In the forest today (June 28), Katie got attacked by a swarm of wild wasps. This happened while we were both trying to locate Gangster’s feces, a juvenile male monkey in group B2 who had just defecated at the base of a tall tree, which apparently was home for a hive of wild African wasps. Evidently, Katie and I have no twisted desire to look for colobus crap - we need Gangster’s pooh for fecal samples which we can later analyze in the genetics lab. As we searched blindly for a tiny brown blob amongst a blanket of wilted brown leaves and brown dirt and brown twigs, in poor light conditions (yes, the old expression “it’s like looking for a needle in a hay stack” applies here) Katie began shaking her head, flailing her arms around, and screaming like a crazy person – or like someone who was being stung by angry wasps. As we both fled away from the bee-hosting-tree as fast as our obruni legs would take us, the monkeys above our head were equally shocked at the sudden outburst. They panicked, we panicked, the wasps panicked, and several minutes later I was trying to pick out the remaining wasps out of Katie’s hair and watching the spots where she was stung get redder and more swollen by the second. She later told me that she could hear their buzzing around her head and that they all began to sting her when she tried swatting them away.
The strange thing is that I wasn’t stung once by the angry bees… Either I have very good luck or Katie has incredibly bad luck (first she sprained her ankle at the post office, and then she had malaria and now this “incident”). Maybe she’s like the guy in that French movie “La Chevre” who only has horrible luck in everything he does, with comical results and hilarious consequences. At least Katie can laugh through it all and continue to stay positive each day. Pretty admirable I think!
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Market and Eggs and Malaria … Oh My!
In the past few years, many of the researchers that have worked at BFMS for more than a few months at a time have gotten malaria at some point during their stay, despite taking antimalarial medication. Local people here seem to have malaria often – I think it’s like their equivalent of our seasonal flu or cold, except when one has malaria your whole body is in excruciating pain, your guts feel like they are being ripped out of your body, your joints are inflamed and achy so that you can’t move, and the idea of death starts seeming like a sweet finale… or so I’ve heard from people who have had malaria in the past.
You may be wondering from the title of this blog post what malaria sickness has anything to do with eggs or market day (the jolliest time of the week). I’ll get straight to the point and fill in the details after. Katie, the best research assistant in the world, got sick with malaria. Her symptoms (all of those wonderful things I mentioned above) manifested themselves in the tro-tro, on our way back from market last Tuesday. As I write this post and as I search for the words to describe the events that occurred just a few days ago, I am baffled by the ridiculousness of the whole scenario. As usual, the actual shopping part of the market was stuffy, smelly and hot. Katie and I did our groceries for the week, we ate some baked yam from a lady selling them on the side of the road (eating street food can be ‘sketchy’ but baked yams are usually ok), we used the internet for a few hours, and then got on a tro-tro heading back to the villages of Boabeng and Fiema. A few minutes into the incredibly bumpy ride, in the tro-tro packed with way too many sweaty people, a few of the eggs I was carrying in my shopping bag broke and made a giant mess, dripping on people’s legs and clothing the entire way home. A lady in front of me started shouting in twii, telling me I have to wash her skirt. As I was frantically apologizing for my mess and reassuring her that I would personally wash the tiny spot on which some of the egg juice had stained her skirt, Katie began vomiting in her backpack. She was so quiet about it that I didn’t even notice until a minute or so after she began puking. Assuming Katie was car sick, I immediately began shouting and bickering with the tro-tro driver to slow down and to stop driving like a mad man. “Yes, yes” I told him, “I know there is a soccer game on in a few minutes, but my friend is feeling very sick”! He did not slow down. Katie kept vomiting and laughing in between each hurling bout. Katie did not stop vomiting - although she did stop laughing when she got too exhausted – for several hours.
Aside: This is one of the things Katie and I have in common; we both laugh during 90% of all situations, even during the most inappropriate of times. The way I see it, it’s either laugh or cry and I prefer to seem crazy laughing, than pathetic crying. Let’s just say I did a lot of laughing the rest of this day.
We later tried to figure out how many times she puked in 8 or so hours and we counted between 16 to 20 times! The entire tro-tro ride, Katie puked inside her backpack. Many of our vegetables were covered in partially digested yam, but we cleaned these off and still used them for cooking that week. LOL The entire 15 minute walk, Katie puked every few minutes on the side of the road. For a few hours at the guest house, Katie puked on the ledge of the stone deck by the stairs. Katie vomited so much that she turned green and began sweating to the point where she looked like she had just walked out of a swimming pool. Well, you can imagine that by this point I was pretty worried (yup, I’m a bright one), and I decided to charter the brand new/used BFMS van to rush Katie to the hospital in Nkoranza. When I say rushed, I mean Ghana time rushed. We still waited for the driver to get dressed, come down to the guesthouse, do some random repairs on the “new” van and fill various tubes with water and oil etc. All the while I was laughing like a psycho, which I could tell was making the Ghanaians around me quite uncomfortable, but at least Katie understood.
I considered that maybe the yam she ate was bad but I had 2 pieces and she had 1 and I was fine and dandy. I know I have a well trained and durable Romanian stomach but given her state I thought that I should at least have some indigestion… a bit of gas or something… So my next thought was “maybe Katie has malaria” … and she did!
After waiting several hours in lines full of sick Ghanaian people while Katie continued to vomit her guts out, after Katie being diagnosed with having gastrointestinal malaria, and after arguing with the doctor about not wanting IVs (we are both worried about re-used needles and AIDS, which is fairly prevalent all over Africa) we finally got the medications necessary to treat her strain of malaria. Back at the guesthouse that night, Katie managed to keep down her pills and to get some much needed sleep - for a few hours at least because she vomited a few more times late in the night.
All I can say is that she was very, very brave. What a good sport! Just a few days later she is feeling much better, and she is back in the forest with me, watching monkeys. I am very impressed with Katie. I only hope that I could deal with malaria as well as she did, if ever were I to catch it in the future (knock on wood).
You may be wondering from the title of this blog post what malaria sickness has anything to do with eggs or market day (the jolliest time of the week). I’ll get straight to the point and fill in the details after. Katie, the best research assistant in the world, got sick with malaria. Her symptoms (all of those wonderful things I mentioned above) manifested themselves in the tro-tro, on our way back from market last Tuesday. As I write this post and as I search for the words to describe the events that occurred just a few days ago, I am baffled by the ridiculousness of the whole scenario. As usual, the actual shopping part of the market was stuffy, smelly and hot. Katie and I did our groceries for the week, we ate some baked yam from a lady selling them on the side of the road (eating street food can be ‘sketchy’ but baked yams are usually ok), we used the internet for a few hours, and then got on a tro-tro heading back to the villages of Boabeng and Fiema. A few minutes into the incredibly bumpy ride, in the tro-tro packed with way too many sweaty people, a few of the eggs I was carrying in my shopping bag broke and made a giant mess, dripping on people’s legs and clothing the entire way home. A lady in front of me started shouting in twii, telling me I have to wash her skirt. As I was frantically apologizing for my mess and reassuring her that I would personally wash the tiny spot on which some of the egg juice had stained her skirt, Katie began vomiting in her backpack. She was so quiet about it that I didn’t even notice until a minute or so after she began puking. Assuming Katie was car sick, I immediately began shouting and bickering with the tro-tro driver to slow down and to stop driving like a mad man. “Yes, yes” I told him, “I know there is a soccer game on in a few minutes, but my friend is feeling very sick”! He did not slow down. Katie kept vomiting and laughing in between each hurling bout. Katie did not stop vomiting - although she did stop laughing when she got too exhausted – for several hours.
Aside: This is one of the things Katie and I have in common; we both laugh during 90% of all situations, even during the most inappropriate of times. The way I see it, it’s either laugh or cry and I prefer to seem crazy laughing, than pathetic crying. Let’s just say I did a lot of laughing the rest of this day.
We later tried to figure out how many times she puked in 8 or so hours and we counted between 16 to 20 times! The entire tro-tro ride, Katie puked inside her backpack. Many of our vegetables were covered in partially digested yam, but we cleaned these off and still used them for cooking that week. LOL The entire 15 minute walk, Katie puked every few minutes on the side of the road. For a few hours at the guest house, Katie puked on the ledge of the stone deck by the stairs. Katie vomited so much that she turned green and began sweating to the point where she looked like she had just walked out of a swimming pool. Well, you can imagine that by this point I was pretty worried (yup, I’m a bright one), and I decided to charter the brand new/used BFMS van to rush Katie to the hospital in Nkoranza. When I say rushed, I mean Ghana time rushed. We still waited for the driver to get dressed, come down to the guesthouse, do some random repairs on the “new” van and fill various tubes with water and oil etc. All the while I was laughing like a psycho, which I could tell was making the Ghanaians around me quite uncomfortable, but at least Katie understood.
I considered that maybe the yam she ate was bad but I had 2 pieces and she had 1 and I was fine and dandy. I know I have a well trained and durable Romanian stomach but given her state I thought that I should at least have some indigestion… a bit of gas or something… So my next thought was “maybe Katie has malaria” … and she did!
After waiting several hours in lines full of sick Ghanaian people while Katie continued to vomit her guts out, after Katie being diagnosed with having gastrointestinal malaria, and after arguing with the doctor about not wanting IVs (we are both worried about re-used needles and AIDS, which is fairly prevalent all over Africa) we finally got the medications necessary to treat her strain of malaria. Back at the guesthouse that night, Katie managed to keep down her pills and to get some much needed sleep - for a few hours at least because she vomited a few more times late in the night.
All I can say is that she was very, very brave. What a good sport! Just a few days later she is feeling much better, and she is back in the forest with me, watching monkeys. I am very impressed with Katie. I only hope that I could deal with malaria as well as she did, if ever were I to catch it in the future (knock on wood).
Confessions
#1: Although I’ve been a vegetarian for about 11 years, I would consider giving that up if it meant that the world’s most annoying asshole rooster would be gone from the BFMS guesthouse. I dream about personally cutting off his head and eating the damn bird, just to put an end to his daily cockadoodledoo-ing ritual at 5am!
#2: I have a tiny crush on my attractive and charming Ghanaian field assistant. I admire his work ethic, his blunt sense of humor, his ability to chuckle after every third or fourth thing he says, and the fact that he needs Sundays off work to go to church (an all-day ordeal around here). Also, he is quite soothing on the eyes, which makes going into the forest each day just a little bit nicer. He’s like the cherry on top of our monkey cake. Katie thinks he’s hot too, so it isn’t just me this time (my taste in men has been questioned by some people in the past).
#2: I have a tiny crush on my attractive and charming Ghanaian field assistant. I admire his work ethic, his blunt sense of humor, his ability to chuckle after every third or fourth thing he says, and the fact that he needs Sundays off work to go to church (an all-day ordeal around here). Also, he is quite soothing on the eyes, which makes going into the forest each day just a little bit nicer. He’s like the cherry on top of our monkey cake. Katie thinks he’s hot too, so it isn’t just me this time (my taste in men has been questioned by some people in the past).
Ewww ... What is Nietzsche doing? We need a code for that!
Each day in the field I am surprised by the astounding behaviors I see my little monkey friends do! First, I had expected that infant handling in this species would be much friendlier and more affiliative than I have witnessed in the past few months. Although most of the time it is quite nice, as young and adult females frequently hold each others’ babies in a caring manner, I have also seen some very aggressive behaviors preformed by adult males and females towards young colobus babies. On several occasions I witnessed adult females bite the heads of infants! I’ve also seen them cuff, nip, grab and pull harshly, kick, and hit young white and grey infants! Although I’ve seen Don Quixote hold baby Obama gently in his lap for almost a minute, he has also nipped and cuffed another infant (Remus) after which he practically forced Remus’ lactating mother to copulate with him! I know rape occurs in many primates, not just in our own species, it is still quite surprising to witness.
Secondly, although I need to confirm this with a heavy duty Scope lens, I’m certain that I’ve witnessed allonursing behaviors several times in one of my study groups. This is super cool to see as it isn’t all that common! Allonursing is when a lactating female nurses an infant that is not her own.
Thirdly, my ethogram (an exhaustive list of behavioral codes describing everything an observer should expect a colobus monkey to do) seems to lack codes for a few of the creepy and sometimes shocking social behaviors I am seeing:
We need a new code for that!
1. After an adult female aggressively bit the head of one my study infants (my heart stopped each time this ever happened and I wanted to lunge through the bushes towards the mean female … but I didn’t … of course), several juvenile monkeys took turns approaching the baby and licking his head, on the spot where he was bitten. This was sweet to witness but a bit puzzling as there wasn’t any visible sign of blood anywhere on the infant.
SU = Social Lick Head
2. On the other end of the biting spectrum, I have seen individual infant handlers playfully nibble and gently bite the body of young infants. This is cute to witness, but once again, I found I had not prepared a code for this affiliative interaction.
SZ = Social Nibble
3. When adult males jump display and try to show off their muscles and strength to other males, usually during inter-group encounters, infants tend to get incredibly excited. They jump on top of the raging males, waving their tails around like pinwheels and squealing like the pig on Christmas. It’s a strange for infants to do this because you would imagine that they frequently get injured in the process. The adaptive advantage of infants’ involvement in the dangerous jump displays of large males is not apparent to me. I thought that maybe those males that have the most infants to scream and make noise as they display would appear to be the most physically fit and reproductively successful to extra-group males, who may get intimidated by them …?? All in all infants look really dumb participating in this. On one occasion I did see a really funny thing. In between the jump-displaying bout of Gordon, the alpha male of group Odum, a small grey infant named Nietzsche jumped in his lap and began touching his face and mouth to his semi-erect penis. This lasted for several seconds and was repeated a few times by Nietzsche and as I watched with my mouth wide open in complete astonishment at what I was seeing, let alone try to make sense of it, I found that I did not have a behavioral code in my ethogram to describe this behavior.
SH = Social Head to Penis
Secondly, although I need to confirm this with a heavy duty Scope lens, I’m certain that I’ve witnessed allonursing behaviors several times in one of my study groups. This is super cool to see as it isn’t all that common! Allonursing is when a lactating female nurses an infant that is not her own.
Thirdly, my ethogram (an exhaustive list of behavioral codes describing everything an observer should expect a colobus monkey to do) seems to lack codes for a few of the creepy and sometimes shocking social behaviors I am seeing:
We need a new code for that!
1. After an adult female aggressively bit the head of one my study infants (my heart stopped each time this ever happened and I wanted to lunge through the bushes towards the mean female … but I didn’t … of course), several juvenile monkeys took turns approaching the baby and licking his head, on the spot where he was bitten. This was sweet to witness but a bit puzzling as there wasn’t any visible sign of blood anywhere on the infant.
SU = Social Lick Head
2. On the other end of the biting spectrum, I have seen individual infant handlers playfully nibble and gently bite the body of young infants. This is cute to witness, but once again, I found I had not prepared a code for this affiliative interaction.
SZ = Social Nibble
3. When adult males jump display and try to show off their muscles and strength to other males, usually during inter-group encounters, infants tend to get incredibly excited. They jump on top of the raging males, waving their tails around like pinwheels and squealing like the pig on Christmas. It’s a strange for infants to do this because you would imagine that they frequently get injured in the process. The adaptive advantage of infants’ involvement in the dangerous jump displays of large males is not apparent to me. I thought that maybe those males that have the most infants to scream and make noise as they display would appear to be the most physically fit and reproductively successful to extra-group males, who may get intimidated by them …?? All in all infants look really dumb participating in this. On one occasion I did see a really funny thing. In between the jump-displaying bout of Gordon, the alpha male of group Odum, a small grey infant named Nietzsche jumped in his lap and began touching his face and mouth to his semi-erect penis. This lasted for several seconds and was repeated a few times by Nietzsche and as I watched with my mouth wide open in complete astonishment at what I was seeing, let alone try to make sense of it, I found that I did not have a behavioral code in my ethogram to describe this behavior.
SH = Social Head to Penis
Don Quixote Shit on My Dictaphone
On one of the first official data collection days that Katie – my wonderful research assistant and new very good friend (we practically spend 24/7 together) – and I had in the field, we spent watching a notoriously hard to locate monkey group, B2. I love this group more than any of the other ones, mainly because most of its members are incredibly fluffy, have really fuzzy face ruff, and the juveniles are very playful. For example, I have seen Guam (a young juvie female) jump display on several occasions. Jump displaying is a “tough” behavior that is mainly performed by males who are showing off how scary and strong they are to other group and extra-group monkeys that are in the vicinity, whereby the monkey will jump with their limbs stiff from one branch to another, shaking leaves and making noise. Although Guam’s jump displays are more like a series of tiny hops that resemble the giddy bounce-bounce of a little Disney cartoon lamb, it was still impressive to see that she at least tried … even if her efforts were amusing rather than intimidating. Guam is also very curious about people. She is always one of the first monkeys to appear around us researchers when we arrive, and she often gazes and sticks around in the trees around us more than any of the other B2 monkeys. In addition to her distinctive B2 fuzzy face ruff, her bubbly brow is also slanted downwards on the sides, which makes her look constantly worried or concerned. She is cute as pie! She is also a very talented little infant handler … well at least she doesn’t drop any of the infants she holds, so that’s good!
On one of these first few observation days, we were in a hard to see area of B2’s range. The monkeys were fairly high up in the trees, right above our heads. I was trying frantically to indentify all of the individuals interacting with the focal infant, to see the behaviors performed and received by the infant, and to catch all of the approaches and leaves done by other monkeys towards the infant, amongst all the overlapping leaves and patches of dense foliage. Eeesh … just describing it makes my eyes squint, and my back, neck and arm muscles hurt as if I am pointing my binoculars straight up! During these first few days I was calling out behavioral codes to Katie while also recording them into my Dictaphone so that we could compare the two methods of data collection later in the evening. At some point during that day I had just completed a focal animal sample and I was trying to ID monkeys, when all of a sudden I felt a hard and slightly painful jab on part of my left hand, which was holding the Dictaphone. Yes, yes… Don Quixote, the new alpha male (a larger monkey with proportionally larger feces) had shit directly above me, his crap splattering all over part of my hand and on my Dictaphone, getting right between all the small buttons and crevices of the machine. Now I don’t mean to anthropomorphize too much, but I swear Don Quixote meant to hit me with his fecal bomb. Right after IT happened I looked up at him, and I thought I saw a glint of sadistic amusement in Don Quixote’s beady little eyes. He knew what he had done and he was pretty damn proud of himself. I only thank goodness he – like all other colobines – is a strict vegetarian; the poop of folivores is less volatile I think… it’s just grass.
What’s really “crappy” (pardon the pun) is that although I had a bit of water to wipe up the mess, I was out of hand sanitizer… then I ate my lunch with my hands an hour later. Oh well… no biggie… apparently you aren’t a real primatologist unless a monkey has shit one you a few times. I admit it has happened to me in the past, but I have never had monkey pooh get on my data collection equipment. Doesn’t Don Quixote know that Dictaphones are expensive!? Next time, he better watch where he aims. Preferably, I would like him to poop directly in front of me (not on me) so that I could collect a fecal sample for genetic analysis. :)
On one of these first few observation days, we were in a hard to see area of B2’s range. The monkeys were fairly high up in the trees, right above our heads. I was trying frantically to indentify all of the individuals interacting with the focal infant, to see the behaviors performed and received by the infant, and to catch all of the approaches and leaves done by other monkeys towards the infant, amongst all the overlapping leaves and patches of dense foliage. Eeesh … just describing it makes my eyes squint, and my back, neck and arm muscles hurt as if I am pointing my binoculars straight up! During these first few days I was calling out behavioral codes to Katie while also recording them into my Dictaphone so that we could compare the two methods of data collection later in the evening. At some point during that day I had just completed a focal animal sample and I was trying to ID monkeys, when all of a sudden I felt a hard and slightly painful jab on part of my left hand, which was holding the Dictaphone. Yes, yes… Don Quixote, the new alpha male (a larger monkey with proportionally larger feces) had shit directly above me, his crap splattering all over part of my hand and on my Dictaphone, getting right between all the small buttons and crevices of the machine. Now I don’t mean to anthropomorphize too much, but I swear Don Quixote meant to hit me with his fecal bomb. Right after IT happened I looked up at him, and I thought I saw a glint of sadistic amusement in Don Quixote’s beady little eyes. He knew what he had done and he was pretty damn proud of himself. I only thank goodness he – like all other colobines – is a strict vegetarian; the poop of folivores is less volatile I think… it’s just grass.
What’s really “crappy” (pardon the pun) is that although I had a bit of water to wipe up the mess, I was out of hand sanitizer… then I ate my lunch with my hands an hour later. Oh well… no biggie… apparently you aren’t a real primatologist unless a monkey has shit one you a few times. I admit it has happened to me in the past, but I have never had monkey pooh get on my data collection equipment. Doesn’t Don Quixote know that Dictaphones are expensive!? Next time, he better watch where he aims. Preferably, I would like him to poop directly in front of me (not on me) so that I could collect a fecal sample for genetic analysis. :)
Going Native or Just Going Whacko?
My work has consumed my life and I am seriously addicted! Ok, this is a bit weird but since my work is all about watching monkeys, I often feel like I am becoming more and more like a colobine as each day in the field passes. Perhaps this is what cultural anthropologists describe as “going native”… except in my case I am turning into a colobus monkey rather than into an indigenous person. Due to the fact that I can recognize individual monkeys in each of the study groups I observe and since I have the privilege of watching each of these individuals live out their daily lives (interacting with other group members, infant handling, being social or anti-social, eating, sleeping, defecating, urinating, copulating, etc.), I sometimes feel like I should stop being a stalker and introduce myself to them. Maybe I would somehow be accepted into their group or I could be their human friend or something … Hehehe Sometimes I wish that I could just climb up into the tree, extend my hand out in greeting to one of the colobus monkeys in a group I am observing, and say:
“Hello, my name is Julia. It is very nice to meet you… officially that is. I’m one of the pale primates living outside your forest, which walks bipedally and makes excessive noise. You’ve probably noticed me staring at you daily for 8 hours every day with my giant bug-eyed lenses (binoculars), as I shout out gibberish codes to the other bipedal primate standing next to me (Katie) who seems to be obsessed with frantically poking the side of a log (Psion) with her fingers. I just wanted to come up here to introduce myself. May I offer you a delicious cabbage, spinach, kale maybe, as a sign of peace and friendship? (colobus monkeys are notoriously folivorous and have trouble digesting anything but green leaves).”
I don’t think such a scenario would end well. Also, who am I kidding? I could never get my ass up into one of their trees, let alone be coordinated enough to extend an arm out while I’m up there and say all that! Oh well… guess I’ll just continue stalking my colobus friends until my field season is over. Did I mention that I dream about colobus monkeys and about collecting behavioral data almost every night?
“Hello, my name is Julia. It is very nice to meet you… officially that is. I’m one of the pale primates living outside your forest, which walks bipedally and makes excessive noise. You’ve probably noticed me staring at you daily for 8 hours every day with my giant bug-eyed lenses (binoculars), as I shout out gibberish codes to the other bipedal primate standing next to me (Katie) who seems to be obsessed with frantically poking the side of a log (Psion) with her fingers. I just wanted to come up here to introduce myself. May I offer you a delicious cabbage, spinach, kale maybe, as a sign of peace and friendship? (colobus monkeys are notoriously folivorous and have trouble digesting anything but green leaves).”
I don’t think such a scenario would end well. Also, who am I kidding? I could never get my ass up into one of their trees, let alone be coordinated enough to extend an arm out while I’m up there and say all that! Oh well… guess I’ll just continue stalking my colobus friends until my field season is over. Did I mention that I dream about colobus monkeys and about collecting behavioral data almost every night?
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