After hours of media work, I am ready for some nice Mpala vegetarian food !

[Tanya] The projects have started

Yesterday (Monday) the projects have started in earnest. We have 4 so far:
Glades - various aspects of the glades (grass patch, typically created by previous livestock grazing sites) habitat;
Ants - looking at the harvester ant colonies;
Fungi - acacia fungi;
and Virtual Mpala - creating a 3D virtual replica of Mpala.

All project have many facets to them and will have a few sub projects.Everybody is pretty excited, few (if any) complaints about the heat, ticks, setbacks

I went with the fungi project. Team members are: Ruthie, Molly, Jillian, Marco, Chayant. And when I say "I went" I mean I drove the team. Driving the minivan (2 rear wheel drive, bouncy suspension, no power) brings back memories, ahhhh.... Anyway, I digress. In the morning, we went to one of the locations where yesterday (or was the day before?) we saw a good number of infested trees (never saw anybody being so excited about tree infestation as Ruthie was). Found a good 40m by 40m patch. Hurray! The team started to map out the trees and the distances between them, using a never-before-seen combination of measuring tape, range finder, and an iPad app. Yep. You want to map out the acacia trees in Africa? We've got an app for that.

In the afternoon we returned with an addition of Jason, who came to keep an eye on the virtual Mpala project, part of which is to take pictures of every other project (a bit recursive here, isn't it? So should they take pictures of themselves, too?). Jason and I were immediately put to work tagging the trees. Which means writing a number on a piece of orange tape attached to a 4 inch zip tie, then putting the tag on an extremely spiky tree full of biting ants. Yes, a full professor (Jason) and an associate professor (I) in computer science were deliberately getting their hands scratched, bitten and pricked while collecting an army of ticks on their legs and miraculously avoiding all the poisonous snakes, all in the name of science. 108 trees tagged! One hundred and eight! Watafiti mwendawazimu ("crazy scientists" in Swahili). Turns out, we may have suffered for naught: the ants attack anything put on their precious trees and will probably cut off the tags within a day or two. I feel like this was a big practical joke that biologists played on computer scientists :)

While at dinner, we got a word of a lion in the area. Everybody has abandoned the food and piled up into three cars, standing room only. We drove bumping in the dark for about 20minutes but as expected, the lions did not wait. We circled the area but with all of us loud and smelly, we did not see them. Most people went home though some went on a night game ride.

[Alessandro] Field work!

Yesterday we began field work for the main three projects we will be working on. It was a whole new experience for me, being out there and collecting samples, evaluating strategies, struggling with the hard life of a field ecologist. But it is so rewarding to work with great people in such a marvelous landscape!

Also in the news: close encounter with hyenas on the way to my room, and night game drive on the big landing strip.

Adam, pass me that root-to-shoot.

Virtual Mpala

First trials of image capture for the Virtual Mpala project began today. Goal is to capture 3D stills, 3D panoramas, and 3D HD videos to be able to create a virtual tour of Mpala and the three course projects.

My major discovery at Mpala

[Alessandro] Day 3 at Mpala.

I woke up early this morning to see the sunrise, and it was totally worth it. Seeing the sun coming up over the African landscape and just on the side of Mount Kenya was utterly beautiful. After breakfast, we all went up to the northern part of the Mpala reserve. We climbed a huge black Cambrian rock and got a breathtaking view of the plains spreading to the North. Afterwards, we visited a number of glades, and got to see more of the amazing creatures that populate this land.

Right past lunchtime, Catherine (PhD student from Princeton) finally joined us! Some of us drove out again in the afternoon looking for ants stuff, while others, me included, went on talking about projects and chilled out playing some frisbee. I also went on a run! Fun fact: while passing by the local village headed to the landing strip, I got caught up watching kids playing soccer and ran into the electric fence meant to keep the elephants out the research center area. While it was not the most pleasant thing for me -- the thing keeps out ELEPHANTS -- the kids found the scene pretty amusing. Anyway, four of them joined me running on the landing strip, someone being very talkative and someone relatively shy. It was great to meet and interact with them.

At sunset, the tenants of the Jenga House (i.e. our faculties) invited us over for a few beers and sodas on their veranda. "I can easily get used to this" was the most appropriate comment I heard.

The sun rises at Mpala Research Center. The outline of Mount Kenya is visible on the right.

[Victor] Mpala Revisited!

While it has only been only two years, the excitement of getting here is even bigger than the first time! Weather has been awesome so far and we have seen all the big and small animals: Zebras, Elephants, Giraffes, Hippos, Impalas, etc. Familiar faces everywhere and the food is even more awesome than the last time! The center is now surrounded by a "live" wire so no more elephants during the night :(

Greatest moment so far: The realization that there are around 90% less moths, insects, etc. during the night!!!!

[Alessandro] First news from Mpala!

For someone, the journey didn't actually kick off in the best way. Three of us (Marco, Camillo, and myself) got delayed in Milan and didn't make it to London in time for the connecting flight to Nairobi. Luckily enough, we were put on a nighttime flight, so yesterday we were able to make it to Kenya in time for being transfered to Mpala. From that point on, nothing but awesomeness.

Waiting for us at the Research Center was a delicious and generous late lunch, which gave us the strength to overcome our jetlag and be ready for the first tour of the reserve. We went off on two vehicles, crowding the roofs with our cameras and binoculars, ready to catch the many wild creatures that populate the ranch. First came hippos, then mpalas, gazelles, zebras, giraffes, elephants, and others! For the unexperienced, me included, it was an unbelievable display of nature, in all its gorgeousness. Back to the center by dusk, we were served a very good dinner and then off to bed, to get some rest in preparation for our first full day at Mpala.

Adam, Khairi, Emma, Mike, and Jacob watching and photographing Oryxes from Dan's car.

This morning we visited some of the diverse habitats of the reserve. At the "Black Cotton" plains, the attractions were the ants populating the domiciles on the acacia trees. Jacob desperately tried to get bitten by one on its fingers, with no success. Frustrated, he put one of the ants on its tongue, hoping that the soft mucose would be more vulnerable. As expected, he drowned the little bug instead. After lunch, we briefed on projects (more to follow on those) and then off again to find some fungi on acacias and some old bomas! It goes by itself than during the whole time spent out in the field, we kept seeing the most amazing wild animals, which we religiously proceeded to photograph.

Giraffe and zebras at dusk.

And here we are, after another amazing dinner at the center. The staff here is great: happy, cordial, and helpful. What to desire more?

Part of Mpala Research Center in the morning.

2012: New year, new course, new blog

Happy New Year everybody!

In October 2011 the new edition of the Field Computational Ecology course has officially began. We are building on the success of the pilot version of the course from 2010. We started with the background preparation mini lecture course, given by various faculty experts at UIC and Princeton to students at both universities (given over a telepresence link). By December, students were ready to start planning projects and have come up with ideas for about half a dozen of exciting interdisciplinary and innovative projects. And now we are ready to go! We will leave on January 4, 2012, converging in Nairobi on January 5, then off to Mpala on January 6 and will begin in earnest. Follow us on this blog!

The pilot version of the Field Computational Ecology course in 2010 (read about it below) was a huge success, with 7 great interdisciplinary projects that have resulted in a dozen of conference presentations and publications for the students. The most well-publicized project is StripeSpotter, a program for automatic identification of individual zebras from photographs (you may have heard about it on NPR or read about it in National Geographic). This new iteration is funded by the National Science Foundation of US.

[Victor] - Back in Chicago

Kenya field course is over. The days flew by really fast, so here I am again back in Chicago. It was an amazing experience and I am packed full of lovely memories and new friends!

During the last days of our stay, we were busy with our projects having no time to blog at all. Still I will write down some of my random memories in this last blog post, things that I wanted to blog but had no time to do it.

The Ants

My project was about Acacia Tree Ants, a specie of ants that lives in Acacia Trees. The ants live in a symbiotic relationship with the tree - the tree provides them food and shelter (it creates them spherical like structures, called domiciles) and they provide protection to the tree. My partner in this project was Colin (he had the original idea to study those ants) so every day we went into the filed counting and studying ants. And please remember: Ants DO BITE and yes it hurts!

The Ol Pejeta

The Ol Pejeta was an arms dealers ranch with a big fancy house in the middle. Now it is a conservancy for animals and the house is being used as a Hotel. We went for an excursion there and it was full of animals. We saw Elephants, Giraffes, African Buffalos, Chimps and Baboons! Highlight of the day was seeing two Cheetahs and three White Rhinos! We also visited Baraka (which means "The blessed one" in Swahili), a blind Black Rhino and took some nice pictures and also fed him!

Naynuki

We went to Naynuki (the closest town near Mpala Research Center) to withdraw money and buy souvenirs! We went to the local market, where everything was completely crazy! The sellers were always trying to attract us to buy from them, saying stuff like: "You are my best customer today", "I will make you the best prize, because I like you the most", etc. The bargains were tough and amuzing! Some of us were really good at it, dropping the prices from 3.000 to 500 Shillings or even less, while some others payed much more than they should! It was funny, because there were people that bought the same thing with a totally different price! Money was also not a problem in this market. You could pay with Euros, Dollars and some even accepted any foreign currency, while others wanted to trade with us stuff: Shoes, t-shirts, hats for anything you wanted in the shop. You could bargain anything in those shops!

Fishing

One day before leaving, Andrew wanted to go fishing at the river. Ann, Albert, Xingli, Khairi, Iain, Colin and me decided to join him. We went at the other camp site of the MRC, which consists of tents and is by the river. While Ann and Andrew fished, we light up a fire and enjoyed the nice weather and the sunset. Ann and Andrew joined us after a while, without any catch. It was fun though!

The last day

We still needed some data collecting for our project so we went into the field first thing in the morning. Cailtin, Andrew, Khairi, Habiba, Albert and Maria joined me and Colin, since their projects were over. We needed some help and they really helped us a lot. During our drive back, we stopped at every chance to watch elephants, zebras and giraffes for the last time!

In the afternoon we had a beer party at a rock were we could see the sunset. Dan drove us there and the view was amazing! We took lot's of pictures and everyone was happy and smiling because the course went fine and the projects were finished on time. After the dinner we also had a group of traditional dancers of the local tribe. They singed and danced and it was pretty cool!

The staff

The staff at MRC is amazing. Always helpful and smiling, trying to solve every problem you have in any possible way.

I would like to personally thank:

The faculty: Tanya, Dan, Iain for their efforts to bring us to Kenya

Margaret - The Director

Mike - The Ranch Manager

Julius - The Head of Security

Tuni

Joseph

Patrick

George - The IT Manager

Lawrence - Head of the kitchen

David - From the kitchen

Frank and Alex - Our roommates !

The other researchers that work there

All the stuff that works at MRC

The dancers

The villagers

Everyone else!