Bill Toone, a conservation program specialist for CRES, helped implement a teacher training program in Kenya. In blogs, he will share his experience as he works with Dan Rubenstein, a Princeton University scientist, and Louise Bradshaw, the St. Louis Zoo's education director, to inspire the next generation of Kenyans to work for wildlife conservation. His first blog is below:

Louise and I arrived in Nairobi, Kenya, late in the evening and then flew to Nanukyi the next morning. A taxi ride took us 25 to 30 miles (40 to 50 kilometers) to Mpala Research Station. We met with Dan, had a quick lunch, and were escorted down to the teachers' tent camp.

It was a quaint camp of canvas tents right on the river's edge. This was clearly not a tourist camp. The tents were simple: no manicured paths, no lights, and no running water. For me, after numerous trips into mainland Africa, it was the first time ever to be out in the bush in a real tent and without fences or guards to protect us from wildlife.

Each tent had a cot and a little chair sitting out front. A water basin was provided each day to wash my face (pictured above). About 20 feet (6 meters) behind the tent was a hole in the ground with its own little vertical tent, a toilet. Twenty feet away in another direction was another tiny vertical tent: this one had no hole and a bucket with a spigot on it mounted over your head. Voila! A shower.

I was not sure how often this camp was used, but thought maybe infrequent use would somehow account for the prodigious amounts of elephant feces throughout the camp. One load appeared to be more of a warning than anything"”dropped dead center on the path from my tent to my toilet!

Any thought that the presence of people would dissuade the elephants from visiting was quickly extinguished by the camp manager, who warned us of their presence and quickly came back to get us and point out a small group coming our way. Their low rumbles and occasional trumpets were quiet only in comparison to the snapping and crashing of branches as they ate their way toward our tents. I took some solace in the fact that browsing elephants had already devastated a small tree near my tent and perhaps left little to attract them. Shortly before nightfall, following a small herd of Grevy's zebras, the elephants wandered off and left us hoping that we would not see too much more of them in our camp.

During the night, I woke to heavy breathing, the tearing of grass, and the grinding of giant molars. I immediately decided the elephants were back. Holding my breath, I quietly lifted myself off the bed to look outside to see how close my giant visitor was. He was close, he was a giant, but he was not an elephant: our camp had now been invaded by a herd of river hippos out for a nightly feed. They wandered between the tents, grabbing big swatches of grass and munching away. They stayed most of the night.

Bill Toone is a conservation program specialist for Conservation Education/CRES.

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