A real update

Things have been greening up here, finally! After several months of drought, everyone is happy with the rain: baboons, wildlife, livestock, and humans.

All the rain has provided more food for our babs, so they can rest and relax a lot more:

Megan has now become an expert in baboons and their behavior. She has mastered all the IDs and the data collection, and remains cheerful pretty much 24/7. She’s awesome. Here are some photos of her in the field – cool as a cuc (one of her favorite sayings). She even celebrated her first birthday abroad!

Joan came to visit! The big boss came to visit the baboons (and us!) in late August. She settled easily into baboon work again, learning a bunch of IDs in just a couple of weeks – what a pro! We filled all hours in between the baboons with discussions of baboons, data, fun field stories, and HBO’s Newsroom. It was a blast and, yet, very productive. We miss you!  

This is Corinna Most, Shirley’s PhD student from UCSD. She’s smart, hilarious, and a perfect fit here at baboon camp.  

Corinna is focusing on mother-infant relationships and early social development, so she pretty much gets to follow little baby baboons all day long (poor her, eh?). This is her 3^rd time out here after two pilot seasons and she’s aiming to be here until December 2015 collecting the bulk of her dissertation data. She is focusing on Ngela, a large troop neighboring ours (Pumphouse Gang and Enkai). I tagged along on this beautiful day:

The baboons spent a lot of time feeding on mineral deposits in this dry riverbed:

Corinna and Ngela tracker, Ngoya, with their troop:

Gobs of data!! We are quickly approaching our 1^st anniversary here in Kenya. Laura and I got to camp around the 1^st of October last year. Data collection was up and running sometime in mid-November 2013. In the time since we have collected 3,817 focals, that’s over 950 focal hours so far, on our 43 focal baboons. That is AWESOME. I’m so proud of my team, past and present, for getting so much data despite health and other challenges. Way to go team!

But it’s not all hard work, we’re still making time for fun:

Here’s a recent sundowner where we enjoyed the green views and practiced our yoga (which we actually do about once a week together after baboon work).

The complete new crew: Megan, Corinna, me, and Laura

And, of course, the local troop joined us (I wonder what they thought of the yoga....).

 We also went on a picnic at the river, complete with sunbathing and a game of bocce ball!

Things are going really well right now. Working hard and playing hard results in happy, healthy, and productive baboon researchers.

Mischievous Moo

It's about time for an update on Moo (this is for you Sam). Our little anti-mouse system is all grown up now, but she still manages to get herself into new trouble.

This series illustrates just that. Where she can get up, she can't always get down by herself! She got up in the rafters and was crying continuously for several minutes before we could figure out where it was coming from.

She eluded several rescue attempts...

 ...before finally giving in.

Since then we have been practicing our purrito wrapping methods to keep her safe. Definitely a photo moment, so we thought we'd add some fruit (what else could we do?).(Again, this is for Sam.) 

 Moo was surprisingly calm and relaxed throughout this 3 minute photo shoot. Maybe cats, like babies, are also calmed by being swaddled? Fortunately, we don't have to purrito her often. She's lucky enough to have 4 loving mamas here to keep an eye on her:

Deborah Ross comes to visit

We recently had a wonderful visit from artist and long-time friend of UNBP – Deborah Ross. Previously a dancer who traveled the world in search of adventure and intimate wildlife encounters, she first came here in the 80s and began painting our baboons. Deborah is a talented artist, but takes the impact of her art very seriously. Most of her art is aimed at increasing awareness about the world’s threatened wildlife and forests.  

In her busy years at UNBP Deborah illustrated Shirley’s book (Almost Human), provided the artwork for the UNBP website (www.baboonsrus.com ), and she founded the painting club in 2008. This trip she spent every possible day with the baboons taking photos and painting them when they stopped moving for social time. 

Here are some of her paintings from her time with us: 

 

 

 

 

 

We had a great visit hearing about all of Deborah's adventures with wildlife, conservation, and painting clubs around Africa. This trip she even started a new painting club in the South Rift. She's now back at her paying job, teaching art in NY.

Follow this link if you’d like to learn more about Deborah or her art:

http://www.deborahrossarts.com