In Which I Unveil the Next Exotic and Adventurous Phase of My Adventuring

A month ago, it was routine for me to wonder how closely the color of my bath would resemble my morning cup of tea, and whether I would emerge feeling more or less dirty. Life has changed since then. Obviously, it was important that I find myself a new location and start making money (which makes me squirm with displeasure, but what can you do? It's a workaday world.) So I decided on my most exciting, most exotic location yet... Pittsburgh.

Don't think I don't see that expression on your face. Before you settle into much-deserved Irene-mockage, hear me out. In my defense, Pittsburgh is a place I've never lived. It has plenty of job opportunities, especially with the student population shooed away for the summer. It's one of the safer, cleaner cities, and has a youth culture. Plus, it's not such a big city that I'd feel swallowed, like New York. But Pittsburgh's most important asset for me just graduated from law school- a roommate.

Everyone runs out of social juice at some point, don't they? For some people, it's like orange juice, and they always seem to have another bottle stashed away in a back room. For others, it might be more gauva or strawberry juice- in short supply, and quick to run out. After four years of living with strangers and making new friends every six months, I hope anyone's juice fridge would be empty. Not that I refuse to make any new friends in Pittsburgh- quite the opposite, in fact- but I need to spend time with at least one person who already knows all my stories and quirks, and who can tell when I'm indulging my flaws- and won't hesitate to swat me for it. I turned to Amy, my roomie from Kenyon, with whom I lived for three glorious semesters- semesters chockful of giant cookie runs, hot chocolate spiked with Bailey's, and impromptu dorm room dance parties.

Plus, she knows how to conjugate the verb "to defame." I trust you can see all the obvious advantages.

We haven't christened our sublet yet, but we're already very attached to it. The shower water is clear and always hot, all the appliances work, and there are no roosters as far as the ear can hear. The actual renters may return to find themselves barricaded out. My job for the summer shall be to mass allies for support in the inevitable Siege of the Shadyside Sublet. Watch the news in three months. I'll be the one in the dented helmet, shaking a machete.

The job search is officially on. Amy disappears routinely, being married to her Bar Exam preparations, and, being a fiesty wench, having a boy toy on the side. I figure it's good for me, because it forces me to look for jobs. Anything will do, possibly two anythings, depending on the hours and wages offered. If I know the patterns of my life at all, I'll be doing something totally new, for which I feel woefully unprepared. But I'm not too worried, because so far those situations seem to agree with me.

The biggest downfall of the Pittsburgh situation is the lack of a fuzzy critter in my life. At Skunk Hollow there was Ivanhoe, and at Bally Vaughan I could always rely on one of the two cats to park its pointedly-purring self on my chest or the keyboard, and rubbing a donkey's ears was an ever-present possibility as a short break from work. Here I depend on indulgent passers-by with dogs. Then there are those "Well that used to be a squirrel" moments...

More on life in Pittsburgh later. I'll do my best to make my existence here as exciting as it was in Africa. Shouldn't be too hard- it's Pittsburgh, after all..?

Home is Where the Duffel Is

This morning, during a caffeine-induced fit of kitchen-cleaning, it started to sink in what being back in the US actually means for me. We're in for some soul-searching. But not right now, you'll be grateful to hear! I owe you Part 2 of my final days in Africa, which has the added advantage of keeping my mind away from the real world.

Among the stories from the last entry, this one should have appeared- probably in the "Biting Back" section. Sheila the yellow baboon was hand-raised at Bally Vaughan, and lives with Babu and Lois, two other females. One day, she reached gray, leathery hands through the fence to me. I'd seen her do this once before, to the man who had brought her to the sanctuary years ago. I went to the fence, and after playing with me hands for short while, she reached a little farther. She snatched the neck of my t-shirt and yanked.
Baboons are fucking strong. I'm still amazed that I braced myself fast enough and hard enough that she didn't get me against the fence. Had to be adrenaline. She kept pulling, while Babu and Lois cavorted and shrieked around her. Still bracing myself and struggling, I was staring into her eyes (brown) which plainly and calmly said "Sucker". It was my shirt that gave way in the end, and Sheila darted around the enclosure, loudly celebating her scrap of red cotton/polyester blend.
Don't ever fall for this. She really could have mauled my face if she had pulled me close enough. Mob mentality, you know.

My two projects as I got ready to leave Zimbabwe were redoing the branches in the parrots' enclosure and removing the chicken wire roof of an old owl aviary. The branches I enjoyed, more or less- I get to play with an axe, I get to play with my leatherman, and as long as I dodge the nippy cockatoo, taking out the rotten, parrot-chewed branches and replacing them with new ones is quite satisfying. The owl aviary roof was a different story- I realized early on that it was NOT a one-person job, but I didn't want to take the staff away from building Getty's and Tarzan's extension, so I decided I'd just sing out if I hit a block I couldn't get around. That moment never came. Frustrating moments, for sure, and angry moments (at one point, I pulled off my bandanna and stamped on it, evidently channeling a cartoon... It's not as satisfying as it looks) but I managed the whole thing on my own. Moments that will stick in my head include clambering from the top of the ladder into a tree to reach the highest wire, chopping branches free while ant larvae rained down on my head, and moving carefully onto branches which overhung the stream, so I could disentangle saplings from the wire. My favorite memory, of course, will be when the left half of the ladder sank deep into the mud, causing the ladder to fall over while I was at the top. In order not to land under the heavy metal frame, I had to abandon ship and wrap myself around one of the poles supporting the wire, a fair distance above the ground. In shimmying down, I discovered a number of nails and splinters sticking out.

But this task eventually got done- the wire scratches stopped bleeding, I washed the larvae out of my hair, dusted off the abused bandanna, and packed my bags to go home.

Over the final few days, I took a small revenge for morning after morning of 2am wake-ups. To whit, I granted myself unlimited rooster-chasing privileges. It was glorious. Highly recommended.

The journey was so beautifully set up, when I originally ordered my plane tickets. No long layovers, not too many stops, and the whole thing would only take about 36 hours. The prices weren't even as bad as I had expected. One small complication was that I'd ordered my overseas tickets from Orbitz, which doesn't acknowledge places like Harare, so my first ticket would have to be ordered separately. No problem- I'd found an inexpensive (comparatively) ticket to Johannesburg, arriving seven hours before my first longer-distance flight.

Wrong. Somehow, in checking ticket prices on surrounding days, I'd managed to order my Harare ticket a day early. Instead of seven hours, which would have given me comfortable time to take my bags through customs, chill out, then check back in, my Jo-burg layover was now 32 hours. Oh no? Oh. Yes. At least I didn't order it a day late. I'm dumb enough.

Somehow I got through it without losing my mind. Parked my big backpack in a baggage lock-up to spare my shoulders, slept in the terminal, and entertained myself with reading, writing, some controlled shopping, and people-watching. I was positively giddy when the flight finally boarded. It was much easier to entertain myself on the plane, what with the personalized movie selection that these new-fangled contraptions now supply. I introduced myself to Sherlock Holmes (how unnerving to hear Rachel McAdams hailed by my own name) and to those computer-animated blue people that everyone is so obsessed with nowadays.

The funny thing about those long flights and layovers is that even though at the time they seemed interminable, afterwards you remember nothing about them. Why? Because you were bored. Or your mind was turned off by the glowing screen. None of those moments were worth recording, not in my head, and not in my blog. The only thing I feel obliged to talk about was my impressions of the USA, when I arrived in Washington Dulles Airport.

Well, first of all, SO many of the faces were white. I blended in. How odd. No cries of "Mzungu!" or "Sistah!" (this was actually a relief) Not only this, but everyone was speaking english. Suddenly, I could understand all the conversations around me. Bloody distracting. I wanted them to go back to Swahili and Shona, because I simply couldn't concentrate with my own language going on around me. Other little things kept giving me double-takes: recycling bins! Climate control in common houses! Electronics and wireless internet everywhere you turn, and no thatched mud houses anywhere. Everything is brightly and neatly packaged, and covered in advertising. People working in stores and restaurants are determinedly friendly, and you can control every detail of your food and drink- there's always a fat-free option. And none of it is maize meal.

I've been in my mom's house for several quiet days now, reuniting myself with ice cream, pizza, and Ivanhoe. I believe the feeling is slowly returning to the numb patch of my donkey-nibbled finger. The pictures from my disposable cameras are sad, stunted things. Like those frogs exposed to radiation, who have extra legs? Half of them didn't come out at all. I'll ask my friends to send others.

Congrats to my Aunt Sharie Geiss, now Sharie Kreilein, who was married while I was in Zimbabwe- the dress was gorgeous, she looked great, and I'm so happy that after all she's been through, she and Phil found each other! They deserve fresh cookies and tall glasses of milk. I'm only sorry that I couldn't be there, but hopefully soon I'll be able to visit! There are a number of visits I'm hoping to make soon.

I don't know where Home is. I have a lot of them, and if you read this rag, it's likely that you're connected to one. Stay tuned for my next step, and I'll watch for yours. Go get a cookie. I like oatmeal chocolate chip, but whatever grates your cheese.

Better Late Than Never

It's not my fault. I occasionally managed to get online in the last month, but it was with very limited time and a shaky connection that can't handle such complicated websites as Facebook and Blogspot. It's not my fault. Blame the Third World. This time...

I have a large number of stories. I figure the story of my trip home can wait until the next entry, and I'll try to fit the rest of my Bally Vaughan adventures into this entry. They've been separated, mostly for my own benefit.

The Donkey Soaps:
I've mentioned Fred and Crumb before. Fred is our handsome, humble, thinks-he's-a-donkey zebra stallion, with the donkey girlfriend, Crumb. They were devoted to each other. You never saw Fred without Crumb. Crumb, who was looking chubbier and chubbier... One morning I was greeted with the announcement that Crumb had given birth during the night. My head was instantly echoing with delighted cries of "BABY ZONKEY!!!!" and I bounced down to where they were hanging out. The pictures will be available soon. What I saw was a pale bundle at Crumb's feet- the bundle had humongous black-tipped ears, dark eyes, a puffy-fluffy forehead, and four little be-hoofed legs. My heart was instantly won. Naturally, Fred was hovering in the vicinity, wondering exactly what his girlfriend was doing.
The thing about donkey mares is that they don't like other equines- or much of anyone not holding food- near their babies. Our fears were confirmed when, the next day, Fred started looking for a new crowd. But no one else likes him. Crumb was the rebel in this respect. A few times a day, I saw Fred try to approach Crumb and the new baby, but he was repulsed every time.
Fred is a new man since Crumb kicked him out. He was finally accepted as a companion by Charlotte Donkey and her son Angelo, mostly because he will chase other donkeys away from a food source and let Charlotte and Angelo feast. They haven't been good for his frame of mind. Charlotte is from The Block. Charlotte has a crocodile scar on her bum. Fred has become a bitter soul. I still see him trying to follow Crumb and her daughter from time to time, and now that the baby is older, Crumb allows it for a little while, but he must still spend most of his time away.
Another word or two about the baby- for the first few days, we thought Fred must have been cuckolded, because the kid looked all donkey. But as days passed, faint shadows of stripes have become visible around her knees and her hocks. She's also grown into quite the feisty little soul- I watched her buck her dad in the nose the other day, in retaliation for being nudged out of the way. The unfortunate thing in my view is that she was named Cupcake. Cupcake the Zonkey. Poor Darlin'.
The situation has caused me my own share of difficulty. During my morning cleaning, I've acquired a sort of Donkey Breakfast Club around my wheelbarrow, where I deposit the fruit and seeds that the birds and monkeys leave behind. Fred has become a prominent member of the club, and until recently, he merely avoided me when I came out to add rubbish or move the barrow. No longer. Now I get threatened regularly with zebra kicks. I've chosen to deal with the situation in a manner inspired by Wolf Park, which after all this time is still my best source of animal advice. I have created the Rice Sack Monster, of which Fred is mortally afraid. The Rice Sack Monster is easily summoned by the waving of a rice sack in the air, and it promptly quells the zebra threat.
Poor Fred. I hope his troubles ease off soon.

Mongoose Viewing:
Our troop of free-roaming banded mongooses, which started with three rescued animals and is now 35 strong, do not often come into contact with snakes. For the most part, besides the meat set out for them by the center, they fill their bellies with foraged bugs, eggs raided from the various rescued fowl, and the occasional unfortunate chicken. But the other day, while we cleaned a lion enclosure, one of the staff came across a mid-size brown snake who seems to have mistakenly bitten his own coils, and thus killed himself. Not bright. Perhaps it's just as well he's eliminated from the gene pool. Sarah brought the neatly-looped carcass to the mongooses. They approached very cautiously. Huddling together, they formed a chirping and twitching mongoose mass, with one animal at the tip, very delicately stretching his nose out towards the snake. As soon as they ascertained that it wasn't going to fight, the troop erupted with squeals and chirrups, snatched the carcass, and vanished with it, presumably to tear it to pieces and devour.

Biting Back:
For a while, I was starting to wonder if I had somehow offended the animal kingdoms. They had suddenly become almost universally difficult. First, two baby monkeys escaped their enclosure during morning feeding. I must assume that I didn't latch the door closely when I was inside. Lucky, monkeys are social animals and these ones were young, so they didn't want to go far from their home and their companions, and were relatively easy to catch. Sarah and Colin assured me that everyone releases someone eventually. Still...
The next day, I encountered african wasps, and the differences between their venom and that of american wasps. African wasps, in addition to hurting like hell, make you dizzy and spacey for a goodly block of hours. I met them while attacking a group of branches with a cleaver (closest thing I could find to a machete. It was going well enough until the wasps showed up). To be fair, I'd been warned about the wasps living in the tree. I had just figured that I would see one and be able to retreat before they could sting me.
Other mishaps involved narrowly avoiding a kick to the head from the zorse (as soon as I saw her head rise, ears go back, and hindquaters start to spin, I ran for it, and heard her hooves whooshing behind me) and rolling down my cuff one day to find a scorpion cozily nestled inside. A tiny, grey scorpion. The way I understand it, the smaller the scorpion, the better to avoid it, but there it was, sitting on my ankle. I stayed very still until I could, in one quick motion, scrape it off with a rock, and I got away clean.
The final mishap, which looks like the only lasting damage from Africa, properly belongs to a different story. Bear with me- it's another donkey story.

The Tale of Achilles:
African farmers are not always nice to their livestock, and donkeys, because they're such tough creatures, get some of the worst treatment. There are 15 donkeys at Bally Vaughan, and those that weren't born there are all rescues from farms. Farmers call Sarah when their donkeys have been abused to uselessness, and she buys the animals and nurses them back to health. I'll leave my thoughts on paying abusers out of this story.
Achilles's story begins with a man on a bicycle who arrived at the Bally Vaughan gates with news of a donkey to sell. We showed up at the farm, and were led into a pasture, where a grey donkey was curled on his side, tied to a stake, listless and unable to stand. His ribs and hipbones stuck out under his hide. Sarah said he was one of the worst she had seen. He had obviously been sick for a long time- the bald patch that usually adorns the withers of a beast of burden had grown its hair back, and his leg muscles were wasted from lying still so long. In the creases of each leg, I found open sores, again from lying still. The sores were infested with maggots. Raw patches at each ankle told me he had been tightly hobbled.
I named him Achilles. If anyone could beat his condition, I figured Achilles would do it. The name was also in reference to the ankle wounds. As the resident volunteer, Achilles was my charge. I alternated with Colin to bring him food and water, and treated his wounds. He was given large doses of antibiotics and vitamins, and left to sleep as much as possible. He was clearly baffled at being touched and treated so gently, and fed so well. I often sat with him and talked, which at first surprised him, but he seemed to like it. He wasn't averse to music either, and would relax while I sang to him (Sarah's caracals also turn out to be music lovers). It was a strange time for him. He was wild about stock feed- it was plain he had never seen or smelled it before. I saw the farmer who sold him sniffing at the mixture, trying to work it out. Achilles gulped down enough that I started to monitor him, to make sure he wasn't overloading his system. He also got all my kitchen scraps- bananas were a great hit.
The morning after his arrival, he was looking perkier. His expression was more animated, and he was eager for his feed. I was feeling optimistic. But he went downhill that afternoon, following a long struggle to empty his bowels. He couldn't even lift his head afterwards. With a blanket under his belly, we tried to help him stand, but his legs were just too weak. I could hear Maxwell, one of the older staff members, tell Sarah that he probably wouldn't make it. Once he was relaxed again and headed towards sleep, I took an axe across the river and vented my rage on some innocent trees. The aviaries needed re-doing anyway.
I came back before predator feeding that afternoon, to check whether Achilles would drink some water. He still couldn't lift his head, but given his prone position and the accompanying constipation risks, it was important that he stay hydrated. Sarah and Colin mixed some bread and grain with water, sugar, and salt, and I hand-fed the mixture to Achilles. His lips were cut up and tender, and with his head sideways, he wasn't having an easy time of it, but he was obviously hungry again. That was how my finger wound up between his teeth. And in an instant, he was biting down. Hard. It was lucky that Sarah and Colin were there. They realized something was wrong when I requested in a tense voice that they get his teeth off of me NOW. Hard as I pulled, I couldn't get my finger loose, and I didn't want to strike Achilles. Sarah and Colin pulled on the donkey's jaw... and pulled... and pulled. I had lost feeling in my finger, and honestly, I'd given up on keeping the top segment of my middle finger. Donkeys are strong, famous for it, and after a while of struggling, I was just wishing that he'd get it over with, so I could bandage it and start healing.
But Achilles, confused, finally gave up the struggle, and I stumbled back. Sarah dressed my finger and sent me home for the last hour of the day's work. She and Colin would look after Achilles for that evening. There were deep gouges on either side of that top knuckle, and I couldn't feel half of the finger pad. On the upside, it wasn't in as much pain as it should have been.
The burst of adrenaline left a hole in my defense system- I woke up that night fevered and vomiting, neither of which were related to the finger. Mid-morning the next day, while I was still tossing with fever dreams and unable to eat or walk a straight line, Achilles died.
The next day, my fever subsided but I was still weak and woozy. My finger was healing very quickly, though even now, two weeks later, half of the finger pas remains numb. That second day of gut-recovery was a good time to cry over my donkey and generally gather strength again. The next day, I discovered that a woman with a sturdily-dressed finger wound can still use an axe to vent her tougher emotions.
I comfort myself that for the last few days of his life, Achilles had comfort, company, and dignity. But I do wish I been there for him those last few hours.

The Vervet Saga:
It's school holiday season, which means that Zimbabwean families who have the means are flooding into Mozambique for the beaches and the diving. Those of them who go into pet shops, or probably to markets, will see young vervet monkeys for sale, and not in friendly conditions. Some of them will buy these monkeys simply to remove them from their sellers (Note: this is not a recommended practice, since it just ends up funding cruelty), and as soon as they're home in Zimbabwe, they bring these cherubs straight to Bally Vaughan.
And when I say "cherubs," that isn't exactly what I mean. I think you know that.
Moe is our latest arrival. He's our first monkey in a number of weeks, so he can't go in with the other baby monkeys, because they would attack him. As for the adult troupe (who have their own babies), they should adopt him without trouble, but there is a delaying factor.
I talked about Tarzan in my last entry, the former leader of the troupe. Tarzan was finally re-captured, after many near-bite incidents, a raid on the volunteer house, and other dastardly capers. Rather than put him back with the others, where he'll clearly just escape again, we evacuated an enclosure of birds and guinea pigs, and moved Tarzan in by himself. He was miserable. No monkey likes to be by himself.
That's where Getty comes in. Getty is an adult female, missing the fingers on her left hand. For this reason, she's the only other member of the troupe who can't be released. She also exhibits great fondness for Tarzan, to the point of trying to defend him when the new leader, BigEars, bullied him. There's one hitch: Getty is extremely aggressive, and even more so in combination with Tarzan the Renegade. Unless we were willing to let them live in utter squalor, we had to devise a separate half to the enclosure, where they could be put for cleaning.
Moe doesn't know that he's waiting for an enclosure to be built. With no place to put him where he wouldn't be miserable, he runs free during the day. He usually joins me for morning cleaning rounds, turns up at herbivore-feeding time to steal tidbits, and then entertains himself for the rest of the daylight hours. He's been seen schmoozing with the wild troupe, but hasn't been adopted as we hoped. We don't have to worry about Moe disappearing, because he was clearly a pet for some time- he likes to play with dogs, and loves to cuddle with people. At the end of each day, Moe can be found at the visitor's carpark, waiting for someone to carry him back to the cafe. Monkeys do not like the dark. As the sun sets, he clings to either me or Sarah, until we roll an apple into his bed-crate.
Cuddling with Moe makes it clear what the appeal of owning a baby monkey feels like- however, in just a few weeks Moe will start to be a real monkey, with aggessive tendencies. And even at this age, he's old enough to be destructive in his curiosity. Sigh. But he's a sweet l'il duffer.
The enclosure had just been finished when I left, so Getty and Moe should be finding new accomodations soon.

I feel like this extremely long entry should be wrapping up soon, but there must be other things to share... For example, the baby marmosets, who were steadfastly clinging to their family's various backs when I first arrived, are two months old now and starting to be really good at running around on their own. Their faces are still grey instead of black. Kadiki the lioness killed a pair of geese who were stupid enough to fly into her enclosure and land right in front of her. The mongooses and the dogs continue their campaign against one another. We had some interesting meat donated lately, as well, which the larger predators got to enjoy. You see, when a wild animal seriously harms a human, it's usually shot, and the meat is parcelled out. Crocodile Man, the game control asshat who, nevertheless was kind enough to release our crocodiles, has recently brought us meat from both an elephant and a hippo. I might not like the policy of shooting animals that people should NOT have been near in the first place, but I do appreciate the expressions on our lions, hyenas, and leopard's faces when they bite into that kind of meat.

I'll write more in a day or two, just detailing the final day or two at Bally Vaughan and some of my thoughts on leaving Africa. This entry is already to long for the average attention span. I will say only that being back in the United States feels very odd.

Will crocodile stories convince you I'm not dead?

I'm alive. Thought you should know, because I'm aware that at least two people were worried enough that they managed to contact Zimbabwe, which isn't easy. Then again, I did report myself as alone in Harare before disappearing for two and a half weeks, so I guess I can't be too surprised. But I'm not dead, just far away from the internet.

Even if we had internet at Bally Vaughan, the power cuts would severely limit my time online. Now, let me stress this- ZIMBABWE IS NOT NEARLY AS UNSTABLE AS THE MEDIA CLAIMS. Several years ago, it was legitimately bad, but the real trouble is over, and Zimbabwe is trying to get back to the strong economy they used to have. Unfortunately, terror sells, so instead of trying to encourage tourism back to the country, the media prefers to speak as though the trouble was still going on. That's the truth. Spread it around, please: Zimbabwe is a fluffy, cuddly bunny.

That said, it's currently a solid third world country, and out of its previous five power centers, only about one and a half are functioning today. The defecit of power is so severe that the company will simply shut down the power to various sectors, usually during the busiest parts of the day, to ensure maximum power save-age. Mind you, the president's house always has power. I never said the government wasn't corrupt. That's the way of governments, especially in Africa.

I'm learning the art of speed-bathing, cold water being the incentive. Also, point of interest, the water is frequently quite brown. And I mean "quite" in the British sense, where it secretly translates to "REALLY FREAKIN'".

My current home is Bally Vaughan Wildlife Sanctuary, where I share the grounds with lions, hyenas, a leopard, blue duikers, a klipspringer, servals, a civet, caracals, a jackal, crocodiles, parrots, zebras, baboons, monkeys, mongooses, marmosets, and owls. Now, Bally Vaughan never turns an animal refugee away, and as I mentioned, several years ago the proverbial shit was hitting the proverbial fan. White farmers fleeing the country dropped off many of their animals here, which means we also house cows, donkeys, a horse, sheep, pigs, goats, geese, ducks, chickens, rabbits, guinea pigs, and white rats. One fleeing family brought a zore! Yes, a genuine horse-zebra cross, sterile as a mule, whose temperment is so foul that she's called simply Zorse, and they're considering mounting Beware of Zorse signs for the public. See, all the equines are free-roaming, and Zorse has been known to charge for no apparent reason. A word to the wise: this behavior is apparently typical of zorses. It's the zebra heritage showing through.

Along that train of thought, we've also got an accidental zonkey (Muffin) and another on the way, courtesy of Fred. Fred is a gorgeous zebra stallion. Fred was found in a tiny paddock, up to his belly in filth, with no company besides an eldlery donkey. We suspect that Fred is unaware that he's a zebra at all. Thank whatever gods you pray too. Male zebra have been known to kill other equines by ripping their jaws off, they are that fierce and territorial. Our Zorse's father was a serial offender. Fred doesn't do that. We like Fred. Fred just wants to hang out with Crumb, the love of his life, a very homely donkey mare.

Moving away from our free-floating equine population. My morning usually starts several hours before it's supposed to, when the rescued roosters start crowing. So. Many. Roosters. Damn them. If ever there was a time to turn down an animal... They've also got a knack for knowing when your temper is fraying, which they see as an ideal opportunity to follow you around, testing the volume and timbre of their voices. The roosters get the dogs going in the morning, who in turn get the lions going, and occasionally the donkeys. It's an interesting wake-up.
If I ever express to you a desire to keep chickens, and if you are a true friend to me, you will refer me back to this passage.

Besides a pair of goats, we've had no new rescues since I arrived, but that doesn't mean there's been no excitement. I've witnessed 3 (count 'em!) crocodile captures, and one monkey netting.
Crocs: To begin with, Bally Vaughan is right on a river, full of plump fish. Recently, a crocodile moved into this river, approximately two and a half meters long, which killed my desire to go swimming, and made us very nervous about the donkeys and sheep going to drink, not to mention the dogs going to play. The wild animal control guy was summoned (he was a pompous ass, and a total disappointment from the desccription, but that's a story for another day). He "supervised" the setting of the trap in the river (a trap built by our staff and carried by our staff while he showed us pictures of animals he'd shot). But he also offered to remove two of the three crocs we were keeping, and to release them in a reserve. Our biggest croc (about 4 meters) is a registered "problem animal," meaning that he was attacking stock and people, so he can't be released- I tried to explain this to the two baby rabbits who recently escaped their cage and took up residence in his enclosure, but perhaps Shona is their first language.

Crocodile restraining is fairly straightforward. First, get something around it's neck and pull ittight against any barrier. Next, coming from behind, sit on it and clamp it's mouth shut. Crocodiles can close their jaws with amazing force (and a horrifying sound) but in opening them again, they're much weaker. One the mouth is held, tie it shut (tightly, please), then tie the wrists behind its back and the ankles behind its tail.

Fascinating to watch. Next time, I wonder if they'll let me help sit on it at least. Point of interest- crocodiles have enthralling green eyes.

As for the monkey, Tarzan is a one-armed vervet, who continuously escapes the enclousre with the other monkeys. This might be all right, except that he's a biting risk, and has been known to raid the volunteer house. Our best strategy is to feed him a jam-and-tranquilizer sandwich, then wait for him to get drowsy enough to net. We managed this beautifully the other day... but I believe he stayed inside about 24 hours. He remains at large.

We have had one death since I came- Paddington the serval was found dead one morning, and the vet says it was a snakebite. So we make a point of making a lot of noise in the tall grass.

I am the only volunteer just now. A lot of the work is familiar- cleaning, some feeding, and fixing anything I notice that needs it. When I first arrived, I worked with a New Zealand vet nurse, but she's been gone a week now, and I rely on Alice and Strauss, the cats, for company. Oh well. At least Alice catches rats. There's some sort of humane society in town that might drop off a litter of kittens for care as well.

I realized the other day that I've passed the One Month Left milestone. It's scary, because I don't know where I'm going next. I wrote a list of all the things I'll require from my next location, the topmost being monetary gain. So that limits me to the States, if I want to be legal.

Oh, it's worth mentioning- the marmosets (which are south american, and were brought over here to be pets) have an obsession with climbing inside my work shirts. Maybe it's because they're so loose? It was already all I could manage to get them all off me before I leave the cage, now they've muliplied the problem, by being inside my clothing. Jen took some pictures, and perhaps she'll post them.

Right. My online time is limited, and I don't know when I'll be back. Hopefully soon. Missing everyone.

Baby Steps

Well, I am in Harare, capital of Zimbabwe, and so far my impressions are limited. The first one went much like this: "Oh my god, there's no one here to meet me. Again."

Haven't we had enough of this shit? Really. I had thought my luck was finally looking upwards, but apparently it's a process. Baby steps. They had warned me that they wouldn't have email for a while, I just hadn't realized that they meant right away, as in "don't bother emailing us back". Me and my spur-of-the-moment plane tickets. And I hadn't thought to warn them that I don't have a phone, so contacting them outside of the internet would be a problem.

So once again, I spent the night in a hotel. I am coming to loathe hotels and continental breakfasts. But I'll join my friend Sydney in her attempts at positive thinking. I've got about six contact numbers written down now, so assuming I can find a willing phone, and the other line picks up, I should be more or less all right. Also, there's an information office in the city, so if all else fails, I could lay siege.

Right. I'll get to it, then.

Someday this will all be very funny...

I feel it's only fair to warn you- this is not going to be a peppy entry. This entry is coming from frustration, discouragement, and now a dollop of severe disillusionment coming from a blow to my faith in humankind and my trust in my own instincts that arrived yesterday.

I'm back in Lilongwe now, having found a clean place offering cheap dorm accomodation. The quest for a new plan is ongoing. A few options include a sanctuary in Lilongwe, a sanctuary and research place in Namibia, and what seems most likely, going to my Zimbabwe location a week or so early. The sanctuary in Lilongwe tells me that they do have space, and they have the benefit of being right here, but they are seriously expensive, so I'm not sure about that. We'll see what unfolds.

In going online yesterday, I learned that about half the people I knew in Capetown are not who I thought they were. I've always known my instincts about people were off, but in this case it seems as though my first impressions were actually the accurate ones for a change. It's amazing sometimes just how wrong I can be. About just about anything. So I'm struggling with myself. I'm in a hostel situation here, so there are people to meet, and I've more or less been on my own for two weeks, so I could use the company. But my bruised-up trust impulses want nothing to do with anyone new, I'm over people right now, and have no trust for male people in particular.

Someday this will be funny?

To pull my head out of my own mopey ass for a moment, I need to send a shout-out to my musher Karin, who started her second Iditarod run this past Saturday, and was let down by a sled. You can do everything right sometimes, and circumstances still find a way to stomp down. Karin, my heart is making a kennel visit, to give you and the dogs much-needed hugs (so if they start randomly yelling and squiggling out there, that's why). I'm sorry, I know all of you were in great shape and ready to go.

And After All That...

And here's the next chapter in the adventure, and I'll warn you that by no means is it the last, as you'll find out in the course of the entry. I waited in Lilongwe for almost two days, with no sign of life from the project manager at Thuma, although I sent him almost daily emails telling him about my hotel changes. Lilongwe is quite expensive, especially the modernized section I was in, so I was telling myself that if I spent a second night and didn't hear from my contact, then I would try to make it to Thuma on my own.

On the afternoon following my first night in Lilongwe, my hotel was entered by my friend Helen from the Dar es Salaam bus and her friend Kenneth, both of whom seemed to have adopted my problem as their own and had decided to check on me. Kenneth is a diplomat working in youth counselling, and seemed to have pull over all manner of things. He declared that my hotel was too expensive, and he brought me to a different place and negotiated my room. The next day, when the internet at the hotel wasn't functioning, his driver took me to his workplace, and after establishing that my contact was still MIA, we worked out a way of getting there.

Okay, to be fair, HE worked out a way to get there, and I argued. The plan which to him seemed incredibly easy and simple, seemed much less so to me. He had me taking a mini-bus towards Salima (he hadn't told me yet that the driver would take me to the bus station, so this was my first concern, knowing where to go), then disembarking at the last police checkpoint before the city. The police, he said, had the most efficient phones and should be able to reach my contact, or at least would be able to tell me how to act next. Now, I was raised on the principle that police in South America and Africa are largely corrupt, and the last thing I wanted to do was place myself in their hands. Moreover, it seemed to me there was a great difference between HIM, as a diplomat, asking people to do favors for him, and ME, as an ignorant foreigner, asking them. But he assured me that at least during the day, Malawian police are friendly and helpful.

This turned out to be true. The policemen at the checkpoint took up my cause enthusiastically, but their phones had no better luck than anyone else's. In the end, they called over a bicycle taxi- yes, you read that correctly. You sit on the back of a bicycle, and pay the barefooted man with no brakes to pedal.

I stared at the bike and gulped. You need to understand, I haven't sat on a bike since I was thirteen, and crashed painfully in the woods. At the end of the day, I'd be much more willing to jump on the back of a strange horse, or stand on a dogsled's second set of runners, than to climb on a bike. Until that moment, I hadn't realized that the old dread had actually lingered. Silly me.

The thought that decided the point went like this "You've come all the way here, just to balk at riding a bike? You call yourself an adventurer?"

The police were all for strapping my big hiker's backpack onto the bike as well, but at this I put my burned and bug-bitten foot down. No bike-taxier deserved that fate, hauling both me and that bag on a hot day. I left the big bag with the police, making sure to get a name and number in case it disappeared, took the small bag with me, and zoomed off with my biker, Girlium George.

It was fun, once I relaxed. The trail was lovely, Girlium George was a truly charming person, and the villagers nearly swallowed their tongues at the sight of a mzungu on the back of a bike. We covered 8 kilometers, mostly of dirt trail through villages surrounded by corn and tobacco crops, with goats running amuck everywhere you looked. After two hours, we arrived at the Thuma gate, where two men live. Here we found yet more complications. No one could be spared that evening to guide me the extra 10km to the camp, which would need to be done on foot. With elephants and cape buffalo along the way, both cranky with visitors, I could not go alone. In addition, the manager, who was the only mzungu at the camp, had been gone since last Sunday (incidentally, the same day I left Arusha) and no one knew when he would be back. Come back tomorrow.

Back on the bike, back to the police, and we had to go VERY fast, because night was falling, and a mzungu wasn't safe, even with a Malawian escort. Somehow Girlium managed it, and the police brought me to a nearby resthouse. This was the sort of place where farmers and tradespeople would stay, so it wasn't fancy- a bed, a small table, and a mosquito net that wasn't quite large enough. As I entered, I saw a tiny lizard the length of a quarter squiggle across the wall. I'm not picky.

At six the next morning, Girlium picked me up and took me back to the gate. The men at the gate had by then gotten in touch with the base camp. They told me that no one there had known anything about my coming. They weren't prepared for me, had no food for me, and didn't know if they had work. They asked me to wait while everyone tried to figure out what was going on. I was starting to feel a lot of antipathy for the absent manager. As I sat by the gate, it occurred to me how strange it was that any manager should take the only car without telling anyone where he was going or when he would return, and for such a long time. Something fishy was going on, and the idea of marching out there was starting to feel very dubious.

Meanwhile, Girlium George brought me my bag to the gate, and upon hearing the situation, swore that he wouldn't leave me until the situation was sorted. On discussing it with the gatemen, he decided to call one of the trustees in Salima. What's more, he brought two fish, impaled on stakes and cooked whole, which he presented to me for my lunch.

Well, first of all, I confessed that I had no idea how to go about eating them (which inspired gales of laughter), and second, I refused flatly not to share with the others. Girlium warmed the fish up over the gatemen's fire, stripped the meat into a bowl, and then he, myself, and the two men all shared it. The gatemen contributed salt and a large bowl of sima, essentially maize mush, about the consistency of play-doh. Not half bad, as lunch goes.

We wasted time by teaching me some chichewa words (chule=frog). Girlium had been trying to teach me greetings. In the afternoon, the gatemen called again, and informed me that the scouts were on their way to collect me. As it happened, the scouts and the trustee in Salima, an englishman, arrived at the same time, the scouts on foot and the trustee in a land rover. Tony lost no time in telling me that the manager had stolen not only the project's car, but both laptops, and that nobody could find him. He apologized profusely for the situation I was in. He drove me and the scouts up to the camp, where they showed me around, and the jist of what he had to tell me was that I couldn't stay.

In rainy season, Thuma forest is covered in deep, high grass. It hides all manner of beasties that shouldn't be surprised, including elephants and cape buffalo, both of which can and have willingly killed people there. In addition, the tall grass makes it essentially impossible to work on the most prevalent volunteer project, the mammal survey. And without a manager to find alternative work for me, there wasn't much I could do. The scouts were also dubious that they could protect me in the tall grass while doing my work.

I have handled myself with dangerous situations before, but if a scout got hurt because I didn't climb a tree fast enough, I would never forgive myself...

I was sad. I was already half in love with the forest- it's beautiful, it's dangerous, I looked over a cliff and saw a troupe of baboons.... I wanted so much to get to know it. Also, I liked the scouts. They laughed easily, they were competent, they seemed easy-going. It didn't hurt that they were also truly beautiful examples of Malawian men- I wouldn't have lacked for eye candy at Thuma. And they were going to teach me to play bau. But with no work, and the possibility of putting others in danger?

Tony took me back to his house, and I'm trying to reverse engines and find a new plan, and not trespass on his hospitality too long. Right now, everything's looking a bit hopeless, and I've had my share of despairing moments. Remember when the first job in Skagway didn't work out? This isn't as bad as that, because there's no way to blame it on myself. I just hope I bounce back as thoroughly this time.

I should close with a happy thought: I've had bad luck these past two weeks, no one can deny it. But I've been consistently and extremely lucky in the people I've met along the way who have given me help. David and Helen, Kenneth, Girlium George (whom I've promised to write) and now Tony and his wife and friends. Where would we be without kind people?