A Day in the Work Life

Sorry about the absence, I kind of knew this would happen! Some general updates: Everything here is going swell, I'm making a lot of progress on the elephant database. I've added Birougou, Malolou, Lopé, Minkébé, Waka, Boumé and a few others to the growing list of individuals. One of my favorites is Iguela, because she has the longest tusks I've ever seen on an elephant (not that I've seen very many tusks in my life aside from the past month) and she always travels with Yenzi, who is missing her left tusk. Yenzi has three little babies and I think Iguela has two, and they're always the easiest to spot on the camera traps because they have such distinguishing features. There's also Vembo, who is a big old male elephant who is all saggy. He is around a lot and has big thick tusks and little tear in his right ear. Definitely my favorite to see on the camera traps are the baby elephants, like a year old or less. They're usually really close to the mother so they can be hard to see BUT OH MY GAWD when you do see them, they are to die for. But I digress. Right now I'm gathering images from the camera traps to put up on the Smithsonian WILD website, so that we can get a little out there about ourselves as a program and about African forest elephants. Here are some images from the camera traps:

This is Iguela, taken last fall. We have thousands of un-entered photos like these that I'm going back to and entering into the database on top of the photos that I get weekly from the camera traps. © Smithsonian.

Iguela and one of her youngest. This is usually the quality of photo at night, sometimes better or worse.                          © Smithsonian.

A couple of baby elephants. The one in the front is scratching it's foot or something on the metal post. Their mother is nearby but out of the frame. It's fairly abnormal to get this many photos during the day because they have been driven to a nocturnal lifestyle by poaching. Mireille (the elephant specialist) says that it's because it's the dry season and food is scares © Smithsonian.

This is Yenzi (notice the missing left tusk) and her three babies, in order from youngest to oldest. Yenzi is about 25-30 years old. © Smithsonian.

This is Vembo, he's about 45 years old. The red and white fence to the left is there because this is actually a bike trail, and that was built to try to keep elephants out. It definitely has absolutely failed, and the elephants still squeeze through. You can see the spot where their sides have polished off the paint on the post to the right. The pipes on the foreground are for oil. The elephants step on them all the time to get across. © Smithsonian.

Sometimes we catch other animals on the camera traps as well. So far we've gotten hippos, civets, sitatungas and an owl. This is a female sitatunga. They're fairly common. The males have magnificent horns that twist upwards and look ridiculously regal. © Smithsonian.

I'm still working on the bios of different people who work here, and I'm also working on cleaning up/organizing the lab. It's sort of an awkward space, and it has to function for our daily office space, eating area, storage, guided tours and practical lab use. It's difficult because I've been here such a short time so I don't really know what we have to keep and what we can get rid of so there is usually a big sheaf of extraneous papers or folders that I'm always asking people about.

More recent news, Axel the intern has returned from his vacation and so he's working here as well which is nice because he's closer to my age and very exuberant, especially on the subject of frogs. Right now he's waiting for his government position since he's done with school at l'Ecole des Eaux et des Fôrets. There are three different types of colleges here. Institutions, which are private, specific and expensive, universities, which are more general, and schools, which have specialities and the government pays for in full but you then have to work in Gabon for ten years with the government after you graduate, unless you go back to school for a PhD or something.

August is coming up and that means that a lot of people are going to be going on break. Independence Day here is August 17 and there is a five day weekend or something like that because there is another holiday on the 15th, so Lisa told me that I should plan to do something fun for it because otherwise I'll probably be pretty bored with little to do. Lisa, Gigi, Perez and Clayth are all leaving within the next few weeks, which is a big bummer. Thom is coming back soon though and maybe new people will move in at the dorms.

On Monday at 11:00 AM Lisa got a call from someone that the Ministre de l'Economie et de l'Emploi et du Développement Durable du Gabon (PHEW long title) felt like swinging by the Smithsonian lab for a tour at 12:00 since he was in the area visiting. And we were like oh wow! That's pretty cool that the Minister of Economy and Labor wants to come see what we're doing. So we busily try to spruce up the lab a little and are expecting probably like five or eight people and then they get here and it's like:

From the left: Landry, Madame Marie-Evelyne Petrus-Barry, the Représentant du Système des Nations-Unies (United Nations) au Gabon, the Ministre Désire Guedon, the head of Shell Gabon (PDG) Godson Njoku, and Axel is the one in the white and black sweater. Landry is showing off our bird specimen collection.

30 people or something like that. Usually our tours are about five people, so having 30 people was pretty overwhelming and I'm just standing there in my Keens and jeans shaking hands with these fancy suits and shiny shoes. It is pretty exciting, though, that he wanted to come by and see what we're doing since the interest level in biodiversity research here varies greatly depending on a person's priorities.

Landry showing the Minister a small sample of our insect collection.

Also, apologies for the lousy photo quality. If I would have known that a Minister and his crew were coming I would have brought the nicer camera.

Then there was this little guy, just chilling outside while all the hubbub went on inside the lab. Actually "little" is totally false, he was probably about as long as an iPhone and about as thick as an average-sized carrot.

The sun set last night was brilliant, but as it is the dry season right now there is often a thick cloud cover, which made it look like a big fiery ball.

Taken in the backyard at the dorm. The big tree on the left is a mango tree in bloom. No fruit til September.

And this is Beka, the main chef at the dorms. I think his eye sight isn't so good because he looks really serious and worried until I get to be a few yards away and then he always breaks into this big grin. At dinner they always serve you buffet style, so you have to tell them what you want. Beka always thinks it's hilarious when I pronounce the different words like le riz and le poulet and le pâte. He also gives out huge portions and so I always tell him "un peu" to which he giggles and scrunches up his face and says "oooh petite petite." He always chops up the chicken and beef for dinner outside and throws the scraps to the chickens in the backyard which makes me feel weird but they don't seem to mind it.

Beka striking a pose. The dorms are serviced by Sodexo, Gabonese style.

When I first got here and I was the only girl, Gigi started joking that I am the princesse du foyer stagiaire and that name kind of stuck because compared to everyone else here I need help a lot. Luckily everyone au foyer is super nice and willing to deal with my French incompetence, and always making sure that I'm doing well. I'll be putting up more photos of people in my daily life, stay tuned!