Tom's First Week In The Forest

2009 sees GVI Kenya enter its fourth year of research and community development and with the new year come some new changes with the launch of dedicated dolphin research, colobus research and teaching projects alongside our comprehensive integrated expedition programme. You will be finding out more about all of these over the weeks to come as well as the latest updates from our Tsavo West community development programme, but we're going to start with one of our new expedition members, Tom Campbell, and his blog about his first week on the year's first expedition...

Bright and early on Monday morning we left our base at Mkwiro and made our way aboard 'Squirrel' to the mainland and GVI's base at Shimoni. After settling in to the brand new banda that has replaced the tents, we proceeded to undertake our training for our week in the forest. We were all excited to put our new knowledge to the test and after a few practice surveys, including the ever-entertaining butterfly sweep nets, we were ready to go!

Our first week was a highly productive one. From the very start we manged to see colobus and Syke's monkeys, from as close as 15m - staring straight in to the eyes of a colobus for the first time was an experience hard to beat! Later in the week, night-time treks helped us to see up close bushbabies, thanks to their spooky reflective orange eyes, and tiny suni antelope. Albeit hard work, the week has been an eye-opener to what is to come with GVI in Kenya.

Tom's First Week In The Forest