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9/15/13

Last day in Gamba!

Friday was when the colleagues and I went to Mississippi, a local restaurant in Gamba, for dinner. It was a very sweet affair: Tobi, Franck, Axel, Lisa, David, and  Clayth were all there. We were missing Michel, Gabriel, Landry and Mireille, because they’re currently on vacation. There were also a few people who’d I’d just met like Gauthier, who has done a lot for the Smithsonian studies in Rabi but has been on break since I got here, and Matt Shirley the crocodile researcher who works primarily in Loango National Park trying to get ecotourism started up.

The food was really wonderful, especially the fish brochettes and fried plantains. At the end we all said a few things, which was really touching. I’d never really had a “going away” dinner before, and this was a wonderful first. Tobi told a story of when we were driving past a car full of boys and I took photos of them because it was ridiculous how many of them were packed in there. Usually, he said, they would be mad at anybody taking photos of them because they could potentially get in trouble. Instead they were super stoked and yelled “Je t’aime! Je t’aime!” He said that that’s how all of Gabon felt about me too, and that it can be my second home if I want it to be.

View from Plaine Verra

They gave me a few things to take back with me: traditional fabric, a traditional woven basket, and four woven mats. Tobi, who is one of the best storytellers I’ve ever met, explained the history and significance of them. They’re all things that people give at weddings actually, and the basket is given as a sort of dowry/gift. Women around here use them for carrying things with them by fitting the strap around their forehead and letting it hang down their back, often filling it with produce off of plantations. The mats were traditionally used in a lot of different ways, one of them being that when a person died, a person would put out mats on the beach to mourn and family, friends etc. could come mourn with them on the mat. Also something about the king walking only on mats because he wasn’t supposed to touch the ground. It was all in French so apologies if I got any of it wrong. But I’m pretty sure that was most of it! So we joked that it was like my wedding dinner and I was getting married to Gabon.

Saturday I went in to finish up a few things at work. I offered to keep working on the elephant database for Lisa, because they still have a year of thousands of camera trap images from different sites that nobody has gone through yet. I figured that since I’ve already been working on it and can recognize as many elephants as I can, that it would be easiest for me to keep doing it because they’re only going to keep having more images especially with the new plantation photos and mango season coming up. So I’m going to see how many images there are total and set a certain amount that I want to go through each week. Even that plan is really up in the air though, because sometimes entire files have images that are unusable, and then there are other days where every image is good enough to look at, identify and enter. Here are a few from the most recent batch. The elephants in the Yenzi area have been coming out during the day a ton, so some of these daytime photos are from 10 AM and 5 PM, which from my experience here isn’t exactly usual.

Mbouda, a male at production fifty camera. © Smithsonian Institution.

Namba, a female at the production fifty camera. © Smithsonian Institution

Mouaga, a female with three offspring, at the production fifty camera. © Smithsonian Institution

Sidenote on the elephant images: the third photo, the front view of Mouaga is a good example of how difficult identification can be. She obviously has very unique tusks, and so when I saw her for the first time like this and had never seen an elephant like her, I named her Yeyena. But eventually I realized that she was the same elephant as Mouaga. The difference was that we had tons of images of Mouaga from the side, but none from the front. Usually when the walk past the cameras at different sites they walk through the same way each time. So at the Golf Entrance we generally get side views, the Production 50 camera gets a lot of images of them walking towards the camera, and so on. For example we didn’t know that one of the females, Sounga, who was first identified in 2012, had a giant notch on the top of her left ear until just a month or so ago. That’s why it’s important not to just add a new individual every time we see a specific characteristic that we’ve never seen before, otherwise we have an inaccurate identified population count. Often when I see the same characteristic on an elephant that I haven’t seen before, I wait until I see it three or so times, then I draw it out and look at the group it’s travelling with, and other clues. I guess that’s why I enjoy working on this project so much, you have to investigate and use three or four different tactics until you can figure out if you’ve seen it before, if it’s a new individual, or if you have enough information or not to enter it into the database as a new individual.

Speaking of all this database stuff, I’m going to really miss seeing elephants on the daily. I don’t know if I mentioned this but the other day at the lab an elephant came through at about 2:00 in the afternoon, and I knew which one it was which was pretty neat. Then on Thursday, the crocodile team and I saw a herd on the way to the lagoon, and on Friday Lisa, David and I saw one right by Vembo lab.

From left: Matt Shirley, Tobi Eli, Axel Litona.

Also on Saturday I went out with Tobi, Axel and Matt to look for crocodiles. It was the same drill as on Thursday, we checked the live traps we had set and added a few more in the water. On Thursday we had a little face-off with a hippo who was in the lagoon at the same time that we were trying to go in with out boat. Hippos can be incredibly dangerous if they feel threatened, so we waited about half an hour to let it move on before going in. Probably the first time that I’ve ever been creeped out by a hippo, since it was sitting in the water staring at us and our lights were making its eyes shine red.

We didn’t catch/tag crocodiles on either night, which was really unfortunate because I was really excited to see the process. We did see some, but they either weren’t the right age, size, or species that Matt was looking for. He was specifically looking for Nile crocodiles that were at least 2 meters. But I got to see how they set up floating traps and hanging traps, and we got lost in a flooded forest which was really beautiful and only a little discouraging.

Crocodile team in the new boat!

Sunday I had a goodbye breakfast with Hugo, and finished up packing my stuff with Clayth. Lisa and David dropped me at the airport, and what felt like just moments later I was picked up in Libreville be Gleen’s dad and brother. It was so sweet of Gleen’s family/friends to take care of me again, picking me up and letting me stay with them. I’m staying at Astrid’s just like when I first arrived, and tonight she made a ridiculously good dinner with fried chicken, prawns, green beans, fries, and rice. I don’t know what kind of sauce she put on the prawns but it was delectable. I also got to meet her boyfriend Alfred this time around, he’s a math teacher, and hang out more with her little kids Merika who I think is 8 or so, and was pretty quiet the first time I met her but after some hang-out French-speaking playtime she opened up. And then there’s also Jonathan who is just 13 months. He loves grabbing keys, cell phones, and remote controls. He’s also really affectionate, so I picked him up and let him drool on me a little.

Me and Merika. Photo taken by Alfred.

Jonathan and Merika.

Tomorrow I’ll be going out and seeing a little bit of Libreville and getting some gifts for people back home, since Gamba was pretty lacking in that category. Then I leave at 10:30 PM for Frankurt. Onward!

White-backed night heron that we found while out at the lagoon.

Bien-être

Latest shells collected from Point Dick with Clayth on Sunday.

My last week on the job! This week I’m wrapping things up with the database, turning in my different projects to Lisa, and saying my goodbyes. It’s such a bummer because the mangos in the backyard are just now starting to turn a yellowish orange. Just a few more weeks and they’d probably be ripe.

The other day Tobi was checking our insect collection for damage to the specimens.

There was an oil spill at the Shell Gabon terminal on August 29^th from an underwater pipeline that was transferring oil to a tanker offshore. It’s been deemed a “small” leak, and although exact numbers are difficult/impossible to tell, it was something between 6-18 barrels. Shell Gabon has been monitoring the oil from the air via planes and satellite images, and they have people on the ground going to the beaches to clean up. Evidently a type of barnacle growing on the pipe produced a natural acid that corroded the pipe leading from the terminal to the tanker caused the leak. In response, the terminal shut down and stopped producing for a time, which is impressive given that 60% of the oil exported from Gabon comes from the terminal here.

I had never seen oil on a beach before but on Monday Lisa, Axel, Gotye and I went to Point Petras because that was as far north as the Shell clean up crews went and we wanted to see what was there. Since the ocean current pushes everything north, all the attention was in this area. We didn’t see much, but there were small, pea-sized globules of oil that had washed up all along the shore. I had never really thought about what “cleaning up” an oil spill really means, but in this case it means people walking up and down the beach and then skimming sand with these oil globules, putting them in plastic garbage bags, and then hauling them out.

After rubbing one of the globules between my fingers. It doesn’t wash off unless you scrub against something abrasive like sand.

On Sunday September 8^th, Clayth and I went to the beach at Point Dick, right by the terminal. When I went into the water just up to my ankles, I came out with this waxy resin on the bottoms of my feet. It was bizarre because I couldn’t see anything in the water or on the sand, but it was most definitely from the leak; we could see the tanker from where we were sitting on the sand. I hadn’t heard about the leak until that day when Clayth told me at the beach. It made me curious about how many people in Gamba knew since urgent information like this isn’t dispersed by specific means like a daily newspaper, Twitter updates, morning news stations etc. There’s word of mouth and a local radio station, but I don’t know how far this news carried. In addition to the more general concern about wildlife being impacted by the leak, it is ill timed for the sea turtles who will be coming to lay their eggs soon on the beaches.

Waxy resin from the oil spill on the bottom of my feet from standing in the ocean for about a minute. It’s difficult to get off your skin once you’ve touched it; I still have dark brown on the bottoms of my feet even after scrubbing with a t-shirt.

Luckily Gamba has a whole host of local NGOs and concerned parties. Ibonga, who focuses on sea turtles, WWF, Agences Nationales des parcs nationaux, and le Ministére des eaux et fôrets

Apparently ANPN, Agences Nationales des parcs nationaux du Gabon found oil on beaches at Point Catherine which is at the northern most tip of Loango National Park and quite far from the terminal. It’s not clear at this point whether or not this oil is from the leak at the Shell Gabon terminal; oil is a big industry in Gabon and it is possible that it is from another source, so ANPN and Shell teams will be testing it to see if it did indeed come from the August 29^th leak.

Unrelated to the oil leak or anything, but on our way to work today we saw this crew of guys in the back of a truck. I counted 17 heads in first photo, but that doesn’t count the people on the other side and the drivers in the front. Luckily the driver was going pretty slowly, which means at least less than 60 k/h since we were able to pass them.

Other than that news, all is well! Actually, yesterday was a bummer because I got le chique again. I can’t believe it! If Lena, Gigi and Perez are reading this right now I’m sure they’re laughing. I explained le chique in a previous post, but it’s worth repeating. Les chiques are these little bugs that are tiny, you can’t even see them until they start feeding on you. Anyways they live in dirty sand (aka not sand at the beach) and hop onto your toes, then bury in and eventually start making babies. After the babies hatch they hop over to your other toes and the process starts over again You don’t feel it until a while has passed, I guess until they start getting bigger. It mostly just feels uncomfortable and for some people it itches really bad but it didn’t for me. The English translation is “chigger,” but we don’t have these in the US. The only way that you can get it out is to cut open your skin and pull it out. Similar to a tick, you really have to dig and twist it out. The first time it happened it had already laid an egg sac, and Clayth helped me pull it all out. This time I figured I could do it by myself but this one was a lot deeper and I ended up calling Clayth to help me. He even brought me cotton and cologne! The cologne is for sterilizing it, since all the alcohol here is just for drinking. No I’m just kidding, but it’s easier to find cologne. But the reason why I can’t believe my luck is because, for example, Clayth and Lena have lived in Gabon for almost their whole lives and have never had one. I live in Gabon for three months and get two, and one in my last week! But, like Lena pointed out last time, at least it hadn’t burrowed beneath my nail. That would have been ten times more painful.

Bien-être cologne for sterilization, cotton for the blood, and a big scary looking needle. All you need for a successful operation on le chique!

Also yesterday was Marlyene’s birthday (32!) and so Pamela, Liz, and Marlyene and I went out to the Yenzi Club for dinner. Tomorrow my friend Hugo and I are going to go to Le Perroquet because I’ve still never been there, only to Belair.

Sidenote: This last weekend we didn’t have any power in Gamba. I don’t know why, but it made for a quiet weekend!

But anyways this Friday I’m going to go out with my Smithsonian colleagues to Mississippi, a restaurant in town. Then I’m set to leave Gamba on Sunday and then I’ll be in Libreville for a night, leaving at around 22:30 on Monday. I’ll be staying with Arlene and Astrid again, so it’ll be tons of fun to end my trip with them. Hopefully now I can converse with them in French instead of making them speak English with me.

At Vembo lake. I believe that this is Merops pusillus, or the little bee-eater! 

"Are You Here?"

9/1/13

Each night when we eat dinner au foyer we generally watch the news. I must say that it has been a bizarre experience, to see my home country plastered over France 24 as much as it is. It has undoubtedly given me a new perspective on the United States’ position in the world, and I think it’s something that each person should experience if possible. Not only does it show you what foreign media think are the most important goings-on in the US, but also to see the reactions of those around you. For example during gay-rights coverage, people grumble a lot of the time or say “C’est fou.” During the coverage of the 50^th anniversary of MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech, there was an atmosphere of respect and reverence. The images of a possible US war with Syria seem surreal, like I’m watching the beginning of doomsday movie.

Last Monday Tobi and I visited an elephant skeleton just off of the road on the way to the beach to see if it had died of natural causes or if we could see any signs of unnatural death. Here you can see two bullet holes on the front of the skull. On the back were two exit wounds.

So I guess the countdown has begun, it’s officially September and that means I only have two weeks left of work. It seems strange that my time here is almost over; I guess it’s partially because I’ve never lived outside of the US before and so uprooting already seems premature. It’s going to be a bummer because I’m sure that my French will decrease dramatically as soon as I get back, but I’m going to do my best to at least keep my reading comprehension up, so that I don’t lose vocabulary. At some point I hope to live in a French-speaking country for at least a year so that I can solidify it in my mind. Three months is really just a taste anyways.

Caught Ferdinand taking a nap under the table.

For the next two weeks I’ll be wrapping up my work with the elephant database, teaching it to Axel and Lisa since it is a new version from what Thom and I did. Also writing up the database protocols, the biodiversity principles, and transcribing my interviews with the farmers. Lisa mentioned me giving a presentation of what I’ve done during my time here. I think it’ll be pretty casual, but sometimes I’m really bad at realizing all of the different things that I’ve done or the things that I know, and how neat they are. That’s what happened during the CCPL3 visit too. I couldn’t imagine what I would talk about and then when the day came I started to realize all of the different things that I knew and could explain to the students.

Guy-Roger, two little kittens and some sugar cane. This is at the same plantation that we visited a few weeks ago, when the kitten on the right followed us on our whole hike. They call the kitten “Mimi.”

I got my other shirt! It’s a different style from the other one, more “professional” you could say. I think I like the back the best, even though the red oval looks a little like the Eye of Sauron. The birds are a nice touch. I’m not imaginative to come up with my own style so I borrowed one of the shirts of the girls in the dorm to take to the tailor’s as an example. I wish I would have known about this tailor stuff before I left; I would have taken people’s measurements and brought everyone back one. I guess Gnamakou candy and Régab beer will have to do instead.

Front & back!

Sidenote: I was just looking at my passport and I noticed that one year ago today I was re-entering the US from my trip to Germany. Who knew that one year later I’d have been living in Gabon for two and half months?

Last night I had a conversation with Dmitri, one of the guys at the dorms here, about our families. Families here are huge; Dmitri has eight brothers and six sisters, though not all from the same Mom/Dad, and I have a pretty small family; just one brother and one Mom and one Dad. A lot of the time people here ask me if I ever get lonely, or what it’s like not to have any sisters. In addition, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of distinction between degrees of separation in families. So for example in the US when people have children with different people we usually label them as “step-child,” “step-son,” “step-sister,” etc. Here it’s just all daughter, son, sister, etc. Even for cousins, people call each other brother and sister and between close friends, “mon frère” and “mon gar,” short for “garçon,” are really common amongst guy friends. Older men sometimes call younger girls “mes filles” and I’ve had women call me “Maman,” and I don’t understand this one but sometimes people call girls “lago.” That’s phonetic spelling because I don’t know how it’s written.

The guardian at Mbassou, the village we go through to get to one of the plantations. That day they were cutting down trees to expand the plantation. Axel said “Les arbres pleurent.”

Speaking of language, when Axel, Franck, Guy-Roger and I were out on the plantations on Thursday we were taking a break for lunch near an off-road by a little stream. There was an old couple taking a break drinking some Orangina. We sat across the way from them. En fait I wanted to take their photo but I didn’t have the guts to ask. Anyways Axel told me in English that he didn’t understand why they were speaking in French. And I was like, huh? What else would they be speaking? He explained that Gabonese couples speak to each other in one of their ethnic tongues, like Fang or Myene. Traditionally they would marry within their ethnicity so they would have shared the same language anyways, but these days I guess they just choose one, whoever has the easiest time speaking the other’s language, I’m not sure. So that’s why it was strange that they were speaking in French together. When they were leaving Guy-Roger asked them what their ethnicities were, and the man was Fang and the woman was Vili. That seemed to explain it to them but I still didn’t understand why that would matter, but Axel said that it’s because those languages are so far apart, Fang in the North and Vili in the far South, so the languages were too different to understand.

This proud little guy (the rooster, not Axel) guards one of the plantations we go to. He’s always there and always alone, despite predators like pythons hanging around. He kept doing this funny thing with his left wing where he would extend it and then trail it in the sand while walking towards somebody, and then walk normally again. Nobody knows what it means. The plantation owner calls him “Le chef des chefs.”

Last word on language (I feel like there’s a literary joke in there somewhere) I talked to Axel about his ethnicity a while back and he is Adouma. Apparently there is a very small population of Adouma and they come from Lastourville, named after the first French person who showed up there. Previously it was “Madiville” which means “City of Oil” in Adouma. Anyways he taught me some Adouma, it has a ton of accents and apparently it’s very difficult for little kids to learn. Axel said that he’s afraid that the language is going to die out because even now not all of his siblings know how to speak it, and they are such a small population compared to languages/ethnicities like Fang. He said that since he’s the first son in his family he would always go with his dad everywhere and that’s how he learned Adouma so quickly.

English: Where are you going?

Adouma: Wè wouni?

English: Good night.

Adouma: Kela nabwédi.

English: Thank you!

Adouma: Li bwè lâwou!

And to say “good morning”: “wè massohâ,” literally translates to English as “did you wake up?” One morning Axel asked me this and I was still really sleepy so I was like “no, not yet” and he told me that there is no negative form of response to that in Adouma. You always say “yes, and you?” Same goes with good evening: “wè drénâ” which literally translates to “are you here?” Sidenote, it’s so cool to hear somebody speak his or her mother tongue. Hearing Axel speak Adouma sounds so much more natural somehow than him speaking French. When I was practicing with him he said I had a really good accent. I told him that it was much easier for me to pronounce then French.

People here really get a kick out of me speaking their ethnicities language. I only know little phrases, most often I use “thank you” and “I’ll see you tomorrow” either in Punu or Fang. Also mbolo, which is the universal Gabonese way to say hello.

Okay this was a massive blog post; I guess that’s me making up for my long absence. Internet access was especially bad this week, so sorry to any dropped communication! Monday will be filled with emails and messages.

Really beautiful flowers on the walk to the plantation. Still need to look up what they’re called.