn't even phased by the elephant and couldn't understand why Karen was running away so fast. 

I called out to Karen, "We should stick together, come back!!!" 

I'm sure she was thinking, "Are you kidding me?! I'm not going back there."

We were told by Derek and Rich (who had been here a while) that it's best to hold your ground when an elephant is charging or following you, but it's easier said than done when it comes to it. Anyways, Rex hadn't charged us or anything, so we continued on in our walking safari. 

We thought we had shaken him.

After carrying on for something up to 10 mins or so, I look behind us and see the freaking elephant behind us - FOLLOWING US!!!

I'm not sure about Jon, but Karen and I were pretty nervous - we didn't know what to do, so we kept walking. Lucky for us, we stumbled upon the land owner's property which had an electrical perimeter fence that we just walked through. Rex doesn't go near those things, even when they're not turned on because of his previous experiences with them. We were safe.

A substory to this experience relates to George. After we fled from the elephant at the pond, we lost our companion kitty. We were told he usually doesn't disappear for long periods of time and he always is at home in the evening. That night, he didn't come home. I felt so guilty that night for leaving him with the elephant after he made such a fuss about us going away on our walking safari. The next morning, George STILL wasn't on our porch where he usually is.  Eventually Rich went out in the Bucky (our vehicle) and searched for him. Luckily, Richard was able to find him and bring him home. Our loyal companion kitty was alive and well. He just doesn't follow me around in the house anymore.

Anyways, that's all for now. Until next time...

Elephant Run

Safe and sound at our new African home:

Everyone is in this pic, minus Karen, who was taking this picture. Peter (bottom right) and Louise (lady with the shades) are the supervisors of the lab, and everyone else are the researchers that I live with. I'm sure stories of each of them will creep up into my blog throughout our stay. This was after we had just arrived on Wednesday and hadn't seen a bed for 2 days. Still happy, though!

I can only speak for myself when I say I had a wonderful night's sleep and woke up the next morning at 4:30am. I heard Derek (top middle) and Rich (bottom left) leave to do their field work for the day and, shortly after, decided to get up. I was completely awake and ready to explore - so I slipped on my running shoes and went for a run.

Running down the road, very cautiously, I saw some wildlife such as warthogs, a herd of antelope, and a bunch of birds. I was making lots of noise to make sure I wasn't going to run into any of the bigger animals.  After running a couple kilometres I turned back to go home (it was an easy running/exploring day). As I arrived back home, I nearly crapped myself when I saw this:

I had to cross his path to grab my camera and then I came back out and took the picture. This elephant's name is Rex and he's been hanging around the house for a while. Derek was going for a run the other day and Rex charged at him, which made me especially nervous to even take this picture, but I was near enough to our electrical fence that I could have darted behind it easily if Rex decided to try anything. 

Karen took some pics from inside the house. Note the perimeter fence we have to keep him out:

Anyways, there is another Rex encounter story, but I think I'll save that one for later. I apologize for my terrible writing, it's much more difficult for me to write these stories a few days after the fact. 

Until next time...

My journey to the other side of the world

A lot has happened in the last few days, which means I have to give you all an abridged version of what I've been up to since I've left Canadian soils. It's difficult to organize what I've experienced so far in just one post, so I might end up just splitting it all up into different posts. Let's play it by ear, shall we? Here goes...

It was only last Monday, January 7th, when I finished preparing for a 33+ hour journey and an entire year away from my Canadian homeland. Garett drove me to the airport that evening, and I managed to meet some members of my family (Brock, Kelsey, Mom and Nick) there as well. It hadn't quite sunk in, that I wasn't going to see everyone for so long. Not sure what to feel, I ended up feeling nothing. Mostly I just wanted to be on my way, since I had been preparing to go for about 3 months prior.

An excerpt from my journal reads, "It's hard saying goodbye to people I love when the reality of my travels haven't quite sunk in. I just hope I didn't come off as cold-hearted. Hugged my crying mother while trying to understand what the big fuss was about. I understood that it's a mother's love and I'll also probably cry when I realize I will have never gone this long without seeing her."

Haven't cried over my family, yet. I don't intend to, and the way things are going, I'm not sure I will. I'll miss them, but I'm completely happy where I am.  This is all just a part of the lifestyle I've chosen. Besides, people live away from their family all the time - even if they're in the same country!

The boyfriend is a different story, but I'll just keep that to myself for now ;)

Moving along...

The flights/layovers were awesome.  It helped that Karen and Miranda (my fellow researchers) were only 1 person away from me, in the same row, from Calgary to London. I didn't even know they would be on my flight! It was a pleasant surprise. Once we all got to the Heathrow Airport, we managed to meet up with Jon (another fellow researcher), who bought us drinks. I had slept so well on the flight that the layover was quite enjoyable.  Jon, Karen, and Miranda continued onto Johannesburg via South African Airlines while I caught a British Airways flight on my own. I slept most of that 11-hr flight, which was nice.

Landing in Johannesburg was stressful and exciting for myself since the gates closed for my connecting flight to Port Elizabeth at 11:00am.  I landed at about 9:40am, took until about 10:20 to get through passport control and then I had to pick up my baggage. Took me a while to figure out where to check my baggage in again, go through security and find my departure gate. I made it to the gate just as they started to board (about 10:40). I had plenty of time left to spare, but it was quite stressful considering I had no idea where to go and I hadn't had a proper night's sleep (bed and pillow) since Sunday night. By this time, it was Tuesday morning (local time).

The last flight was very short and easy. In fact, the airplane was practically empty. I arrived to the Port Elizabeth and was reunited with the others. From there, we were picked up by Derek (who had been living at our destination home for months and months already) and drove ~3 hours north to where we now live, on the Asante Sana Game reserve.

I think this post was really boring, but I felt inclined to document the journey anyways. There are some exciting stories to share already, but I'll save them for additional posts to prevent myself from losing your attention.

Until next time...

38 days away

I have about 910 hours (~38 days) until I depart Canada and head back to the African continent.  The last week or so has felt pretty scary, but am finding myself to be getting more and more excited, given the cold temperatures outside and the fact that I've almost completed getting ready for this trip (i.e. paperwork, moving, etc.).

It also helps that I know more about where I'm going to be staying, who I'm going to be staying with, and what I'm going to be doing. I might as well lay it out for all of you who are curious...

Here's the general breakdown:

Myself and a couple of other people I've met via email (Jon and Karen) will be helping a master's student (Miranda) and post-doc (Richard) with their vervet monkey research on the Samara Private Game Reserve in South Africa. I'm not sure what Miranda's thesis consists of, but I do know that Richard is working on some kind of behavioural thermoregulation project. This research is conducted by the Barrett-Henzi lab from the University of Lethbridge.

We (Jon, Karen, Miranda and I) will be sharing a project house on a neighbouring game reserve called Asante Sana. From the research that I've been doing on this place, it sounds like there are various large animals roaming the reserve such as elephants, rhinos, zebras and giraffes. I'm pretty much going to be living an African Safari for an entire year!

Which brings me to my next point - Yes, I will be gone an entire 12 months.  Never have I ever been this far away from home, not to mention for this length of time. But I am absolutely stoked! I feel overdue for my next adventure, and this is it.

Are you guys falling asleep yet? I still have to write down my goals! This blog post is more for me than you, so don't worry about reading the rest...

For the year 2013 I would like to gain more experience collecting behavioural data, meet more like-minded people that I can network with and learn from, and spend time figuring out what I would like to do for my own Master's degree (what general topic to study and what universities to apply to). And for a slightly unrelated goal, I would like to spend my downtime learning French.  Apparently Canadian universities require their PhD students to be bilingual. This is going to be a challenge. 

Anyways, that's the general breakdown. I'm sorry I'm such a horrible writer, but I think this blog will help me get back into putting my thoughts down into words.  Practice will make perfect - so expect more posts from yours truly!

May this blog help my friends and family understand me a little better. 

Peace and love,
Kira

links:
This is where I'll be working 12 hours a day, 5 days a week: http://www.samara.co.za
This is the Barrett-Henzi lab: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3098948/B-HWEB/index.html

The next destination is... (drumroll please)

It's been a long time since I've paid any attention to this blog, which means I haven't travelled anywhere lately. Since Ghana, I've spent the last year completing my degree, working a retail job to pay off some loans, and doing fun things like hiking, camping, and hanging out with some good friends.

The past couple of months has been challenging in terms of figuring out what I'm doing in life as a university graduate. I've been applying to every primate-related opportunity I find (even the ones I'm under qualified for). Alas, I've had no luck.

....until now!

Q: So, what's your next mission in life?

A: Getting more primatology field work experience!

Q: What's your next destination?
A: South Africa!

Woo! I'm excited!

More information to come later.

Okay, this is the end of my teaser post :) I wanted to post this news all over facebook but I don't want to tell everyone the news yet...so I had to kind of let it out on here. No one really reads this!

I'm going to attempt to log my experiences of this trip better than the Ghana trip. There is a possibility I'll have more access to internet in South Africa, but I still don't know much information about the field site. More info will come in time!

Cheers, everyone! I'm going to miss you (all my Canadian friends)!

Kira