Oct 2007

Well, I left you last time in the suspense of my Friday night meeting with the girls. Dinner went well. One girl is German and is here as a tutor for the missionary family from Switzerland. She is very young, maybe 19. The other two girls are from Georgia and South Carolina. One girl is mid-30’s and one is my age. They were fun to hang out with. Unfortunately, we haven’t had the opportunity to see each other again since that first dinner.

Gebran and I have been hanging out with the guy from France and girl from Namibia. They are really fun. We have eaten out with them at Nenuphar, and also cooked at my house two times. We have been trading movies and cds. Lee is watching all my Dawson’s Creek seasons and I borrowed her Skeleton Key movie. Some of the guys from work and I had a movie night to watch Skeleton Key at the 5 bedroom house because they have a BIG screen TV. I stole mom’s Boy Scout popcorn when I was home last, so we ate that. I forgot for a minute, or at least a second, that I will in the middle of Congo.

I got my first taste of Malaria last week. It wasn’t too bad. I caught it early I guess. I started having crazy dreams, woke up one night with chills, and woke up one morning with my muscles feeling like I had just run a marathon and like I had been hit by a truck. That morning I went to the clinic. Blood test showed Malaria. I took the herbal Chinese medicine Artesunate. It is supposed to be really effective. I continued to feel tired, but was pretty much better by Saturday morning.

Saturday was a half day at work, so we took advantage of the off time. A group of us drove up north to Lefini. The Project for the Protection of Gorillas has a reserve and camps outside Lefini. The drive took about three hours. National Route 2 is paved from Brazzaville all the way to the Congolese President’s village. NICE. We stopped along the side of the road to eat lunch and have a drink at some village bar. It was cool. The restroom facilities weren’t cool, though. The toilet was a hole (as expected), but it was swarming with bees. YIKES. Eventually, we got to the turn off that goes to the camp and gorilla nursery. That road was not paved. It was one lane through the middle of fields, forests, hills, and valleys. We saw the most interesting flowers I have ever seen, but no animals at all. It was really strange. The scenery was gorgeous. We saw all different types of landscapes within our off road drive. At one point, we had a following of hitchhikers. There were about five or six little boys from a village that we passed that rode on the back of our landcruiser for a couple kilometers. They wanted to go swim in the lake close to our camp, so they came along with us for the ride.

The road to the camp was not clearly marked. You could really just make your own track in the middle of no where. It was like trekking into the unknown. Thankfully, we brought the GPS. Once we arrived at the camp, there was a very short hike up to the cabins. They have built wooden platform walkways (like at the Okeefenokee) over flooded forest bottoms and the Lefini River. The cabins were well laid out in a square. Each room opened to the inside of the square and outside for ventilation. SMART. Once we got settled in, we went to the dining hut to hang out and cook dinner. At dusk, the baby gorillas that stay over night in the nursery came in after playing all day in the forest. Their handlers just follow them around the forest all day to make sure they don’t get into trouble. What a life. The nursery currently houses three babies; two older ones that stay together and one really young baby. The older two put on a show for us, chasing each other around the yard. Also, when we were photographing them, they kept handing us their food then grabbing it back. It was great. Apparently, we were really lucky to be able to get that close to the gorillas. The director of the camp was gone on vacation. Yeah!

After dinner, we got to interview the project workers. One lady, who I like to call “Mama Gorilla”, raised like 16 gorillas at the nursery. Wow. The workers had some fantastic stories. The nursery gorillas get released with the others when they are about six years old. The workers said that it is really like loosing a child.

Before bed, I went to the bath house. No water or power. Hmmm. Good thing I have a headlamp and some bottles of water. I laughed to myself as I put Clinique face wash on and rinsed with bottled water in the middle of the forest. The night started out really hot, but cooled off eventually. Mosquito nets don’t help with the heat either.

In the morning, we got up really early to try to see animals drinking at the pond by the camp. We walked down to the camp, but we scared the animals away as we walked up. We did see some hippo tracks. Apparently, they sleep near the pond at night and move to the river for the daytime. We ended up walking past the pond to the old gorilla cage. Can you say JURASSIC PARK? SERIOUSLY. I have pictures. The filmmakers of Jurassic Park must have gotten their ideas from this place. It was a HUGE steel cage, filled with plants and swings and gorilla sized toys.

After breakfast, we packed up our stuff and drove to Abio. Once again, GPS came in handy. At Abio, we got on a boat to travel up river to an island in the reserve containing four silverback male gorillas. There are not enough female gorillas in the area for all the males, so these males started fighting amongst the group for the females. It eventually got so bad that these males got banished to this island together (poor guys, bachelors for life). However, they are very well fed. They can feed themselves, but they get treated when visitors come to see them. It was really comical because the rangers were chucking food at them, many times clocking them hard in the side of the head. The gorillas would just look up and grunt. Ha. There used to be five gorillas on the island, but one drowned last week. Two of them were fighting and one got knocked into the water (gorillas can’t swim). Sad.

Overall, it was a great trip. I came home with tons of great pictures and only five bug bites. On the way home, we stopped again at a village restaurant for lunch. The owner of the place had on a Cleveland Indians shirt on. Go Indians! I meant to ask him if he knew about baseball, but I forgot. Chances are he got it free somewhere.

More later…
Love ya’ll - Allie