Ngoi

After recieving mom's text message that mindfull observation is like meditation I decided that I will give it a try, after all what wrong could it bring if I become a buddha? I don't know if mother nature decided to reinforce me with that, or it's rather simply the fact that the weather is changing, that some fruits are riping, that there is more rain etc, but lately observation has become more and more entertaining. I got to see new things (ie. species) almost every day.  Most exciting of all was the leopard, probably because it comes very scarsely to the clearing, it is a very fearfull animal and hides all the time. We have seen its footprints for a while, and then one morning we arrive to the clearing and started the morning scan, so same old species, and then suddendly Michel, one of the ecomoniteurs says that there is an animal with a long tail. Since usually his observational skills are crap I gave no credit to what he's said, and thought that it was probably a branch or dead leavs. Then Flory took the telescope and almost shouted "Ngoi", but I understood koyi, which means nictitans - also a rare observation - so I started to look at the trees, and then everyone grabbed the googles/telescope, and by the time I understood it was the leopard, they were like no, we don't see it anymore. Then we spent the next half an hour looking for it in the high grasses, and I was like it is not possible, the leopard comes like once in a year and everybody has seen it exept for me. And the guys kept saying how beautiful it was and I have already felt like I have wasted a once in a lifetime ocasion when Flory got to the telescope again, and then grabbed my armes and told me to look. And it was there, so beautiful, at the far end of the clearing hiding in the trees, sharpening his claws on a trunk. It wasn't easy to spot it in the yellow-green bushes. It came to try its chance but except for birds he didn't find much food in the clearing so he left after a while. It's a pity I didn't see it hunting, espetially that later that day there were buffalos, duikers and wildboars coming to the clearing (and by the way that was the only day that I've seen wildboars, and I am pretty sure that the two observations, ie. wildboars and leopard, are somehow connected).

Another excitement is a female elephant with her male offspring, couldn't stop taking pics of them, they were so sweet together, seeing them it's hard to imagine, that this is the most feared animal in this forest. And not only by humans, all the animals escape them.

But obviously we've seen also gorillas, albeit only three times, but there was a group of ten, a group of five and a solitary silverback. The first group stayed more than four hours and there was plenty of time to enjoy the scene. It was Achille's group, he is a beautiful SB with a harem of four females, from which one had an almost newborn baby. It was also interesting to see the different behaviours of the females, there were big differences in their child care and protection attitudes. The second group was Paps and his family, he had a bigger baby, that was already leaving his mom sometimes and coming down to play in the high grass, so sweet.

But for the rest of the days it's buffalos and birdwatching and colobes and other small monkeys. This is my last shift at Lokoue, the 3 of April we swap places with Celine so I go back to Romani. Although I will surely miss the nice walk in the forest I am quite excited by this change especially because they see regularly chimps coming to the clearig there and they've even obesrved them hunting for colobes! That was the first time Celine have seen it, and she's spent quite a lot of time here already so it is really a rare observation. But I still hope that I will have a chance to see that too. And anyways gorillas are also more frequent there than here, so I think this change comes right.

So although mindfull observation is only a practice for my conscienciousness I don't mind if I'm reinforced by seeing loads of interesting stuff:) Keep your fingers crossed that there won't be any ripe fruits in the forest around the clearing because then again the animals won't come to see me...

copyright ECOBIO/Université de Rennes

copyright ECOBIO/Université de Rennes