No hippos yet. I know it has only been 2 days since the
traps have been open but of course it is stressful. I keep thinking “What if we
don’t get one?” This is basically our last chance. It’s so difficult to sit in
the morning and wait for that radio call from the pit trap checkers. I guess we
just have to be patient. I always feel like “Tomorrow will be the day” but I
know we have…like 26 days left to try. I am so so so optimistic.
Nothing too big drama wise is happening. Of course the cast
of characters is very interesting. OH, it has been some time and I hadn’t told
you about the group that arrived on Tiwai the day after I wrote the last blog
journal. We got home from finishing all the traps, and of course I was dirty
and exhausted, and I walk into the research camp only to see a fairly large
crowd of people milling around. Dr. John Oates and a retinue of Njala
University students had arrived for a three day stay. I was a little dismayed
because now is a pretty stressful time, what with all the hippo stuff going on.
Dr. Oates was very firm about staying at the research station, so for the past
2 nights our little apartment on one side of the dormitory has been filled with
probably 10 or so young men who are very loud and keep going in and out at all
hours of the night. They also keep throwing their trash around and of course
things of ours have gone missing. It was very interesting to meet Dr. Oates,
and I got to give a little presentation yesterday to all the students (some of
them fell asleep, but oh well!) about my work on pygmy hippos. They are leaving
tomorrow, which will be a relief to have the place quiet and calm again (and so
I can get a decent night’s sleep!).
Last night there was a disco, but I did not go due to the
hippo trapping and all that. However, at the disco, Lahai Lukulay (the guy who
was attacked by a croc last year) got drunk and jealous of one of his wives,
and beat her pretty badly. They took him to the police station and her to the
clinic in Potoru. Not too good, and made me doubly glad I was not there. I do
love me some dancing though…
It’s been nice to go down to the riverside at the rocks to
bathe almost every day. The water is refreshing, and the view is 5 star. We are
having difficulties with the running water and all that in the place, and there
is always the worry that the electricity will give out, especially when you
have about 20 people charging phones, laptops, etc.
Our vet is of course awesome and I probably would be a lot
more lonely/annoyed/etc if she was not. We’ve been doing radio telemetry
training for the past couple days – one of Annika’s technicians has never done
it before, and also Bockary never showed up for the first 2 days of work, so we
had to replace him with somebody else. I felt really really bad when Bockary
show up after I’d just hired the other guy, but what could I do? We didn’t know
where he was or when or if he would be coming, and when he showed up, I
couldn’t just ask the other guy to stop working. I just hate the uncertainty
for sure! Maybe tomorrow???
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