After a few days of catching up with emails and other business, my nephew Scott was able to set me up with a three-day visit to Mpala Research Centre, the place where he did his undergraduate thesis on termites while at Princeton. He still has connections because some of his friends he graduated with are currently working as Princeton-in-Africa Fellows and he is currently serving as a project manager at another site an hour or so away and he comes to visit when he has time. I will talk more about his duties at Ol Pejeta in a future post.
The ride up to Mpala was made more pleasant because the local taxi driver that I was riding with was excited to tell me about his country when he heard it was my first visit to Kenya. I learned a lot as he told me what we were seeing all along the drive. We saw all kinds of domestic animals and even a very large herd of camels. This is the dry season and the colors of the landscape were mostly in the range of dull brown, dull green, and golden yellow. The sky was bright blue and nearly free of clouds. As we approached the research station we saw plains zebras, a solo elephant, and a bunch of tiny antelope called dik-dik, and lots of beautiful birds.
The first person I met was Ciara, one of the Princeton Fellows, who showed me to my room and along the way introduced me to Julius, who was one of the main people in charge of security. He was the first of many people I met that day who had nice things to say about Scott. This was part of what made me feel welcome, but there was a calmness about the place that made me feel like I had been introduced to a little slice of heaven. This was bound to be great.
To learn more about Mpala Research Centre, click on the link below.