Kakamega Forest Reserve

I set up my tent on the edge of the campsite as far away as I could get from the kitchen and everything else. I like my privacy and silence. Guides are available for the trails but not mandatory. The trails are not well marked but are easy to see and I thought I'd give them a go before I hired at guide, since a guide for a 4 hour walk was almost $13.
Kakamega is the the easternmost forest of the once great Guinean-Congolian forest and the largest slab of rainforest left in Kenya. It's not a big reserve and is still under considerable pressure from locals for illegal logging, firewood collecting, encroaching agriculture and grazing from cattle. The forest lies at an altitude of about 1500m making it more a montane rainforest than a hot and steamy lowland forest. Temperatures in the day hit around 29 C and the coldest night dropped to 14 C.
Biota is a German research camp located beside Udo's camp and I really got to know some of the scientists there. Some trails started from their camp so I always had to walk through it. I met Neills my first day and he gave me some info about the forest and trails. He is here for 3 months studying pollination and is part of the much larger 9 year long Biota research project encompassing all aspects of the forest.
I came to Kakamega mostly for the primates of which there are 5 duirnal species - baboon, black and white colobus, red tailed monkey, blue monkey and De brazza's monkey. Baboons walked the main entrance road and I passed them on my way in. I was surprised to see baboons here, I thought they were mainly a savanna animal. But then again, I walked in the forest for hours everyday and I never saw a baboon. I only saw them around camp. The main monkey I wanted to see was the De brazza's and was really disappointed to learn that it doesn't exist in this part of the forest anymore. Kakamega is made up of fragments of forest and the De brazza's suppposedly exists in the northern fragment, I was told. Though Neills had never seen one. It was too much $ and hassle to go the this fragment of forest but I will have more opportunities for finding the De brazza's in Uganda and Rwanda.
As I headed out on the trail Neills said I would see all the 3 other species of monkey and he was right. It was already 4pm when I started out and it gets dark in the forest around 6 so I just walked for an hour and then turned around. But this was enough time to see the blue monkey, actually right near camp and the red tailed monkey and black and white colobus further out in the forest. The blue monkey hung around long enough and low enough for me to get some ok photos of it. I was happy to have seen all the monkeys and now it would be my mission to try and get some photos of them.
It was friday night and there were a lot of people around the kitchen which is just some firepits in a large banda (native mud walled hut with conical straw roof). It turns out it was one staff members going away party. They invited me to join but I didn't feel right about it. I just cooked my noodles and beans and chilled in my tent. The party went on till 2am, I couldn't believe it. It wasn't keeping me up the whole time but I could hear them laughing loudly and was surprised when I got up for a pee break at 1.30am and heard them still. They asked me the next day how I slept!I said it was kind of loud and they replied, ' Yes, everyone was very happy!'