Video: Macaques & Morocco October 2011-January 2012

Well, readers (if any) & old fellows, this is my tribute to my first period working with the barbary macaques in the Middle Atlas Mountains of Morocco. (Hopefully, the video is not blocked in too many countries because of the music…).




Azrou is not the same without you, guys, the "magic" is gone. Even if I felt like a bull in a Bohemian glass shop most of the time and I struggled to be understood and to fit, now I have fond memories of that time...maybe because the challenge of making a real a party was quite entertaining, I don't know, but I certainly miss that weird atmosphere....Take care.




…como el perro del hortelano y la gata Flora, en fin... “They can't take that away from me” Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong…

Sometimes pee just happens

My next post was going to be a great stuff that I’m preparing and hopefully will be ready quite soon. However, today I co-starred a couple of funny stories in doing the shit-pee business that I would like to share...even if it's only whit my laptop, my most loyal friend (4 countries already together and preparing for the 5th crossing the Equator, dude!).

Today the Boss told me to stay with Kitkat, one of the males of the tourist group, to collect his urine and faeces. The faeces only took a couple of hours...spent on watching his ass and sporadically, studying some French, practicing bo with the urine-catcher and of course, singing and jumping (I'm a multi-tasking girl). Nonetheless, the urine was much more trickier. After a couple of hours staring at him on the top of a tree (neck-breaking monkeys...) and having lunch, I was watching at him in the middle of the tourist area when some pee started to fall on him. Neither he nor I were prepared for that! He was sleeping and when the stream fell on him, shocked, sat down and shaked his body while looking upwards. I could only laugh watching Lychee (Fidji) above him and urinating, apparently on purpose. I reacted late, and I could only take few drops of the precious liquid. It was so ridiculous... Kitkat couldn't believed either and looked at me like saying "did you see that?? Ahhh...some people..."

I consulted with the Boss because I wasn't sure if it was worthy to save such a small quantity. She, a little bit pissed off because I only took that scarce drops, said "yes" and she stayed preparing the sample and sent me to follow Kitkat again.

Fortunately, I could redeem myself because, just when I found him again, with the French, he peed on a rock, one which fortunately had a hole which acted as a container. So, I could get a good sample of 1.5ml, the maximum that we collect and still have enough for carrying out the urine-analysis. The French and I were doing it when, suddenly, I heard the distinct sound of pee drops falling on the ground. In a matter of seconds I had time to turn around, and scream "F&%CK, F&%CK, F&%CK!!!!" while taking the pee-collector and runing to collect Lemon's (Clarisse) urine. It wasn't too much, but much better than Lychee's sample.

While we were preparing this last one, the Boss radioed me and told me to replace her with Banana (Shannon). So, there I went. A couple of minutes latter, the French came around looking for monkeys on the ground to take the photogrammetry and we were talking a little bit (yeah, old fellows, now I speak a lot while working...well, at least more than a rubber plant as I did before...)

She turned around and I felt some drops falling on me. I said "What was that??" And she laughed and said that probably an infant had just pee on me. I laughed too, I had already been sprinkle with worse things the last month and a half...

Not long after, Banana (Shannon) climbed down to a much lower branch and sat down. I said "Pee, Shana-Banana, pee!!!"...and so she did! But when I put the urine-collector bellow her. She jumped and switched from branch while pissing. However, thanks to the ninja reflexes that I'm acquiring, I could catch it all. She, disappointed, tried to defecate on the sieve, but I was quick again and removed before the dung fell. "Ah, Ah" I said to her, like Nelson of the Simpsons. She looked annoyed.

After this sample it was my time to follow Donut, this time for faecal samples. He didn't take much time to go down from the tree he was and start to walk toward the bushy area (9). I didn't know what to tell him to make him shit...but I remembered a song of Frank T ("Soy un poeta"), ans Spanish mc, in which he said "...ahora ya sé cuál es mi filosofía y ¿cuál es? comer y la tripa llenar, ir al servicio y dentro cagar. ¡Oh! qué placer cuando llegas al fin mi filosofía de cacafutiscín. Es imposible contradecirla, es imposible, no quieras maldecirla. Tú haces caca, él hace caca, todos cagamos y los poetas rimamos.." ( "Now I know what is my philosophy and What is it? To eat and to full your stomach, go to the toilet and shit inside, Oh such a pleasure when you come to the end, my philosophy of cacafutiscín. It is impossible to contradict it, it's impossible, don't try to damn it. You shit, he shits, we all shit and we, the poets, rhyme..."). It's not his best work, but it seemed appropriate for the occasion. At the third repetition, he finally did!

And this kind of stories are the adventurew and misfortunes of our daily routine,..


Curioso giro de los acontecimientos…quién lo iba a decir después de tanto tiempo...pero de momento, a lo Nina Simone “…I rather be lonely…[…]…I Intend to be independently blue...”

Melted stories of harassed macaques and pissed off researches

Since the BBC came, it hasn't snowed any more so, now, only remains are left, depicting a patchy landscape on the ground with leaves, branches and some hard snow scattered around...but in the tourist area, where a tick layer of ice is still present. Thanks to it, every morning, when looking for the monkeys, we can show our skills in figure skating (yeah, ok, we look more to a reumatic Donald duck...).

Anyway, the leftovers of snow are enough to prove that rubber boots are maybe useful to don't be wet but are useless in a slippery terrain if your aim is to don't end up with your bottom on the ground. This is how, the other day, when trying to follow Galack during a scream fight to collect faecal samples, I made an incredibly well performed imitation of Gollum climbing a hill. Given the amount of fans that this character has, the going ups are, at least, somehow dignified...somehow...The going downs, however, are further less elegant and, being fed up with almost dying every time that I tried to go down a snowy slope, I resolved to follow the wise advice that the Portuguese gave me when I was going to the cliffs of Veneguera to search for shearwaters "To move with safety use your 5 tips, arms, legs and ass".

Notwithstanding, all these difficulties are what I consider environmental enrichment and make the days more interesting. The real nuisances are, as usual, the tourists.

Today, the Boss and I had to follow Pepito and Tequila (Leila) for getting faecal samples and, as they are the lowest ranking monkeys, instead of being far in the forest with the rest of the group, they moved towards the tourist area. There, a group of teenagers started to harass them by throwing them peanuts, screaming a lot and playing music. As the other time, each time that a tourist came too close to Tabasco, Tequila's infant, she started grunt and open mouth, only achieving that the tourists started to laugh and even pursue her. For me it was quite stressful to see the anxiety of Tequila to keep her daughter safe among that bunch of cretins. One even climbed to one of the trees going after Pepito (The only good point is that the monkeys were so stressed that we could collect our samples...even when Tequila's one was stuck on her ass for an hour...).

The thing is that, looking at them I could only feel "asco y vergüenza" like Arianna Puello would say (disgust and shame). How could they find funny something that it was so awful to me? And then I wondered how many stuff I do that make others consider me a monster. We, the doomed species, I guess. Maybe Corso was right, we live in the Hell...and we are the evil.

While waiting for Tequila's sample to fall (such an elegant way of saying "waiting for a rain of shit"!), the Boss, amazingly, tried to do some social anthropology. I would never be able of being nice with someone that I want to tear into pieces; I hardly manage to don't hit them with the urine-catcher! Well, I was standing there, with the typical pain in the neck (of course, Tequila has climbed as high as she could) when suddenly I saw Tabasco falling from 7 m high together with a cedar branch! While my heart beat as if I had just finished a marathon, Tabasco...stood, ran and climbed to a tree. I was freaked out, wondering if she would be really fine...fortunately seemed to be the case. These animals are completely amazing.

Once both samples were collected, we leave the two poor social outcast with the tourists, hoping that they were able to take care of them selves as they usually do ( I feel bad for betraying my kind, but work is work, guys, and the rest of the group was at the other corner of the home range!).

Fortunately, now that the Moroccan holydays are finished, these scenes are less usual and concentrated in the weekends. Western tourists are not better, of course, but normally they only stay for 10-15 minutes, not for hours; so they have less time to be harmful. Even though, our macaques seem to ran away, just in case, and today we end up in a patch of forest that I hadn't visited before and again reminded me to the Green group site...which is going to be very funny if it snows again as it was starting to do when we left this afternoon...let's see in one week and a half.

Videos: Juveniles and infants of the tourist group playing

PD: I changed the settings of the blog and now (in principle) it is possible to post commentaries without being registered or anything. Just to let you know.



...sigh...

Snowy tales of frozen researches and cold macaques

As I said in previous posts, the snow finally covered our Middle Atlas Mountains a couple of weeks ago and with it, new situations appeared too.

Firstly, it is well known that when it snows is less cold than the average (the average of a cold winter, I mean…); however, when there is snow but it’s not snowing it can be colder than hell! (as the thermodynamics laws state, the hell is frozen (For Spanish-speakers or google-translator addicts (though not trust it too much): Termodinámica del infierno ! Sorry Christians).

This is how last week we reached a record of cold temperature since I’m here: -8ºC. I know that is probably not too cold for many people, but I’m not used to be more than 2 or 3 degrees below zero!! We found the macaques in what we have called the Peace area/site/place (It’s relatively far from the tourist area and the nasty tourists normally don’t go so far, so we can have good times alone with the macaques and a little bit of silence without anybody throwing stones or snowballs to the monkeys). We had just arrived when I saw Fingers peeing from a tree. I ran there with my pee-catcher and got it. It wasn’t too much quantity because he was quite high and in these cases the pee scatters all around (included us, of course). The Boss was near me and tried to help me to collect the urine from the sieve with the pipette and pass it to the eppendorf; it was my first day as responsible of faecal and urine samples. She took a pipette and with it, some of the pee from the sieve. When I had the eppendorf on my hand, she tried to pour the urine on it but…it was stuck and frozen inside the pipette. While she was saying that she could not believe I looked at her and observed how some of her hair was, as well, frozen!

The macaques don't seem to be very affected by the snow and the cold; at least this group (let's see in 15 days how my little Greens are doing). They don't expend much time on the trees, except when tourist bother them too much and they flee away at the top of the cedars, and they look happy of having access to water always that they want. Only the infants look a little bit colder, with their reddish noses.

They do a pretty much normal life, with Twix grooming and copulating with the subadults females, Vanilla (Tamara) and Washabi (Mortichia); Olive (Athena) aggressing Cinnamon (Osiris), the males masturbating and eating the semen afterwards (proteins are scarce!...an excuse as any other, I guess…), Safran (Luna) pursuing Nutella or Galack while masturbating in front of them trying to convince them to copulate...nothing weird!

Nonetheless, last week was hard for them and more for us because the amount of tourists. It was the Mawlid (Birth of the Prophet), and the Moroccans had a week off. The field site was, as a consequence, awash by tourist from Casablanca, Rabat, etc, that came to see the snow and to disturb the monkeys. Apart from feeding them with crap, scaring them and playing music loud, we could also see many throwing them stones, snowballs...You can imagine how much my opinion about humans has improved during this week...I should have specialize in microbiology and made up a lethal virus as was the initial plan, but it's too late now, sigh.

This harassment, of course, stresses the macaques and sometimes you can see very sad scenes as I saw yesterday. I found Tequila (Leila) with her infant (Tabasco, the cutest infant in the world) and Pepito on the top of and oak surrounded by around 15 tourists screaming and throwing them food. At the end, Tequila couldn't stand it any longer, and ran away from the tree. Unfortunately, Tabasco wasn't brave enough to follow her and stayed on the tree screaming very scared while the tourists laughed. Then Tabasco went close to Pepito and hugged his arm until Tequila, grunting, came back to pick her up.

It is not surprising then that, sometimes, the macaques decide to go away from the tourist area and enjoy some time without noisy humans. Today, for example, we found them relatively close to the tourist area, but they started to walk to the Peace place and crossed the road to go to a new place I had never been before, the Paradise area, according to the Boss. They seemed to have being waiting for us to guide us to this quite place that reminded me to the Green group's site. So, against cold, what better than going to a clear terrain inside the forest and spend the hours under the sun? They are more intelligent than they seem to be! They gave us this marvelous and peaceful day...only a little bit damaged by the fact that we lost the S. Carolinian for 4 hours...
So, on the average, our monkeys don't seem to suffer by the harsher weather conditions of this month, as it was expected.

Unfortunately, we, the researches, are not so well adapted nor equipped for the snow and the below zero temperatures as the macaques are. My snow boots were completely destroyed before the snow came and, after a couple of weeks I realized that no matter how many layers of plastic bags I wore, my feet were always swimming in an icy lake a couple of hours after arriving to the field. As you can imagine, this is awfully painful. But I'm tough, god damn it! However, a girl appreciates to don't suffer when there is no need for it and, when I told the Boss that I needed to buy some waterproof boots she said me that the family (the people that rent us the flat) had given back the rubber boots of the German and the Ohioan. Since then my feet, under 6 layers of shocks, are always cold but at least, dry. Thanks, girls!

Nonetheless, before this, I could prove what the consequences are of wet feet plus stomach ache. As I said before (First steps with the Barbary Gang), one night we had dinner with a couple of guys of the BBC and the couscous we ordered made that our guts were a good revival of Vietnam war. However, we didn’t notice the morning after, so we, happily, we went to the field. The first in starting dying was the French, followed by the English. I felt, certainly, some pain, but I could stand it…till the end of the day when I was almost fainting...and the French was starting to feel better again! So it was painful but short. Nevertheless, when we finally arrived home I went into the bed and after a while I realize that I couldn't stop shaking and that I felt terribly cold. I thought that maybe I had fever, so I used the thermometer...but it was the other way around, my temperature was below normal. I checked a couple of times more but the result was the same. A little bit freaked out, I warmed some milk up and it seemed to work. Not much latter I was again with the temperature of any other living human.
It wasn't as easy for the French, even though. After expending a pair of unhealthy days of between Azrou and Fez, her guts weren't either in a very good shape and, after a day in the field the consequences appeared. I went late to bed, as usual, and start to type stupid stuff on the laptop when she woke up shaking and started to put on the half of the clothes she had in her suit case. I gave her my thermometer and she saw that, as it happened to me, her temperature was lower than it should. I prepared a hot water bag for her and she could sleep but the morning after her temperature wasn't right yet and she needed a day off to warm up.
Of course, in none of the cases we reach a temperature as cold as to call it hypothermia, but we were close...

Apart from this, the shower usually hasn't got hot water and the house reminds to the North Pole even with the stove and the gas radiator. However, whenever I feel a little bit pissed off because I see the steam of my breath while sitting in the living room, I think about Madrid and its emptiness and I say "God damn it, cold is good for circulation!! This is healthy!" and I enjoy the "harsh" field biologist life again.





 “el cariño es cosa de niños”.

Video: Intergroup encounter; Green group VS Humpback group

Well here it is, finally, the video of the intergroup encounter between our group and their neighbours. This ocurred in November and our macaques had spent then the last weeks in a place called Maze. The "battle" happened just in the limit between this and the Gorge. After this fight, if I'm not wrong, our monkeys avoid the place...

Behind the scenes: Resolutions in the half of a journey

(I just needed to write, it isn’t interesting, wait till the next post, there are no macaques in this one)



It seems that I cannot sleep tonight (I’ll surely regret it tomorrow…well, in 3 hours…I’m gonna dieeee!…). Since my old fellows in Morocco left I’ve been attacked by nostalgia and I’ve been remembering all those people that, at some point, meant something to me.

When I was a child I spent a lot of hours dreaming while going through the pages of the atlas of my house or reading about Livingstone at the school library. I saw myself as a biologist in Kenya, waking up in my tent in the middle of the Serengeti, tying my boots and going into the savannah with my notebook to search for my lions ( I was a kid, man, I had a very romantic idea about biology and no worries about safety!). Since then I have always had a voice inside me (well, better call it intuition, I'm not schizophrenic! It was just for lyrical purposes...) which tells me things that I should do in order to reach that aim. One of those things was to never get tight bonds with anybody around me, since I knew, even then, that it was the shortest way to a sedentary life and I wanted to be a nomad. Especially, if you are a f&%cking sentimental girl who becomes fond of people too easily. Maybe that is why I have always been bad getting to know people, maybe I didn't really want to do so because of the fear that it could end up preventing me to follow my dreams. Nevertheless, one cannot avoid to cross paths with some people that somehow enrich your life at the high prize of a life-lasting yearning ( quería decir "añorarlos toda la vida", pero no sé yo...) and the emptiness of the lost of the emotions and the oblivion.

At the end, everything seems to vanish, and only a blurred memory of those times and feelings remain, more like a footnote than a sensation, like that phrase that Michael Douglas says to Val Kilmer in one of my favourite movies "The Ghost and the Darkness": "[...] A lot of things happen in your life and when they do you say - oh, yes, this memory will remain, for sure...I'll never forget this dawn, this hunting, this passion, and then...shh...disappear… […]” (Sorry, it’s the translation from the Spanish script…)

These days, remembering all those people that once were something in my life made me realize that most of them... mean nothing nowadays! It sounds tragic to me that all that energy, time and feelings are, at the end, just something that you were doing while waiting for something else…but tonight, while Marsellus Wallace (the downstairs cat, that looks cute but when you don't watch out he gets medieval on your ass) was looking at me through the smoke of my cigarette, I thought that maybe it's just one of those things that you have to accept. You can fight against many things, but you will certainly be defeated by nature, especially human nature.

One must live in the present, even if it was the past which made us. Maybe all those experiences were useful somehow; at least were good times (hedonism is a new acquisition of my philosophy and getting stronger, probably is the only thing that makes sense), and when they weren't, they made us stronger (I can't forget my dear Friedrich, even though). I'm not a Samburu, I'll always look behind, but I hope to don't do it so sadly and with regret; to accept the things as they are, particularly when the decisions are out of my hands or when everything has changed so much that bringing people of the past to the present could collapse the universe! Summarizing, I should add some Stoicism to my list too.

However, I would like to dedicate these nightly thoughts to all those people that have been going round and round in my head these days:

To the Philippine, friend of mine in my first camp, when I was 7 years old.

To my friends of the Boy Scouts, because of those nights around the fire, eaten by bugs, watching the starts from the sleeping bag and digging for shitting were unforgettable experiences of my childhood.

To my friends of Las Acacias, which were pretty much the same people of the high school, El San Juan de la Cruz (El tuto 3, tronkas!!), specially to the Physicist, who was my best friend during many, many years before some things happened; also to my Niñas Yks, my crazy gang during those blurred years of adolescence (hehe). Also to the Dominican, who made me have an idea of how a heart stroke must be. And to the Musician, the first teacher that taught me more than a subject (don't think bad, perverted people! She only showed us to fight for our rights!!).

To the girls of APDL, failed attempt of rap group, but was funny anyway. To El Nota, even if you deserve to die (joking, just a kick on the face); To Mr.Flow, you know.

To the Sevillan boy, because so many good times and so (so, so) many tears. To the Sevillan girl, for those long talks and good moments in Dublin, Sevilla and Madrid.

To my friends of the UAM, with whom I fully experienced the Madrid night (and that of Valencia, Oropesa, Monastir, Barcelona...), in addition to many other surrealistic experiences and good times. Among them, special thanks to Gammawoman, Carnival (sorry, girl, is for the song you like) for the crazy nights also in Dublin, Galway, Edinburgh, London and Paris, as well as for being my good friends during the degree; and to the 西班牙人 (hopefully means "Spanish"), because of the same and because you were there when I needed someone to talk to.

To three of the people of the workcamp in Husavik; the Catalan, the Valencian and the Slovak, because you helped me more than you think (probably you don't even remember me). To my friend of the workcamp in Gargantilla, the Polish, I'm glad that you are doing fine now. To my best friend during the Erasmus, the French, because we had great times at the pubs and at Stonehenge. I hope you finally find your way. I really miss you, girl. To my friends of the workcamp in Sipplingen, the Kyrgyzs, whom I remember with lots of affection.

To the people of the UB. Portuguese, I hope your thesis is a big success and that many field campaigns in lost tiny islands are waiting for you. Chilean artist, you added some surrealism to my life and I always appreciate that. Valencian, thanks for helping me out dealing with our advisor and the seabirds; good luck with the thesis.

To Corso, for such an extremely huge list of things... sorry I couldn't keep my word.

To you, because you triggered all this and possibly you will be part of this list one day...or maybe not, let the time decides so.

For all of you, good luck, wherever you are, whatever you are doing. I let you go, ghosts of the past; we may meet each other once or twice in the limbo before leaving, but we won't ever share some of our lives again, right?...Unfortunately, I'm a silly dreamer and I hardly ever follow my own advice... :

First steps with the Barbary Gang: Snow, shitty business, long focals, BBC and much more.

(Sorry, I didn’t have time to check for mistakes, I’ll do it later…)

Well, I have already been working with the Barbary Gang…just 2 weeks and a half!!?? Jesus…so many things have happened that I thought it had been at least 3 and half (I my world is a huge difference, man). Well, as I was saying, a lot of things have happened these last days and it’s time to tell a little of it, I’ve got already too much work pending (the curse of the master thesis is still going after me…&%$ fatty acids!).
I’ll divide this in several chapters, is easier to read (easier to write) and you can skip easier whatever doesn’t sound interesting (providing that I still have any reader, risky guess).



New tasks and routines


First of all, half of my monkeys and the areas have new names. So, now, my terrain, that olderly was quite divided into different zones, each one named by a number is now called by names such as toilet area, valley of happiness and apple store. But my monkeys are the ones suffering a personality crisis cause the name changes. All the females are now named for a fruits or spices; Luna is Safran, Osiris is Cinnamon, Venus Paprika and my beloved Leila (now, of course my favourite) is TEQUILA!!! (I’ll propose Tabasco for her infant). Apart from that we have new ways of collecting data…

With the PhD student all the data collection was about behaviour, mainly scans and focals and some variations of these (I’m not gonna boring you with details, specially because I don’t know if I’m allow to give them!). However here the behavioural data is only another piece of the job, which includes mainly faecal and urine sample collection, photogrammetry and social anthropology…

When I was with my old team at the Green Group, whenever there was a scream fight, the most important thing was to run over there and figure out who was supporting who and who won, while the Germans and the Ohioan took videos of the fights to analyze them afterwards. However now the story is completely different, no longer matters who slaps who but…watching the asses of the monkeys and try to catch the shit knowing whom belongs to!!! (And don’t be bitten when you try to save it from being contaminated, of course). The most disturbing thing, actually, is that now we get excited whenever we see one of the monkeys shitting or peeing and radio quickly to the Shit Master (the English) to come to collect it. Poo is easy in comparison to urine, more unpredictable and, if it falls on the ground is useless. It must fall on a rock or on leaves or, if we are lucky enough, we can collect it with our sophisticated urine-collector (and strainer fastened to a stick and with a plastic bag joined with sellotape…y luego dicen que los españoles somos cutres, tócate los pies!). Even though, following a monkey only watching his/her ass is a extremely boring experience…only enriched by the always unpredictable tourists. On Tuesday, for example, when looking at Milkyway ass, first a little girl came and tried to give me a mandarine. I said “no, merci” and she asked why…and I had no idea of how to answer in French, so I only smiled and said no, thinking that I must really look like a homeless (Yes, I do…hehe).
Afterwards, a man came and asked me if I was doing observations on the monkeys, I said "yes", but he shouldn’t hear me cause afterwards he asked to the French and told her that he had asked me but that he thought that I was meditating cause I didn’t answer (I’m so focus when I work…at least it looks like, even if I’m thinking of…). Latter a woman asked me if my sophisticated urine-collector was for chasing the monkeys, I said no, •C’est pour l’urine” but she didn’t understand, so I tried to stage it…and she laughed a lot…

Another new commitment is photogrammetry. I haven’t have a big chance of dealing with it, but I have to practice since I will have to do it in a month in the Green group. So, this consists on trying to get some very specific pictures of each macaque from a given distance and measure this with the laser. Of course, the monkeys must be in a very particular position and, as they are Machiavellian, they wait in that posture til you are ready to take the picture and then they go away. It’s a very maddening task, as much that it made me think on giving up…

Apart from the new ways of collecting data, there are new things behind the scenes.
When I worked with the PhD student independence was the motto; each time we stopped at the market each one ran away to buy her/his stuff as quick as possible and go back to the car and, if we had to go to the alcohol shop, we told her to don’t wait for us. Now I can hardly go to buy bread to the shop of the corner without someone behind. Show them the healthy middle way, uncle Gautama! I really miss to have independence, walking alone through Azrou and watching my mountains on the sunset…I need to escape one of these days again. I’m like a cat, I like to be with people, but only when I choose so!

Other not very pleasant novelty is machismo. I won't talk much about it cause I know that people get very angry when I speak about human right and equality, so I will ony quote another blogger and recommend: Basta de Sexismo (in Spanish) and The Angry Black Woman(in English, not only about sexism but about discrimination in general):


“That which does not affect you, you often do not see or understand
In other words, if you are White, 99% of the time Racism doesn’t affect you. Therefore, you may not see nor understand Racism when it happens.
If you are a Man, 99% of the time Sexism doesn’t affect you. Therefore, you may not grok Sexist behavior when it occurs nor will you always see Sexism when it is plain to others.
This goes for any -ist or -ism or -phobia you can think of. This goes for you, even if you’re a minority, when it concerns people who are not like you.
What does not affect you personally often will not impact on your consciousness unless you’ve trained yourself to see and understand.
Therefore, the next time you feel yourself declaring something “not racist” or “not sexist” or “not offensive”, think about whether you feel that way because you’re not the one on the receiving end of racist, sexist, or offensive behavior/words/actions/images.” (The angry black woman: ).



Snow: wonders and nightmares

In the last (and first) post about the Barbary Gang I told you that we had witnessed the first big snow of the year. Before it melted, it snowed again last week. Everything was, certainly, beautiful (before the tourists came and smashed everything!). Last time there was so much snow that I sank beyond the ankles!
Snow has many advantages: Everything looks beautiful, the macaques are extremely cute on it, even more the infants, it’s less cold…



BUT

Snow has disadvantages too: First, that is not really easy to walk when you have to struggle to take out your foot from it, but this can be considered exercise, so is not very bad, just a little bit annoying if you are tired. However, what really pisses me off is that, after some days of sun, the snow of the trees starts to melt and leak. The water falls to the ground and, obviously, it turns the snow under them in a thick and slippery layer of ice. Yesterday I was close to die more than once, man…Worse is that you magnificent snow-boots are full with holes and are no longer waterproof so, after a couple of hours, your feet splash on ice lakes inside the boots, no mater how many layers of plastic bags you use. Fortunately, the German and the Ohioan left their rubber boots here and since I use them my feet are less close to fall into pieces! Thanks girls!




Lost in translation

Last week, the Boss asked us to find the monkeys in the morning and I had to go with the S.Carolinian to the toilet area (1, 9 and 7 areas for my old companions) to look for the monkeys. When we arrived at some point, we divided and he told me anything that I didn’t really understand (why, you, Americans have so many accents?? Said the Spaniard with a much smaller country and much more accents…) I assumed that he was going to climb a hill and that we will meet afterwards…but I was wrong. His radio was dead and I was completely unable to find him. I radioed the Boss and told her the situation, and she told me to try to find him, so I started to walk through all the valleys screaming his name and trying to be noisy. While I was doing that, in the middle of the snow, I began to think that dying is the easiest thing in the world; everybody can do it, even people that haven’t been born! It’s always necessary to have protocols of safety, even if people regularly regard them as paranoia and cowardice. However, let me tell you that the bravest and toughest person I have ever known always cares about safety and protocols to preserve it because he has lived enough to know that tiny details can save your life in a certain point.
But well, after an hour of unsuccesful search, I radioed again to the Boss and she sent the French to help me. Two minutes afterwards the French radioed me and told me that the S.Carolinian was near the museum collecting data. Extremly pissed off I went there and he looked at me as if I were crazy giving a simply explanation of why he was there. I asked why he hadn’t searched for the others so they could radioed me and tell me that he was fine. I don’t remember the answer, but I remember that I imagined myself taking out a katana and making and x on his chest. &%$!!!!



Moroccan primate conservation foundation

Last week we went to the Medina to have dinner with the director of MPC. It was nice, having new tajines and listening to her talking about a nomadic life. I saw her as a possibility of me in 10-15 years, so I liked to know what she thought. She spoke about all the problems of this sort of life, like not having her own house, being always struggling for money and having all her stuff divided in different houses in different countries…but, anyway, it was a great life and that her home was any place where she could plug her laptop and see what was going on with her loved ones in the other side of the world.

Of course, she also spoke about primate conservation and how things in Morocco are changing even if very slowly and how people are becoming conscious about the importance of preserving their natural heritage.



Long focals
Last week we found Lychee (Fidji) feeling quite weak, with difficulties for walking and bleeding. The Boss told me to follow her during the day and see how she evolved. So, I started a focal ( I really loved that, cause in that time I was completely feed up with the seek of poo and pee). So, I spent 9 hours with her. I remember once, when two juveniles came and start to groom her. I was sad, cause it reminded me when I was with my chimp for my Final Year Degree Project and all the group surrounded Gost, the alpha male. They started to groom him very quietly for a while. Two days afterwards he was dead…
The long focal of Lychee ended uo with a big surprise that I cannot tell you right now, but that made me skip my day off and be again the next day following her for other 8h. I felt great of being able to do this, I should put it on my CV…



BBC and the bad cuscus
Last week, after the big snow, a couple of guys of the BBC came to film the Green group in the snow as they had tried to do the year before unsuccessfully. So, we met them in the morning at their hotel at 7 in the morning and greeted them. They didn’t look very well equipped, and the Boss laughed…afterwards we found out that they weren’t planning to come to a snowing place, only the desert, and that was why they didn’t have too much equipment for it. Never judge people too fast, probably you will be absolutely wrong!
There was so many snow that the road to the Green group was blocked, so we had to leave the cars on the tourist site and walk. It was a nice trip, with interesting conversations with the producer, the magical view of the forest in white, one of the dogs of the tourist site following us and the encounter of 4 sheeps at the side of the road with the neck cut.
We finally arrived to the Green group site and found the monkeys near the car park (UK). It was snowing again and the monkeys were on the top of the trees, specially cause the dog that had followed us scared them.
The camera man tried to film something, and Lewis, one of the males, made it a little bit easier going to a branch “near” the ground.
We were taking pictures of us, playing with the snow and speaking with the freelance Moroccan periodist who went with the BBC guys to help them to deal with the country. An interesting man.


I had a little walk alone (well, the dog followed me) to the Gorge. It was so nice to see everything covered by the snow and all that silence… I imagined my old fellows there and how funny a snow battle would have been…sigh.
We left the guys at midday and went back home to enjoy our half day off. At night, we went to the Medina to have dinner with them.
It was nice…but the fact that the day afterward 3/5 of our team included me were dying because of our stomatchs. Apparently, Moroccan people never order cuscus at restaurants because they have it every Friday at home; only tourist eat it. That is good in touristic places because the couscous is cooked on a daily basis, but in not touristic places like Azrou, we probably had a couscous too old that got medieval on our guts…







Well and that is this for now. Today we are leaving for a short trip to Fez so the Boss can collect her boyfriend, the legendary Scottish. Why the legendary Scottish?? Because I’ve heard about him since the very first day I arrived here, and I mean it. The first day I arrived and I went to hang out with my then completely strange new fellows, we took a picture for him because it was his birthday. My fellows then, The German, The Ohioan, The Czech and the Californian told me to put an open mouth for the picture, and I had no idea of what was that or who was the Scottish; so now I got a funny picture with all these people with an open mouth and me looking at them as if they were crazy (they are, but my face in that picture is too clear!). He was also the one who broke the binoculars that the PhD student gave me to use in the field, binoculars that had been converted into two nice monoculars. He was also in many of the stories that the Californian told me about his Moroccan experience so, I’m pretty curious of getting to know this mythical character; one of the first students who came to work with our macaques.



PD: Requiem for Potatoe (Nelly) one of the females of the tourist group who was bitten by a dog the last time we saw her and we couldn’t find her again afterwards…sigh.