Not too much excitement in the last couple of weeks. Rainy season has kicked in full force. We get torrential downpours every day, along with some very impressive thunder and lightning storms. It is cool to watch the storms roll in – the clouds are so dark and threatening that it looks like something out of the apocalypse. But once it hits, there is nothing to do but stay inside. And being that we don’t have a car here yet, well…it’s been pretty boring.
Since I have arrived in Africa, and for the last six weeks, I have been working on my own. Both of my bosses, Mark and Kathy, have been in the U.S. for the entire time. Needless to say, it’s been very weird starting a new job and having to figure everything out on your own with no one to give you guidance! But Mark has arrived just a few days ago - the head of our organization, CARACAL. Seems like a cool guy. His wife Kathy, the veterinarian and my immediate supervisor, will be here next week. I am told that she is a work-a-holic, and to expect some very, very long hours when she is around – lots of field work and lots of lab work.
One of the services our organization provides for the community is ‘Snake Calls’. When someone finds a venomous snake in their house or one is spotted in any of the lodges, we are the ones they call (oh, yay). A few days ago we got a call from none other than the owner of the property where we live. A Banded Cobra was spotted near our cottage. Mark, his best friend (and one of the other local ‘snake guys’) Butch, and Jason went over to check it out and managed to wrangle a very pissed off cobra out of a tree. We’re told our property is infested with them. Grrrrreat.
We have both been craving pizza for weeks, so today we made the trek into town to the one and only place in the area to get it. And, in typical frustrating-day-in-Africa fashion, the restaurant was closed. Sigh. We settled on going to one of the lodges for lunch. It is a nice place, right on the river. A little pricey, but there is not a lot of food options around and at this point we were super hungry. The restaurant is open-air, and Vervet Monkeys are regular visitors (and thieves) to the place. Now, I love all kinds of wildlife, but some of you that know me well know that with an exception of a few species, I am NOT a primate fan. Germ-y, parasite ridden little creatures. Ick ick ick. Imagine my dismay when a couple of Vervets started jumping up on dining tables, tipping over cups and glasses and licking them and the table (ewwwwww!). Of course, one ended up jumping up on our table and was eyeballing my apple juice. Oh, uh uh. Nope. Not gonna happen. I stood up and without thinking smacked him on the ass in the hopes of making him go away. Instead he got pissed off, promptly threw all of the toothpicks from the container on the table all over the ground, and as I tried to pick them up, he came over and smacked me straight in the face. Yeah, still not a fan.
It has been raining so heavily lately that it has turned the roads near our house into huge pools of water. In some areas it is nearly calf deep of mud and water, so we had to bypass this today by walking through the brush to get home. I was walking in front, and was so distracted by keeping a wary eye out for lion and elephants, that I did not realize that I had walked right past a cobra! Jason spotted him immediately after I had passed him, and fortunately it didn’t seem too disturbed and just slithered off. A little reminder to not get too complacent about stuff here!
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