Diamonds and chimps!

I am probably the world’s luckiest girl. How many people can say they have eaten mangoes while watching wild chimpanzees eating mangoes right in their front yard? I should smack myself everytime I feel homesick. This place is amazing. I went in a dugout canoe touring the smaller islands surrounding Tiwai today, and marked any location where I saw pygmy hippo footprints or feces. Then we headed to the mining site, where the Kambama people are mining diamonds. They pumped water out of a water inlet in the Moa River to expose the river bed, and right now they are digging up the gravel. I really want to be there when they wash the gravel, cuz that’s when they find the diamonds! I don’t want any of them, I just want to find them. It reminds me of North Georgia, mining for gold, only NOT. These men work really hard. Not work for the faint of heart, or body! They have some ripped muscles. I didn’t even try to help them cuz I knew I would only get in the way. I hope to take some pictures, so that ladies, when you look at your shiny rings, you know where they came from!