Why one should never tempt fate with misquoted movies…

I know ir’s only been a few days since my last entry, but yesterday was a crazy enough day that it was worth trekking out to the network point just to write what happened.

So today is Camille’s last day in the forest, and Noah leaves on Wednesday. Consequently, a fete was in order. Noah had also at some point in time offhandedly mentioned that he’d like to play football (soccer) while he was here, and Frederic (my field assistant, who told me he is very popular with women because he’s so good at football!) arranged a friendly match between some people from the forest and the official football team of Gouliyako II, one of the villages where our field assistants come from (And yes, there *is* a Gouliyako I) to be held on July 14.

And with that July 14 became basically the most awaited day in the forest. Our field assistants – even the laconic one – constantly talked strategy. It came out that most of our field assistants felt too old to play football, so they arranged with the Pouliyula football team to let some of our guys play with them in a match which we were still calling friendly.

Yesterday morning, we decided to drive out to the town of Tai because Noah wanted to get a pair of sneakers. Since Camille is leaving and our main driver will be gone driving Noah to Abidjan for a few days, the time had come for me to learn to drive our Toyota Hlilux out of the forest. It shouldn’t be too difficult, except it is a manual transmission (which I tried unsuccessfully to learn at age 16), and the road is very squishy, except for where it is slippery and muddy, or crosses little wooden bridges. And it is twisty, with occasional point things. But anyway, it started off really well! Camille and Noah and I piled into the practically empty Hilux, making sure to grab the machetes in case we needed to clear trees off the road. I handled giant puddles with aplomb. When we had to stop halfway up a terrible hill to avoid running over the chimp project’s car, I got us going again without sliding all the way back DOWN the hill. I even crossed the bridge. And then… I drove too far to the right and the car sunk in the mud. It was well stuck. Camille gave up on my driving and tried to get it out, but to no avail. So then we started chopping up fallen branches and built little ramps for each wheel, and then Noah and I pushed, and THEN we put the car in some sort of hyper-4-wheel-drive. And finally, after a half hour of machete-ing and pushing and mud and tsetse flies, we escaped!

The match, it turned out, was less friendly than we had anticipated, and instead turned into kind of a terrible grudge match. There was an impressive amount of actual injury (Noah got accidentally punched in the face, for example), and an impressive amount of fake injury. Ivorian footballers take Didier Drogba’s example seriously. Camille and I took pictures and hung out with the little girls, all of whom are quite taken with Noah (he can’t walk anywhere in the village without a gaggle of 10-13-yaer-olds who blush and whisper “Bonjour, Noah” whenever he passes them). After the match, we distributed palm wine and coutoucou to both teams, and ate some painfully spicy pork and sauce feuilles de patates before driving all the footballers back to Pauliyula (it took three trips, with the Hilux literally stuffed to overflowing!), and then making it back to the field station for the fete. I was in charge of the music, so I now have a lot of Ivorian dance music. Zouglou is not my favorite genre, but ca va aller! I also stuck some “Musique des blancs” in the playlist. Bob Marley and Michael Jackson went over well, and Sean Paul could make a strong comeback in Cote d’Ivoire. Sometime, maybe I’ll mention that all the white people music they like is actually played by black people.

Around 1:30, Noah and I crashed and headed back to our camp. While I was getting ready for bed, I heard something rustling in the corner. Since there’s a very bold mouse, I thought that was who was moving around, and shined my headlamp in the corner to see who it was. In fact, it was a snake. Not a big snake, but definitely a snake. So I kept my light on it and called for Noah to get me the broom and dust pan on a stick, and we shepherded the snake out my door. Unhappily, it fit in the crack between the door and the floor, so I am having Bertin make me a wedge to put in the door to keep more snakes from visiting. Anyway, he slithered off into the forest, and didn’t bother me again except for in my dreams, where all the fecal samples I collected turned into snakes L I’m not sure what kind he was – sort of dark brownish, but with a purple tinge? Very slim, with a triangular head. My guess is a forest cobra, or maybe a viper of some sort. Anyway, exciting times here, and hopefully I won’t see another snake for a while. I’m on my own here from Wednesday until about a month from now, and I’d really like this month to be snake free!

Ants... why did it have to be ants?

 Hi everyone – I apologize for the delay in my entries here! I kind of over-estimated the strength of the internet in the rainforest, and additionally under-estimated the internet requirements of blogger as a platform. However, it looks like last time I tried to post I was doubly successful, and I didn’t even think it posted once! At any rate, here I am, still doing well in the middle of the rainforest.

I’ve only been here in the forest for three weeks (I got in late the evening of the 19th), but it feels like I’ve been here for much longer. I’m back to a familiar routine of waking early, eating bread and either blue band (amazing margarine spread that doesn’t need to be refrigerated and tastes kind of like butter!) or Nutella, drinking lots of tea, and wandering around the forest after monkeys. In the evenings, we’re cooking much fancier foods than I ever cooked when I was here last time. There are also two other students here, so I’m talking with people a lot instead of reading nearly as much as I did last time. Unfortunately, they both leave next week, so I’ll be on my own for a month until the next student shows up. In the interim, though, I’m taking advantages of Camille’s fancy cooking abilities. No longer am I eating only rice and eggs, rice and tuna, or rice and sardines! We’ve made carrot coconut curry! We’ve made guacamole! We’ve made zucchini chips! We’ve made sauce melon! We’ve even made cheesy flatbread! I’m afraid that canned sardines and fried onions are no longer going to satisfy me.

I’ve spent the past three weeks helping my friend Noah finish collecting data for a project we’re working on, looking at the way different monkeys here use their forelimbs while they are foraging. I’ve also been working hard at learning to recognize the female Diana monkeys. It turns out that the easiest ways to distinguish between females are comparing their calls (which I am learning), their tails (how fluffy they are, where they are broken, etc.), and their nipples (which side is bigger, what direction they face, etc.). I have notebook pages full of PG-13 Diana monkey drawings, trying to remember that it is Pensette who has inward-facing nipples and a tail like Melo does (Melo has a larger right than left nipple, and a tail like Pensette), while Eva is the one whose nipples point down and has little white spots on her face.

That may be more information than you wanted to know about my research methods – I apologize.

I’ve also been working with one of the older field assistants – Ferdinand, our Chief of Assistants who represents the assistants in all their negotiations – at learning the most important trees eaten by the Diana monkeys. My project has taken a much more ecological turn than I initially thought it would, which is great because I like the ecological stuff even more than the social stuff. We begin our 5-day weekend today (the assistants work 9 days, then have 5 off), but when Ferdinand gets back, we’re going to start going through the grid to measure the abundance and size of different tree species so that I can see what the monkeys are eating in relation to what is available for them. I’m hoping to get between 10 and 20 100m x 100m squares measured in the following two weeks, and then start my data collection with the monkeys in earnest on July 30 when my official field assistant finishes his two-week break.

When I’m not staring intently at monkeys’ chests, searching for their feces, or trying to figure out what tree the monkeys I am staring at are in, things back in camp have also been exciting. We had a green mamba eat a frog under our laundry the other day, and a giant scorpion we have decided to call Alfred has chosen the steps of the old house as its new favorite spot. A few nights back, a swarm of army ants tried to move through my house. Fortunately, Noah caught them when he was heading to bed, so we spent the next two hours fighting back by pouring fuel mixed with water in all the door jambs and liberally spraying Rambo at the edges of all the mosquito nets. While this curtailed our usage of candles in the house, it also successfully kept the ants out! They also only bit me four times, but a bunch of them embedded their heads in my sandals and got stuck. Pulling them out of my sandals was probably worse than being bit. Unfortunately, it looks like the colony has decided that UNDERNEATH MY HOUSE is an excellent place to build, and we don't have any more Rambo to dissuade them for the moment. I've been having nightmares about earthquakes depositing me in the middle of an army ant nest. We were thinking that maybe if we named them, they'd be less scary, so for the time being we're calling the army ants Gloria (the workers are all female).

Well, my computer battery is growing dim and it’s starting to get dusky out. I’ll cross my fingers that this posts (once!), and try to write again soon!

A la foret!

Hi everyone!

I am writing to you today from the middle of the forest – literally! Our internet café here is on the buttress of one of the really big trees; I’m perched on a root watching a very long, burgundy millipede walk past. He has neon orange feet.

So I made it to the rainforest on Thursday night, late, after a long day of driving from  Abidjan. Though our plan was to take significantly longer in our drive and get there in two days, Bertin decided to drive all the way through (we were also bringing two 10-year-olds from Abidjan, and the mother of one of the other field assistants). So we got in late Thursday night and ate a lot of spaghetti with a tuna sauce. I stayed up talking with my friend Noah, who has been here for a month. On Friday, I stayed in camp to do some setting up and arranging of things, but it worked out great because while I was relaxing on the hammock (reading Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), I heard something rustling in the tree next to my house. When I looked over, there was a solitary, youngish adult male lesser spot-nosed guenon.

He may be the same guy who hung out around the house last time I was here – though I would have hoped it wouldn’t take him a full year to find a new group of females and raise a happy family of lesser spot-nosed guenons. Then I was imagining that perhaps he is just a misanthropic (misguenonthropic?), disaffected youth who thinks everyone else is a phony and so he’s spending all his time alone, mocking everyone else. I’ve decided to call him Holden. (I promise not to anthropomorphize all the monkeys …)

This morning, Noah and I went out with Ferdinand to follow one of the groups of Diana monkeys I’ll be following. Noah is collecting some data on how they use their forelimbs to complement the data I collected last year on mangabeys in order to publish something cool about foraging and forelimbs, and maybe follow it up with some dissections when we get back to the US! I started working on identifying foods and females in that group, but we only went out for a half day. However, during that half day, I collected TWO FECAL SAMPLEs and TWO FRUITS!!!! The first data of my dissertation!

Tomorrow, we’ll try and spend all day with the group and finish up with that data collection. One of the veterinary students leaves soon, so there will be a fete tomorrow night. Monday, the plan is to get everything cleaned up and organized around camp. I will probably try to come out to the internet again on Monday as well and report anything exciting…

Holden the Lesser Spot-nosed guenon!

Hi everyone!

I am writing to you today from the middle of the forest – literally! Our internet café here is on the buttress of one of the really big trees; I’m perched on a root watching a very long, burgundy millipede walk past. He has neon orange feet.

So I made it to the rainforest on Thursday night, late, after a long day of driving from  Abidjan. Though our plan was to take significantly longer in our drive and get there in two days, Bertin decided to drive all the way through (we were also bringing two 10-year-olds from Abidjan, and the mother of one of the other field assistants). So we got in late Thursday night and ate a lot of spaghetti with a tuna sauce. I stayed up talking with my friend Noah, who has been here for a month. On Friday, I stayed in camp to do some setting up and arranging of things, but it worked out great because while I was relaxing on the hammock (reading Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), I heard something rustling in the tree next to my house. When I looked over, there was a solitary, youngish adult male lesser spot-nosed guenon.

He may be the same guy who hung out around the house last time I was here – though I would have hoped it wouldn’t take him a full year to find a new group of females and raise a happy family of lesser spot-nosed guenons. Then I was imagining that perhaps he is just a misanthropic (misguenonthropic?), disaffected youth who thinks everyone else is a phony and so he’s spending all his time alone, mocking everyone else. I’ve decided to call him Holden. (I promise not to anthropomorphize all the monkeys …)

This morning, Noah and I went out with Ferdinand to follow one of the groups of Diana monkeys I’ll be following. Noah is collecting some data on how they use their forelimbs to complement the data I collected last year on mangabeys in order to publish something cool about foraging and forelimbs, and maybe follow it up with some dissections when we get back to the US! I started working on identifying foods and females in that group, but we only went out for a half day. However, during that half day, I collected TWO FECAL SAMPLEs and TWO FRUITS!!!! The first data of my dissertation!

Tomorrow, we’ll try and spend all day with the group and finish up with that data collection. One of the veterinary students leaves soon, so there will be a fete tomorrow night. Monday, the plan is to get everything cleaned up and organized around camp. I will probably try to come out to the internet again on Monday as well and report anything exciting…

The First Snake!

Here in Abidjan, I am staying at the Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques, a scientific organization that helps us with logistics here and also maintains a nice hostel for researchers in their compound in Yopougon. We're right on one of the lagoons (and can hear the Chinese dredgers working to take sand from the lagoon floor all day). Back in the 60s and 70s, the center was totally forested, and there were groups of Campbell's monkeys in the grounds. In fact, one of the first studies of Campbell's monkeys, which was published in the 70s, was carried out here. Unfortunately, the monkeys are long gone, and so is most of the forest cover (a combination, I think, of hunting and building expansion). There are lots of neat birds in the area, though, and we hear bush babies (galagos) and rock hyraxes all night. There are lizards and geckos all over the place - I am currently watching a tiny gecko, maybe three inches long, hut for spiders on the patio ceiling! There are also squirrels.

So yesterday, I was sitting on a patio overlooking the lagoon, when a squirrel started running around. I looked a little closer - and saw a long snake slithering up the tree. The squirrel started jabbing at the snake, chittering at it and trying to chase it away from a big hollow in the tree. The snake was having none of this, and struck the squirrel at least once while the squirrel ran around and around the trunk. He actually knocked the snake off the tree to the ground! This went on for maybe 20 minutes, and then things calmed down and the snake disappeared.

About an hour later, the snake showed up again (I assume it was the same one, anyway) and slithered up the tree trunk, this time without the squirrel noticing. He went all the way into the hollow, stayed there for a while, and then came back out and relaxed on an adjacent branch for a while. The squirrel showed up a little while later, and chased him away again. And just now as I am writing this blog, I'm sitting on the same patio and the snake is slithering up towards the hollow. I haven't seen the squirrel yet - I hope he didn't get eaten! I'm guessing the snake may be a green mamba - he's green, with a yellow underbelly, and a reddish tinge to his tail. He's probably about 4 feet long, with a rounded head (not diamong shaped like a viper). He's pretty, but I'll watch him from the patio with my binoculars and keep my fingers crossed for the squirrel.

Today is my last day in Abidjan - I'll leave for the forest tomorrow. The roads are bad enough that we expect it to take two days between here and Tai, so I should be surrounded by monkeys sometime Friday afternoon! I'm waiting for Anderson to come back from the bank, and then would like to load up the truck with supplies so that we can get an early start tomorrow. Hopefully, next time I write, I'll be at the internet café in the forest!

Akwaba Cote d'Ivoire!

I arrived in Abidjan Sunday night after a lot of airplanes and many airplane meals. Rather than waste precious new books on an airplane (I've spent the past year building up my kindle's library), I slept and chatted on the first plane, and watched Mulan, Les Miserables, and The Perks of Being a Wallflower on the second. My plane was only two hours late, and - unlike last year - all my luggage arrived! For my year in Abidjan, I've got a camping bag full of clothes, a duffel bag filled mostly with Ziploc baggies for collecting monkey poop and food, and a nice new pair of rubber boots.

I'm currently on the patio of my room at the Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifique in Abidjan listening to the call to prayer echo across the lake from the city. Abidjan would like to be a tropical rainforest again, if it had its way, but instead it gets to be a giant, crowded, humid city. It is the rainy season now. Last night and this morning the rain was really impressive. It's since cleared, but I'm glad I got an extra dry bag to keep my camera in!

I spent Monday getting logistical things taken care of in advance of heading for the forest. We'll leave on Wednesday rather than today because we've got a few more things to finish up here. Monday afternoon, we went to change some money and get groceries at a very fancy grocery store downtown. Not only is this grocery well stocked, but you can pay with a credit card! As well as some staples like rice, sardines, and lentils, I got some extravagances (in particular, Nutella, but the French kind without palm oil in it).  I also got a *lot* of tea because I like drinking it in the mornings, and I like having tea for people when they come up to camp. I am also now the proud owner of an Ivorian cell phone, and the magical little doohickey which will give me internet access in the forest. And, most importantly, I got my research permit which will allow me entrance to the forest!

So I'll spend the rest of today finishing up some loose ends from school - I'm trying to finish a manuscript draft to give to my advisor when he heads back to Ohio tonight (he's been in the forest for the past few weeks), and I am working on coauthoring a paper with my friend Noah based on some data we've been collecting on forelimb use in several species of monkeys in Tai, so I need to finish up my section of it before he leaves Cote d'Ivoire in late July. But then I'll leave bright and early tomorrow morning for the place that really knows it's a rainforest!

And they're off...

This evening, I leave the US for Cote d'Ivoire! An overnight plane from Boston to Paris, followed by an afternoon plane from Paris to Abidjan, will deposit me back in the tropics where I can sit overlooking the lagoons in Abidjan and watching lizards sun themselves. 

I plan to spend Monday taking care of logistics: groceries, changing money, buying a cellphone, buying a usb-connector for the internet. There's a fancy grocery store in Abidjan we go to where I can purchase a year's supply of rice, tuna, tea, powdered milk, candles, and so on - and, importantly, use a credit card! I'll also meet up with my advisor in Abidjan. He has just completing a few weeks checking up on our field station.

If all of that goes as planned and I get all my stuff taken care of on Monday, I'll leave on Tuesday morning for a long drive all the way across the country. From Abidjan, which is the de facto capital of Cote d'Ivoire (home to the ports, most government offices, embassies, etc.), we'll drive up north to Yamoussoukro, which is the official capital of Cote d'Ivoire. Apparently President Houphouet-Boigny, who ran the country during the 90s and early 2000s, was born in Yamoussoukro, and wanted to honor his hometown by making it CAPITAL. The other ridiculous thing he did there was build the world's largest Basilica. It is quite large, and we'll drive right in front of it on our way through the city. From there, we make an arc down to the southwest, through Duekoue, Guiglo, Daloa, and eventually the town of Tai! That takes between 6-10 hours depending on traffic and the state of the roads.

We'll likely spend the night in Tai on Tuesday. Tai is a small town with probably about 5,000 residents. It's only electrified part of the time because sometimes the big generator breaks down - they're off of the main grid in Cote d'Ivoire. Last year, I slept in the convent in Tai on my way into the forest because the hotels were all full (there are only a couple). Tai is where I get all my produce and groceries during the time that I'm in the field. I'll need to say hi to the mayor of Tai and other government officials, and show my permits to Eaux et Forets, the agency that deals with the parks and wildlife. Wednesday morning, we'll drive to the villages to pick up the field assistants, and then - between Gouliako and Pouliyula - pick up the road heading into Tai National Park where I'll be back in my forest home!

I'm not sure how frequently I'll be able to get to the internet; the place where we can pick up a signal is about a half hour walk from camp. I anticipate once or twice every week or two. I'll do my best to keep in touch as frequently as possible over the next year (!!) that I'm in the rainforest! 

My house in the research station

The kitchen at the research station, with food, coolers, and dishes

The cooking setup. In the evenings, a group of monkeys hangs out in the trees behind the kitchen and watches me cook.

A tailless whip scorpion who lived in my house (they're not dangerous, just impressive looking)

Four of the employees of the Tai Monkey Project and me!

A Diana monkey - the guys I'll be studying!

Beginning Again

It's time for a re-dedication of The Great Blue Erin. I've made it through my first three years of graduate school: coursework, gross anatomy, conferences, three months in the field, five semesters of teaching. I've submitted a lot of unsuccessful grant applications, and a few successful ones. I took my candidacy exams, I defended my dissertation proposal, and now - here I am! It's May 7, and I leave for a year of nothing but primates in 37 days. Of course, this is generally an occasion for celebration, but I thought I'd be leaving on my own with not even a satellite phone to connect me to the world outside of Tai National Park.

Fortunately (!!), it turns out this isn't the case! With the help of nearly-ubiquitous mobile coverage across sub-Saharan Africa, I will apparently be able to access the internet just a short half-hour walk from camp! Expect occasional dispatches from the middle of the rain forest of southwestern Cote d'Ivoire ...