I did it, I
survived one week and a half! I was scare of just arriving and being bitten by
any snake on the field or by one of the spiders that watch over my bed , but no,
I only count with some scratches on my arms, proof of my dedication in trying
to follow the samangos and doing ecological plots and some unidentified bites...
Here are some “short” (me enrrollo más que las persianas, ese desconocido más
allá de Pirineos) episodes and descriptions of my first week “working” in
S.Africa.
The Barn: human primates sleeping site
The Barn is
a sort of reconverted, as you can expect, barn; with rubber floor and tin roof.
At the entrance you find the living-dinning-office-room; with some sofas, and a
couple of tables, one where all the chargers for the different stuffs are. At
the back, you’ve got 4 fridges and on the right of those, the kitchen, with a
sink (of course, two taps, English style…¬¬) and a gas cooker. Everything here, amazingly,
works with gas…well, not, I’m lying, some of the electricity comes from a
little hydroelectric stuff we have on a little waterfall; but the fridges work
with gas! (I’m a city child, what can I say, I’m fixing it!).
Just at the
right of the entrance door, there is a sink and, near to this, a little
cupboard where all the toothpastes and other stuff of the volunteers lie (same
place where a couple of nights ago I found a happy cockroach having a walk on
my glasses box…).
The toilets
and showers are on the other side of the sink, and there are 5 rooms inside and
a small cabin outside.
It is, as
any tourist pamphlet would say, rustic; which means that we have an extensive
diversity of spiders over our heads and the feeling that a snake could be
hidden in the sofa; but it cosy, anyway. Having spiders is not so bad after all; they
eat mosquitoes and sometimes you’ve a shower with entertainment; with some of
the spiders trying to catch a moth while you are trying to clean all the new
scratches of the day.
But not all
the visitors are annoying or not friendly-looking. My first day, a lonely male
samango, after having a walk in front of the PhD student (obviously, not the same of Morocco) and the Post-Doc cabin, tried
to go inside our toilets. People here call all the male samangos “Shitbag”, but
I personally call this one George, after the greatest Barbary macaque of all. We had also a toad
on one of the showers, but we had to take it outside because, apparently, after
the toads, the snakes come. During the night, sometimes, you can hear steps on
the roof; bushbabies, the people say; which scream loudly some nights (fluffy cute little f&%kers!).
There are
some weird details in the Barn, such as a Mexican flag, a wall clock (that of
course doesn’t work, they never do), a well-done drawing of meerkats, and a lot
of stuff here and there that I hope to get to know sooner or later.
We are
currently 8 girls living in the Barn, apart from a cat called Bonny. I like to
think that she had this name after the great pirate Anne Bonny, I guess is not
the case, but some times little lies make the life sweeter.
The safety talk
The first
thing I had to do the morning after my arrival was to go and see The Owner of
the research centre, so he could gave me a short talk about the place and some
safety issues.
Following
the indications of my fellows, I walked towards there looking compulsively to
the ground in case there was any snake around…(the Cologner (adjective for a
person from Cologne, Germany?) had just told me that a couple of days ago she
had a creepy encounter with a black mamba and I didn’t want to go through the
same, at least for a while).
I arrived
to the fence and came into enclosure where the house and the pretty garden of
the Owner were. Then, when I was trying to reach the door I had the bad luck of
meeting Gunter.
Gunter is a
massive and smelly san Bernard, nearly as tall as me (yeah, maybe it’s only
massive from my point of view), who likes to jump on you and cover you with his
slobber; especially if you are clean. Fortunately for me, before I got
completely wet with the stinky slobber, the wife of the Owner came to rescue
me. She said his name and he became absolutely frozen.
Then she
told me where to find her husband and so I did. I found the old man in his kind
of office, surrounded by thousands of biology books stacking everywhere as any
good academic. And, as any old Afrikaner, he wore shorts and sandals.
We were
going through his power point presentation about the place and then we reach
the point of the safety.
First, try
to don’t kill yourself by falling while walking through the field site; and he
told me a scary story of a student who had to be rescue by helicopter because
he got his femur broken.
Second, all
the happy deadly and nearly deadly animals. With leopards, the advise was
pretty much use your common sense and don’t go after them if they were trying
to escape…no comments about what happen if it’s you who is trying to escape…
Then the
spiders; violin, black widows and another one which, apparently, don’t kill
you, as long as you notice and you can be treated. And finally the snakes: puff
adder, spitting cobra and the deadly mamba. Basically, try to don’t step on
one, and if you are bitten, put a bandage, but in the case of mamba in which a tourniquet
could be the most appropriate (better loose your leg than your life). The most
funny things were his comments such as…”Well, you should wear boots and long
trousers…I’m not a good example, but I prefer dying from a snake bite than from
heat” or “ Try to don’t go on your own too far, if you are bitten by a mamba
you have one hour and a half before passing out” (I guess that with my size is
probably less).
The best
thing is that we work alone quite often and in relatively far areas, with no
radio nor mobile phone coverage, so…I always carry a pencil, a scarf and the
instructions of how to do a tourniquet, just in case…
Any way,
apart from trying to do the few things the man told me to do; I try to check my
clothes, boots and sleeping bag before using them as well as to close the
drawers of my closet, so I don’t find any unexpected guess. And I made my room
mates, 5 well-feed spiders, to sign a non-aggression agreement; I don’t remove
their webs, but they should stay away from my mattress…It’s working for now…
A jungle of buckets
One of my
nearly daily tasks for the next month and a half is helping a master student
with her project. It’s not something that I expected, but well, she has a
supervisor not very in touch with reality and I know how that is, so I can be supportive.
She is
working in giving up densities and landscapes of fear in samangos; which sounds
pretty cool but, as usual, in the practice is much less glamorous. It basically
means that we have to go every morning to the forest to hang some buckets with
peanuts and sawdust in several trees at different heights and then, in the
afternoon, take them down and count the peanuts left.
The good
thing is that the forest is a pretty place, full of dense vegetation and lianas
and the master student, the Scottish, is nice. I was a little bit afraid at
first of not getting along with her because she was extremely motivated by her
project (My body react badly to too enthusiastic people, my conscience it’s
like an extremely sarcastic Daria, that character of a series (http://youtu.be/xf01tSJ41VQ) that so few
people know, apparently) and she was
speaking all the time, repeating how kind I was for helping ( I don’t like too
polite people either…what kind of bas&%rds do I like?...sigh) . But after
she defined her self as not a “girly” girl, and that I hear her using
frequently expressions such as “f&%ck off”, “bloody hell”, and, the one
which won my hearth, “that’s watchable shit!”, I realized that we were of a
similar kind, so thing can work out fine.
In
addition, trying to follow the Scottish to the jungle is a quite good exercise;
even if right now she seems the world champion of 1000m lianas and I’m closer
to a drugged baby Bambi.
Sometimes,
Bonny comes with us and she is climbing here and there and smelling stuff
everywhere but we have to be careful so she follows us all the way. The poor
cat is not smart enough to find the way home by herself!
Counting leaves
Another
task is plant phenology; defined as “the study of periodic plant life cycle
events and how these are influenced by seasonal and interannual variations in
climate” (wikipedia, this is just a blog, not a f%&cking paper! ); which is
interesting to contrast with monkeys movements and to see if they are affected
by the former. 
The first
day it was a show to watch me, looking all the time to the ground to see if
there was any snake, while insulting the GPS in Spanish because it didn’t help
me to find the trees, and Bonny the cat after me, meowing, rubbing my legs and
climbing everywhere, while a troop of baboons was around with the consequently
noise. I did my first steeps in climbing
in a couple of rocks, helping me with some lianas (only trust the thick ones,
and not always!)… but I retreated this time from climbing a tree; the one I had
to go up had a thick, huge spider web that didn’t give me good feelings.
Nonetheless,
the other day, a little bit less concerned (but always with the impression that
I could die each 5 minutes), I climbed some trees (well, ok, less than 1’5m
from ground, but is something!), and rocks, and nearly step on a baby red
duiker! I saw, as well, a preying mantis that resembled lichen…and almost got
lost as it was getting dark and I was far from the way. I decided to leave the
trail and cross the forest since, according to the GPS, was the shortest way to
“civilization”. It worked, fortunately; 20 minutes more and I would have had to
find my way in the night (I had the head-torch with me, but I’m not ready yet
for that).
Introducing the Vervets and the Samangos
In theory,
my first months here I would be working with predators, but the Leader changed
her mind and I’ll be doing so in a couple of months, helping with the trapping
of some to radio-collar them (promises to be…exciting, at least). Until then,
I’ll be helping with the samango data collection and some with vervets.
That’s why last week I went with the
Crossliner ( I think he said that was his town in California, but I don’t find it! Anyway) to check
the couple of traps he had set up on the vervet’s homerange to capture one and
radio-collar it, so it is easier to find them and re-habituate them. After a 40
minutes walk we reach the place and check the traps, which are not armed yet,
they are there only to habituate the monkeys to them. We checked the camera
traps, but only red duikers had come along. After baiting them again, we were
patrolling the area for a while, to see if we were able to find them and follow
them for a while, but the only think we saw was Guinean fowl.
The day
after, once I finished with the buckets at the forest, he came to pick me up at
the Barn and we went to the place he had left the House troop of samangos…but
obviously they weren’t there any more. Using our ears we could, somehow, found
them again within the extremely dense and bl%$dy thorny vegetation. Then he
showed me to do the scans, which is the only data collection they do and that
are quite simple in comparison with the ones I did in Morocco…especially
because nobody is able to identify the different individuals, so the only thing
we can do is try to know the sex and the age-class…but that is difficult too!
The adult
male (one per troop), is relatively easy, because is bigger than any female and
has balls; but to know if you are watching a female or a subadult, you have to
look for nipples; which make you feel like a kind of pervert and monkeys don’t
like it too much either. Juveniles are nearly a matter of chance, they had
“like a younger face” but this is quite subjective; and the infants are just
the smallest, but they are now nearly one year old and you can only be sure if
you see them being carried by their mother, which is not too often.
We were
sitting close to the male, having lunch because here they don’t consider
necessary to move out of sight of the monkeys to do so…but of course it is, as
shown the fact that once the Crossliner moved to do a scan leaving his backpack
behind, the male quickly stole the leftovers of and apple he had. Then the male
move away and we realized that the whole troop had moved away while we were
there with the male and we lost them. The Crossliner said that that day was only
a warming up, so it didn’t worth it to try to find them again and we came back
to the Barn.
Yesterday
it was the first full following day of the troop, so the Crossliner came to the
Barn to collect me at 6. He left me scanning a troop, that he was suspicious
that probably was the Barn troop instead of the House troop that we were
supposed to follow. Right, he came afterwards because he had found House troop
at Owner’s garden.
There we
went, trying to escape from Gunter, so we ended up standing on a rock so the
dog couldn’t scatter his slobber all around us. Then, when Gunter finally got
bored of us and we could climb down the rock, the Crossliner had his second
breakfast.
The monkeys
took a while before moving from the garden, which was very appreciated because
afterwards we found ourselves trying to make our way within the thorny
vegetation once again and for a while we lost them all, but, after a while, we
were able to find a female and a subadult and an hour latter, she rejoined with
the rest of the troop.
Around
lunch time, they gave us a (long) rest, in which they were feeding on Acacia
without moving too much…which gave time to the Crossliner to do several
Sudokus…and when he got bored he started to make a spear with a stick and a
razor…(WTF man? ¬¬’). I didn’t dare to ask him if he pretended to hunt the
dinner or to play the Vlad Tepes with me.
Nothing
really interesting happened, a part from the sighting of a red duiker and a
bushbuck, and the antipredatory behaviour of the monkeys when they saw and
eagle.
We followed
them until nearly 18, when it was getting dark and they, finally chose a
sleeping tree.
It was much
less funnier than to follow my dear Barbary macaques. First, because when you don’t even
know the exact number of the troop, everything is much less personal and
entertaining. Second, the vegetation is so dense that sometimes a monkey can be
5m away from you and you can’t see it. And third, the only thing that these
monkeys did was eating. I just saw 2 groomings and, given that their hierarchy
is inherited (as long as I’ve been told), they aggress each other very
infrequently. So, I was a little bit disappointed, but I’ll get use to it and I
can spend the 15 minutes between scans trying to manage the unmanageable task
of identifying them.
Louis Tritchardt and S.African manners
We visit the
town on Mondays, at least if we are not supposed to follow the monkeys.
So, this
Monday was my first time in Louis Trichardt if we don’t count my quick visit to
the bus station and the supermarket the day I arrived.
Honestly, I
couldn’t see too much. As it was my first day, I stayed with the other
volunteers to see what was their routine in there…and pretty much can be
summarizing by eating and shopping.
We had
breakfast in a kind of posh-café that I guess that not too long ago had a
cartel on the door saying “whites only”, given the kind of customers that were
there. I did expected other habits from my new fellows.
Then, we
accompanied the Netherlander to get her visa. The building had a slight urine
smell, and the officials were protected behind bars. Weird. We met there an
American which spoke apparently fluent Venda with the officials and who,
apparently, also spoke Zulu.
Afterwards,
some shopping, lunch and back to the
Pick’n’Pay for buying groceries.
The few I
could see from the city was that, in general, everything is quite organized
(ÑE!) , but there is some room for unexpected stuff; such as an advertisement I
saw that said “Abortions. Discounts for students”.
About manners
and habits I have only got that people here say “hello, how are you?” all the
time, even if it’s obvious by their faces that they don’t care about the
answer; even though I try to smile and say “ fine, and you?” (yeah, I’m trying
hard to look like a social person, just to see if I can do it).
Another
thing that I’m discovering is that I like S.African English, because is kind of
latin-thinking. For example, the plural of man is not men, but mens; and they
say persons instead of people! Cool!
The only
S.African habit I have been able to participate so far is a Braai. This is a
barbeque and it seems that the volunteers and all the people associated usually
do one each week; all sitting around the fire, waiting for the meat and
potatoes to cook, while drinking some wine and beers. That’s the kind of
tradition I like.
My own point of view
Well, I
must say that, for now, I’m a little bit disappointed about some stuff, such as
the laughable safety measures, that people eat in front
of the monkeys (though maybe is kind of understandable given that most of the
days people work alone with them and if you go out of sight you probably loose
them…that again brings us to the laughable safety measures…I’ll try to do the
right thing, though), the fact that the training of everything don’t last even
a day so you are not really sure of being doing anything right and sometimes
I’ve got the feeling that I’m doing random stuff without any purpose.
Hopefully, I’ll change my mind in a few weeks; I always tend to see the cons
automatically, while I take a long time to see the pros.
Fortunately, many of the problems I had during my first weeks in Morocco have gone. My
stress level is zero (I mean, regarding to the work, regarding to the poisonous
bugs is much higher), and my worries about fitting or not are pretty much at
the same level, which actually makes much easier to fit, life is that unfair.
So, in general, I feel good (rather lonely, but that is like saying that you are wet after the rain ¬¬) and I have adapted to the dynamics of the people
and the work pretty much instantly…
I’ve got the impression that whatever I learn here is gonna depend to a
really large extend in my own interest, because nobody is going to check what
I’m doing or to correct me if I’m doing something wrong. Anyway, I guess that
only the experience of following monkeys in much harder conditions and trying
to walk quickly in the jungle jumping lianas while trying to don’t twist an ankle is fair
enough…
But well, as I said, I have been an extremely negative person for a
really long time so, even if I have change in many aspects, some bad habits are
still there. Quite probably my idea about everything will be much better in not
too much time..for now, even here, I miss Morocco.
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