Au Revoir

So Thom left Sunday, Lena left Monday, and Perez left this morning. Tonight will be the first time all by lonesome, so I’m probably going to take a walk depending on what time I get home, eat, watch one of my last movies (Fantastic Mr. Fox, Amelie, Monsters Inc., or the Aristocats) and then go to sleep.

Just a few things I’ll miss about the people who’ve left:

Perez knocking on the wall between our rooms before sleep to say goodnight.

Staying at the Zoo until 4 AM.

Lena and I eating gateaux and la lait caillé and then watching TV together.

Driving around with Thom.

French lessons after work with Gigi.

Being the loudest table during dinnertime.

Here are a few photos from the long weekend. As expected, I didn’t do too much. Did a little bit of work on biographies and research for a field trip that the Smithsonian will be doing this Saturday with a bunch of kids and adults from Gamba. We’ll be showing them savanna, forest, and ocean ecosystems. I have absolutely no idea how I’m going to do it because it will be 100% French. I am praying that Tobi won’t have me present anything, and that I’ll just be able to hang out in the background and take photos and look at how cute the kids are.

Lena wanted to take a picture of me with my big beer.

Thom finished the new database on Sunday, which is so amazing of him especially in such a short amount of time (thank you thank you thank you Thom!). He explained to me that working with somebody else’s database is ten times harder than creating your own, which makes sense. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to work with it yet because the hard drive is loaded with viruses and the anti-virus software on the computer isn’t working. See Thom, you left us for one day and we’re helpless.

Thom and Liz and I watched Blood Diamond over the weekend, which is a very intense movie if you’ve never seen it before. Recommended! It was also very strange for me since I am also a young white, female American journalist (student) in a West African country. Obviously huge differences, but a lot of fundamental similarities and frustrations. Like I told Ben already, the biggest difference between the bloody history of Sierra Leone and the relatively peaceful past of Gabon is that millions of years ago, the Earth began creating diamonds instead of oil.

Lena!

Sunday was lazy and mostly a packing day for Lena and Perez. In the afternoon Lena, Perez, Freddy and I went to the beach bar again for a little bit, which was nice.

Lately we’ve been having problems with the camera traps because the batteries are so low that the infrared flash isn’t working anymore on them. What’s that you say? Go buy new ones? Splendid idea! I’ll just take a brisk walk down to the local Wal-Mart and buy 60 D batteries, no problem. No just kidding there is no Wal-Mart here and 60 D batteries would be ridiculously expensive. Not sure what we’re going to do yet, but in the mean time most of the camera traps aren’t getting any images during the night. It continuously strikes me how some of the simplest issues in the US are so difficult here, like logistics behind getting small things or technological problems. In the long run it’s a good wake up call to how parts of the rest of the world function. In the short run it just makes me want to pull my teeth out.

Freddy on the left, Perez on the right.