Quick/ really long note from Laikipia

Hello all!
This trip keeps getting more and more amazing and less and less able to be described in words.
The Maasai Mara was absolutely breath taking. It is definately the africa that people fall in love with. We were camped inside the Game Reserve, near an old research centre- no one else was permitted to stay inside the reserve, and we really were living with the Hyenas and Lions. Lions roared 2 or 3 times a night, and we would wake up and listen to them, safe inside our tents. We didnt actually end up having Maasai warriors per say, as our guards, but most of the people who live around there are Maasai and the rangers who patrolled our campsite at night were locals. So, almost the same Suen.
The sun sets were absolutely stunning. We birded every morning, and went on at least 1 game drive a day. We saw lions, lionesses, lion cubs, cheetahs, elephants, hyenas, giraffes, gazelle (grants and thompsons), impala, baboons, warthogs, buffalo, ostrich, wildebeest, hartebeest, saddle billed storks, secretary birds, grey-crowned cranes... the animals were great. Probably the freakiest thing that happened to us was one afternoon our Ornithology class went on a bird walk with an armed guard. While looking at a bird in the 60x scope, Dr Bird and John yelped as two lions ran across the clearing in front of us. After that, we made a bee-line back to camp, and frightened a herd of gazelle, which looked just like a running group of lions and scared us more than anything else. We had to cross an elephant wallowing pool to get back to camp, and while some of us jumped across the puddles, others looked back to see a fast-approaching group of elephants. Meanwhile, those back at camp had spotted us below them and were sort of freaking out about the fact that there were elephants a few meters behind us.
Needless to say we got away just fine. The scariest thing though is the fact that we weren't as frightened as we should have been, and we were all much more niavely excited at our close encounter with dangerous wildlife on foot. That was the first and last bird walk in the Mara.
After 5 nights in the Mara, we packed up camp and set off on a ridiculously long drive to Elangata Wass. I think the drive took us well over 10 hours, which was really rough by the end, with the open sided trucks battering us with wind and dust the whole way. But we have become seasoned travellers over road and these drives are becoming longer but passing faster as the trip progresses.
Elangata Wass is at 1200-1400 m, very high altitude, and is suffering greatly in Kenya's time of drought. When we arrived, they had no had rain since August. We pitched our tents at Kudu Camp, a half hour drive out of Mile 46. Everything was dry and crispy, and extremely intolerably hot.
This was the place we did our Maasai home stay. We were paired off and dropped at Mile 46 with local kenyan youth guides to walk to our bomas, which ranged from 30 mins to 2 hours walk away from the town. Maya and I walked for 1.5hrs (and it was very very hot) to our boma in the middle of absolutely nowhere. There were 8 children where we stayed, and we slept on a cattle hide platform inside the tiny, low, hot, dark and smokey cow-dung home. We learned alot. The grandmother whose boma we stayed in was named Rebecca (they often have Christian names) and we were told to call her Ngoko (I think thats how Maa for grandmother is spelt). She was really very nice and talked alot to us through our youth guide, Daniel. She lives in the same acacia-bush encircled complex as her 3 sons and their families. The cattle and goats were brought in from the fields after dark. There is no water in those parts right now and many family's fathers have left with cattle for months, many all the way to Tanzania, looking for pastures for their herd. The drought's consequences stuck out when I went into the cattle yard. In one corner, with her calf standing near by, was a cow who was so hungry and dehydrated that she could not stand nor eat. The family force fed her some cabbage, then stuck a stick under her boney ribe cage, one man grabbing eat end, her tail and her horns, and the 4 men pulled her to her feet. The only way to get her to walk was by teasing her with a bucket of water held just out of reach as she stumbled towards it. The calf was in very poor shape as well, and the children kept sticking their fingers under its pelvic bone and between its ribs.
Some Maa words, for you at home:
"supa" - hello/ greetings
"ipa"- response greeting
"Ashayoling"- thank you
Also, when an elder approaches, you must bow your head and let them touch your head as they say Supa, and then you are allowed to reply Ipa and look at them.
It was a pretty intense experience. We were with the family for 24hrs, which allowed us to experience a miniscual part of their lives, but the men talked fairly good english and the children take english at school so we did manage to have some great interactions without needing a translation. The next morning we woke at dawn and helped around the boma before leaving at 8, dressed in our sunday clothes, to walk the 2hrs back to Mile 46 to meet the rest of our group at a Pentacostal church at 10.
Everyone was pretty worn out, and the rest of that day and the day after were easily the lowest point in the trip. Orno had a midterm the next morning, and everyone was tired and emotional.
On the 24th we loaded up the busses and drove for another 7 hrs to Laikipia, stopping by in Nairobi to stock up on basic supplies and snacks. We arrived at MPALA research centre at around 5:30.
This is a wonderful wonderful place. If you are not a researcher, you pay up to US$1700 per night to stay in the Dutch tents that line the river. But as we are both researchers and students, we pay nowhere near that price and still enjoy the amazing luuries of hot water in basins outside our tent in the morning and the opportunity to shower in the canvas shower stalls. Toilets with seats are also something we havent seen for a few weeks. We have real beds, on which we are absolutely passed out every night, and the mood has lifted significantly since we left E. Wass.
Orno is working on our case studies while we are here, and Jordi and I are studying the Common Drongo, a fork tailed black bird seen almost every where in Kenya. It has this cute way to hunting insects, called hawking.
We will leave here on the 3rd, and trek back to Nairobi to stay in ICIPE for 4 days.
I hope this finds everyone well at home. If anyone at McGill knows the date we are permitted to register for courses, would you please post it so I can see? MyMcGill absolutely will not load on these computers (who is surpised?!), and our profs are unaware of the deadline.
I hope midterms have passed, or nearly have, and that everyone is enjoying Reading Week!
Lots of love to all
Marion xoxoxoxo