"Training" the Minnesotan

Two weeks ago, a new girl, the Minnesotan, arrived to collaborate in the project and pretty much at the same time, half of the people left to have some holidays. With the Cardiffian, the Crossliner and the Cologner gone to Kruger and the Leader, the Co-Leader and the Predator Team to Botswana, I end up in charge of her training...even if it was my 3rd week.

Barn troop

The first day it was our turn of replacing the Cardiffian and the Crossliner in the follow of the Barn troop. Additionally, the Cardiffian had explained to me roughly the night before she left how to collect the data of the sleeping sites...

So, at 5 in the morning (aka d%ck o’clock), the Minnesotan came to the Barn and together, armed with our torches, went into the forest until we reached the sleeping site and sat waiting for the monkeys to give any sign of life, while Bonney the intrepid cat walked around with her bright eyes because of the light of the torches.

The sound of the pee and poo falling gave us the clue that the monkeys were awakening.

After collecting some data on the trees, I hurried up to follow the monkeys who quickly were leaving the Barn surroundings and going towards the road that goes to Bush camp. Anyway, we stayed for some hours with a kind of subgroup formed mainly by subadults.

That day I let the Minnesotan just to watch; it was too soon for me to "teach" and I think that she deserved a day of just looking, as I had in Morocco; though I told her to try to discover nipples on the monkeys, which is the only feature we have to tell apart adult females and subadults.

The monkeys made us follow them through an extremely thorny forest until we reached Bush Camp. It is amazing that, even when you wear long trousers, your legs end up like the scratching pole of Freddie Kruger's cat...but your trousers are still without a scratch!

The day finished with us trying to see what sleeping trees were the monkeys using to sleep and marking them.

The eco-ilogical plots

Next day, the Minnesotan had to help the Scottish with the buckets and then, come with me to do some ecological plots.

The GPS that we had with the points of the plots was completely crazy and we were lost in the bush for an hour, until we came back to one of the roads. Then, I took out a couple of normal compass that I had to measure the aspect and the slope of the plots and we saw how the GPS had the north right in the opposite direction of the compass...even if these two didn't exactly agree between them! At the end, somehow, we found one of the points and I could "teach" the Minnesotan all that I had learnt about the plots in the previous couple of weeks...which wasn't much and we both had a lot of queries, but we did our best. After lunch, we tried to do another one, but we couldn't complete it because I had to take her at 16h with the Scottish.

Around 17h, I was going to left the girls and the buckets to look for the House troop to follow it the next day when the Scottish made me realized that I had misunderstood the instructions of the Cardiffian and that the sleeping site data were collected the evening of the follow and the morning of the next day...Between this and our morning problems with the GPS, the Minnesotan should be thinking that I was pretty stupid, or at least I felt so.

But nothing better to cheer you up than found your little samangos preparing to sleep in bamboo poles, reminding you to the fight of the bamboo forest of the House of flying daggers.

House troop

This time, we woke up a little bit latter and went to the bamboo poles to find the samangos; which awake late, giving us the opportunity of watch them as small fury shadows hanging of the bamboo poles.

I asked the Minnesotan if she had already seen the baboons and, just a couple of minutes later, as an invocation, they appeared. They were among the troop half of the day, together with the PhD student and the Scottish, that had a day off and had gone with the PhD student to remember all times in which they both were assistants and followed these curious monkeys.

It was fun to watch the baboons, their interactions and to hear the bunch of vocalisations they do, and how, when they have to pass "close" (7m or more) to you, they look at you constantly and run. The samangos didn't seem to disturbed by their bigger cousins, but when these climbed to the trees in which the samangos were and these later jumped to another tree giving ground.

Concerning to the "training", I was testing the Minnesotan about the age and sex classes as well as the heights. I let her one of this fancy clinometer so she could practice alone the latter, and I let her in charge of the GPS points. I was expecting that she would have to expend a couple more of days training with the Crossliner and that she would have a real cultural shock...

Close to the sunset, the monkeys travelled to the Owner's garden...which is a garden near the house, but a thick thorny jungle downwards, where the monkeys made us stay for a couple of hours squeezing hour brains trying to find out how to follow them among the dense bush.

When the sunset came, we tried to find the sleeping trees, but Gunter, the massive smelly dog, was after us all the time, bordering especially to the Minnesotan. At the end, we couldn't find any thanks to the slobbery cub.

Next morning, I went alone to do the sleeping sites. I was relatively successful despite Gunter, the fact that the clinometer's batteries got exhausted and that I had to hurry up to meet the Post-Doc, the Cologner, the Neatherander and the Scottish to go to Polokwane at 8...well, to a Mall in Polokwane; it seems that this centre are one of the most exciting thing to do around apart from fauna watching.

End of training

The next House troop follow day, the Leader had told me to let the Minnesotan to do alone the second half of the day. So, I was quickly teaching them how to do the scans, and done a kind of "test" to see if we agreed. Fortunately, that was the case; she really wants to do the things right and is clever.

So, around 12h, I left her with the monkeys, sad, thinking once again that "my babies" were with a stranger...I guess a common feeling among "primate people".

Random stuff

Well, I have been here for a little bit more than a month and, sadly, I'm a little bit disappointed yet. I find that many things are not done as well as they could be done, especially concerning all the primate stuff. But I'm trying to change that. Thanks to the advice of the Boss in Morocco, and the discussions with the Scottish, I finally told my point of view in one of the group meetings and apparently, we are going to change the samangos data collection, so it is closer to a serious primate study...hopefully. I gave to the leader the protocol that we are using with comments, suggestions and ideas that the PhD student, the Scottish and I had and let's see what happen...But sometimes I wonder if it's the best strategy to make enemies during a leopard trapping season; I could end up like bait!

Apart form that, as I just said, we have just started with the leopard trapping to radio-collar them and tonight will be my first night checking the traps.

Yesterday, on the other hand, was my first day checking the vervet traps. I should say that I was glad that none of them got caught; I have many concerns about how ethical is to trap monkeys to radio-collar them, at least with the methodology we are using...but well, I haven't had the chance to read about the topic, so maybe it's just my impression, after all, I'm not an expert... Nonetheless, when I did the last trap check, one of the traps was triggered and without the baits and I saw, for the first time, the vervets, who were around 30m away from the trap, apparently very happy. They honoured me letting me stay with them for some minutes at around 10m, before they got lost on their nearly impenetrable kingdom.

I try to enjoy the experience, but the fact that I've got the impression that the things aren't done properly drains me out. I don't want to blame anyone in particular, because I think that probably all is a by-product of the "low-cost" science which is on fashion nowadays more than a matter of neglect...but... It doesn't help to remember Morocco everyday while wondering if I will ever have such a good times in my life again and the fact that, once again, my future is an unknown. I shouldn't think too much in this kind of things but, as I said, bad habits are difficult to give up.