Wow it has been a full and busy week! I have so much to tell. Let me start with the most exciting and biggest news. Yesterday Alex and I saw a female chimp just after she gave birth to a new infant!!! This is a HUGE event for us to see, as it is vary rare to witness births and deaths in the field. In the 40 years that Jane Goodall studied the chimps of Gombe, she only witnessed this event TWICE! Alex, Kennedy and I are only the second people to see this in the Budongo Forest in Uganda, so you can imagine how ecstatic we are that we were fortunate enough to experience this sighting. Zinta said that if we take really good notes on the mother over the next several months, then we can possibly publish this event as an editorial or note in some journal, since so few chimps births are documented in the literature. I took notes like mad yesterday and will only continue to if we can find this mother again. Unfortunately we haven’t had much luck winning the females over yet, they are still to afraid to be close to us. Yesterday was actually the first day that we saw this female, and she may only have stayed around with us so close by because her placenta was still attached, therefore, she couldn’t move around much until it falls off because it would get caught on branches and such. Hopefully though we can find her again tomorrow!
When we first found her and realized her placenta was still attached, we knew she must have given birth sometime that morning, possibly even just minutes before. There was a male seated directly beside the new mom, grooming her and curiously inspecting and grooming the infant. This is a bit unusual, as female chimps typically do not let ANY males near them or the newborn for awhile after birth. However, sometimes experienced mothers will allow males to get close, so perhaps our new mom is an old pro at child birth and rearing. Also, perhaps this male is the father. After about 45 minutes from when we arrived the male casually wandered off somewhere in the forest. We did not follow, but stayed with the new mother instead. She didn’t do much of anything for the rest of the day, just rested in the tree we found her in, also probably the birthing tree. As I peered through my binoculars at her she looked utterly exhausted like she could sleep for days. Unfortunately she seemed a little nervous to fall completely asleep, probably because she seemed shaking 60 some meters in the air with this brand new infant, also probably partly due to her awareness of us standing below. I will be sure to keep everyone updated on mom and baby’s progress over the next several months.
Unfortunately with good news, there is often some bad news as well. Thankfully though, this unfortunate news has improved somewhat since it first occurred. Four nights ago, Alex’s and my tent was broken into by some children that were staying in camp that night. One of the employees of the camp we’re staying at brought his family and all his children to the camp for the day and night. They were very curious and intrigued by Alex and I, so much so that Alex and I finally had to politely ask them to leave and explain that we were trying to do work. The children were starring at us like we were animals in a zoo Saturday night, as we were packing our field bags for the next day and getting urine and fecal samples ready. After they left we locked all our windows and the door to our hut because they appeared way too interested in all the “things” we have. Anyway, to try and make a long story short, the next day we went out into the field and when we returned that night we noticed that our tent was filthy inside and that everything was moved around. I stupidly left my cell phone and laptop in the tent during the day and we had not locked the tent. I had been telling myself all morning remember to take the items out of the tent and lock them up inside and then we ended up getting rushed for work and I completely forgot. Thankfully, the children did not steal these items; they only turned them on and changed some settings on them. Unfortunately they did steal Alex’s alarm clock and a small LCD flash light of Alex’s. This story has improved because these items were returned to Alex last night.
Alex and I were extremely angry and upset the night this happened. We felt so violated and creped out that people had been inside all our personal things and laying in our sleeping bags. Alex and I have since placed a lock on our tent and always remember to take any valuable items out in the morning that we may have brought in the night before. So the break-in was partly our fault, but it still was a very unpleasant experience, and we have definitely learned our lesson! I think too that part of this was a difference in cultures. I couldn’t understand at all how someone could even think it would be alright to just go into someone else’s space and things without asking, but then I realized that I think may people in this culture do not have a concept of “mine” and “yours” in the sense that we in America do. I think when someone has something here it is available to the community if need be and doesn’t necessarily just belong to one person. Plus they were children, though most were old enough to know better, but children often don’t understand when they can’t touch something. Thankfully everything has turned out ok in the end, and now Alex and I are feeling guilty for bringing the incident up because we fear the children may have been beaten for what they did. At the same time though, we had to say something so that it wouldn’t happen again.
As a very quick wrap up, some of the other highlights of the week are as follows. On Friday, Alex and I attended a going away party for one of the researcher’s at Zinta’s field site. It was a ton of fun. We played games and I got picked for one of the teams and won a sack race, where I had to get in a sack and jump to the finish line. Overall, my team came in second. After the games we had a huge feast and then there was a dance at the local forestry college that we stayed at our first few nights here. The dance was so much fun. It was so nice to have a chance to relax and let loose for the first time since we got here. On Tuesday our tent flooded and we had to set-up Zinta’s tent which she gave to us as a back-up in case our first one flooded. It flooded because our tarp fell on top of it for the second time…I think we have since fixed the problem so hopefully this will not happen again. It was a torrential down pour though for the entire day!! Everything, including ourselves was completely drenched!
Other than that we have had a pretty good week overall with the chimps. We finally are finding them consistently everyday, and many of the males are becoming comfortable with our presence and we can usually follow them for at least a few hours. We’re finally obtaining some data…yea!! Hopefully things will continue to progress as well as they have this week. There has been lots of good and a few frustrating and angering things, but Alex and I are still surviving well, and are really enjoying out time here. I can’t believe though that September is already half over…time is really flying by. Oh and one last thing, snakes and cockroaches are now added to the list of creatures that our inhabiting our hut, so the tent is going to definitely be our permanent sleeping quarters. I have no idea where the cockroaches came from because we do not keep any food in our living hut or in the tent or anywhere near these places! Oh well, we’ve accepted that the hut does not belong to us.
Hope everyone’s doing well. Miss everyone tons!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment