"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.