Pics from the best team ever:)

me, Yunin, Jen:



me, Jen, Katie (I gess in may):

Yunin, me, Jen, Katie:

Agnes with gorillababy:

Henriette`s b.day party:

Andre, Severin, Henriette, Julien:

Andre, Severin, Henriette:
Tim, Cressence, Akono, Julien:

Dark side of the moon

"Never doubt that a single comitted group of chimps can escape from the nursery, indeed that is the only group that can so quickly disrupt the entire camp."
Na vajon miert ez a mai motto? Nem, nem azert, mert az ovisoknak sikerult megszokniuk -bar ketseg kivul ez az eset ihlette a WCnk falat diszito uzenet irojat, termeszetesen Margaret Mead utan, akinek " Never doubt that a single group of comitted individuals can change the world, indeed that is the only thing that ever has" mondata szinten ott virit. De egyeb mas okossagok, szalloigek is szorakoztatjak a magan konnyiteni vagyo onkentest, itt Sanaga-Yongban, tobbek kozott a kovetkezo, igen talalo megjegyzes: "If you think you are to small to be efficient, you have never been in a same room with a mosquito".
Szoval igen, a mai resz tartalmabol: WCk, bogarak, patkanyok, kakigyujtes - tehat a dzsungeli taborozas sotet oldala. Gondoltam elore kozlom, csakhogy Jobby idoben kiszallhass... Merth gond a 12a tobbi resze boldogan veti bele magat az olvasmanyba, mit nem adnatok ezert a fekalia es csulagazdag kornyezetert. Bela feltamadt. En szemely szerint egesz heten alig varom, hogy legyen mar COTCO nap, es a gazdag amerikai tarsasag sterilszagu angolwcjen ulhessek.
Tehat itt S-Yban egy bolgar-gorog style pottyantos wcnk van felig az erdobe rejtve, hogy mindenki aggodalom nelkul elengedhesse magat, es lazitson ha ezt a helyet kell meglatogatnia. Allitom, hogy ez lenne a vilag leghigenikusabb wcje, ha lenne elvezeto csatorna. De nincs, es ezert legyek es mas ganejturo bogarak raqja fogad minket minden alkalommal. A rovarok elkerulesenek egyetlen modja, hogy az ember kora reggel vagy sotetedes utan megy wcre (semmikepp sem a deli hosegben), vagy pedig tagra nyitja az ajtot es a wcben talalhato legyezovel kihesegeti a kellemetlen tarsasag egy reszet. Legalabb ennyi luxus jar a dzsungellakonak, hogy wczes kozben is legyezheti magat. Azt hiszem a szunyogok es verszivo rovarok utan a wclako bogarak a legrosszabbak, es hiaba a kedves gekkopajtasok az epuletek falan, sajnos nem eleg hatekonyak, hogy az egesz zavaro bagazstol megszabaduljunk.
A ketrecek kornyeken az edes gyumolcslevek szaga raadasul rengeteg mehet es darazsat csalogat oda, igy eteteskor nagyon oda kell figyelni mibe nyul bele az ember, de meg igy is lehetetlen elkerulni a heti egyszeri csipest. Egy Fatal Funnel nevezetu csodaszerrel harcolunk ellenuk, de nem tul hatekonyan...
A csotanyok azok, akikkel ezek utan bekes szimbiozisban tudunk elni. Ok nem bantanak minket, mi nem bantjuk oket. Csak kerjuk szepen ne masszanak ki minden kajabol. De mivel eleg szep mereteket oltenek itt altalaban (olyan 6-7cm), ezert eleg ugyesen lehet ellenuk vedekezni, azaz minden szepen femdobozba kell csomagolni.
En nekem hasonlo a teaoriam a patkanyokatt illetoen is, de az onkentesek nagy resze hatarozottan meg akar szabadulni toluk, foleg az ovodaban levo populaciotol, akiknek jeszakai csetepateja konnyeden elhesegeti az almot a szemunkrol, amikor az ovodaban kell aludnunk. Raadasul Jennek ugy tunik, hogy patkanyfobiaja van, ugyhogy o elegge erosen eliminacio parti. Eleinte humanus modszerrel, azaz elo csapdaval probalkoztunk, az elkapott egyedeket pedig a folyon tulra deportaltuk, de mivel csak egy mukodo csapdank van, eszert a modszer elegge lassunak bizonyult es a patik gyorsan kitanultak. Most tehat a tarsasag egy resze valamifele mergen gondolkozik, ami szerintem nemhogy teljesen ellentetben all a tabor (allatmento kozpont!) szellemisegevel, de meg raadasul veszelyes is lehet a csimpikre, kutyakra es macskakra nezve. nem mondom, hogy kellemes elmeny, ha az ember feje folott folyton 4-5 patjkany rohangtal, harcol, es a szunyoghalo teteje pedig folyton televan apro fekete ajandekcsomagokkal, de szerintem ez nem oszt es szoroz ha azt nezzuk, hogy igyis-ugyis budos van, mert a 8 bebivel alszunk egy legterben, akik termeszetesen ott vegzik a dolgukat ahol a szukseg eri oket, es az ejszaka folyaman pedig folyton durrantgatnak.
Mellesleg aki csimpanzokra adja a felyet jobb ha megbekel az urulek allando jelenletevel. Egy ovaral beszerzese a legelso kell hogy legyen, foleg ha kozvetlen kapcsolatot akarunk a majmokkal. Persze ketrecen keresztul is ki vagyunk teve minden kockazatnak, es nemritkan erhet minket meglepetes: fuvel alcazott jo nagy adag szar, fokent ha a Futur, Moon vagy Bumba kozelebe mereszkedunk, akik meltan harcoltak ki maguknak a "les lanceurs de kaka" cimet. Hasonloan veszleyes a bebikkel valo turazas, ilyenkor sokszor 12szaros mancs kapaszkodik beled, csung a ruhadon, hogy el ne hagyd, es te nem razhatod le oketm, mig meg nem erkeztek a kiszemelt fahoz, ahol ok akaratlanul is szepen megmosakodnak a falavelekben. De persze nincs vege a dalnak, mertha nem talalunk jol vededd helyet ahova leulhetunk, hirtelen azon kapjuk magunkat, hogy pisizuhatag erkezik a nyakunkba...
Es hat a katrectisztitas is igazi elmeny, foleg ha a nagy ketreceket tisztitjuk, ahol egy nagy legterben 25 csimpi el, na igen, annak szep szaga van. Aki pedig engem jol ismer annak mondanom sem kell, hogy ki volt az aki egy ilyen alkalommal belejtette a walkie-talkijat a kb 5 m mely godorbe ahova a hasznalt forgacs-kaka-pisi-kajamaradekot szorjuk. Es kinek kellett ket oran keresztul turnia benne egy gereblyevel, mire sikerult elohalasznia a sokt rothado maradek kozul a radiot? Igen es a legjobb az egeszben az volt, hogy allando a parazs a godorben, mivel a maradekot elegetjuk, hogy ne foglaljon tul nagy helyet, es en szep nagy holyagot egettem a talpamra, hogy egy hetig santitottam, es mindenki rajtam nevetett.
Mindezek utan egesz egyszeru feladatnak tunt, amikor ket kutato erkezett apasteur intezetbol, es arra kert minket, hogy gyujtsunk ossze legalabb 40ml urulekmintat 25 csimpitol, ami alapjan ok meg tudjak allapitani az egyedek alfajat. Ennek ellenere ket napunk folyamatos strazsalasbol allt (poopwatching days), melyik majom mikor hova kakil, de mintha a mi bosszusagunkra, sosem uritettek eleget. Azert remelem nem vesz karba a munkank, mert az alfaj kulonosen fontos a szabadoneresztes szempontjabol, ugyanis egy kameruni szabaly szerint csakis azonos alafajbol allo egyedek alkothatnak csoportot a visszavaditaskor. De erre meg jocskan varunk kell, mert nem konnyu kamerunban olyan helyet talalni, ahol nincsenek vad csimpanzok, akik megtamadhatnak a mi majmainkat. De meg nehezebbolyan helyet talalni, ahol vadorzok sincsenek....

News from the front

When I am thinking of what to write about, it is not so easy to pick up on a topic. Most of the time our life is a routine, and each day has a well written protocol that we have to follow:

• Monday: town trip
• Tuesday: fruit run
• Wensday: laundry day, going out with Zach`s group
• Thursday: town trip
• Friday: fruit run, going out with Baati`s group
• Saturday: theoretically nothing!
• Sunday: laundry day, sterilizing day

And then the duties, which are the same every day:

• night feeding
• early duties
• big cages morning
• big cages evening
• camp morning
• camp evening

And then the schedule, you have to follow: 5:30 prepare the bottles for the carantine babies, 6:00 give the milk to the new baby, 6:10 give the bottles for the nursery babies, 6:15 cut the fruits, 6:30 check the solar panel, etc, etc never ending story...

But then yeah, there is always sg unexpected that turns up, like Tic`s face at the morning feeding with a part of your mosquito nethanging from his ears and the other part in his hands, trying to hide it from you so that you won`t take away his tresure. And the best are the big question marks that never leave his eyes. You just adjust them to the current situation: "Is there anything wrong?", "Where is my milk?"Why did you close the door before I could get out?" So yes, the nursery babies decided to have weekly parties in our nursery bedroom barking into it and taking whatever they can find: coversheets, matrice, mosquito net. This starts to be annoying as these all are unexpected expenses. And Yunin and Jen are however rather unhappy with the idea of sleeping with the rats and snakes so they are lobbying to erease this duty from the list:) But for the moment to they misfortune they have to bear it even more often as Katie has left, and it made the rotation faster than it was before.

Before she has left, she had a goodbye party in Bikol 1, the closest village to the project. It was quite exciting to see all these people we work with in different context, having fun and just relaxing. They all gathered under the hangar of the chief of the village, drunk and danced to cameroonian music. As the cameroonian pop music is not so elaborated and diversified (which pop music is?) the only way you can dance to it is to shake your as along with your partner. The villegers are very proud of thier way of dancing and they keep asking whether people in Europe dance the same way or whether we can do like that. The thing what I liked about this party is that everybody was there: babies, children, young and elderly, which is none of big thing as the party was held in the middle of the village, under the blue sky, so nobody could sleep anyway. I filmed a lot the children. I loved the way they danced, much more than the adults. Maybe because when I arrived they were all drunk from the one bottle of beer that everyone could have and the enormous amount of palm wine (matango) that was already gone when I asked for it. I didn`t really mind, as it`s not my favourite taste. The oonly good thing about it is that it can be completely free if you find the right palm. The life of the cameroonians is very comfortable if you take into cnsideration that all the best food (fruits, vegetables and even alcohol) grows right next to them, it is around them everywhere. The palm wine, according to its name can be obtained from the palm tree by cutting it at the top and collecting the white fluid that pours out from it. If you have a chance you can obtain as much as 10 l of pure alcohol by a simple machete cut. The only problem ( is it a real problem?) is that you have to drink it within a day otherwise it goes wrong. Maybe that is why they dring so much here. You can`t really predict the taste of the wine, as the consistency depends on the tree itself, so it`s always a mistery what will you drink. Before it`s gone you can make quimbey from it, which is a kind of a whiskey, and I am not very keen on it. At Katie`s party all the quimbey I got I distributed between all the drunk people who were very happy to being offered a drink. As everybody got quickly into a good mood, despite I kept telling them we should go home because we would have to work the day after, I had to go back to the project alone through the forest. (Almost alone as Charlie come with me as long as finally he realised that there is no way I am going to become his girlfriend.) So first I thaught it would be sacaring to walk through the forest in the middle of the african night, but as there are no artificial lights around the area the moon and the stars enlightened the road enough so that most of the time I even didn`t have to use my headtorche.

So the social life is much better here, then I felt it was at the begining. Since Katie has left we play cards almost every evening, and when we do that we need somesnack, of caurse, thus there is a kind of competition who can prepare the best candies for the game. For the moment I think Yunin is the winner with her potato chips (can not compare with lays or chio or anything else), sweetened peanuts or ballos of coconut and sweetened milk. The second is Jen with her (apparently tipical american) fog, which can perfectly replace nutella, and Agnes, with her (apparently tipical french) sweet crepes. As for me I am only profiting from this competition, I can not prepare anything special. (But pls, if you have any recipie of cookies that don`t require baking, send it to me, so that I can also take part in the competition... we cannot bake here as the only oven we have is a mud one built by volunteers years ago and we don`t know how to use it)

Agnes is also more and more open, and we spend some nights together chatting about past and the chimps. I really admire her for the way she can handle and manage everything here, especially after hearing the stories she can tell us. Like i.e. there were quite a few robberies in the camp that she knows were done by some of the employees (the person who has been sent into prison had named them as complices) , but some of them have such unusual skills as darting an adult chimp, so Agnes can`t get rid of them, and she take the risk of keeping them, rather than having nobody to help in case a chimp escapes. The only thing we can do, as she says, is to reduce the temptation. And that is why we, the volunteers are here, to check if the amount of the rice for the employees` lunch is the same that was decided by Sheri, if all the screwdrivers, machettes, hammers, saws etc. go back to their places in the evening, when employees finish workinig with them, and if they use as much of kerosine and gas as it is needid for the generator or chainsaw. And so the employees hate that, and i.e. a few days ago they went on a strike, arriving 30 minutes late, so we had to feed all the chimps by our own, being four for the work that needs at least 9 persons. And they didn`t say a word why they did that, like 3 yrs old children who don`t want top explain why are they upset. later during the day they told Raymond, the chief of the personel that they problem was that we changet the monday menu from pistache sauce (which is a quite expensive dish) to makabo ( which is a common dish here). Agnes is afraid it might be about sg else, and she got scared Jen to death talkink about the possibility of an armed robbery. We had some "visitors" coming from Douala, and Agnes said they might came to inspect the area.

As for me I am much more concerned about the ant army, that visited us the other day. There are hundreds and hundreds of them, they can cover everything in a few minutes, and they can eat you alive. The only way to csare them away is to pour kerosene in their way. So we make cicles around the cages and our cabines. And that is why the new baby always has to sleep with one of us, because she can not escaope in case of ant attack. Anyway the new baby has changed a lot since she has been here. She is still unconfident comparing to other chimps in her age, but she already allows us to hold her, and even she screams sometimes when we leave her. I think I spend a lot of time with her and we strated to have a kind of boundary, so she started to come and sit on my knees, to groom me (it hurts!), and she discovers the world holding me. We started to integrate her with Baati`s group, but it turbned out that only Sambe is willing to play with her, which was a weard kind of game pulling her by her leg as Christopher Robin did it with Winnie:) The new baby was nonethless very happy to have a new friend.

Coffe is doing well with Ballas1s grp, she asks Ballas for reconciliation, which he gives her through the bars. Finally we got her second chamber ready, so she could move there and we could clean her cage, after a month. We had some problems doing that before, tehre was always something more precious things to do, like repairing Kiki`s and Ballas`s enclosure because there was a huge tree that fell over the fences.

Fortunately it didn`t happen to Jacky`s grp, I can`t really imagine 25 chimps kept for days in cages, it is a disaster. And they will be 26 soon as Mado`s belly grows fast, Agnes thinks she will give bitrth in July ( hehe, she hopes so, as she is leaving in August to France and she doesn`t want to miss it). I can`t wait to see the baby and the way Mado takes care of it, especially cause this kind of social behaviour is learned by young females by observing their mothers and other elder females, and Mado didn`t have this chance in her life. Hopefyully everything will go well.

Meanwhile we got news about 5 more chimps being kept in Bertoua. As far as we3 know one is a baby, so Agnes hopes she will be our new baby`s age so that they could form a group. As for the 4 older ones we have to find a place for them somewhere else, because there is no more room here at SYCRC.