Those are the number of bites that I could count two mornings ago when I
woke up around 6. The mosquitos are the lesser problem, the worse are
the tse tse flies, completely insensitive to the repellents, really
itchy and attracted to sweat, something almost omnipresent at all times.
But well, that´s the biggest problem I have faced so far, so it is not
such a big deal, though after the first week it was very difficult to
sleep just because all the skin was extremely itchy. In addition to the
mosquitos and the tse tses, there are some minute insects quite itchy
too, that people on camp call the "invisibles". They look like tiny
minute flying black spots that, as soon as touch your skin makes it
itchy. Not very helpful when you are trying to ID the bonobos (still
getting there).
After discarding the daily use of antihistamines as a cure, and see that
no matter how frequent you use the repellents or how covered by clothes
you are, the arthropods always find a place to suck, I´m dealing with it
by "bathing" myself in tiger balm each nigh, trying to think in anything
else and do my best to keep myself as clean as possible...well everybody
here have told me that it gets better with time and they have been here
for long and even repeat, so they must be right... Patience, that
wonderful gift which I usually lack of....
Not all that bites seeks your blood, though, but they are annoying anyway and
this is the case of the driver ants. Sometimes, in the forest, if you
look at the ground, you can see these massive hordes of ants, all in
line, crawling fast in one direction. If you steep on them, even for a
second, some climb on you and search for a spot of flesh to bite
fiercely. That is why having the shocks above your trousers its a good
idea, despite the ridiculous appearance we can have (the bonobos don´t
care, not prejudices about shabby researches)...as long as you are able
to stop them before they climb too high. I didn´t catch them today so
soon, though, and before I could realize, I had ants all over my head,
quite difficult to remove since I made several braids in my hair in
order to deal with the washing conditions (If they don´t work I will end
up shaving my hair). Notwithstanding, minutes after, I managed to
collect my first decent urine sample from one of the female bonobos, but
half of it was all spread on me, which seemed to calm the ants...
But it is not necessary to bite in order to be a pain in the a$/. From
one week now, our dinning table has become a meeting point for a bunch
of bees. Fortunately, they are not aggressive at all, but you find
yourself doing pirouettes (??) in order to get the food into your mouth
with an extra dose of protein on it. As any other insect here, they
don´t give a shit about repellents or any of our attempts to keep them
away (cleaning the table, almond oil...). They also serve as a
camouflage for the tse tses, that fly within them, making them even less
detectable. Not to talk about the whole community of hymenoptera,
diptera and lepidoptera that you need to get out from the latrine before
using it...(so you can see better the ocean of maggots that crawls on
the bottom...). Lately there are even some crickets wandering around it
at night...
There are too many things going on every day and that I would like to
share, but the time is limited and the battery even more, so I have
decided to write small thematic chunks like this one from time to time
(but I can change my mind at any point, as usual, privileges of being
the author). I´ll try to be more careful with the writing, I saw that I
made several (painful) mistakes in the last entry but well, I can always
blame the Lariam, so convenient...
