No, dear reader(s), I wasn't dead, even if the last entry was almost 3
months ago and one could be wondering if the bite number 294 finally
killed me. But, the ones who know me, or at less think to do so,
probably knew that few hordes of blood-thirsty arthropods, some tropical
illnesses and a tangled swampy forest are not rival for this travel-size
girl. At first, I was just too busy, and then, our means to communicate
with the 'real world' (sensu New Jerseyian) stopped working. Now the
time came to restart, but the Congolese timing has already settle on me
and my newly acquired equatorial circadian rhythms will make things slow
(an excuse as any other). Therefore, 'malembe, malembe', slowly, slowly
in lingala.
One could think that the fact of living isolated in a small camp
surrounded by jungle and with the closest village within 5h walk would
make things to be quite steady, but not so. Five planes have come since
my last post and each of them took people in and out changing completely
the settings (those voluble social networks that I'm trying to
understand…). The first took my boss back to Europe, leaving me quite
confuse after training for only 1 month and with too much uncertainties
(again that old feeling of the bicycle without the little wheels),
but I survived and improved, while the camp was crowed of old and new
fellows. Then we felt slightly the harshness of scarcity of resources
and feeding competition, though to some extent minimize by the presence
of the director of the project, which improved the quality of the food,
even when we were so many to share. So, it was a good introduction to
what would later overcome.
Suddenly, most of the people left, at the same time in which the bonobos
decided to cross to a forest in which we are not allowed to go, so we
were functioning as a small family which clumps together when the
adversity hits. Those were good times to get to know better my fellows
of the west side (there are 2 bonobo communities we are working with,
and I'm studying the one ranging on the west side of the forest) the New
Jerseyian and the German Musician, both guys, a black swan in the female
dominated field work. I'm quite happy with the click and sometimes I
think about the 3 of us as the Musketeers. Those days were also useful
to get to know better the only other girl in camp, the Canadian who, as
a matter of chance, was a fellow of the Ohian (Macaques & Morocco) in
Ethiopia.
But the calmed days of few researches and missing bonobos didn't last
long. Quite abruptly, the camp was flooded by people working in very
diverse projects and even a tv crew trying to film our bonobos who, of
course, decided to play the game of crossing the river and disappearing
for days. And, then, suddenly, half of the people were gone, including
the camp manager, which has been leading to uncomfortable and chaotic
situations about camp organization, minimized by the noticeable talent
of the new habituation assistant, the Australian, to deal with all the
necessary tasks. Finally, my second boss and one of the PhD students
that was here when I arrived came, full of energy to start working but
with no sugar, milk, onions and many other resources that we were
expecting to get with their plane. So, times are complicated (and guess
what, the bonobos crossed the border of the forest again!), but it seems
that we all want to collaborate to make things as easy as possible,
trying to minimize our consumption of scarce resources and tolerate
everyone's bad days and obsessions. So far we seem to be a good team.
In general, I've been quite happy during this period, though, of course,
there are some mood indigo days, mainly caused by my body trying to
cycle normally without the resources to do so (yeah, life in camp is
like a little socioecological model) and sometimes you just would like to
have a real friend around, one to talk to without having the impression
that you are playing with a half charged gun, but, this is how it is.
Some days you feel in heaven (well, except for the tsetses) and wake up
happily at 2h30 am to walk 8km to watch the bonobos leaving the nests,
walk 9km back after 10h of work and still you got some energy to laugh
and hang out with your fellows and other days you would like to lock
yourself inside your tent with earplugs and forget that you should hurry
up to the dinner table before there are no bananas left for the breakfast.
I'm so glad to have the opportunity of being in this place, studying the
least known ape and sharing the daily life with such an interesting and
intelligent group of people, even if sometimes is overwhelming. So many
discussions on interesting and relevant topics, none in which I know a
good deal about can quickly undermine your self-esteem (is it the Lariam
talking?) Specially when your English is still not as fluent as it
should, you have to deal with 5 different accents of native English
speakers, and your faith and motivation in sciences have being decaying
lately. During the last few years I have seen so many misuses of the
scientific method and examples of how-things-shouldn't-be-done that my
curiosity, my willingness to question things and my belief that science
can bring trustworthy answers had been going through a long decadence
and now is almost dead. Hopefully my enthusiastic colleagues will
insufflate some revitalizing air to it…Meanwhile, let´s follow some apes.
