Following details

Some people (and by “people” I mean my mom. Hi, Mom) have been asking me for more details about following samangos. So, here are some highlights from following yesterday:

• I woke up at about five a.m., and started looking for the monkeys at about 6:15, but I wasn’t actually able to find them until 8:00. They were basically at the top of a cliff, and apparently do not usually sleep up there.

• I saw a huge rodent-creature, that after consulting a few other people and a field guide, I think was a dassie. It basically looked like a giant mouse/guinea pig, and it walked right up to me and looked me in the eye. 

• One of the hardest parts about following (besides keeping track of the direction the monkeys are moving in) is dealing with all the thorny plants. Basically, thorns are to the Soutpansberg Mountains as grass is to Ann Arbor. I’m not even exaggerating. It’s impossible not to walk through them; it’s just a matter of picking which thorns are the least unpleasant. 

• In the afternoon, I found a vine that made a perfect swing. There was even another vine that made an excellent foot-rest. It was pretty much a childhood dream come true.

• Later in the day, the samangos encountered some baboons, and the two species basically foraged in the same area for awhile and didn’t seem at all bothered by each other. Apparently the young ones sometimes play together, but I didn’t get to see that. However, they did come within about a foot of each other. Speaking of close encounters, the adult male samango nearly touched me. I actually had to move out of the way (contrary to what many of my friends seem to believe, I am not actually a crazy person who wants to cuddle with wild primates). 

 

Week 2

This week, I did my first couple of monkey follows (really, I should say monkey follow attempts). The first day, I found the troop at sunrise, and thought I was off to a pretty good start. However, they were really spread out in the forest (so often I would only see a couple of monkeys out of a troop of forty individuals). They were also being extremely quiet, and the noises of their movement was drowned out by birds and baboons doing their “wahoo” calls in the distance. This made them pretty challenging to follow, and I lost them at 11a.m. After a couple hours of searching, someone radio’d me to say that she saw a couple of monkeys that she thought were from the Barn troop (the one I’ve been following). There were only two monkeys, and neither of them had ear-tags, but they were in the Barn troop territory, and I figured the rest of the troop was probably nearby. However, I didn’t see any others for awhile, and after about twenty minutes I started to wonder if they were two dispersing males. After three hours of watching them eat seed pods (that was literally all they did), I decided that they definitely were not part of Barn troop, and I left to try to find the troop. I never did find them, though.  Fortunately, my second day of following went a bit better…there were a few mishaps, but I at least did not completely lose the group. 

Also this week, I moved out of “The Barn” and into “Bush Camp”, where the other research assistants from my project are living. There’s no internet, and electricity is only available with a generator for a few hours at night. The walls are made of bamboo, which has a nice rustic charm, but is somewhat permeable to mambas and such. Anyway, I’m glad to finally be settled into the room I’ll live in for the rest of the summer. 

I think that’s about it for now. 

 

Trees, fetuses, and mambas

            I’ve been at Lajuma for a little over a week now. I’ve mostly settled in, but I definitely still have quite a bit to learn. I just passed the “tree test” which is sort of a Primate and Predator Project rite of passage. Before you follow samango monkeys alone, you have to be able to correctly identify the tree species they feed on. My first solo monkey follow is scheduled for Thursday. Eleven hours alone in the Bush might be a tiny bit insanity inducing. I’m sure I’ll be carrying on lengthy one-sided conversations with the monkeys in no time. However, following definitely seems to have its perks – swinging on vines, watching juvenile samangos clumsily learn to climb trees, and getting to see various wildlife and different parts of the forest. I’ll mostly be following one specific troop, so I’m hoping I’ll become really familiar with their patterns after awhile.

             I’ll be doing a lot of monkey following in the next couple of weeks, but our schedules are pretty varied. Tomorrow, we’re setting leopard traps. I’ve been told to pack a lunch and wear clothing that’s appropriate for handling cow fetuses. Just a normal day here…

            Speaking of normal days, this afternoon a black mamba snuck into another research assistant’s room. Fortunately, she just left for vacation. I didn’t actually witness the extraction process, but everyone was pretty excited about it. A lot of people here want to see black mambas. Personally, I wouldn’t be that upset if they stayed far, far away from me, but I would like to see a leopard.  We’ll see.

            

Quick update

I’m pretty busy at the moment, so here’s a quick bullet-point list of what I’ve been up to here:

• Hiking up some cliffs, which is great exercise, and not quite as scary as I thought it would be. 

• Working on learning to identify 24 different tree species the samango monkeys feed on, so that I can pinpoint what they’re eating when I follow them.

• Getting trained in safety, GPS and other technology use, and methodology.

• Hanging out with baboons. They are really habituated, and you can get within a couple feet of many of them, and they don’t even react. I took a ton of pictures, but unfortunately they take forever to upload. So I’ll save that task for some point in the future. 

• Trying to convince the ant community currently residing in my room that they would be better off elsewhere (and by “convince” I mean I’m dousing my entire room in baking soda, because apparently they hate that. It seems to actually be working). It’s too bad I don’t have much of an interest in studying ants, because I could easily observe them from the comfort of my bed.

  So, that pretty much sums it up. Oh, and one final anecdote: yesterday, a samango monkey snuck into someone’s bedroom, and ran off with a bottle of peanuts. He looked pretty pleased with himself. 

First round of pictures

Whoops

I would like to make a correction to my last post: in Louis Trichardt they sell caterpillars to eat, not grasshoppers. I’m only making this distinction because I don’t want anyone to think I’m a wuss. Just for the record, I would totally eat a fried grasshopper. Caterpillars just seem a bit more oozy. Sorry if anyone is reading this while eating. 

Arriving at Lajuma

I made it to Lajuma (research center)! Highlights of the journey so far:

–       Some security people at the Detroit airport almost didn’t let me get on the plane, because I’m staying in South Africa longer than 90 days and didn’t have a visa. They had to call the South African embassy, which confirmed (as I already knew) that I could get a visa once in South Africa. Whew.

–       The Amsterdam airport is exactly what I would have imagined: they have tulips everywhere, tons of cheese, and even wooden shoes. I ate lunch in a chair shaped like a giant teacup.

–       The trip was exhausting (I got about three hours of sleep in 37 hours), but staying awake was worth it, as I am now not really experiencing any jetlag.

–       After spending the night in Johannesburg, I met up with a couple of other people traveling to Lajuma, and we rented a car (the buses here have been on strike for a few weeks). None of us knew how to drive on the left, but we actually did not have any near-death experiences, which was nice. We saw some giraffe along the way, and all screamed in typical tourist fashion. We also got a bit lost and almost ended up in Zimbabwe (we think).

–       I’ve already seen vervet monkeys, samango monkeys, baboons, some sort of peafowl, and some deer-like animal (can’t remember the name of it).

–       Today was grocery day, which means we drive an hour and a half into Louis Trichardt/Makhado (the nearest big town) and spend most of the day there. We stopped for breakfast, and I ate a “muffin” which had spinach, bacon, and cheese in it. It was delicious, and really cheap. Louis Trichardt is actually much bigger than I expected. It seemed almost like Ann Arbor, but a few things were really different (for instance, you can buy grasshoppers to eat. Yum. I think I’ll probably have to at least try one before I leave…)

–       I haven’t done any fieldwork yet, but tomorrow I start training. I’m really excited to get to hike around a bit.

–       I could write more, but I don’t think anyone besides maybe my parents would keep reading if I continued blabbing. Basically, everyone seems really nice, and I love it here. I think time is going to pass really quickly. I’ll try to post some photos soon, but I’m sure it won’t do the landscape justice at all. 

Since I don’t have any monkey pictures yet…

My dog, Bessie, recently got a cut on her leg while running around in the woods, and had to have stitches. My parents didn’t want to make her wear the “Cone of Shame” so they put her in some boxer shorts instead (they cut a hole for the tail). I spared her the embarrassment of wearing them when we went for a walk, but here I am posting it on the internet.

The beginning

In just a couple of days I’m leaving for the Soutpansberg Mountains of South Africa, where I’ll spend the summer working as a research assistant to the Primate and Predator Project. I’ll use this blog to post travel updates and pictures, so check back if you want to see what I’m up to. Have a great summer, everyone!