CCPL3, Pythons, Mots mêlés, etc.

8/25/13

I absolutely can’t believe that I’m going back to the States in just 21 days. I guess that’s still a while, that’s longer than the amount of time I was in Germany/Czech Republic for, but it sounds so short because it doesn’t feel as if I’m just visiting here anymore.

This weekend has been as slow as the others with the exception of Saturday (explained below). Mostly hung around my room and Pamela, Marlene and I went to go play pool at CCPL3, the community center in Gamba. We saw Freddy there as well. I was really bad at pool, just like the last time I played. It was funny because since there’s only one pool table and its free, there was a bunch of random people standing around giving advice to whoever was playing.

Yesterday the little kids in the yard behind my room kicked the ball over the fence two times when I was outside and so I gave it back to them. I started suspecting foul play, but either way it was cute and they were really proud to show me that they could speak a little English. Other than that, did some laundry, cleaned my room and pulsed around a bit in my jellyfish ways.

This last Saturday was the CCPL3 visit to the lab, which actually went a lot better than I thought it would. Tobi told me last minute that I could do it in English and he would translate for me, so that made me feel better. And it was also less “stand up in front of everybody and lecture at them” and more “hey look at this cool thing, lets talk about it and why it’s important” and making the discussion applicable.

Tobi showing a small portion of our insect collection to the students.

We gave the 60 some kids a tour of the lab, and then Axel showed them the microscopes and how to use them. After that we walked out to the savanna and forest to look at different things. Along the way one of the little girls, probably 8 or so, decided that she really liked me a lot and started holding my hand, which also made me feel better about the whole thing. Now that I think about it, it’s funny how much I am not around children. Other than when Willie and I were little, and that one time I held one of my cousins’ babies, I’ve never really been around kids. So it was a new experience to hang out with her and her little kid friends and help them over the big logs and mucky spots. She had these gold sparkle flats that were pretty neat so I made sure she didn’t get them too muddy. I never found out her name, but everyone just called her ma petite copine (basically that means “my great friend” or “my best friend”). I’m still not sure who her parents were, but she skipped out on taking the first bus back to hang out with me more. She was also fascinated by my dad’s camera so I showed her how to use it and let her take photos of people. Here she is:

She had a pretty serious face on most the time.

Anyways then I showed them all a bunch of elephant poop, told them how important poop is to science and to seed dispersal and pointed out how you could see the Saccoglottis gabonensis seeds inside of it and how the Saccoglottis only germinates if it has passed through an elephant first which still blows my mind.

Here are a few more photos from that:

A bunch of boys wanting to get a picture with the white American girl. Obviously caught the kid in the front at a bad moment. This photo was taken by ma petite copine.

 

The whole group. Try to find me!

Also today I decided (with my Mom’s encouragement) to go get another shirt made. One of the other girls at the dorms has a shirt that’s a neat style, sort of like a tunic, but the shop was closed so I’m going to go tomorrow. I’m excited because the fabric here is so so pretty and I’m rationalizing it by saying that you can only get a tailor made shirt with awesome fabric for $20 ever so often.

Oh yeah, and on Friday I touched a python that was on the loose at Vembo. These French guys showed up and put it in a bag to let it loose some place else. It was an interesting interaction, because there is so much mortal fear of snakes here. But pythons are protected and after one of the security guards was talking about eating it, Axel mentioned that that’s the same criminal activity as if you ate an elephant. That’s been one of the hardest things to explain to people that I talk to here, why eating bush meat is destructive to ecosystems, especially when it’s an unsavory creature like a python.

Anyways, everyone was like “this is the smallest python I’ve ever seen!” and I was like “this is the only python I’ve ever seen!” And I must say, I had to quell some serious primal instincts to run the opposite direction when they told me that I could touch it. But, in accordance with my “yes” policy, I did anyways and I’m glad that I did because it felt so neat. I don’t know if I’ve explained my “yes” policy, but it’s pretty straightforward. It’s to say “yes” to as much as I can within reason, excluding drugs, sex, or alcohol. I guess I’ve kind of broken the alcohol rule a few times though because I’ve tried local-made whiskey and palm wine, which wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. But at the end of my stay here I’m going to post a list of all of the different things I did simply because I said “yes” when somebody asked me. So now I can add “touching a python!”

Tobi is coming back to work this week (yay!), and I’m going to be interviewing some farmers on their conflicts with elephants, work on the elephant database, and maybe tomorrow go out with Tobi to Ivinga and investigate an elephant skull to see it died of natural causes or not. I have no idea how he will discern that, but it should be interesting. Needless to say, my life is full of elephants these days. Who would have thought?

Mots Mêlés for days.

Also Clayth gets back the 31^st, and then Lisa gets back the 3^rd of September. And then I leave two weeks later! Ahh! Last thing: I’ve been really into Mots Mêlés lately. I honestly can’t remember the English term right now. It’s not a crossword, it’s where you find the words in a bunch of jumbled letters. Word search? Word puzzle? Something like that, you get the idea. Oh, and I watched Les AristoChats (The Aristocats) and it was sort of better in French, except Eva Gabor’s voice is a better Dutchess, and I wanted the songs to be in English so I could sing along. Oh well.