Camera Trap Trial

We went up to Nyungwe on Monday to deploy a trial set of the camera traps. In the exact same spots that Okan and I had deployed them earlier. This time, a park gaurd, Eoste, came and helped me instead since Okan doesn't yet have a permit to touch his tinniest toe into the park. They are hard core here with the permits. Okan went for a 10k run through the public park roads instead. The camera deployment was successful despite a little rain (it is a rainforest after all) and Eoste was super nice and very helpful. I hope he can help me with the next set of cameras I want to deploy in early April (seventeen in total).

Today I am headed back to Kigali to meet with the permit officer. My permit is only half approved right now as he wants proof I'm not some lunatic from American who wants to kill all the animals I trap. I've called on my veterinary friend Chris to help by writing a letter of support and assuring them I'm competent to immobilize carnivores. Aside from a veterinary degree, I'm not sure what other kind of assurance I can provide! I've been very anxious about this glitch in my permit for weeks now and have been dreading this meeting. Wish me luck!

Starting in early April I am moving up to Nyungwe full time to start my field work/trapping (if I get the rest of my permit approved). I'm really looking forward to that. In the meantime have been trying to enjoy all that Butare has to offer, which frankly, isn't a lot. But they DO have a really great national museum here that I went to last weekend. Lots of fascinating cultural and political history and artifacts. A really well done museum.

They have their own special way of writing the history of Rwanda. For example, instead of writing that the president's plane was shot down by opposing militants before the genocide began, they wrote under his picture that he died "in a plane crash". I suppose it's technically correct! But also lots of fascinating crafts and pictures of Rwanda from the early 1900s. Amazing stuff and I'm hoping to go back and visit again.

Kibuye

We went to Kibuye this last weekend- it was amazing and beautiful. A nice respite from the stress of dealing with my permit. Gorgeous warm lake water that I could swim in. You could see Congo on the other side of the lake! It's just a normal lake, not volcanic like I said before.

We also stopped on the drive home to look at some really pretty overlooks over the hills of Rwanda.

Then we stopped at this nice cheese making place and bought fresh goat cheese. The children were all very interested in the car load of muzungas and gathered round to check us out.

All in all we had a perfect weekend getaway. Would love to go back another time.

Rainy Season

We had our first massive, massive, massive rain yesterday. First it started thundering non stop for about an hour and a half. Then came, what I affectionately refer to as "the end of days" rain. We've all experienced it before. The rain that just looks like the sky has opened with enormous fat rain drops drowning from the sky. The difference here is that it rained like that for hours and hours. I have to give Rwanda credit however- they have a really fabulous rain drainage system that puts the US to shame. They have these meter by meter rain gutters along all roads that efficiently drains the water. The roofs on campus are all shaped like a mini-V so that all the water drains down off the roof and into these large cement (3m x 3m x 2m) wells that also drain away (not sure where!). It is still cloudy this morning so I think we may have more rain in the forecast. Hoping it might hold off for our trip to Kibuye this weekend (along Lake Kivu- a lake that fills the crater of an extinct volcano).

Yesterday I had another student come by to ask me to be his advisor for his thesis. I already have two undergraduate students I have taken on and I'm a little hesitant to take someone else on. He was interested in a project I had advertised to the biology students which would involve looking at carnivore health and parasitology. The student had heard from the other students that I would only take someone on for this project who had already had a parasitology course. So when we met yesterday I naturally asked him about whether he had taken it and how he had done in the course. Unfortunately, he said he barely passed. I really wanted to just tell him no right there on the spot but I'm too much of a softy. So I asked him to do a literature review on carnivore parasites and then meet with me next week. If he really does a great job, I may take him on. But if his writing and literature review skills are like some of my other students (not so great), I may just have to take a pass. I already feel overwhelmed with what I have on my plate, which includes two of my Masters students from Columbia that are graduating this spring (so I'll be editing/reading theses soon), organizing my 4th field season of summer research at Black Rock Forest (NY) on small mammal community ecology (I got funded for another year- yay!), plus trying to analyze my sea turtle stable isotope data and write it up for publication and submit an abstract for a conference that is due at the end of this month. Oh, and then there's that pesky field work/permit issue at Nyungwe to worry about too. I know I'm no busier than most people reading this blog. Everyone I know has a ton on their plates too. I guess I'm just trying to justify not taking on another student that will need a lot of spoon feeding/hand holding!

Live and Learn

Made the hour drive up to the park yesterday and finally met with the Park Warden. For our full 10 minute meeting. What's that you say Mr. Park Warden? You didn't have time to read my research application so you have no idea what my project is about? Oh no worries, I know you are a busy man. The good news is that I have my permit and I have met with the warden so I'm ready to go out into the field and start my work! Yay! Hoorah!!

Wait, what's that you say Mr. Park Warden? That I need permits for all of my research assistants? And that this can take from 3 days to 3 months to process? Oh, that's not all? Really, tell me more Mr. Park Warden! Oh, you say that it costs $80/month for each research assistant? No kidding! And the reason no one told me this when I applied for my research permit in February is........???? And so when I explicitly wrote on my cover letter of my permit application that my understanding was that my permit also covered my research assistants, you thought what exactly? Oh, right! You didn't see that bit!! Of course! So I can only go out into the field with park guards and no research assistants until I get the permit? Wait, let me guess... and no park guards are available? Oh, they ARE available!! So it's not ALL bad news then! (Insert heavy sigh here)

Is it March already?

The internet has been ridiculously slow lately, which hasn't inspired me to want to get online and post. Okan is working with the IT folks on campus now and he tried to explain why our internet connectivity has gone down hill recently, but I didn't exactly understand. Something about some person from Congo taking away NUR's bandwidth. So now the entire university is MAXED out on bandwidth and the internet feels glacial.

We went up to Nyungwe yesterday. I was told (or so I understood) that my permit had been approved and we went up to meet the Park warden for a 2:30 meeting. I thought I should utilize the trip to go ahead and deploy some of my camera traps.


Big mistake. So after about 4 hours of hiking and deploying of 5 camera traps we ran into some of the park guards hiking the same trail as we were on, just moments after we had finished our work. I explained that I was a scientist from NUR and that I had a permit to do the work. They told us that the camera traps were not safe and that despite the braided metal cord locking the cameras (with a padlock) to the tree, that they would be stolen. Which is not at all what the Wildlife Conservation Society researchers had told me (they deployed camera traps at Nyungwe with no problems). Having not done this before (camera trapping), I decided to take the traps down. They are too expensive to risk getting stolen even if several different people at Nyungwe had already told me it was safe to deploy them. So that was disappointing. They also told me there were no animals up in this area of the forest so we would never get pictures of animals. I decided to bite my tongue and not pull out the carnivore scat I had collected along the trail that morning.

Then once we hiked down to the bottom of the trail, the guards started acting weird. They wanted our names and phone numbers and wrote down the license plate of our car, like we were going to flee the park or something. We knew we were in trouble then. They insisted on accompanying us back to the park station house, even though I assured them I was going there for a 2:30pm appointment with the warden. While I hate to generalize, my experience so far has given me the impression that Rwandans are generally, suspicious of other people (both foreigners and each other). The guards were no exception and they insisted on cramming into our car to ride to the park station. We were greeted at the station by someone who told us we were not permitted to be in the park and boy were we in trouble! It turns out that even though my permit had been approved, since I had not yet met with the warden (our appointment was at 2:30 that afternoon), I was in a big pile of trouble for going out without permission. Yikes!! It also turned out that the park warden had earlier in the day canceled out meeting, which the person at the station let us know (he had emailed me that morning but we were already hiking by then). Insert heavy sigh here....... So I tried to turn on the dumb-blond charm as best I could and apologized to everyone for my mistake. Luckily it doesn't look like I have done any permanent damage and I have another meeting with the warden on Monday- I'm sure I will be doing more apologizing then.

I feel bad for breaking a rule. Although in my defense, another scientist had taken us out hiking before alone so I didn't realize it would be such a big deal. But it is also frustrating because I feel like time is a wastin' for my research and this whole permit application process (all of Feb) + formal meetings with all the important people, seems to go on forever.  I clearly need to learn to be more patient and readjust my expectations of what research I will be able to get done.  I am in daily contact with the WCS folks too, and they are really the science experts of the park. The Parks department is more like the police of the park. I also found out that researchers are not allowed in the park without a park person accompanying them!! I'm not looking forward to explaining to the park warden that my research requires daily trips into the forest for many consecutive months. I'm not sure how that will work out.  So back to Kitabi (the town at the edge of the park where I will start living full time in April) to meet the warden on Monday!