The LuiKotal health system
My last entry, I explained how I had fallen ill, and how I had decided to, at short notice, ignore the majority of my work duties here at Camp. I had begun taking anti-malarials, and I had successfully convinced several of my colleagues to take over some of the work I am usually relied upon to do.
In this entry, I've decided to address our health-care situation here at LuiKotal Camp. Somehow, this may calm people down, while on the other hand, some people might just freak out. I recommend just accepting the situation, because freaking out is futile. No matter whether you think that freaking out may be warranted or not.
Basically, we're totally isolated here. There are no doctors anywhere, nor any medical facilities of any sort. We live in the middle of the jungle, with essentially no modern infrastructure that most people from our respective countries would consider commonplace.
My doctor here is Martin. He's actually working on his PhD in the behavioural ecology of bonobos, and he has his formal education in field biology. He's definitely not a medical doctor, but I've chosen him as my doctor here because I'd rather just one opinion than five. Anyway, I feel more comfortable talking to him about how my body is functioning than I do with the others. And he has a bit of credibility, because his brother back in Switzerland actually is a medical doctor.
The other potential doctors are:
1. Caro, another field biologist, from Austria, with experience observing bonobos in Frankfurt zoo.
2. Grit, another field biologist, from Germany, with experience tracking chimpanzees in Cote d'Ivoire.
3. Gaby, a plant specialist from Kinshasa, who has done numerous stints of field research at LuiKotal.
4. Andrew, a British chimpanzee expert who's lived most of the past six years in the field in Nigeria (he actually is a doctor - he has a PhD on chimpanzees!)
5. Me.
Our diagnostic equipment consists of two books and a thermometer. Both books are called "Where there is no doctor", although the newer edition is in German: "Wo es kein Aerzt gibt".
Actually, there's a so-called "clinic" in Ipope, about 27km from here, near the airstrip, manned by a guy I met while waiting for the plane last week that speaks French and is called Infirmier Esperant. (Though I don't doubt that this is actually his name, the direct translation is somewhat depressing, given his post: "Nurse Hopeful".) Given Ipope's similar lack of any modern infrastructure such as electricity or refrigeration (diagnostic tests for specific illnesses generall need to be refrigerated, have short shelf lives, and require precise laboratory instruments to get reliable results), I think the clinic's diagnostic equipment is basically the same as ours. Infirmier Esperant may just not need to consult the books quite as much. But given that the clinic is where sick people from the region flock to, I'm definitely much safer from sickness here at Camp.
Based on the diagnoses we get from our diagnostic equipment here (the books and the thermometer), we have a variety of remedies. The most important one is patience, which is often combined with others in turn.
We have an assortment of medecines, from fever reducers to painkillers to antibiotics to malaria treatments. Basically, between the lot of us foreigners, we've got a decent assortment of pills that each individual deemed important enough to bring to such a place. To combat a given ailment, a medicine is chosen and taken, combined with a strong dose of patience and some vigilant observations of the results. In general, a given illness improves over time, thanks to the medecine and the rest that whoever's been needing it has been taking. If one treatment doesn't do the trick, another is eventually attempted, along with another healthy dose of patience.
Given this reality, anyone reading this can assume at any time that those of us at LuiKotal camp are either 1. perfectly healthy, or 2. somewhat ill and trying to get better. In either case, worrying will get you nowhere. Yeah, I might write at some point that I'm sick, but you worrying will do absolutely nothing. We're on our own here, and we eventually get better. There is no need to give any more details on our health here; you can be spared the bitter details. (I recall reacting with hilarity my first week here, when one of the veterans, Tim, was explaining life at Camp and told me, nonchalantly, that "you'll just have to accept that, at some point while you're here, you'll get worms". Among other things.)
The next step of the health-care system, however, does exist: evacuation.
I explain this in an attempt to calm anyone who has read about our paltry camp infrastructure thus far and worries that we have no other options. In fact, each of us foreigners has travel insurance. Mine is through an American company, so I get to call some consulting doctor in the 804-area code if I ever determine that I'm too ill to get better through patience and experimentation. If the consulting doctor determines that evacuation to a reputable hospital would be the best option, that's what then gets organised. Yeah, I'd have to get to the Ipope airstrip 27km from here, and hope that the chartered plane actually arrived and took me to wherever the American insurance company determined was a better place, but eventually that would happen. Similar contingencies, I assume, are in place for each of my expatriate colleagues here. (Our phone access is via the same satellite connection we use twice per week to upload and download the email messages - we can't receive calls, we can just make them when we connect to the satellite.)
The other layer of comfort is via my embassy. I registered with them when I arrived in Kinshasa, so they know my whereabouts and have contact information for my mother and sister in the US. As a foreigner, if ever I show up in a hospital, morgue, or jail in this country, the authorities will notify my diplomatic representatives, who will in turn notify my mom and sister. That service hopefully won't be needed, but it's there nevertheless. (I remember being glad to be in regular contact with the Canadian diplomatic representatives when I lived in Palestine in 2000, ultimately getting evacuated in the bulletproof Mercedes with the little flags on the front and back.)
In the meantime, however, we do our best here at Camp. I organised a week off from working last week while I recovered from malaria, in a manner similar to what I'd consider to be sick leave. I think I'm pretty much over the malaria, and will hopefully be back to full form soon enough. So as long as I'm still here at Camp, please don't worry about my health - I'm either fine or getting better.
Got it mom?
;)
Monday, May 28, 2007
Friday, May 11, 2007
(RM) Disclaimers (and some anecdotes)
Disclaimers (and some anecdotes)
Well I've been writing a lot from my bonobocamp in the middle of the jungle, and I guess it's time that I lay out a couple of disclaimers:
1. You don't have to read anything I write.
2. I'll write what I want, when I want.
3. I'm not a bonobologist.
4. I don't represent anybody but myself.
That's it, really.
Now I get to explain in excruciating detail:
1. I like to write. I often write long entries. The same stuff can often be summed up in a couple of lines, but then it's not as eloquent, is it? Like the disclaimer points above, for example, vs. the explanations that follow.
I chose the format of a blog to allow me the luxury of writing as much as I want, whenever I want, without ever feeling that I was imposing on anyone. I don't send mass emails, as some people might do. Instead, whoever feels like, can just check in on the blog site at their leisure and read as little or as much as they please.
Nobody is obliged to read anything. If you find my writing style dull, then skip it. Or skim to the punch line at the end. Or struggle through it and then write to me with (constructive) criticism. My favourite comment so far:
"sounds neat albeit, i don't really care what you or the others choose to mush up in there oatmeal. that had to be the least exciting bit of information ever coming out of the congo. now, do you take notes throughout the day on such matters or is all held in your -ahem- now clear mind."
My response to that is that I just have topics I wanna write about, and that I get into details when I write them. Like what's mashed into the oatmeal. Basically, I just try to get the feel of my experience across to whoever's reading. And part of that is the little details which may or may not seem interesting. But it's at least descriptive, no?
2. I make no promises as to what I'll write about, nor on when I'll write. I enjoy the storytelling, so maybe I'll write about something just because I feel like telling that story. Although other stuff might be going on here that's interesting, but that I don't really feel like writing about at the moment.
I'm open for suggestions as far as topics to write about. I'll probably oblige, but only when and how I want to. In the meantime, I might just write about something else that tickles my fancy at the particular time that I sit down at the computer.
Emails are uploaded from camp on Mondays and Thursdays. Those are normally the only times, therefore, that I'll probably post anything, but I might skip uploads sometimes if there's other stuff going on at camp, or if I just didn't write about anything since the last one. Check back in a week or two, and maybe I will have posted another story or two.
3. Please don't take what I'm saying as scientific fact. Yeah, I'm living here at the bonobo research camp, and I go observe bonobos in their natural habitat, but I am not a bonobo expert. I honestly knew almost nothing about bonobos until I got here, though I've certainly learned a lot since.
The people I work with are generally seasoned primatologists. Their educational and professional backgrounds are in biology with a focus on primates, particularly on the great apes. Some of them get articles published in journals or books, or give presentations at specialised conferences or symposia. If you're looking for specific information on bonobos, you'd be best off referring to those sources rather than to my blog.
If you want anecdotes, however, that are somehow linked to bonobos, then you've come to the right place. I'm all about anecdotes! But please take it as just that - I don't pretend to preach fact, just stories.
4. This blog is my own invention, and is completely attributable to me and only me. In a large part, it serves as a personal creative outlet, while it also allows me to share whatever I'm experiencing with the people I love scattered about the globe (at their leisure, of course). In no way should what I write be associated with the rest of the camp where I live, nor with the organisation that established the camp and keeps it running.
OK, I guess now that covers things. I've got all my excuses covered! Read my writing if you want, or don't. Don't take anything I write too seriously - just enjoy it or not. And give me all the credit!
OK, and now for a couple of little anecdotes from the past few days:
- I killed a mouse the other night. It was sitting on our kwanga (logs of starchy food), eating it, and I was holding an empty tin of Quaker Oats and I smashed the tin on the mouse and it fell to the floor and I stomped it a few times. Damn kwanga-eating mouse!
- Molos brought home a caiman. He's our fisherman and he checks his nets every morning and brings us back fish for lunch, but yesterday he found a 4kg (about 9 pounds) caiman! That's a little alligator-looking creature that's really endangered, in case you didn't know. He had cracked its head open with his machete already, and I didn't buy it from him like I do his fish. The workers ate it for lunch while I ate beans.
- Brigham and Lovis saw elephants. They were following the bonobos and the bonobos started freaking out (or so claims Lovis), and then Lovis started freaking out, yelling at the top of his lungs and shaking the nearest tree!!!! So I guess the elephants were sort of startled, and gave the two of them time to get the hell out of there. Caro saw elephants the next day,and got out of there too. I wish I'd seen elephants, I wanna go to the forest and find them.
- I succeeded in doing the Grande Tour last week. That's the 20km loop that I got lost on the week before that prompted the 'Lost' entry. I found the trail and snipped a lot of branches and vines to make it more apparent, and marked the whole thing into the GPS so it'll be easy to not be lost in the future.
- The driver ants came back to camp this morning, but stayed on the edge because the sun was out. They reached the edge of the shadowed area, killed everything in their path, and soon left again. Thank goodness.
- The other day was Brigham's birthday, so Caro and I spent all morning, while Brigham was out with the bonobos, decorating our table area with arts and crafts stuff. We cut out funny pictures from magazines and taped them all over, we made a 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY' banner with cut-out letters, and we hung hard little green fruits above the table as decorations. Since we have no cake, I drew a huge one in the sand between the table and his tent. Not bad, considering the circumstances, eh?
- I've seen a palm civet near camp twice in the last week. I spot it's yellow eyes at night, amongst the trees, reflecting against my flashlight, and I've gotten a few good looks at it. It looks like a cross between a dog, a cat, and a skunk.
- We harvested about four of our pineapples from camp over the past week. They're so tasty!
- I found a piece of amber in the stream the other day. It may not seem like much of a big deal, but there are absolutely no rocks of any sort here, so finding something so solid like that is really out of the ordinary.
OK that's a taste of a basic week at camp. I guess it's enough for now!
Well I've been writing a lot from my bonobocamp in the middle of the jungle, and I guess it's time that I lay out a couple of disclaimers:
1. You don't have to read anything I write.
2. I'll write what I want, when I want.
3. I'm not a bonobologist.
4. I don't represent anybody but myself.
That's it, really.
Now I get to explain in excruciating detail:
1. I like to write. I often write long entries. The same stuff can often be summed up in a couple of lines, but then it's not as eloquent, is it? Like the disclaimer points above, for example, vs. the explanations that follow.
I chose the format of a blog to allow me the luxury of writing as much as I want, whenever I want, without ever feeling that I was imposing on anyone. I don't send mass emails, as some people might do. Instead, whoever feels like, can just check in on the blog site at their leisure and read as little or as much as they please.
Nobody is obliged to read anything. If you find my writing style dull, then skip it. Or skim to the punch line at the end. Or struggle through it and then write to me with (constructive) criticism. My favourite comment so far:
"sounds neat albeit, i don't really care what you or the others choose to mush up in there oatmeal. that had to be the least exciting bit of information ever coming out of the congo. now, do you take notes throughout the day on such matters or is all held in your -ahem- now clear mind."
My response to that is that I just have topics I wanna write about, and that I get into details when I write them. Like what's mashed into the oatmeal. Basically, I just try to get the feel of my experience across to whoever's reading. And part of that is the little details which may or may not seem interesting. But it's at least descriptive, no?
2. I make no promises as to what I'll write about, nor on when I'll write. I enjoy the storytelling, so maybe I'll write about something just because I feel like telling that story. Although other stuff might be going on here that's interesting, but that I don't really feel like writing about at the moment.
I'm open for suggestions as far as topics to write about. I'll probably oblige, but only when and how I want to. In the meantime, I might just write about something else that tickles my fancy at the particular time that I sit down at the computer.
Emails are uploaded from camp on Mondays and Thursdays. Those are normally the only times, therefore, that I'll probably post anything, but I might skip uploads sometimes if there's other stuff going on at camp, or if I just didn't write about anything since the last one. Check back in a week or two, and maybe I will have posted another story or two.
3. Please don't take what I'm saying as scientific fact. Yeah, I'm living here at the bonobo research camp, and I go observe bonobos in their natural habitat, but I am not a bonobo expert. I honestly knew almost nothing about bonobos until I got here, though I've certainly learned a lot since.
The people I work with are generally seasoned primatologists. Their educational and professional backgrounds are in biology with a focus on primates, particularly on the great apes. Some of them get articles published in journals or books, or give presentations at specialised conferences or symposia. If you're looking for specific information on bonobos, you'd be best off referring to those sources rather than to my blog.
If you want anecdotes, however, that are somehow linked to bonobos, then you've come to the right place. I'm all about anecdotes! But please take it as just that - I don't pretend to preach fact, just stories.
4. This blog is my own invention, and is completely attributable to me and only me. In a large part, it serves as a personal creative outlet, while it also allows me to share whatever I'm experiencing with the people I love scattered about the globe (at their leisure, of course). In no way should what I write be associated with the rest of the camp where I live, nor with the organisation that established the camp and keeps it running.
OK, I guess now that covers things. I've got all my excuses covered! Read my writing if you want, or don't. Don't take anything I write too seriously - just enjoy it or not. And give me all the credit!
OK, and now for a couple of little anecdotes from the past few days:
- I killed a mouse the other night. It was sitting on our kwanga (logs of starchy food), eating it, and I was holding an empty tin of Quaker Oats and I smashed the tin on the mouse and it fell to the floor and I stomped it a few times. Damn kwanga-eating mouse!
- Molos brought home a caiman. He's our fisherman and he checks his nets every morning and brings us back fish for lunch, but yesterday he found a 4kg (about 9 pounds) caiman! That's a little alligator-looking creature that's really endangered, in case you didn't know. He had cracked its head open with his machete already, and I didn't buy it from him like I do his fish. The workers ate it for lunch while I ate beans.
- Brigham and Lovis saw elephants. They were following the bonobos and the bonobos started freaking out (or so claims Lovis), and then Lovis started freaking out, yelling at the top of his lungs and shaking the nearest tree!!!! So I guess the elephants were sort of startled, and gave the two of them time to get the hell out of there. Caro saw elephants the next day,and got out of there too. I wish I'd seen elephants, I wanna go to the forest and find them.
- I succeeded in doing the Grande Tour last week. That's the 20km loop that I got lost on the week before that prompted the 'Lost' entry. I found the trail and snipped a lot of branches and vines to make it more apparent, and marked the whole thing into the GPS so it'll be easy to not be lost in the future.
- The driver ants came back to camp this morning, but stayed on the edge because the sun was out. They reached the edge of the shadowed area, killed everything in their path, and soon left again. Thank goodness.
- The other day was Brigham's birthday, so Caro and I spent all morning, while Brigham was out with the bonobos, decorating our table area with arts and crafts stuff. We cut out funny pictures from magazines and taped them all over, we made a 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY' banner with cut-out letters, and we hung hard little green fruits above the table as decorations. Since we have no cake, I drew a huge one in the sand between the table and his tent. Not bad, considering the circumstances, eh?
- I've seen a palm civet near camp twice in the last week. I spot it's yellow eyes at night, amongst the trees, reflecting against my flashlight, and I've gotten a few good looks at it. It looks like a cross between a dog, a cat, and a skunk.
- We harvested about four of our pineapples from camp over the past week. They're so tasty!
- I found a piece of amber in the stream the other day. It may not seem like much of a big deal, but there are absolutely no rocks of any sort here, so finding something so solid like that is really out of the ordinary.
OK that's a taste of a basic week at camp. I guess it's enough for now!
Monday, May 7, 2007
(RM) Driver ants
Sunday, 6 May 2007
Driver ants
In the midst of the drama, Brigham shared with us some sage advice given him at some point by Gottfried, the founder of LuiKotal Camp: "Brigham, one day, you will wake up and driver ants will be all over your tent. When this happens, do not go out of your tent. Not even if you really need to use the bathroom. They will be gone in 30 minutes."
We were in the midst of a driver ant invasion. Our camp is about 40 metres across, and the wave of driver ants spent the better part of about six hours weaving their way methodically through a good portion of its surfaces.
The ants were first acknowledged at around 1:30pm, when Andrew came back from his tent to wish us farewell as he departed for the afternoon shift in the forest. His tent is down a short path just northeast of our camp clearing, and the area was apparently crawling with the ants.
I first noticed the wave entering the camp at its northeast corner, probably around 2:30. Brigham and I sat watching them from the momentary safety of my 'salon' (the roof that shelters my tent has room for a second tent, where I keep an inflatable sofa on a tarp). The
space between my shelter (a sloped roof held up by columns; there are no walls at LuiKotal) and the row of pineapple plants at the forest edge is perhaps two metres wide. When we first sat down to watch, there were various thick lines of them marching together, intertwined with smaller lines of them marching about, interspersed with individuals covering the rest of the space. Within five or ten minutes, the space was absolutely teeming with driver ants! There was literally not a square inch of sand that did not have at least one driver ant crossing it.
The biggest creature we saw being overcome by them from our comfortable spot looked like a large cicada, although it wasn't very identifiable through the mass of ants enveloping it. We watched as unfortunate little crickets hopped into the throng, only to realise their folly and try in vain to hop away before being devoured. The larger crickets actually fared worse, writhing wildly as they were overcome. I was glad to see the little cockroaches get pounced upon - I hate those fuckers anyway. I wish I'd seen more of the bigger roaches to flick into the mess.
Basically, the small clearing was just covered with a massive coordinated hunting party. Any creature in its path is attacked by whichever ants first encounter it, and is quickly immobilised by the throngs of ants that follow. Thus, in addition to the thick lines of ants, the thin lines of ants, and the individual ants, there were increasing numbers of thick clusters of ants indicating where various prey was being eaten alive. We recalled Gottfried's story of putting an open can of corned beef in the middle of one such hunting party. "It took them two days to finish," he had told us, "I have pictures!"
The driver ants probably qualify as the scariest creatures of the forest. Sure, there are a few leopards around that could conceivably attack a human, and there are forest elephants that ostensibly charge at people on sight, but the likelihood of actually seeing either of those is so slim that we would actually love to run into them and take our chances (leopards generally flee before you see them, and elephants can easily be outmaneuvered in the dense forest). Driver ants, on the other hand, will always attack maliciously, and the only way to escape is to flee and pick then them all off yourself. The biggest forest fashion trend among westerners at LuiKotal Camp is inspired by the driver ants: long pants tucked into the socks. Like this, when you walk (run!) through a hunting expedition of driver ants along the trail, the individual ants can be then picked off (the outside of) your clothing as they crawl all over you.
Driver ants are apparently blind, as they evolved from a type of termite that didn't really venture out into daylight anyway. Their ant society is composed of various specialists, each performing specific roles for the good of the group. I was able to discern three different types of individuals among the mass that came through camp. There are probably several more tiers to the hierarchy; I was too enthralled by the actions of the group as a whole unit to really focus on each of the individuals. (I was also quite cautious to not get too close to them, lest too many crawl up my legs at once - they're painful!)
The smallest ones, perhaps about half a centimeter in length, were the most abundant. They were clearly the biggest killers, overcoming prey in seconds by their sheer numbers.
The largest ones, maybe about 1.3cm long, with sharp mandibles about 2mm in length protroding from their heads, appeared to be sentinels. They were stationed periodically along lines of the smaller ants, constantly waving their pincers in the air in varying orientations, in order to keep watch for anything out of the ordinary. They were also to be found near the crest of a given wave of ants, exploring new territory, essentially serving the same role. I found that attempting to hack any of these big guys in half with the end of a shovel would temporarily halt the smaller ants around my victim.
The medium-sized ants seemed to be the scouts, scoping out fresh stretches of camp that weren't yet covered in driver ants. Working in tandem with the big ones, these ants formed the crests of the waves that slowly crossed LuiKotal Camp.
Brigham knew of one insect species that can actually put up a good fight against the driver ants: a type of smaller black ant. One tactical advantage is that they are similar in size to the smaller warrior caste of driver ants (so individuals don't get overtaken by sheer numbers), while their other advantage is that they have sight. We have a nest of these little black ants on a tree at the edge of camp - it's a football-sized ball of honeycombed soil attached to the trunk about two metres from the ground. So of course we hacked a chunk of the nest with a machete, and, using a shovel, brought it to be dumped into the centre of the driver ants.
Sitting back in the sofa, we watched in awe at how quickly the mass of red ants was dispersed. Where there had been not a single square inch of sand without a driver ant in it, there was soon a round clearing that grew to nearly a metre across - those little black ants did wonders!
But of course the driver ants had to go somewhere, and our space was next. They started up the columns supporting the roof, and started scouting out the dry soil under it. That was our cue to retreat. The wave had also moved past the side of my shelter, southwards to the long shelter covering the other three tents (Caro's, Martin's, and Brigham's, with some similar tent-free space in between). Some ant-free sand still stood between the two tent shelter structures and our central sitting/eating structure, so we went there to sit and read and chat.
Without a good view of the ant mayhem, our attention moved on to other matters. One of my roles at camp is to manage the food supplies so that we have the most variety for the longest amount of time, so this is when I had my second argument of the day with one of our local workers: I told the cook that the workers would get canned sardines for dinner instead of smoked fish, since we're running low on smoked fish and I've been getting it out for several dinners in a row now.
The first argument had been when I tried, unsuccessfully, to get our bonobo worker to go for his rendez-vous in the forest despite the rain. He refused, which is why Andrew left at 1:30 - to meet Martin in the forest instead of Papa Endu.
We chilled out in our sitting/eating area for a little while, reading and discussing the workers' intransigeance, as the workers brewed in their area discussing how inconsiderate we were being. But soon the ants found us there too! They had gotten into the blue barrel that we keep next to the table to hold condiments like instant coffee, sugar, salt, and such. They were climbing up the columns and into the palm-frond roof overhead, and they had begun to envelope one of the bench seats. We had to retreat, and we had to postpone our dinner.
This was around 5:30, and it was getting dark, so we all needed our headlamps in order discern whether or not a patch of ground in front of us was covered in driver ants or not. This drew our workers' attention, and they came over to survey the scene as well. The wave had mostly moved on from my shelter, it stretched fully across the longer shelter with the other three tents, and the mass was slowly filling in the space between there and our central sitting/eating shelter. We couldn't sit, and the other tents were inaccessible for the moment.
From the workers' shelter, I heard the cook doing a chant, and wondered whether he was praying for us or for them. Evidently, the ants were attacking us because we had been so inconsiderate to them, so this was our just punishment. But evidently, the ants may well move on towards the workers' sleeping quarters, which is not as impervious to ants as our tents. I think his chant was intended to divert the oncoming wave away from their direction.
Sure enough, the ants soon dispersed from our table, remaining in the immediate vicinity only in clearly-demarcated paths that could be safely monitored from the benches. This was probably by around 6:30 or 7, so we got to sit down for dinner shortly after Andrew and Martin returned from nesting the bonobos (in the rain). That also gave the ants time to move on from the long tent shelter before anyone had to actually access their tents. We ate to the sound of a squirrel chirping desperately from a nearby tree in the forest - evidently being surrounded and attacked by the marching army.
By 8:30, our end of camp was relatively safe from marauding driver ants - we could each approach our tents cautiously. I think a branch of the moving wave of ants had begun to come out of the forest at the workers' end, because they were busy building barricades of hot ashes and coals between the forest edge and their shelter - while our tactic had been to simply wait them out, hot coals can speed up their departure.
Now it's 10:30, and I've been sitting in my 'salon' for the past two hours, typing away unaccosted. The driver ants have already come and gone from LuiKotal Camp for the day, and they actually provided the useful service of eradicating lots of the other non-flying insects in their path - it was eerie to see the shocked cockroaches cowering in plain sight this evening, having somehow survived the passing army.
This was the most intense exposure to the driver ants that I've had since being here. We encounter them very regularly though, and we will see them again soon. It's entirely likely that I'll wake up at some point to the sound of driver ants flowing over the outside of my tent in a continuous wave, at which point I'll hope there are no tiny holes in the fabric that I hadn't noticed and patched before. It'll be frustrating if I have to pee, but otherwise, if I'm supposed to wake up, I think I may actually appreciate being forced to remain in my tent for a while longer and wait them out. Because although the driver ants may be the most vicious creatures in the forest that I know of, their hunting party will soon have moved on to somewhere else.
Driver ants
In the midst of the drama, Brigham shared with us some sage advice given him at some point by Gottfried, the founder of LuiKotal Camp: "Brigham, one day, you will wake up and driver ants will be all over your tent. When this happens, do not go out of your tent. Not even if you really need to use the bathroom. They will be gone in 30 minutes."
We were in the midst of a driver ant invasion. Our camp is about 40 metres across, and the wave of driver ants spent the better part of about six hours weaving their way methodically through a good portion of its surfaces.
The ants were first acknowledged at around 1:30pm, when Andrew came back from his tent to wish us farewell as he departed for the afternoon shift in the forest. His tent is down a short path just northeast of our camp clearing, and the area was apparently crawling with the ants.
I first noticed the wave entering the camp at its northeast corner, probably around 2:30. Brigham and I sat watching them from the momentary safety of my 'salon' (the roof that shelters my tent has room for a second tent, where I keep an inflatable sofa on a tarp). The
space between my shelter (a sloped roof held up by columns; there are no walls at LuiKotal) and the row of pineapple plants at the forest edge is perhaps two metres wide. When we first sat down to watch, there were various thick lines of them marching together, intertwined with smaller lines of them marching about, interspersed with individuals covering the rest of the space. Within five or ten minutes, the space was absolutely teeming with driver ants! There was literally not a square inch of sand that did not have at least one driver ant crossing it.
The biggest creature we saw being overcome by them from our comfortable spot looked like a large cicada, although it wasn't very identifiable through the mass of ants enveloping it. We watched as unfortunate little crickets hopped into the throng, only to realise their folly and try in vain to hop away before being devoured. The larger crickets actually fared worse, writhing wildly as they were overcome. I was glad to see the little cockroaches get pounced upon - I hate those fuckers anyway. I wish I'd seen more of the bigger roaches to flick into the mess.
Basically, the small clearing was just covered with a massive coordinated hunting party. Any creature in its path is attacked by whichever ants first encounter it, and is quickly immobilised by the throngs of ants that follow. Thus, in addition to the thick lines of ants, the thin lines of ants, and the individual ants, there were increasing numbers of thick clusters of ants indicating where various prey was being eaten alive. We recalled Gottfried's story of putting an open can of corned beef in the middle of one such hunting party. "It took them two days to finish," he had told us, "I have pictures!"
The driver ants probably qualify as the scariest creatures of the forest. Sure, there are a few leopards around that could conceivably attack a human, and there are forest elephants that ostensibly charge at people on sight, but the likelihood of actually seeing either of those is so slim that we would actually love to run into them and take our chances (leopards generally flee before you see them, and elephants can easily be outmaneuvered in the dense forest). Driver ants, on the other hand, will always attack maliciously, and the only way to escape is to flee and pick then them all off yourself. The biggest forest fashion trend among westerners at LuiKotal Camp is inspired by the driver ants: long pants tucked into the socks. Like this, when you walk (run!) through a hunting expedition of driver ants along the trail, the individual ants can be then picked off (the outside of) your clothing as they crawl all over you.
Driver ants are apparently blind, as they evolved from a type of termite that didn't really venture out into daylight anyway. Their ant society is composed of various specialists, each performing specific roles for the good of the group. I was able to discern three different types of individuals among the mass that came through camp. There are probably several more tiers to the hierarchy; I was too enthralled by the actions of the group as a whole unit to really focus on each of the individuals. (I was also quite cautious to not get too close to them, lest too many crawl up my legs at once - they're painful!)
The smallest ones, perhaps about half a centimeter in length, were the most abundant. They were clearly the biggest killers, overcoming prey in seconds by their sheer numbers.
The largest ones, maybe about 1.3cm long, with sharp mandibles about 2mm in length protroding from their heads, appeared to be sentinels. They were stationed periodically along lines of the smaller ants, constantly waving their pincers in the air in varying orientations, in order to keep watch for anything out of the ordinary. They were also to be found near the crest of a given wave of ants, exploring new territory, essentially serving the same role. I found that attempting to hack any of these big guys in half with the end of a shovel would temporarily halt the smaller ants around my victim.
The medium-sized ants seemed to be the scouts, scoping out fresh stretches of camp that weren't yet covered in driver ants. Working in tandem with the big ones, these ants formed the crests of the waves that slowly crossed LuiKotal Camp.
Brigham knew of one insect species that can actually put up a good fight against the driver ants: a type of smaller black ant. One tactical advantage is that they are similar in size to the smaller warrior caste of driver ants (so individuals don't get overtaken by sheer numbers), while their other advantage is that they have sight. We have a nest of these little black ants on a tree at the edge of camp - it's a football-sized ball of honeycombed soil attached to the trunk about two metres from the ground. So of course we hacked a chunk of the nest with a machete, and, using a shovel, brought it to be dumped into the centre of the driver ants.
Sitting back in the sofa, we watched in awe at how quickly the mass of red ants was dispersed. Where there had been not a single square inch of sand without a driver ant in it, there was soon a round clearing that grew to nearly a metre across - those little black ants did wonders!
But of course the driver ants had to go somewhere, and our space was next. They started up the columns supporting the roof, and started scouting out the dry soil under it. That was our cue to retreat. The wave had also moved past the side of my shelter, southwards to the long shelter covering the other three tents (Caro's, Martin's, and Brigham's, with some similar tent-free space in between). Some ant-free sand still stood between the two tent shelter structures and our central sitting/eating structure, so we went there to sit and read and chat.
Without a good view of the ant mayhem, our attention moved on to other matters. One of my roles at camp is to manage the food supplies so that we have the most variety for the longest amount of time, so this is when I had my second argument of the day with one of our local workers: I told the cook that the workers would get canned sardines for dinner instead of smoked fish, since we're running low on smoked fish and I've been getting it out for several dinners in a row now.
The first argument had been when I tried, unsuccessfully, to get our bonobo worker to go for his rendez-vous in the forest despite the rain. He refused, which is why Andrew left at 1:30 - to meet Martin in the forest instead of Papa Endu.
We chilled out in our sitting/eating area for a little while, reading and discussing the workers' intransigeance, as the workers brewed in their area discussing how inconsiderate we were being. But soon the ants found us there too! They had gotten into the blue barrel that we keep next to the table to hold condiments like instant coffee, sugar, salt, and such. They were climbing up the columns and into the palm-frond roof overhead, and they had begun to envelope one of the bench seats. We had to retreat, and we had to postpone our dinner.
This was around 5:30, and it was getting dark, so we all needed our headlamps in order discern whether or not a patch of ground in front of us was covered in driver ants or not. This drew our workers' attention, and they came over to survey the scene as well. The wave had mostly moved on from my shelter, it stretched fully across the longer shelter with the other three tents, and the mass was slowly filling in the space between there and our central sitting/eating shelter. We couldn't sit, and the other tents were inaccessible for the moment.
From the workers' shelter, I heard the cook doing a chant, and wondered whether he was praying for us or for them. Evidently, the ants were attacking us because we had been so inconsiderate to them, so this was our just punishment. But evidently, the ants may well move on towards the workers' sleeping quarters, which is not as impervious to ants as our tents. I think his chant was intended to divert the oncoming wave away from their direction.
Sure enough, the ants soon dispersed from our table, remaining in the immediate vicinity only in clearly-demarcated paths that could be safely monitored from the benches. This was probably by around 6:30 or 7, so we got to sit down for dinner shortly after Andrew and Martin returned from nesting the bonobos (in the rain). That also gave the ants time to move on from the long tent shelter before anyone had to actually access their tents. We ate to the sound of a squirrel chirping desperately from a nearby tree in the forest - evidently being surrounded and attacked by the marching army.
By 8:30, our end of camp was relatively safe from marauding driver ants - we could each approach our tents cautiously. I think a branch of the moving wave of ants had begun to come out of the forest at the workers' end, because they were busy building barricades of hot ashes and coals between the forest edge and their shelter - while our tactic had been to simply wait them out, hot coals can speed up their departure.
Now it's 10:30, and I've been sitting in my 'salon' for the past two hours, typing away unaccosted. The driver ants have already come and gone from LuiKotal Camp for the day, and they actually provided the useful service of eradicating lots of the other non-flying insects in their path - it was eerie to see the shocked cockroaches cowering in plain sight this evening, having somehow survived the passing army.
This was the most intense exposure to the driver ants that I've had since being here. We encounter them very regularly though, and we will see them again soon. It's entirely likely that I'll wake up at some point to the sound of driver ants flowing over the outside of my tent in a continuous wave, at which point I'll hope there are no tiny holes in the fabric that I hadn't noticed and patched before. It'll be frustrating if I have to pee, but otherwise, if I'm supposed to wake up, I think I may actually appreciate being forced to remain in my tent for a while longer and wait them out. Because although the driver ants may be the most vicious creatures in the forest that I know of, their hunting party will soon have moved on to somewhere else.
Thursday, May 3, 2007
(RM) Lost in the jungle, part 2: Lost
Lost in the Jungle
or
How to use a compass to find the way
Part two: Lost
Sunday, 22 April, 2007
...
LOST
At about 4pm, I consciously left the known trail behind me, armed with a pair of garden snips and a compass bearing of due West. Down the slope I went.
(This is a continuation of the last entry, entitled "Lost in the jungle, Part one: Trails". That entry gives the context of the trail system, the forest environment, and the day's events that led me to the point where this entry begins: leaving the trail. So although this entry may be an interesting read on its own, I recommend first reading Part one, in order to better understand the situation.)
It's amazing, really, how easily it is to stray from a given direction. In the rainforest, there are trees everywhere, as well as fallen logs, hanging vines, dense thickets of harmania, holes, mud, and a bit of slope. This initial foray into the unmarked jungle, which was fortunately still during daylight hours, was on one of the steepest stretches I know of in our study site. It seemed like I was headed straight downhill for a while (okay, I wasn't always going straight, but that's what the compass was for). Of course I also got something in my eye right away, I tripped over plenty of vines, and I walked through most of the spider webs of the forest.
At the bottom of the slope was swamp. Yup, that means more knee-deep muck to schlep through, but without the added benefit of a marked trail to facilitate unobstructed forward movement. I fell forward plenty of times, catching myself on my hands and knees in the mud, and using the garden snips to cut random vines that engtangled me. Some stretches had standing water in them, some had running water, and some were just mud. Elephant footprints appeared prominently in numerous spots. There were also stretches of solid ground between the potto-potto (the local name for this muck), but it wasn't as plentiful as I'd have preferred.
In the meantime, of course, the sun was setting. Even when the sun is shining at its brightest, very little sunlight actually reaches the forest floor through the dense canopy, and of course the potto-potto valleys are even darker. So when the sun approaches the horizon, there's practically no ambient light in the forest at all. I haven't seen the horizon in a month and a half.
I had my headlamp on by 5pm, and my GPS batteries were nearly dead. The compass was fine though! After about an hour following a straight West bearing, I reached the Bompusa River. It was deep up to my belly and actually had some flow to it, so I had to hold my backpack over my head and watch my step, but I honestly found it very refreshing to be standing in the cool water for a few moments. I tried looking upstream and downstream from my crossing point to see if that's where the actual Nkuma trail crossed, but the river was too overgrown with vines to make any travel up or down it really feasible. I almost fell in trying to go upstream, so I abandoned that plan and just continued west. The western bank didn't really have any place to clamber up to, but I forced my way up, and started up the slope. At least it wasn't potto-potto (yet) on that side!
Checking my GPS again, it told me that Nkuma-1500 was now at a NW bearing, another kilometre from where I was currently. Then I watched the screen fade out as the batteries finally died. I changed my bearing and headed up the slope. The relative clearing on the Bompusa gave me the last glimpses of sunlight for the day; I continued my bushwhack as night fell hard.
Going northwest was similar to going west, but this time it was in the dark. I did encounter more potto-potto, which was even suckier in the dark than it had been in the twighlight on the other side of the Bompusa. But in general, bushwhacking through muck or dry ground in dense rainforest is just sucky all around, because you can really only see a couple of metres ahead at any given moment. The headlamp illuminates the branches and trees and vines that it points at, and the pupils adjust to that bright light at close range so that everything else is pure darkness. No matter though, because I just needed to follow my NW bearing, so it didn't really matter what was beyond a few steps - that's all I really needed to focus on anyway.
A few times I did need to make some detours, when I hit really dense harmania patches or really big fallen trees, but even those I often just ploughed through or over. Garden snips and determination are great tools in such circumstances.
Around 6 I knew my colleagues would be at about Nkuma-1100, so I did our standard whistle to see if they could hear: a really loud catcall. I was far though, so I didn't really expect a response. I continued my trek northwest.
After an hour or so of following my bearing due northwest, I decided to turn on the GPS again to see where Nkuma-1500 was relative to me: only 600m to go, due west! The batteries died again, and I switched my bearing. It's too bad the GPS only gives bearings in 45-degree increments; it would have been feasible for me to have just followed something between west and northwest, and made the bushwhack that much more direct.
This method worked out though, and I crossed a well-worn trail at about 7pm. I saw the trail marker that said "Nk1400" just a few metres from where I emerged - I was less than 100m from the point I had been targeting for the past three hours! Not bad, eh?
NOT LOST ANY MORE
So I walked a few hundred metres to the Meike-5 intersection, and took my second break of the day. I sat on the big log just west of Meike-5, took off my wet boots, ate the last of my biscuits, and drank some more water. I had packed a dry pair of socks, which I put on once my feet were as dry as they were going to get. Then I put my feet back in my wet boots, put my backpack back on, and started the easy 7km back to camp. If I walked fast, I could be there by about 8:30pm - about the latest I could expect my colleagues to stick around waiting before they mounted a search party. I was tired, but I maintained a quick pace. The trail was so easy after all that off-trail mess I'd had to hack through!
As I walked the familiar trail, the sky flickered brightly and thunder clapped. I was actually relieved to get rained on at that point, since my body was so hot. My boots had been wet since 8:30 or so in the morning, and the rest of my body was pretty wet with sweat already anyway. So the last 45 minutes or so of my walkabout were in a downpour, with my headlamp illuminating the falling droplets. I saw two small antelopes along the way (blue duikers).
I got to camp at about 8:35, and one of the cooks immediately started calling the other cook's name: "Djoli!". Djoli had left with Brigham a few minutes before to start the trek down Bompusa trail to see if I was coming back that way. They hadn't even hit the muddy bit yet by the time I got back.
Martin and Andrew had a bag packed with some of the same essentials that had been packed a few days earlier when Andrew was late getting home. They were planning on waiting until Brigham and Djoli had checked for me through the Bompusa swamp, and then walking the Grande Tour in the other direction until they found me.
Once it was determined that I was fine, Andrew gave me his news: he had been successful in following the Grande Tour back to Meike-5, and he had seen a leopard where Nkuma crossed the Bompusa! Apparently he was only a few metres away from it when the leopard saw him, and it just bolted in shock from where it was drinking. He had also seen fresh elephant footprints, but no elephants. They hadn't succeeded in finding the bonobos though, which meant that everyone could sleep in to 6am if they wanted to:)
LESSONS LEARNED
I think the initial reaction of my colleagues, when I didn't return from my solo trek on the Grande Tour for a few hours past dark, was that we probably shouldn't be heading out alone to destinations outside of our normal stomping grounds. This sentiment was particularly strong given the stress we had all put ourselves through a few days before in worrying about Andrew in a similar situation. It's true, that going out into the forest in pairs obviously adds a safety factor in case anything happens, and it provides the opportunity for two pairs of trailfinders in situations where seldom-used trails just seem to disappear. Andrew hadn't lost Nkuma after 4150, so if we had been together I wouldn't have had to bushwhack.
On the other hand, the experience demonstrates how we are able to wayfind around here, and how even the furthest reaches of the forest are still just a few hours of hiking back to camp. We all use our compasses to follow bearings back to known trails - I just did so for over two kilometres straight through the forest.
The next day Andrew and Brigham used the same method for about a kilometre to reach a savannah, Momentaoule, that we see on our satellite photo but that nobody from camp had ever been to. They determined that by following a bearing from one of the known trails, they would eventually hit it. Getting to that savannah was the first time either of them had seen the horizon for a long time. They marked the waypoint for the centre of the savannah on my GPS, so now it will be even easier for any of us to bushwhack our way there.
The GPS has also gained in stature among my colleagues. I had been marking waypoints for weeks, as I walked the trails, surveyed the BFTs, and nested the bonobos. Having Nkuma 1500 waypointed allowed me to choose to bushwhack 2.1km west to a known trail for my walk home that night, rather than oblige me to hike the 10km back through the wet trail I had just come on - that would not have been a very viable option without it. My GPS unit has been out with everyone since then, and we have marked a lot of bonobo nesting sites and feeding trees on it. Hopefully we can get a similar GPS for the project in on the next plane.
Walkie-talkies have also been discussed. The dense forest precludes their use for much distance, such as from camp to Meike-5, but they may be useful for closer distances. I think I would have been able to communicate with Andrew at 6pm when he was around the Meike-5 x Nkuma intersection and I was a kilometre away in the bush, to let him know what was up. I also could have contacted camp as I approached, allowing them to stop worrying, and to cancel their search party before Brigham and Djoli left. This is a harder sell to our boss in Germany, since he somehow already has it in his head that the range of any walkie-talkie makes them useless in such dense forest, but we'll be requesting a set on the next plane anyway.
Overall though, I think my 3-hour adventure through the jungle was't a bad experience. I did leave the trail, but I was never really that far from points that I knew. The terrain around here is not that abrupt, so it's not like I was going to come to an impassable cliff or anything (there are actually no rocks here at all), and my boots were already wet and muddy since morning. The worst that could have happened would have been a sprained ankle, which would indeed have been an issue, but I still would have been able to hobble to a trail and be met by the search party when they finally came around. And I definitely got good practice following a bearing!
So don't worry about me getting 'lost in the jungle' around our bonobo study site. It's a good forest to be in, and fun to get to know. Instead, picture me primarily on the trail network, with periodic forays into the bush to follow bonobos, to find a lost trail, or perhaps, eventually, to visit Momentaoule.
or
How to use a compass to find the way
Part two: Lost
Sunday, 22 April, 2007
...
LOST
At about 4pm, I consciously left the known trail behind me, armed with a pair of garden snips and a compass bearing of due West. Down the slope I went.
(This is a continuation of the last entry, entitled "Lost in the jungle, Part one: Trails". That entry gives the context of the trail system, the forest environment, and the day's events that led me to the point where this entry begins: leaving the trail. So although this entry may be an interesting read on its own, I recommend first reading Part one, in order to better understand the situation.)
It's amazing, really, how easily it is to stray from a given direction. In the rainforest, there are trees everywhere, as well as fallen logs, hanging vines, dense thickets of harmania, holes, mud, and a bit of slope. This initial foray into the unmarked jungle, which was fortunately still during daylight hours, was on one of the steepest stretches I know of in our study site. It seemed like I was headed straight downhill for a while (okay, I wasn't always going straight, but that's what the compass was for). Of course I also got something in my eye right away, I tripped over plenty of vines, and I walked through most of the spider webs of the forest.
At the bottom of the slope was swamp. Yup, that means more knee-deep muck to schlep through, but without the added benefit of a marked trail to facilitate unobstructed forward movement. I fell forward plenty of times, catching myself on my hands and knees in the mud, and using the garden snips to cut random vines that engtangled me. Some stretches had standing water in them, some had running water, and some were just mud. Elephant footprints appeared prominently in numerous spots. There were also stretches of solid ground between the potto-potto (the local name for this muck), but it wasn't as plentiful as I'd have preferred.
In the meantime, of course, the sun was setting. Even when the sun is shining at its brightest, very little sunlight actually reaches the forest floor through the dense canopy, and of course the potto-potto valleys are even darker. So when the sun approaches the horizon, there's practically no ambient light in the forest at all. I haven't seen the horizon in a month and a half.
I had my headlamp on by 5pm, and my GPS batteries were nearly dead. The compass was fine though! After about an hour following a straight West bearing, I reached the Bompusa River. It was deep up to my belly and actually had some flow to it, so I had to hold my backpack over my head and watch my step, but I honestly found it very refreshing to be standing in the cool water for a few moments. I tried looking upstream and downstream from my crossing point to see if that's where the actual Nkuma trail crossed, but the river was too overgrown with vines to make any travel up or down it really feasible. I almost fell in trying to go upstream, so I abandoned that plan and just continued west. The western bank didn't really have any place to clamber up to, but I forced my way up, and started up the slope. At least it wasn't potto-potto (yet) on that side!
Checking my GPS again, it told me that Nkuma-1500 was now at a NW bearing, another kilometre from where I was currently. Then I watched the screen fade out as the batteries finally died. I changed my bearing and headed up the slope. The relative clearing on the Bompusa gave me the last glimpses of sunlight for the day; I continued my bushwhack as night fell hard.
Going northwest was similar to going west, but this time it was in the dark. I did encounter more potto-potto, which was even suckier in the dark than it had been in the twighlight on the other side of the Bompusa. But in general, bushwhacking through muck or dry ground in dense rainforest is just sucky all around, because you can really only see a couple of metres ahead at any given moment. The headlamp illuminates the branches and trees and vines that it points at, and the pupils adjust to that bright light at close range so that everything else is pure darkness. No matter though, because I just needed to follow my NW bearing, so it didn't really matter what was beyond a few steps - that's all I really needed to focus on anyway.
A few times I did need to make some detours, when I hit really dense harmania patches or really big fallen trees, but even those I often just ploughed through or over. Garden snips and determination are great tools in such circumstances.
Around 6 I knew my colleagues would be at about Nkuma-1100, so I did our standard whistle to see if they could hear: a really loud catcall. I was far though, so I didn't really expect a response. I continued my trek northwest.
After an hour or so of following my bearing due northwest, I decided to turn on the GPS again to see where Nkuma-1500 was relative to me: only 600m to go, due west! The batteries died again, and I switched my bearing. It's too bad the GPS only gives bearings in 45-degree increments; it would have been feasible for me to have just followed something between west and northwest, and made the bushwhack that much more direct.
This method worked out though, and I crossed a well-worn trail at about 7pm. I saw the trail marker that said "Nk1400" just a few metres from where I emerged - I was less than 100m from the point I had been targeting for the past three hours! Not bad, eh?
NOT LOST ANY MORE
So I walked a few hundred metres to the Meike-5 intersection, and took my second break of the day. I sat on the big log just west of Meike-5, took off my wet boots, ate the last of my biscuits, and drank some more water. I had packed a dry pair of socks, which I put on once my feet were as dry as they were going to get. Then I put my feet back in my wet boots, put my backpack back on, and started the easy 7km back to camp. If I walked fast, I could be there by about 8:30pm - about the latest I could expect my colleagues to stick around waiting before they mounted a search party. I was tired, but I maintained a quick pace. The trail was so easy after all that off-trail mess I'd had to hack through!
As I walked the familiar trail, the sky flickered brightly and thunder clapped. I was actually relieved to get rained on at that point, since my body was so hot. My boots had been wet since 8:30 or so in the morning, and the rest of my body was pretty wet with sweat already anyway. So the last 45 minutes or so of my walkabout were in a downpour, with my headlamp illuminating the falling droplets. I saw two small antelopes along the way (blue duikers).
I got to camp at about 8:35, and one of the cooks immediately started calling the other cook's name: "Djoli!". Djoli had left with Brigham a few minutes before to start the trek down Bompusa trail to see if I was coming back that way. They hadn't even hit the muddy bit yet by the time I got back.
Martin and Andrew had a bag packed with some of the same essentials that had been packed a few days earlier when Andrew was late getting home. They were planning on waiting until Brigham and Djoli had checked for me through the Bompusa swamp, and then walking the Grande Tour in the other direction until they found me.
Once it was determined that I was fine, Andrew gave me his news: he had been successful in following the Grande Tour back to Meike-5, and he had seen a leopard where Nkuma crossed the Bompusa! Apparently he was only a few metres away from it when the leopard saw him, and it just bolted in shock from where it was drinking. He had also seen fresh elephant footprints, but no elephants. They hadn't succeeded in finding the bonobos though, which meant that everyone could sleep in to 6am if they wanted to:)
LESSONS LEARNED
I think the initial reaction of my colleagues, when I didn't return from my solo trek on the Grande Tour for a few hours past dark, was that we probably shouldn't be heading out alone to destinations outside of our normal stomping grounds. This sentiment was particularly strong given the stress we had all put ourselves through a few days before in worrying about Andrew in a similar situation. It's true, that going out into the forest in pairs obviously adds a safety factor in case anything happens, and it provides the opportunity for two pairs of trailfinders in situations where seldom-used trails just seem to disappear. Andrew hadn't lost Nkuma after 4150, so if we had been together I wouldn't have had to bushwhack.
On the other hand, the experience demonstrates how we are able to wayfind around here, and how even the furthest reaches of the forest are still just a few hours of hiking back to camp. We all use our compasses to follow bearings back to known trails - I just did so for over two kilometres straight through the forest.
The next day Andrew and Brigham used the same method for about a kilometre to reach a savannah, Momentaoule, that we see on our satellite photo but that nobody from camp had ever been to. They determined that by following a bearing from one of the known trails, they would eventually hit it. Getting to that savannah was the first time either of them had seen the horizon for a long time. They marked the waypoint for the centre of the savannah on my GPS, so now it will be even easier for any of us to bushwhack our way there.
The GPS has also gained in stature among my colleagues. I had been marking waypoints for weeks, as I walked the trails, surveyed the BFTs, and nested the bonobos. Having Nkuma 1500 waypointed allowed me to choose to bushwhack 2.1km west to a known trail for my walk home that night, rather than oblige me to hike the 10km back through the wet trail I had just come on - that would not have been a very viable option without it. My GPS unit has been out with everyone since then, and we have marked a lot of bonobo nesting sites and feeding trees on it. Hopefully we can get a similar GPS for the project in on the next plane.
Walkie-talkies have also been discussed. The dense forest precludes their use for much distance, such as from camp to Meike-5, but they may be useful for closer distances. I think I would have been able to communicate with Andrew at 6pm when he was around the Meike-5 x Nkuma intersection and I was a kilometre away in the bush, to let him know what was up. I also could have contacted camp as I approached, allowing them to stop worrying, and to cancel their search party before Brigham and Djoli left. This is a harder sell to our boss in Germany, since he somehow already has it in his head that the range of any walkie-talkie makes them useless in such dense forest, but we'll be requesting a set on the next plane anyway.
Overall though, I think my 3-hour adventure through the jungle was't a bad experience. I did leave the trail, but I was never really that far from points that I knew. The terrain around here is not that abrupt, so it's not like I was going to come to an impassable cliff or anything (there are actually no rocks here at all), and my boots were already wet and muddy since morning. The worst that could have happened would have been a sprained ankle, which would indeed have been an issue, but I still would have been able to hobble to a trail and be met by the search party when they finally came around. And I definitely got good practice following a bearing!
So don't worry about me getting 'lost in the jungle' around our bonobo study site. It's a good forest to be in, and fun to get to know. Instead, picture me primarily on the trail network, with periodic forays into the bush to follow bonobos, to find a lost trail, or perhaps, eventually, to visit Momentaoule.
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