06/09/11

Today I spent the morning at The Trust making a Colobridge- literally a bridge for Colobus monkeys. They are really clumsy on the ground, they can't walk in a straight line, so they get hit by cars a lot. That's why The Trust was started up in the first place. Anyway, it was really getting to actually make the bridges. There was about 8 of us on it and this is the finished result:

It's about 60 metres long and will go over a section of Diani highway. After that we did some tree nursery work. The Trust plants a variety of trees that either monkeys eat or sleep in because there's so few left. It wasn't all that exciting, just taking baby trees and putting them in bigger pots!

After lunch I got to go de-snaring and that really is fun. We go out into the forests and look for traps and snares laid by the poachers. They are really simple things, just pieces of string and rope but they are very hard to spot in the trees and bushes. We found four which was pretty good going. I'm glad I didn't do it last week, they found a suni antelope, dead in a snare. Anyway, it was very fun and we found a massive monator lizzard, it was about 4 feet long.

Lizard!

This is called a spikey something. It's native to Kenya.

Mwitu, one of the workers at The Trust who took us desnaring, and his very casual use of a machette!

That night was pub quiz at one of the bars so most of us went along. We came last but the questions were very much aimed at the older generation and our average age is about 23! Anyway, the bar it was in was brilliant. I didn't take my camera but I'm sure we'll go back so I'll take pictures next time. We stayed there and danced the night away in true British Tourist fashion!