293 bites

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...

Moroccan Christmas Trees

 Well, now that I am close to my next (Awesome-scary-dreamed) destination, it's time to write a couple of posts that I have been delaying too much. They go in reversal order. First, my short come back to Morocco during Chritsmas and then, hopefully, a summary of my travel from Lajuma to Cape Town (If the laziness doesn't beat me again).


When I left Morocco in March 2012, I had the feeling that I would be back. Many things are out of our hands (well, almost all of them, as our fake democratic politicians enjoy to show us daily in Spain or the evil selection panels of the universities show me by delaying my future). Fortunately, despite the raw crisis, a girl can still ask for a present for Christmas, and what better than going back home?


Overland (and sea) tour: Madrid-Fez-Azrou

Thus, I took my big red bag (which, as the owner, is multi-task and works for carrying the laptop as well as the field equipment and the lunch when following macaques), and filled up with warm clothes and cold meat and both went together to the bus station the night of the 26 December.

While I took a seat as the only non-Moroccan person in the bus, my father looked stressed outside while my mother looked at me angryling with the typical mother eyes that say something like "If you die, I kill you!!"...

During the night the bus crossed half of the Iberian peninsula, while the children cried, the fire alarm ringed and my sleeping pills did little effect. But, finally,  before dawn, we reachead Algeciras.

After a brief explanation of the driver of what we were supposed to do to take the ferry, I dropped of the bus drowsy and followed the herd.  More than an hour of confusion later, without anybody telling us clearly when we were supposed to take the ferry, we did, just when the sun was rising. Once in the ship, I tried to fill the papers I had to in order to get the stamp on the passport, not without, again, lot of confussion, since most people in charge in the ferry didn't speak Spanish and little English (and my French is still in stand by, let's see if I fix that!).

Some more than two hours later we reached Tanger, landed and get into the bus again. I breath relaxed, sure that the trickiest part had passed...though I was kind of worried when the policeman came into the bus and I was the only person he addressed... Shortly after starting the way we stopped again to change buses; some went to Casablanca, some to Marrakesh and me to Fez. Luckily, everybody spoke Spanish and explained me what was going on when they saw my lost-WTF-face.

We made a technical stop close to Larache to have lunch. After getting to know so many services areas in South Africa, full of fast food stuff, it was refreshing to go back to the hole-in-the-ground toilets and a simple stall serving tajine.

Hours passed, as well as Ksbar el-Kebir and many towns that reminded me somehow to Azrou. Many Moroccan towns reminds me to teenagers; there are parts very developed and parts that are not, but all of the coexist together in the same street/individual !!Aaah...sweet sixteens. Finally, at night I reached Fez...one hour before I expected.

After texting the French, I waited inside the station while a couple of guys were telling me how wonderful was Fez and if I wanted to marry one of them (it's was a joke, of course, but even tired as I was, I was able to say something kind of ingenious "sorry, I don't like husbands").

And then the French and the English came. Marjane and drive to Azrou, just to go to bed to see the Green Group next day. Home, sweet home.




Macaquing once again 

Next morning, the Boss, the French and me went to follow the Green Group. The Boss dropped us at the end of Texas and only few seconds later he appeared silently and lonely, as the great macaque he is..."George!! You missed me, I knew it!"
 
Then I started to follow him to collect his urine; but then the French came with the first sample of the day and while we were preparing it, ninja-George dissapeared misteriously (he was on the top of an isolated tree! how did he do it?).

The day passed relaxed, with the group moving very little and me greeting to all my dear macaques but Lewis, who didn't show up. I was very glad to see Anna and Rebeca again, and well, the whole group. To see the juvelines, such as Dakota, who now starts to have a reazonable swelling was a little shocking, but I'm happy that they are all fine... Well, probably Artemis doesn't agree, he has a new scar on his mouth.

As usual, the middle of the day was dedicates to grooming and resting in the top of the trees; and there is when I realize that those are my  favourite christmas trees, huge cedars with macaques as ornements.


As the good macaques they are, they wanted to remind me their old habits. One of the most common, stick to Murphy's laws. So, after hours in which each of us were following patiently our respective monkeys, even when they were resting on the top of the cedars, they decided to pee almost all at once creating a little chaos and making us miss a couple of samples...but I know that it was because they needed an excuse to make us come the day after...


 So, next day, the French, the English, and the new member, the Iranian-Californian, stayed with the turist group and the Boss and me went to collect the last samples of the Green group...in which we failed miserably! But we have extenuating circumstances. The Green group decided to stay around the fence which separates the road from the forest. So, for example, I was on the side of the road under Anna, while she asked for groomings or groomed herself. After half an hour like that, she decided to move and I followed her; and then, she jumped onto a tree on the other side of the fence just in front of me and pee while I tried to put the urine-stick underneath while saying "no, no, no" and only managing to hurt myself with the fence. Thanks Anna ¬¬' . Even if it wasn't too productive, it was nice to see them there, playing and eating the young cedars that some Moroccan workers were trying to plant.

Unfortunately, we had to leave by midday. We had a wedding to attend to!

Moroccan Wedding 

We were invited at the celebration party of the wedding of a relative of the owners of the house, girls one side, boys in the other. So, we the four female researchers went upstairs to see what was going on. We sat on the living room of the house, surrounded by the female friends and relatives of the bridge, who was sitted well dressed presiding the room from a fancy sofa. Nobody was very chatty, and people didn't stop to come over, until there weren't seats for all. Some live music, of women singing and playing the drums livened the long wait time until the lunch (well, it was almost at 16, so I'm not sure if it was lunch or dinner).

 Finally, when we were really starving, it came. We were seated in a table with old women, so we were quite concerned about the protocol, specially challenging for the French, which is left-handed and found even more difficult than us to eat politely with the right hand from the common plates. Chicken, beef...all quite tasty tajines well dressed with the typical round flatted bread.

Then, we retired the tables, and while the bridge changed for the third time of clothes, the women started to dance (Cultural shock: why do you make such an effort in dancing sexy without guys in front and without being drunk? lost in translation, I guess. We didn't dance much, except when asked to. Most of the time we were taking pictures and videos by the requests of the assistants.

After some Moroccan tea and tasty pastries, some more dance and the party was over. It was men turn, a party which, as the English told us, was quite more entertaining, as usual...




A Tajine for the fossil guys and New year's eve

The last day in the field was just to say goodbye to the monkeys and to thank the fossil guys with a Tajine. We went to the field relatively early (though not monkey time) and started to cut vegetables for the Tajine over one of the benches behind the stalls.

When everything was on the pot and heating, we went to see the monkeys. The poor tourist group did suffered some looses in my absence. The first was Milkyway, who died shortly after I left from a food poisoning (stop feeding the monkeys, you evil tourists!!). Apparently, Nutella then took over as dominant male, but in the mating season he had his testicles almost ripped off during a scream fight and he wasn't seen again. Galack seemed to be now the one rising...not very probable then that he decides to leave the group, even if he is on that age. Beside that, some of the infants died. Though one of the young females who breed for the first time, Vanilla (Tamara), kept hers. Unfortunately my beloved Tequila lost her new infant...I wonder if her daughter, Tabasco, had something to do, as attached as she is to her mother, competence wouldn't be something she likes...(kidding, of course, Tabasco wouldn't do that XD). 

After some pictures, we joined the fossil guys in front of the museum for our tasty vegetarian tajine. Good last meal of the year. 

For dessert, we went again to watch the monkeys for a while, before going back to Azrou and buy stuff for New year's eve dinner. 

Guacamole, Spanish cheese and cold meats, chips and white russians ran out quickly, and awesome chocolate cakes made by the Boss  worked as the dessert. Then, some silly-funny games before making everybody to follow my Moroccan version of the Spanish tradition at midnight. Eating the 12 grapes watching the bells of La Puerta del Sol in Youtube from the last year. Dance and excursion to a club in Ifrane to dance a little more, before going back, almost straight to bed. 




Last days

The rest of the days went relaxed (at least for me, that didn't have to enter data!). We enjoyed  a windy but beautiful sunset from the crown of Azrou's rock with the team one day.  Also, we attended to a great presentation of the Boss where she bravely showed her project to the different Moroccan authorities related to the Ifrane National park. We even have time to go for souvenir shopping one day to Meknes...and then we were almost leaving.

 Of course, before we spent a marvellous day cleaning as crazies every single corner and piece of forniture with the help of the family. Then is when we discovered that the house was intelligently designed to be able to clean the floor in the Moroccan way, i.e. with a river of water that gets rid of all the dirt, and then flows smothly to a small sink strategically placed on the ground. We also enyojed a last meal with the family, which, as usual, was very nice. 

The very last day in Azrou, we came back to the tourist site and watched the monkeys for a while before the Boss and the Iranian-Californian went back to Azrou and the English, the French and me walked to the Green group site. We had lunch in Texas and walked towards the Gorge. Unfortunately, the Green Group didn't show up. We walked through the Gorge and I told them about the huge Inter-group encounter  
that the Green Group had with the Humpbacks when I was there with my old fellows the year before. 
I wanted to take them through the way I did with my former colleages before they left. My memories were a little bit blurred, but at the end, it worked and we found our way to Azrou. 

Back at home, I could check my email just to see that the to PhD I had apply for had rejected me...one was specially sensitive, with a nice graph that showed that, instead of moving from "application sent" to "interview" I was "drop out". Thanks. Anyway, one have to learn to say to the world "f&%ck you" when it deserves it and keep going, even if it hurts. If you are insistent enough you will end up winning...or at least you will die fighting, which still seems more romantic to me than dying defeated and surrended .  

We had our last dinner together and played the mythical Jungle Speed before the Boss drove us to take the bus to Marrakesh. After some farewell hugs to the Boss, the four of us took seat at the bus and left Azrou behind. 



Marrakesh 

No much of sleep in the bus, despite we have enough room to lay down and that the Iranian-Californian gave me one of her sleeping pills. The rejects were still on my mind and going back to Spain with even less hope than before wasn't a good  somniferous.

We reached the big city when it was still dark and we were waiting for a while having a coffee until the bus started to work. Then, we started our way seeking the bus stop...by doing so, we ended up in Djema-el Fna square, which was actually the place we were aiming for. We had breakfast in a nice cafe there and then looked for our hotels. The Iranian-Californian and I found ours and went inside to tried to sleep a while before visiting the city, but, again, was impossible to me. 

One hour later, we went out and walked toward the square. Sadly, the first thing we saw were some juvenile macaques that were being exploited for the joy of the tourists. It came as a real shock, one was even an infant an was screaming and pulling the rope that he had around his neck. I blamed myself for not having at least some of the leaflets of the  Moroccan Primate Conservation Foundation  with me, at least to leave them around...

We walked around the zouk for a while, still sad for the little monkeys, before we joined the French and the English to have lunch. I had a "pastilla", apparently a typical dish from Marrakesh, quite tasty, sweet-salty pie of dove meat. 

Then we visited the Bahia Palace, which was quite beautiful (and also one of the cheapest places). After that we splitted paths, and the Iranian-Californian and me got lost looking for places to visit after going to the cyber-park ( I was curious about it!). Finally, we went back to the Zouk and after some bargaining we decided to have a Moroccan tea during the sunset in one of the high terraces which surrounded Djema-el Fna. It was funny to see how the square, which when we arrived at dawn was completely empty, was filled with things during the day until reach it maximum at night. This included the poor macaques, whose owners didn't leave until it was already dark, taking them inside tiny green boxes.

We had some tajine and then went to the hotel before going around the square to watch the different shows. It was great, the only problem was that if you stayed for a couple of seconds you were asked for money, and we had not many dirhams left..even if we tried unsuccessfully to find some beers (apparently is not possible in tne Medina despite all the tourist and it seems even unpolite to ask for it). 

Next morning, we had a good breakfast in the hotel before taking the bus to the airport, where I said goodbye to the Iranian-Californian before and took my plane. By then I had had the new that I was having an interview next week for a position...I didn't know yet that I was going to had anotherone one day after that which would send me back to Africa a little more than a month later.

Happy New Year

Bye Lajuma...

I'll write something whenever I've the time.... Right now, I'm just trying to pack, hard because I came with a suitcase and a backpack and now I can only take one of them because of the flight company; plus my travel around the country is not completely solved yet and I found out this morning that I didn't get the job I applied for, so when I come back to Spain I will be one of that 50% of young unemployed with great qualifications but no hope. Great day, yeah. Keep on standing, anyway...

Inter-Group Encounter: Barn VS House troop

Last week, I was following House troop and we were getting close to the Barn, when half of my monkeys ran towards me. I was kind of excited 'An inter-group encounter?Finally?' The only inter-group encounter

I had seen so far were when I wasn't following or when they found each other in the sleeping sites, but not a full one from the beginning.


Soon, I saw 3 monkeys coming, open-mouthing to mines. I radioed the Belgian to confirm, and she told me that she was with most of the monkeys of Barn troop at 150-200 m. But I knew that it was that, these evil monkeys are always extremely spread.

Few minutes later the little battle started, after my troop decided to stop ignoring the other (see video). However, while most of the visible members of Barn troop were, at least, paying attention to the battle, most of mine were some meters behind feeding. 'F^@ck, guys! What are you doing? We are more, let kick their as{^s!' But they didn't give a sh@t! Then I saw Babootie, who was been groomed by 3 adult females 'WTF, girls? He is useless, stop that and go to support your fellows' But, once again, ignored me.

20 minutes after, the fighters got tired of agonistic displays and went to their corners to get involved in an orgy of grooming, just to restart some minutes later.

The baboons came over. I guess that the e evolutionary roots of disease are deep, but at least the baboons instead of coming running and screaming 'fight, fight' are far more elegant and pretended that they just came to feed...but I saw you looking, guys!

When we thought that the issue would last forever, a peace-mediator came: Gunter. He appeared running crazily, slobberying all on his way and making the two parties to split and run away to their sides.

Daily life at Lajuma

Now that I'm almost leaving I wanted to share some of those things that I don't normally write about that are the daily stuff that happens when you are not following monkeys, doing phenology, checking camera-traps and so on.




Visits of the Neighbors

When you live in the middle of the field site, is common that your subjects of study decide some times to hang out at the entrance of your house.


Barn and House troops of samangos had always being regular visitors, jumping on the roof, messing in the pile of ashes of the braai and Babootie, the adult male of House troop, pretending to be Bonnie the cat to enter into the Barn and grab some food. Additionally, this place is part of what we call they grey area, where both troops territories overlap and, therefore, we were able to enjoy some inter-group encounters in the afternoon.

Less often, but also in a regular basis, the baboons come over to enjoy the grass and the sun of the place, even when the samangos are about.

Additionally, a family of greater bushbabies sleeps just behind the Barn, which is good because normally they move away to forage during the night...but is true that sometimes they decide to have a concert on the roof in the middle of the night. They are cute animals, but their vocalizations are f^Œking ugly! But we cannot complain. At Bush camp, they not only suffered the concerts almost daily, but for months had a bushbaby getting into the kitchen and stealing food.

Certainly, Bush camp is a much better place to get acquaintance with the local fauna. Since I arrived they have been the only ones on having scale guests, such a bush snake in one of the assistants room or a twig snake close to the fire place. Spiders are also more common and diverse there, we only had a couple of relatively tiny rain spiders so far.

However, we do have some dassies behind the Barn, who sometimes climb to the trees giving the fake impression of being samangos and, when the place is quiet, even some bushbucks dare to graze about.

Domestic animals, such as the feared Gunter and the horses visit us sometimes and now, daily Ozi, the cat of the PhD student. This cat comes mainly to eats Bonnie's food and flirt with her (I know this kind of guys...) in a kind of aggressive way.





Gas and Water issues

Our living conditions are really comfy, indeed, even in the middle of the bush but, of course not everything works always.

One night I was outside when one of the Germans was having a shower when, suddenly, one of the pipes outside exploded, flooding all the entrance of the Barn. Quickly, I closed the gas bottle (it was starting to smell already) and looked for the key of water, but I couldn't find it, nor the PhD student when he came to the rescue. He went to call the Handyman while, fortunately I finally saw the key and couple stop the water of flowing.

The fridges work with gas too, and they have the problem that, when the bottle is coming to the end, they don't burn all the and the Barn becomes a gas chamber, no matter how many windows you open. This is how I ended up camping with the Germans outside some days ago.

The water supply comes from the streams that cross the property and it's quite reliable. That's why we are lucky enough to have a 'washing' machine...that you have to empty by had and that, no matter how many times you rinse the water is always orange or black. At least it removes the smell to sweat...though in some occasions it replaces it by latrine one!



Braais
Braais, the SA word for barbecue, occur at least once a week and are the wildcard for any occasion, no matter if it's a birthday, a farewell or just Friday, a fire is always convenient, specially because the smoke covers quite effectively any bad smell that the 'washing' machine left on our clothes...



Town days

As a general rule, we go to town on Mondays to buy food, pick up new people, etc. Most of the people here hate town days and try to avoid them giving their shopping list to anyone else but for me it was the only little window to SA culture that we had and also my opportunity to have a nearly complete day off.

The journey takes 1h and a half, mainly because of the 7 bumpy km that separate us from the bottom of the mountain. Then breakfast at Café Rosa, a kind of very corny place but with cheat good food and portions big enough so you don't have to eat any more the rest of the day.

After that, it comes the shopping and those things. Maybe a visit to the Robot Electrical, an all-in-one shop, to buy some beads and make jewelry in the few time off or Mister Price for cheap. Any of these if you are not in the difficult situation of getting a visa.

If that's your case, you will have to visit Home Affairs. There, after going along the corridor, always full of people waiting, you go inside the international affairs office, where the workers are behind some bars, like a prison (we don't know if is to protect them from the frustrated people that they attend or for protecting those of them). Then you ask to one of the nice ladies there who, with a mixture of boredom and disgust will probably say something like 'It's not possible' 'I don't know' or 'It's not my problem'.

I remember the first time I went to check if my visa was ready. I asked and the lady checked on the computer and then went to the closet from where she took the stick of the visa. 'This is not going to be that easy' I thought. Of course not. As soon as I looked at it I saw that the visa expired 10 days before I had to take my plane, even if I gave them a ticket of the booking when I applied for the visa and that I had counted scrupulously the days before purchasing the flight. They had extended my visa from the moment they received my application instead from the day the one was going to expire. I explained to the lady, who quickly told me that she couldn't do anything. Next week, I came back. I knew that could be fixed, the Scottish and the Post-doc had had that problem before.

Fortunately for me, that time there was a different lady. At first, she tried to persuade me that it was too difficult to fix it, but I counter-attacked with Bambi-eyes and saying that I had no money to buy another plane ticket. After having a look to my dirty 2-sizes-bigger trousers, she sighed and told me 'ok, but don't blame me if you don't get it'. Fair enough. I still had some more than 2 months and a half, so I wasn't too worried. 3 weeks later, finally, I got a new (and right) visa.

But apart from this theme park of the African bureaucracy, it's true that there is not much to do in town. There is a market with stalls, where no white SA has ever been seen and where most of the people sell tomatoes, avocados and some more veggies. I have no idea if all of them manage to sell something having other 100 people around with the same products.

In general, when you get bore of messing inside the shops, you throw yourself to drink. Well, just one or two ciders, don't think too badly. Then is when we end up at Mike's, close to the PickNPay, where we buy the groceries, or to the Grasdack, my favorite. Savannahs don't taste better any where else.

Naming The Monkeys

Some weeks ago, as I said, a different research group came to trap samangos to take genetic samples and to see how isolated this population is to all the other ones around. As a part of their job, they tagged on the ears all the monkeys already caught. As a result, now I've got in my troops some individuals that I can recognize individually for certain (Finally!). So, what better than starting to give them names. As the tags are two colors on the ears, we have named them on the data collection as the initials of those, so we have BB (blue-blue), RR (Red-Red) and so on...but I though that would be funny to give them real names. So, I started, even though I only got a couple of days left and I only have 3 names!

Babootie (BB)

The samango with the honey badger aptitude

Babootie was the male that I used to call Greg, name that I didn’t really like but that made sense given that was the male of House troop. But with the BB tag I thought that Babootie, a typical SA dish, was much funnier and appropriate! Babootie is like that famous honey badger of youtube, a pretty bad dumbass. He doesn’t give a sh&t about humans, and sometimes, if we are distracted, he comes inside the Barn and steals food. When most people try to scare him away, he open-mouths them (but not me, I open mouth him first and he just looks around and pretend to be a good monkey munching grass…guess that my macaque style is kind of gansta). The other day I surprised him looking on the containers of the workers; he ended up with a huge piece of bread on the top of a tree eating for one hour and a half. We are trying to fix the situation, but it’s hard to make everybody to be careful all time with the food in their own houses.
But he is not only a nightmare for humans. Some days ago the Belgian was quite upset because Babootie had attacked one of the females of her troop and the poor monkey was bleeding from an arm! And two weeks ago, I was following the troop, that was around a road, which is great, cause you see them really well, not too frequent, and then some baboons appear. They were feeding around and all seem to be peaceful between the two species, as usual…until some came too close to Babootie and he, of curse, lunged and open-mouthed them, made the baboons to run away.

Roibos (RB)

 Juvenile male

 

Pap (PP)

An Adult Female