Ecology of the Turkana Basin with Dino Martins

Hello everyone, a lot has happened since I last posted. After our trip to Lothagam we wrapped up our Geology module with a test and a trip into town to Lodwar that weekend. There we said good bye to our professor, Craig Feibel who normally teaches at Rutgers, and explored a bit of town. Like most town centers, Lodwar is where all the stores are, where people come to buy food or sell food, where people come to see the doctor, where the bank is and so on. We had an interesting time there buying local snacks and received quite a good amount of attention since we stood out so much from the locals.

The following week, we began our second module, Ecology of the Turkana Basin with Dino Martins and so far we’ve been having a blast. When we’re not in class, Dino has us running all over the place observing and catching all kinds of insects and plants. I think I might have learned more about bugs and plants here in the past week than I have in all my twenty-two years of schooling (that’s what happens when you grow up in the city). Bees for example, are extremely fascinating insects with very complicated lives, who knew?

Other highlights of these past two weeks;

1. According to Dino, we caught parasites and bees that have never been studied so far.

2. We climbed the Napodet Hills, which is a series of hills about an hour away from TBI.

3. We all started our own projects for our ecology class; mine explores how rainfall affects the Turkana region, others have taken up to studying the decomposition of animals, ants that live in hot climates, the pastoralist community around here and etc.

4. We explored the Kerio River Delta and made some new friends.

5. We visited a nearby farm to learn how a small group of women have taken up to sustainable farming, and then sung songs for them.

Till next time! :)