T.I.S.A: The Daily Sun

Well, here is the second episode of T.I.S.A, some crazy articles of one of the most selled newspapers in the country, the Daily Sun. Hope you enjoy it.

Now we now the true drama...

ah...that's why we never have them around here

Amen

Culture: The origin of the Venda People

We found a book about African folklore in the Barn, one day that we were crazy looking for the charger for the spotlight that we use in leopard trapping. Here is the fragment in which the origin of Venda people, according to their tradition is explained. By the way, the Vendas are the dominant group around here (apart from the immigrants from Zimbabwe), that is why:

<<Kale, kale –long, long ago- before there were Venda people in the world, there was a large snake called Tharu (Python) living on the mountain slopes pf the present land of the Vedas. That which came about happened during a year of prolonged drought, It was then that Tharu divided humself into two parts- Thoho, the Head, and Tshamutshila, the Tail. When Tharu had so divided himself, each part became a snake. They lived on, until one day Thoho said to Tshamutshila: “The drough has brought great famine everywhere. I fear that we shall die of hunger unless we do something to avoid starvation. Therefore, let us separate. You go westward in search of food, and I shall search in the east.”

Then Tshamutshila went westward searching, into the land that is now the country of the Vendas. When he arrived in that place he became a human being. He gathered herds of cattle, he married many wives (Let me just say that religions and traditions seem to be in agreement that women have a different origin than men…¬¬’ anda que…) bore Tshamutshila numerous children. These numerous children married and begot more children, and in time all these people became a tribe. Tshamutshila became their chief, and he was called by the name Ramabulana. He built Musanda, meaning Great Place, and from there he ruled.

The land of the Venda people was fertile and full of rivers and springs, and rain was plentiful. The people grew maize, millet, squash, pumpkins, peanuts, sweet potatoes, cassava, beans, sweet cane and many other kinds of crops. They had cattle, sheep, goats, fowls, dogs and cats. Food was plentiful and the people were prosperous. Tshamutshila, or Ramabulana as he was known, became a chief whose name was in far-off lands.

Now, Thoho went east to a place in what is now Mozambique, and there he founded the Ronga people. In time he also turned human, and he came to be known by the name Nyamusoro. But the lands he rued were lands of drought and famine. The soil was not fertile, there were not many rivers and little rain fell. In order to procure food for himself, Nyamusoro became a wandering singer and entertainer. He travelled from one village to another, from one country to another and from one Great Place (dweling of a chief) to another. He sang and danced in return for food to eat and beer to drink. And he arrived one day at the Great Place of Ramabulana, he who founded rhe Venda nation. He danced and sang at the outer gate of the Great Place, and the people gathered until there was a great crowd. His dancing stirred up a cloud of dust that rose into the sky and hung there over the town.

Many people went to Ramabulana to urge him to come and see the dancing, but he refused. Knowing thet he and Nyamusoro were parts of Tharu, The Python, he feared that the two parts would again be joined. So he would not listen to those who urged him to come to the town gate. But Ramabulana’s wives implored him even more strongly than others. They sang:

“Go out of your house, O Vhamusanda,

For Nyamusoro’s singing and dancingm O Vhamusanda.

It is a spectacle too great to be missed by any living person,

A sight never before seem or heard,

Come out and go to the gate, O Vhamusanda!”

Importuned this way, at last Ramabulana could not resist. He agreed to go to the gate to hear Nyamusoro sing and see him dance, He arose. He went to the gate where the great crowd was watching, and where the dust was still rising from the groud into the air. He went forward, till he and Nyamusoro saw each other. And instantly they came together, the two parts of Tharu, and they joined and became Tharu the Phyton again. And even as the Venda people watched, Tharu coiled and uncoiled and then made his way out of the town into the forest.

Thus Great Place of Ramabulana was a Great Place without a chief. Ramabulana`s sons grew up, they married and had children; but they quarrelled among themselves and could not agree on anything. So they parted, each of the sons taking his family and his followers. Each chose a different direction. Werever one of the, settled with his people he became a chief. Thus Venda people spread across the country, all of the progeny of Ramabulana, who began as a part of Tharu, and who returned to Tharu.

(From “A Treasury of African Folklore- Harold Courlander”)

T.I.S.A I (It means "This Is South Africa")

Every country counts with some particularities that look weird and funny to foreigners' eyes; and here I will share some of those things that I find kind of funny in my current location:


Ohh!!! C'mon, man! I feel so naked without my 45 long colt!!

So, not only there is a HIV proportion of 1 out of 2 in the region, but the men are, accordingly to the advertisement below, not very well equipped ...

 And now that I'm not longer a student I won't even get discount!! Arg!

 

Well, but at least if I feel kind of weak, I've got a marvelous beverage that will help me to fight every environmental aggression and disease!

 And, if this doesn't work, at least we'll have a good price:

Notes on the first days at Soutpansberg Mountains

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.

Translation on a daily basis: go to the field on your own with a PDA and a GPS; try to find your 50-something trees (more interesting given that the GPS are extremely inaccurate and I don’t know yet the field) and then, when you have the tree; try to find the branch tapped. Once you got it, climb to a rock, tree or whatever if necessary to see it well and count the leaves on it; see if there is any fruit, flower or seed and proceed to the next one.

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. 

The Long Walk To Lajuma

Madrid-Cairo-Johannesburg (28-29^th April)

There I was again, in the international departure area of Barajas airport, waiting for my plane to Cairo which, of course, had a slight delay. After so many years travelling in low cost companies, I felt like a luxury to receive a meal during the flight and to have a blanket and a pillow and the possibility to watch a movie and to listen some Egyptian music. I liked to hear some Arabic again, even if the only word I understood was “shocran”, but I had the impression that Egyptian Arabic must be easier to understand than Moroccan Arabic, it sounds more open.

In the plane, the distance to the destination and the local hour was shown, and I don’t know exactly why, but It was supposed to be one hour more than in Spain so, my flight which was supposed to reach Cairo at 20:30 was going to do it at 21:30 and the boarding time for the next one was at 22:10. So, little bit stressed, I enjoyed the vision of the Egyptian capital during the night and to cross the Nile.

Then, once landed, I ran to the gate of the next plane, just to find out that the time in my previous plane was wrong and I still had one hour before queuing. I was glad to hear Arabic again, it felt like home; a home in which I don’t understand most of what it’s going on but that feels comfortable.

Finally, I went inside the second plane, not as comfortable as the first one, but again with meal (2 dinners!), blanket and pillow. I did my best to sleep, since I had hired a tour the day after, but I think that I only managed to sleep for 4-5 hours; while crossing Africa in the middle of the night.

Before 6 we were waken up with the lights and had some breakfast (such a difference with low cost companies!). The sunrise was quite slow; I guess is something normal close to the tropics, but it was my first time down the Equator.

When we landed I had a kind of zombie-state-of-mind, so I don’t remember very well how I reached the luggage bands, but I was glad to see that my two bags had made the same trip. I was worried about that, so I made sure that the stuff was divided in both packs, so I had a little bit of everything if one was lost.

After changing some money, I called to the hostel so they could collect me.

Johannesburg (29^th April)

A couple of minutes after my call, a tall skinny black man came to pick me up. And as a welcome-to-South-Africa song, the Adele’s “Someone like you” sounded on the radio. My lasts fellows in Morocco had a funny time watching me suffering with this song in the car when we were coming back from Erg Chebbi and it was hilarious that it was my “welcome” song…past can be behind, but it’s always with you.

The man was nice and was giving me some conversation during the short way to the hostel. Good news that after one month of Spanish my English wasn’t much worse than when I left Morocco and the South African accent wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be, based on “District 9”.

The hostel reminded me to a British B&B, as “clean” as those, but with tropical garden and safari-like decoration.

Shortly after, the guide of the tour came to collected me to the hostel and we went towards Johannesburg, that was like 25km away from there. During the way, the guide and his colleague were speaking in something that I thought it must be that mix of English with some other language; because I was able to understand some word each few minutes, but in general I was lost.

Once in town, we collected a Slovenian couple in their thirties, the colleague of the guide left and we began the tour…which was mostly by car, something that I didn’t expected. He firstly drove us around the most dangerous neighbourhood in Johannesburg, Hillbrow, which is just in the middle of the city; so I was glad to follow my mother’s advice and do not have gone alone around the city in my zombie-state-of-mind, because I surely had end up there with my teletubbie appearance, robbed and who knows what else. According to the guide, that single neighbourhood raised the crime statistics of all the country…and that everything was the fault of the Nigerians, who were professional criminals…No matter the country you go or where the immigrants come from, locals will always blame them!

Then was the turn of the Constitutional Hill. Once it hosted the Old Fort, a prison where many, such as Mandela and Gandhi passed long tough times, but now is the site of the Constitutional Court, where human right issues are discussed in the 11 official languages of the country. It was built partially with the remains of the Old Fort, as a symbol that they could build a much better future with the ashes of the past.

Afterwards the guide stop for a while in front of the Africa Museum (hopefully I'll be back there somehow), and the he took as to the "Top of Africa" which is the Carlton Tower, a 50 floors building which is the tallest of the continent (sorry, Kilimanjaro, humans are always that egocentric!).

That was all that the guide wanted to show us from the city; it was time to go to Soweto, no without a little stop in the world cup stadium...(hate F%&cking soccer...)

Soweto (South Western Township) is now a 4 million lively city next to Johannesburg, were rich mansions stay not too far from slums. It's famous because it was the home of Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela, who lived in Orlando West street ( the only street in which two Nobel prizes have live in) and because of the Soweto uprising(Soweto Blues-Miriam Makeba), which began with the high-school students protesting because of the introduction of the Afrikaans as teaching language, followed by the police shooting and killing some of them, including the 13-old boy Hector Pieterson, whose name was given to the uprising museum that is now in the city.

I had to admit that I slept a few minutes in the car while driving through Soweto, I was extremely tired; but I enjoyed to see Mandela's house and see that also S.African students do volunteering for gaining experience ( Western are not the only stupids that work for free!! Yeah!!! Mal de muchos, consuelo de tontos...)

After having a look to Hector Pieterson museum, we had lunch there in a typical "restaurant" that scared to the Eslovenian couple. I had the chance to taste the pap, a porridge made out of ground maize, similar to the Ugali in East Africa, I guess.

The tour came to the end (too short in my opinion), and the guide drove the couple to the airport and me to the hostel. He was really shocked that I was going to work for free, and in a dangerous environment. I tried to explain him that now there is so many people in Europe with the same degree and kind of master that you don't go too far without experience...but I don't really believe what I was saying, it's just that I don't know what to do; if I stayed in Spain I would have to work in something that I would hate with my entire guts and only I were one of those lucky 40% of young people that have a 700€/month work. I'll have to do it soon...but let me dream as much as possible.

Once in the hostel I collapsed and honoured that tradition that everybody thinks is so Spanish but I think that it's quite spread, the siesta. I was so tired that I didn’t bothered to have dinner or anything, I just remind one of the owners of the hostel that I would need a taxi the day after and they gave me the bus ticket that the Leader had sent to me.

Johannesburg-Louis Trichardt (Makhado)-Lajuma (30th April)

I woke up unwilling and took me sometime to get up and get everything ready before going down to have a light breakfast surrounded by quiet international backpackers.

The taxi driver came 10 minutes late and so we arrive to the Park Station. The bus was due in 15 minutos, but the driver was nice and showed me the way running with one of my bags.

The passengers were pretty much a small picture of S.Africa population, with a majority of black people, some white and one of Asian origin.

More than six hours took us to cross the provinces of Gauteng and Limpopo, passing through Pretoria, Mokopane and Polokwane, before reaching Louis Tritchardt...half an hour late.

Once there, I got out of the coach and said to myself "cool, the Leader is not here, what now?" but while I was collecting my luggage, a tall white middle age man asked me if I were me. Let's call him the Afrikaner man (I might change names later on, I'm still a little bit confuse, there is too much people here!). He help me with the luggage and we went to the jeep were some others were waiting; one of the volunteers working with predators (an English girl, I'll give her a name later, most are English, I'm gonna need to know the town!); the Geordie (she is from Newcastle and this is the adjective I found, I may ask her...), who is a master student, and her boyfriend.

The Afrikaner man drop me at the Pick'n'Pay, the supermarket of the town, so I could buy food for the week. There, another volunteer, a young English girl who has already spent 7 months here as a part of her degree, came to help me by orders of the Leader.

When I finished it was time to go, finally, to Lajuma, which was 46km away; but 1h and a half in time due to the 7 last km, which are through the mountain and driving in a sand path quite uneven.

By the time we arrived it was dark; and the Barn, my new home, was waiting form me to have dinner and sleep...not without wondering if I should be worried about the 5 spiders that surrounded my bed or if they were harmless...

Culture: Moroccan particularities

Some weeks ago I found out that my old colleague, the Ohioan, also has a blog and in it, she has a post dedicated to Moroccan culture and I never overlook a good idea when I see it.

So, given that I have been here for more than 4 months (and I don't have much more time left...sigh) here is my post about what I have got to know about Moroccan culture so far (this is one of the many good side effects of field biology...).

Of course, before anyone gets angry, what I know is what I have seen in Azrou and surroundings and the few Moroccan people with whom I had the opportunity to hang out. Maybe it is not very representative and it will be, of course, subjective, but, even though, I will risk to tell what I have seen, but without any intention to generalize (“generalizar sobre lo que sea implica injusticia, y la injusticia es una mierda” Chojin) or to offend anyone…despite my usual satiric tone (but that’s my signature, dude, get used to it!).




Clothes: Armani, djellabas & fluorescent pajamas


As I said in my post "First times", one of the things that surprised me the first time I arrived to Azrou was to see women dressed in a very Western way together with women in djellabas. The same can be applied to men, though as a rule, young man and many old ones dress on a Western style (the old ones normally in a very particular way...) and the old men with more traditional clothes with the omnipresent hood.

However, it took me some time to realize that the women that I have seen in pyjamas on the street weren't an infrequent coincidence but a general rule! I don't know the reason behind it, but here in Azrou it's very common to find women and children in the street wearing pyjamas and no discrete, precisely, but normally fluorescent pink, blue or green, so you don't have any doubt that is a pyjama (of course, the shoes are normally slippers in these cases). To complete the wardrobe, if you have a baby, what better than to hold him/her on your back with a fantasy towel?
Well, I certainly appreciate the many advantages that these costumes have and, actually, one of the things I would like to do ( If I dare) before leaving my current home is going for a walk in pyjama!

I think this is something particular from here or maybe from medium and small size
cities since the tourist coming from Rabat or Casablanca to see the macaques are completely the opposite and even the children look as if they were models, perfectly dressed up and with their last generation smart phones...




Traffic: What the hell…!!!????

One of the first things that shocked to me when I landed here was the nightmare traffic and the crazy capers of the drivers overtaking three or more cars in a round when another is coming on the opposite direction. Of course, why are you going to reduce your speed when there is snow on the road? Everything will be fine, "In shaa'Allah"...and afterwards you find two crashed cars at the same curve...

And seatbelt? What is that for? Well, honestly it's the only occasion in which I feel happy to don't have driving license (yeah, it's a shame, I know...soon...if there is money and nothing more interesting to do with it...).

It is actually surprising that, given this crazy way of driving we have only known about one mortal accident; the one of a trucker that crashed on the tourist area filling the site with apples that fed the monkeys for a couple of months...

Even though, I guess that here is, by far, better than in Egypt, or at least for what people say...





Food: by hand or by spoon, that is the question

Certainly, I have had many chances of sharing food with diverse Moroccans and even more now that part of the work is social anthropology (i.e. hanging out with people calling it "work").

My first experience with a "real" Moroccan meal came as a consequence of the Eid al-Adha' ("Festival of Sacrifice"); when Ben, one curious character, invited us (The Czech, the Californian and me) to have dinner at his place the traditional lamb meat that is eaten those days after each family (when possible) sacrifices one (well, here normally is a goat instead of a lamb, but...). After nearly one hour trying to find his home, he finally picked us up and showed us the way. Once there, he started to prepare brochettes of lamb meat with his pretty dirty hands and invited us to help. Then, he went to put some on the “barbecue” and after a while he showed us some. The Czech said that better more cooked…when he left again she said “ I think it will be healthier…” “¿Healthier?” asked the Californian “Well…less harmful”. Then I said that I was glad of having my hepatitis A vaccination, but they didn’t understand me (Those were hard times for me).
Finally we ate…and it was amazing! Probably the best meat I have ever tried. Of course, Ben made us eat much more than we would have wanted to. That seems to be a very Moroccan habit; to be sure that your guest have no more room in their stomach (oesophagus, mouth and so on) before they leave. After, he showed us where he kept the meat…under the table! (He doesn’t have fridge, obviously, is not an extravagance).
When we went out I dared to make a comment that, this time, was understood (or at least they laughed…well, smiled) “Well, I don’t know if we will survive, but it was great”. Actually, that time, surprisingly, our stomachs were safe and sound the day after!

Yeah, is curious, but here you have no idea of when your stomach will become Pearl Harbour. You can go to a very fancy restaurant and suffer the consequences (See “The BBC and the bad couscous” at “First steps…”) or eating something that would make your mother to pass out and being perfectly fine.

Nonetheless, the more typical dishes are the well known tajines and couscous, and they are what the family that rents us the flats cooks when they invite us to have dinner.

Any meal, of course, is accompanied, at the beginning or the end of it, with the mythical mint tea, which I love so much (yeah, I was a hummingbird in a past life; there is never enough sugar for me!).

However, the best couscous that I have had so far was when Ben, again, invited us to have couscous for lunch one Friday. The S.Carolinian and I went there ( I remembered the way! Finally!) and Ben was waiting for us near his home. He guided us to the terrace, where his brother, a child and two other men were waiting for us (yeah, we were late…). The couscous was really nice, but the best thing was the view of all Azrou with this marvellous light ( which I’m gonna miss so, so much…), enjoying the warm temperatures that are recently coming…It was quite relaxing, with Ben’s brother speaking some times in English with the S.Carolinian and sometimes in Spanish with me ( It’s amazing the ability that these people have with languages; most of the people that I have met can speak fairly well at least 3 or 4 languages and know the basics of some more). After finishing the couscous, the tea came…and other Moroccan traditions that I will only share in front of some tequila.

Noteworthy to say that, even if the traditional way of eating couscous is using your hand (right one, always) to grab some and make a ball, I have only seen Ben doing this. The family always uses spoons The tajine is usually eaten using bread as spoon-fork and this is more common…and tastier.




Hypocrisy: The keystone of any society

As any other society, Moroccan one has many hypocrisy points.

One of the more obvious is in respect with alcohol. You can only buy it in very specific shops or in big supermarkets like Marjane, where it is appart from everything else and you pay in there and go out from a different door than if you buy any other thing. These shops are suppose to be only for tourists or non-muslims...but of course this is not the case. Every week, the little shop where we usually buy is full of Moroccan men buying stuff. They give you very thick plastic bags, so nobody can see the content (even if is the only place in which you have these bags, so is obvious what you are carrying...) and they wrap the drinks with newspaper. Drink in the street is, apparently, a very serious offence...but our forest is covered with beer cans and wine bottles...

However, as in any other society, nobody is more hypocrite than the politicians. Our forest, for example, is supposed to be protected...but the trees are cut anyway. A certain amount is supposed to be legally cut...but quite likely, not the amount that we can see pretty much every week, and, especially, because normally the trees chopped are the oldest cedars...sigh. The timber industry seems to be so important for the region as to make up weird stories to preserve it. For example, a common idea among the forest guards is that the macaques are bad for the forest because they eat bark and this kills the tree..Obviously, this is not true, but the fact is that, by eating the bark, the macaques make that many trees don't grow straight, making them useless for the timber industry, apparently...



Attitude toward Westerns: kindness, ignorance or harassment

Most of the people coming from outside to Morocco are tourists (no travellers) and, as such, they will probably leave the country with the idea of the annoying sellers, the cheaters, and the children saying "dirham, dirham".

However, this is something that have nothing to do with the majority of people here; we must remember that, in any country, the tourist usually moves through a parallel world in which all resemblance to reality is by chance.

In general, what I have seen here is very nice people trying to help you and understand you, even when your French is drunk monkey Chita level and your arabic is amoeba level. In more than one occasion I understood bad the price of the stuff that I wanted to buy and I have given more money than it was and the sellers have kindly rectify my mistake. Furthermore, it is not uncommon that people tries to help you if you have a problem in the street even when you don't ask for it.

Other less frequent attitude is completely ignoring you; something very convinient at the queue of the shops, where you can be ages waiting if you are unlucky enough to find a couple of these people. This can also happen when you are walking on the street and, magically, you become invisible and people try to pass through your body if you don't watch out.

The third sort of interaction is harassment; pretty much the same kind that tourists suffer. Here is, in general, quite light; only guys saying to you "Bonjour""Salut""Hello" or "Hola". If you don't pay attention, normally nothing else happens. However, I seem to be lucky in this aspect; my old colleagues the Ohioan and the German, and now, the French, apparently had to suffer higher degrees of disturbance and I'm sorry for them. As a general rule, I don't have this kind of problems. I guess my angry-dog face has something to do with it ( I wasn't called "borde"-girl (rude-girl) at the high school for nothing, man); something annoying when you want to make advances with someone, but quite useful in any other occasion.





Well...I could say many other things, or at least develop more the topics. However, the time is passing really fast and I've got some posts in mind before leaving so...as I said to the cigarettes seller the other day when he asked me how it was possible that I have been here so long time and I couldn't speak French nor Arabic yet (I guess that for them 4 months is more than enough to be fluent in any language!) "Je suis travaillant tout le jour et je n'ai pas du temps!!"




...hay promesas que valen menos que un Sugus...