{"id":414,"date":"2011-02-28T09:22:08","date_gmt":"2011-02-28T14:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.wabash.edu\/studying-abroad\/?p=414"},"modified":"2011-02-28T09:22:08","modified_gmt":"2011-02-28T14:22:08","slug":"amazing-days-in-kenya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/studyingabroad\/2011\/02\/28\/amazing-days-in-kenya\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazing Days in Kenya"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pete Guiden ’12 – Feb. 19 –\u00a0So\u2026this is Africa.\u00a0 Since arriving in Kenya, I think I can admit that inside I still feel a little confused.\u00a0 You would think that being transplanted to a different continent, half the world away, immersed in a completely foreign culture would feel strange, different, uncomfortable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>But really it doesn\u2019t \u2014 it\u2019s just life, the same as Crawfordsville, Indiana, in a lot of ways.\u00a0 Take the kids, for example.\u00a0 Anywhere you drive, they stop what they\u2019re doing and wave at you from the side of the road, they laugh, they ask over and over and over for candy.\u00a0 That\u2019s feeling number one, and it occupies at least 90 percent\u00a0of the time here.\u00a0 Feeling number two, that sneaky other 10 percent is triggered in those random moments such as, waking up to the sound of monkeys climbing on your cabin roof, or the news that what you thought was thunder last night was actually an elephant trying to knock down the camp fence.\u00a0 Or waking up every morning and catching the peak of Mt. Kilimanjaro\u00a0– that one gets me every time.\u00a0 This is Africa alright.<\/p>\n

A couple of super-interesting experiences to note.\u00a0 I\u2019m here to study wildlife ecology and conservation intensively, so I was expecting lots of that.\u00a0 No problems or disappointments there.\u00a0 But what surprised me a lot in the first few weeks here was the stress put on the human involvement in the process, specifically using the revenue generated from tourism to empower the local people, who are severely impoverished \u2014 in other words, living humanely.\u00a0 As part of that, the 29 students in my class were dropped off at local Maasai homesteads near the camp a few days back to spend a day with either a warrior or mama, living a day in their shoes and experiencing that culture firsthand.\u00a0<\/p>\n

My host\u2019s name was Thomas, and I\u2019m grateful for the little English he speaks (my Swahili is broken at best, and I know maybe two words of Maasai).\u00a0 I spent most of the day helping to a prepare a tomato field for planting, or fixing the goat pen fence.\u00a0 It was an amazingly humbling experience, and served as a healthy reminder to how blessed Americans truly are.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Today was focused entirely on the wildlife, as we made our third trip to Amboseli National Park (also known as heaven on earth).\u00a0 Today was special though \u2014\u00a0 we worked hand in hand with the Kenyan Wildlife Service to conduct a complete count of animals in the park.\u00a0 This involved leaving the road, which all tourists must stay on, to reach the largely pristine areas of Amboseli, seen by very few.\u00a0 We covered a plot of about 100 square miles, and in doing so remarkably managed to only get stuck in the mud twice.\u00a0 The wildlife was spectacular\u2014topping the lists were elephants, giraffes, ostriches, and zebras (unfortunately no big carnivores).\u00a0 We even got up-close and personal with some while driving out of the park, as we found the road blocked at one point by a family of elephants crossing the road.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nine hours of standing in the Kenyan sun takes a toll on you though, so tonight\u2019s agenda is to relax a little bit by the campfire before a full day of class tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pete Guiden ’12 – Feb. 19 –\u00a0So\u2026this is Africa.\u00a0 Since arriving in Kenya, I think I can admit that inside I still feel a little confused.\u00a0 You would think that being transplanted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-study-abroad"],"w_featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2011\/02\/Pete400.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}