Pictures

Thanks for the interesting discussion about overpopulation in response to my last blog post- and I hear your requests for more photos. I’m still trying to get a picture of one of the local fish or of the swampy bog that they inhabit in Magombera for my old fishing buddies. I haven’t done any fishing here and probably won’t, but I am sure that you could catch some crazy stuff in the Ruaha river if the crocodiles didn’t get you first. Here’s a photo for my brother Mike and the rest of the Mock family. This is Aloyce and I putting a numbered tag on one of the trees which is used by Ruth’s red colobus group. Aloyce smiles all day long until you get out the camera.



Ruth must number and identify all of the trees used by each of the groups she studies. We’ve marked about 250 trees in the last two forest days, both with a metal tag number and on the handheld GPS unit. Eventually, Ruth will have tree maps of the red colobus group range from which she can draw conclusions about their tree preferences. Sometimes the monkeys lead us on high speed chases through the forest. They’re up in the canopy and we’re hacking our way through the kamba vines and marking the trees as they go. I was going to be the tag nailer, but Aloyse commandeered the hammer on the first day, in the same way that he grabbed Ruth’s backpack and slung it over his shoulder which left no room for debate. He’s a super hard worker. So instead I try to watch the monkeys to mark which trees they are on. Ruth is operating the GPS and writing notes in her book and when we’re being led on a fast move, we can barely keep up. Other times, when the monkeys sleep or stay in a single tree and eat, Ruth watches them with her binoculars and we take it easy. Some of the trees on the edge of the forest and also at the research center are filled with snug looking little bird’s nests inhabited by these weavers.



We bought 4 soccer balls in Dar es Salaam to give away to the local kids. That was a great idea, unfortunately though they were such cheap soccer balls that one exploded when we tried to pump it up! The rest aren’t likely to last long so we have asked Ruth’s aunt to bring a couple of nicer soccer balls, when she comes to visit, that we can give to the adult soccer teams of the Magombera village and the Mang-ula village. We think Aloyce plays for Magombera and that their rival team is Mang-ula but we’re not sure since some of our understanding is missing from translation. However, I am certain that they cannot seem to muster a proper ball- although re-use of plastic bags gets a big !thumbs up! from the zombie slayer.



It’s true that I am technically on vacation, and this is Ruth’s research project so I basically just tag along, read, practice Sawahili with Aloyce and do all of the 4wd driving! Woohoo! This is a slo-travel trip meant to give me plenty of time to consider our surroundings. While we’re here I am also a walking, sweating bag of hot blood - a meal ticket for every creepy crawly, mozzy, spider, fly and no-seeum out there and a decoy to lure the bugs away from Ruth. Today is a bad day for me in terms of the % of skin covered by itchy red welts. Not sure what, but some tiny bug – maybe a spider or maybe something more numerous and sinister- has been penetrating the defenses and getting under my shirt and having its way for the whole time we’re out in the forest. I have been coming back covered in welts. Crap balls. Today I washed my clothes and rinsed them with tea tree oil in the water. Maybe this will help?

I far prefer the big bugs* - bugs that you feel the weight of when they crawl up or fly on you. You can hear them coming, you can swat them off, usually no harm done. I guess that’s why bug of the day is always huge! This one looked almost exactly like a goby fish that I kept in my saltwater tank in San Diego and I was half expecting to see it swim away.

*- except cave crickets