Happy America Day! (Kate's 1st Post)

The 4th of July is referred to by our Kenyan friends as "America Day" and a great celebration was planned and executed with style at the Ranch house on Mpala. However, before the party got started, there were schools to visit and children to teach. The group split in two, with Annelise, Colleen and Helen heading out in the jeep to visit Ewaso Primary while Alex, Dayton and I hitched a ride over to the Mpala Academy, the primary school located on Mpala, walking distance from the ranch.

At Mpala Academy, it was food chain day and we started the lesson by reading the Great Kapok Tree to a rapt audience of primary school children who missed much of the English, but enjoyed the pictures. The Mpala Academy Conservation Club teacher translated the gist of the story into Swahili as each page was turned.

Dayton reading from the Great Kapok Tree

Once the story was over, the children were asked to name all of the animals that were characters in the story and after a little proding they were able to come up with them all, including humans. Then it was lesson time and Alex smoothly transitioned the class from the Great Kapok Tree story into a lesson on food chains, using the animals from the story to help illustrate the different levels of the food chain: producers, herbivores, carnivores and omnivores. The children had clearly heard these terms and learned these concepts before and were easily able to come up with examples of each from both the Amazon setting of the Great Kapok Tree and their own more familiar Kenya. After demonstrating a food web illustration on the chalkboard, Alex then gave the students some time to draw their own food webs which they did with gusto.

The awesome Alex teaching the class about food webs

Students hard at work on their own food webs

After the students had completed their food web drawings and shared them with their classmates, we took the class outside. I got my first taste of the hard work the students have all been putting in preparing for Community Day when the Mpala Academy Conservation Club performed their poem for us as a practice run to prepare for the big day tomorrow. I was blown away with the poise and talent of these primary school children and it got me incredibly excited for tomorrow's event.

After the dress rehearsal performance, we introduced the students to a game called Lions and Antelope which is just the Kenya version of Sharks and Minnows where you start with one predator and a heard of prey. The prey attempt to run from one end of the field to the other, while the predator tags as many as he can. Anyone who is tagged then becomes a predator. Its a great game because it gets the students running around but it also teaches a basic lesson on supply and population growth within an ecosystem.

Lions and Antelope!

When the game was over, it was time to say goodbye to the students. Usually at Mpala, we teach a computer class after the Conservation Club lesson, but today there was no power at the school, so we were not able to do the "Google search" lesson that Alex had planned for the day. The teachers also wanted to send the students home early, as they had to be back at the school at 6:00 am the following morning to get on the bus that would take them to Kimanjo Mixed Secondary School where Community Day is being held, over an hour drive away. (Blog post on Community Day to come tomorrow)

Once the work was over, it was time to celebrate...

HAPPY AMERICA DAY!

Eunice, the amazing cook at Mpala, prepared an American feast and Nancy and Dan Rubenstein had all of the researchers, grad students and undergrads (about 150 people) up to the ranch house for dinner. It was a great way to relax and meet more of the people living and working at Mpala. Before dinner we had a rousing Frisbee tournament in which much fun was had by all and then we ate until we thought we might explode while watching darkness fall over the breathtaking view that is Mpala.

Happy American Day Flag Cake!

The view from the ranch of Mpala

48 hours later and we're here! (Colleen's first post)

 Habari from Mpala! Despite the feeling temporarily narcoleptic, jetlag has not been too bad and Kate and I hit the ground running yesterday afternoon with school visits. We piled into the Land Rover alongside Nancy, Helen, Dayton and the two PEI interns, Alex and Annelies. Taking such a large group allowed us to visit three schools in total, Kimanjo Primary School, Kimanjo Secondary School and Ngabolo Primary School.

I went to Kimanjo Primary School with Alex, Helen and Dayton (Helen and Dayton later headed to Kimanjo Secondary School down the road). We took turns reading The Great Kapok Tree to the students, which promotes a message of stewardship for the Amazon Rainforest (each of the animals that lives in the tree or depends on it pleads with a man to not chop down the tree for different reasons). The book tied in perfectly to the themes of this particular club’s preparations for Community Conservation Day (a large event with all of the clubs coming together to share ideas and performances). The Kimanjo Primary School club had prepared a dramatic piece that compared two villages, one which was dedicated to preserving trees and one that cut the trees down. People in the area often cut down trees for fuel and to make charcoal, which ultimately has adverse effects on the wildlife by taking away food and shelter. In the drama, ultimately the village dedicated to planting and preserving trees flourishes. The villagers share their knowledge with the neighbors and by the end of the skit both villages are planting trees. The message of the skit fits with the mission of the Northern Kenyan Conservation Clubs. We’re trying to promote education about conservation within the clubs themselves, but also empower students to share that knowledge with their families and greater communities. Importantly, the skit is in English and Swahili, though the majority of the play is in Swahili, ensuring the bulk of the attendants will be able to understand it. The Kimanjo club continued to build on this theme with the demonstration they are planning to share on Community Conservation Day. The students made their own charcoal using dung and charcoal dust, eliminating the need for wood. They will share this technique with the community and hopefully others will follow their example.

Visiting the school gave me a bit more insight to what we’re trying to accomplish with this project. The Great Kapok Tree takes place in the Amazon, which is a world away for Kenyan students (and the vast majority of American students). We began by explaining and showing where Kenya and the Amazon are in relation to each other on the map. As we went through the different animals, we checked if the students knew what they were (boa constrictor and sloth in particular were problematic). This is the same sort of problem (so to speak) that will are attempting to address with this project. We want to make the lessons relatable to students and part of that is using biomes and animals they recognize and know. That said, we were able to relate the new animals to various Kenyan animals (i.e. a jaguar is like a leopard; a sloth is slow like a tortoise). We’ll definitely try to mimic that same sort of thinking in the American curriculum.

From a teaching perspective, I was really struck by the classroom and the number of students assigned to each class. While sitting in the head teacher's office, we noticed the enrollment numbers for each class, which were quite large. The overall teacher-student ratio is 1:71. The head teacher told us it's frustrating for many new teachers, who are qualified, as the government won't hire them. Though that is an issue with budgets in the US, it's not nearly to the same extreme. Thinking about my own teaching, I have had classes as small as five students and as large as thirty-nine. The difference in what you can do in terms of activities is huge. It is unsurprising that with classes this large Kenyan students aren't often engaged in full discussions. The conservation clubs try to promote experiential learning as much as possible and Nancy has helped to facilitate workshops for teachers to learn new methods. The layout of the classroom is very basic and all of the posters hanging on the walls were created by hand and are glued to the wall. These posters get ripped down at the end of the year, often leaving part of the poster behind. It's definitely made me feel spoiled about the classrooms I have taught in and will certainly make me think twice before complaining about wifi being slow!

Twende! Let's go!

Students practicing their poem for Community Conservation Day.

Helen reading to students.

The conservation club even has it's own little shed! You can't see it, but the charcoal balls were drying on the roof.

Crossing the river on the way home.

Giraffe sighting on the way home!

Dayton Visits Il Motiok Primary School

We arrived at Il Motiok Primary School early. The students still had plenty of class time left before the after-school Conservation Club I was there to help teach. Helen and some others left for Nai Perere, and I remained with Nancy and Alex. Nancy Rubenstein is a former elementary school teacher and the wife of Princeton ecologist Dan Rubenstein and the Conservation Clubs are largely their brainchild. Alex is a rising junior interning through the Princeton Environmental Institute as a teacher and she has prepared a lesson on birds and adaptations for this afternoon.

With permission from the Il Motiok teacher, we decided to sit in on a class until school was out. First we caught the tail end of a religious education class in which students were learning causes of suffering (war, sickness, sin, guilt, etc.) and, had time permitted, would have learned of Jesus Christ’s triumph over said suffering. A cursory Wikipedia search reveals Kenya first found Jesus in the form of Portuguese Catholics in the 1400s. Kenya’s colonization by the British from 1920-1963 cemented Christianity’s hold, and today roughly three-quarters of Kenyans are believers. (Other British influences can be found in their Anglicized names and driving on the left side of the road.) I don’t mean to comment on the merits of Christianity; instead, my thoughts drifted to the lasting power of colonialism. Parts of a culture were lost or irrevocably altered due to Western influence. As a white Westerner interacting with young Kenyans, I must be conscious of not overstepping my role.

The next class we saw was a science class. A different teacher went over the parts of the heart and drew a diagram on the board. His style was relaxed and informal, and he actively involved Nancy, Alex, and me (“Let’s ask our visitors what the smallest blood vessels are called”). The students seemed to be enjoying themselves, and I knew I was (“Capillaries!”).

After class, we met up again with the religious education teacher, Joseph, who also teaches the Conservation Club. He expressed discontentment with the way the kids are so often kept silent in their chairs, and declared that for today’s Club we would go on walk.

It was tempting to be frustrated. All the preparation for Alex’s bird lesson just (forgive me) flew out the window. But to be honest I was secretly pleased. Joseph, in the end, is the Club teacher, not Alex, Nancy, or I. If he felt his students had spent too much time inside, well, he knew better than we did.

We walked about 5-10 minutes to a rocky outcropping, past a glut of livestock (domestic goats are everywhere here. Apparently they eat more than their fair share of plants and are bad—dare I say baaaa-d?—for the environment, but between you and me I think they’re hilarious and kind of awesome). I tried to initiate conversation with one or two of the students, but due to their general shyness, unconfident English, or whatever else, I was woefully unsuccessful.

We sat down in the rocks, some of the kids flipping through animal-themed picture books they’d brought along. Joseph began to speak, as much to Nancy, Alex, and me as to the students. He pointed far out in the distance at what he claimed was an elephant, and the students seemed to agree. I’m inclined to believe them, and I think I might have seen it move, but I wouldn’t be shocked to find out it was just a big grey rock.

Elephants at Il Motiok are not quite as beloved as they are in the US. They had trampled and killed a woman three months ago in the area, and such events are not uncommon. While poaching (for ivory) and habitat degradation (especially cutting down trees) have sent elephants onto the endangered list worldwide, there are still quite a few in Il Motiok. Kenya’s textbooks take a pragmatic approach to conservation: elephants are good for tourism, which is good for the local economy, and thus Kenyans should protect their elephants. Joseph explained this to the students in a way that implied they had heard it all before. The tourism benefit might be true in the short term, but I am skeptical that conserving solely for this reason is a sustainable approach.

Luckily, Joseph also hinted at something more important. Discussing leopards, which are endangered due to—yet again—poaching (for their pelts) and habitat degradation (they live in trees), he had his students follow the food chain. “What happens to gazelles when there are no more leopards?” he asked.

The gazelle population, of course, would increase with fewer predators. More gazelles eat more grass, which means less grass left over for the goats, cows, and other livestock upon which human communities depend. (This is a simplification, but the principle stands.) Ecosystems are complex and sometimes fragile things, and humans are a part of them. We should think twice before tampering with the system, because we might bring ourselves down too.

This concept, while not simple, is fairly intuitive in this region of Kenya. Thinking ahead to the eventual object of my project with Helen—the development of a US curriculum—I realize a lot of work must be done with American students. Industrialization and urbanization have created an illusion in the states that the human world and the environment are two separate things. Resource depletion and climate change are showing us just how dangerous this misconception can be, but these threats are less obvious than “my goat shares grass with this gazelle.”

Making the connection between humans and the natural world is hugely important; to save the environment is to save a part of ourselves. I personally feel obligated to point out that even if this weren’t true, I believe we have a moral responsibility to other living things, especially the more intelligent ones like elephants. However, even an anthropocentric ethic is enough to motivate conservation; Helen and I will have to show American students that humans have a place in nature, that Earth is a finite, sensitive home.

When Joseph ran out of things to say, we still had a few minutes left. In honor of the recent inaugural World Giraffe Day, Alex led the kids in a true-or-false-type game with giraffe facts. I let my ecological ruminations slide and watched the game. Honestly, I hadn’t known most of the facts, and I learned a lot. Did you know giraffes can run 50 kilometers per hour? Or that their calves can stand on their own five minutes after birth? These days, it’s easy to attach my knowledge of the non-human world to all this high-minded moral responsibility stuff. I’m glad I haven’t forgotten that it’s also really cool.

When it comes to the elephant, students sometimes confuse the words 'endangered' and 'dangerous.'

My beloved goats

Seriously goats are everywhere.

Wild dogs reclaim the streets.

Check out Mpala Live to see the wildlife

The Mpala Live webcamera at the watering hole is very cool.

Take a look at the animals yourself .

You can also access the webcam feed via the Mpala Live tab on the navigation bar.

Helen-Post 2

We stood next to the school garden which flowers like a green oasis in the midst of the dry, dusty dirt. The students had planted the trees; I learned that this was something that was highly prioritized and encouraged in Kenya. Planting trees and conservation went hand in hand - someone told me that if you cut down one tree, you were expected to plant two. In schools when we taught lessons of how to help endangered species, the common answer was to “plant trees.” The students were proud of the trees; they said that it made the school more beautiful and provided shade for them when they ate their meals. I was delighted to hear this, since something that we’ve been trying to teach the children is the importance as well as the satisfaction of preserving, and perhaps even creating, beauty in the environment.


“How do you say beautiful in Swahili?”

“Nzuri.”

“Kenya is nzuri!”


The children who shyly lean against the wooden post smile widely, and a boy (Johnson) nods enthusiastically. Yes, Kenya is a beautiful and striking country. Each day when we make our trip to the schools, I am awed by the land rolls and stretches luxuriously under the azure sky. There seems to be no end to the breathtaking plains beyond the shrubbery that carpet the low, rumbling mountains in the background. However, each day that I am here, I am constantly aware of the dichotomy of being an appreciative visitor and living as the people of these rural villages do.

It was surprising (perhaps it shouldn’t have been) because for many of the children, the “cool” animals like leopards, lions, and elephants, can be a symbol of danger and fear for them. In some instances, it was hard to dispel the notion that these animals needed protection; some students didn’t understand the idea of “endangered” and persistently thought that it made more sense to portray the animals as “danger.” The fear and perhaps even anger toward these animals are not unjustified. Recently, an elephant invaded a village and trampled a woman to death, and the elephant was killed. Lions and other predators are deadly nuisances that kill the people’s livestock and even humans.

However, it would be incomplete and perhaps even incorrect to say that the students have a negative attitude toward animals. While conducting the lessons and asking the children about the animals that they see around them, I had the sense that they felt pride and fascination toward their wildlife neighbors. One of the things that we worked on with them was the “Species on the Edge” essay contest. They each chose an endangered animal, wrote about it (what it looks like, where its habitat is, why it is endangered, and so on) and drew a picture of it. The pictures were vividly colorful and gorgeous, and the children glowed with satisfaction and some even pushed their artwork toward me when I passed by their desks. These animals were magnificent and attractive, and the children seemed to enjoy drawing them.

Such a tension between danger and beauty, wildlife and the human, frames the environmental concerns and efforts here. Perhaps it is ironic that it is because the Kenyan landscape is dangerous that the environment is made all the more vulnerable. The delicate balance between human survival and wildlife protection is, and should be, central to the conservation education at Kenya. This is a challenging task, and I realize that each day as I learn about the students’ efforts to conserve the environment. For example, planting trees is an entirely different matter in Kenya as compared to the United States. The school faces issues such as not having enough water to give to the trees, elephants and other wildlife coming in to trample upon their garden, and even members of the community setting their livestock into the schoolyard to graze. Most of the teachers, however, expressed a tenacious desire to “keep going” and “keep planting” and to not give up. I felt that it really is a battle to conserve the environment at Kenya, and it starts with the children.

One of the main goals of the conservation clubs is to educate the children so that they can grow to be responsible and knowledgeable adults, and so that they can go back to the community and teach their parents. For example, one of the lessons that we did was to create a role-play game for the students. The situation was that water was scarce, and the members of the community have to make a decision whether or not to close the waterhole to the animals. They pretended to be a member of the community that either agreed or disagreed with sharing the waterhole with the animals. They got into groups to discuss and answer questions such as: why should we protect animals? What are the short-term and long-term effects of our decisions? Are there other solutions? Giving the students knowledge about their environment (the impact of biodiversity, maintaining balance in the ecosystem, the consequences of deforestation and so on) is like giving them tools to make their own decisions.

I have been thinking a lot about what it means to educate a child in Kenya. To me, it feels that the conservation clubs’ efforts are to help the students become a global citizen in a sense. Healing the environment is only possible if it is made into a worldwide effort; giving the tools for the Kenyan students to grow up to be wise decision-makers in their communities, and to make decisions that could have a far-reaching impact, is an important step in this process. As I spend more time here and learn more about Kenya, I realize how crucial it is for the indigenous people to make their own decisions; they are the ones living on the land, coming face-to-face with wildlife, using the resources. At the same time, our help and sharing of scientific knowledge is also important.

Such a partnership can begin with the communication between US and Kenyan students through the Mpala Live! website. It has been a meaningful and exciting journey so far!

Dayton and I were working on creating the cards for the “more or less” game that we’re planning to teach to the students at Kimanjo secondary school.

Elephants--Kenya's Satao was recently killed by poachers for his ivory. See http://www.forbes.com/sites/mfonobongnsehe/2014/06/15/world-famous-elephant-satao-killed-by-poachers-in-kenya/  for the full story.

A giraffe

A hippo

Helen and Dayton's First Post

After a long journey, Helen and Dayton made it to Mpala! They have already begun working with some of the Conservation Clubs of Northern Kenya and have seen some amazing wildlife. They will be posting from Kenya and will be joined shortly by Kate and Colleen. Below is an account of some of their initial thoughts, observations and experiences.


6/11/14-Today we (Helen and Dayton) visited five schools and met with each of the clubs to talk about what they were planning for community conservation day (a gathering of all the Conservation Clubs of Northern Kenya during which individual groups perform and present various projects).

One of the lessons we helped with focused on biodiversity and balance of the ecosystem. Opuntia cactus are invasive species that must be eliminated. One of the schools was experimenting with how to effectively wipe out the cacti. They found cutting the cacti and leaving the pieces to dry did not eradicate the species fully and that burning the cut cacti was more effective.

The Deraja School was working on a project about pollution and recycling resources. Students created a soap of grey water, using charcoal instead of cutting trees for wood.

One important aspect of environmental education is to promote stewardship of nature, and to emphasize the human role in not only participating in actions that prevent environmental degradation, but those that actively protect and restore it. We found that this was a theme for all the schools we visited, and planting trees was a central aspect of the environmental consciousness and education of each. This is part of a nation movement, as the government strongly endorses tree-planting. The common motto is that if you cut down one tree, you should plant two. Herders, who have suffered from overgrazing, flock to schools because there is grass at the schools thanks to the trees members of the school community have planted.

The importance of trees was also present in some of the lessons. One school focused on the benefit of trees, especially for livestock (like the herders above). The groups attempted to teach children and their parents about how conservation can benefit day-to-day life, hoping to promote a personal connection to trees and feeling of stewardship.

One other thing that we are emphasizing is the importance and presence of indigenous knowledge. The children are encouraged to talk to the elders about how human activity has influenced nature, especially given the juxtaposition of the past/present.

Dayton and Helen

A leopard we saw on our way back to the ranch.

A mural painted by the children of Kimanji Primary School on one of the building's walls.

Children drew/wrote this on a water tank to remind themselves not to waste water whenever they use it.

Crossing the river to access schools that are farther away.