Hello from BFMS
It was quite the adventure to get to the Boabeng-Fiema Monkey Sanctuary. Murphy's Law took over and showed us that even if you pay lots of money to rent your own car you are just as likely to break down as if you paid $4 for public transportation.
Pascale, Bright, and I left Accra early in the morning on Friday. After crawling through brutal morning traffic jams we weren't 2 hours out of Accra when our car just died. The driver revved the engine and nothing. Then white smoke started pouring out of the car, then black smoke, and we all headed for the hills. The driver went to check the engine and there was a loud "poof". Our water tank had overheated to the point where it acutally exploded! No one was hurt fortunately but we were definitely without a car to BFMS.
We left behind all our stuff and hopped on a tro-tro headed for Kumasi. Took forever to get there and we were really late for our meetings (we were going to visit Bright's boss at FORIG, the forestry dept and his former supervisor). By the time we finished our meetings it was 3 pm and I was close to fainting from being forced to skip lunch. Not fun! We tried to get a hold of the driver to see if he was in Kumasi but Bright's cell phone died on us. And as Murphy would like it, the power was down in Kumasi so we couldn't charge the phone battery anyways.
FORIG was nice enough to find us another car as well as a last minute driver. By the time we made it out of Kumasi traffic (who makes traffic circles in the 2nd largest city in Ghana?) it was pitch dark. We drove the next 3 hours in the dark and probably squished half the frog population between Kumasi and BFMS (it's frog breeding season and they're everywhere!). We did make it to BFMS by 9 pm and were greeted by Julie and Alfred. Too bad none of our stuff made it though! I had my day pack and Pascale had nothing but her laptop!
So many things have changed at BFMS since I was here last year. We have electricity and fans now! The fans are a godsend. The temperature ranges from about 20 at night to 38 during the day so anytime I'm in my room I basically keep the fan on. We're still pumping water and taking bucket showers but we're basically living in Shangri-La now! I have my old room back but all to myself. Most of the people still remember me from last year, it's nice to see friendly familiar faces half way around the world. Even the mice remember me... I've got one pooping around my room but I have yet to catch him.
I've started some prelim stuff for my project - tagging trees, collecting samples, setting up equipment. Setting up my 3m long tree pruning pole was quite an operation. There were basically no instructions and the diagram was microscopic. I had the wildlife officers (Jonas and Isaac) helping me put it together. Half an hour later, we finally have something that cuts branches! Some of these trees at BFMS are small enough that I can start real data collection without climbing the tree. However, some of the trees are 40m tall before you reach the first branches. I don't know if I can even get my field assistants to climb to that height just for safety reasons. Thank goodness Pascale is here with us so we can work out the issues/problems right away. I can't afford week long delays with the e-mail system here!
I can't believe I've only been gone just over 1 week. It feels like an eternity!
Pascale, Bright, and I left Accra early in the morning on Friday. After crawling through brutal morning traffic jams we weren't 2 hours out of Accra when our car just died. The driver revved the engine and nothing. Then white smoke started pouring out of the car, then black smoke, and we all headed for the hills. The driver went to check the engine and there was a loud "poof". Our water tank had overheated to the point where it acutally exploded! No one was hurt fortunately but we were definitely without a car to BFMS.
We left behind all our stuff and hopped on a tro-tro headed for Kumasi. Took forever to get there and we were really late for our meetings (we were going to visit Bright's boss at FORIG, the forestry dept and his former supervisor). By the time we finished our meetings it was 3 pm and I was close to fainting from being forced to skip lunch. Not fun! We tried to get a hold of the driver to see if he was in Kumasi but Bright's cell phone died on us. And as Murphy would like it, the power was down in Kumasi so we couldn't charge the phone battery anyways.
FORIG was nice enough to find us another car as well as a last minute driver. By the time we made it out of Kumasi traffic (who makes traffic circles in the 2nd largest city in Ghana?) it was pitch dark. We drove the next 3 hours in the dark and probably squished half the frog population between Kumasi and BFMS (it's frog breeding season and they're everywhere!). We did make it to BFMS by 9 pm and were greeted by Julie and Alfred. Too bad none of our stuff made it though! I had my day pack and Pascale had nothing but her laptop!
So many things have changed at BFMS since I was here last year. We have electricity and fans now! The fans are a godsend. The temperature ranges from about 20 at night to 38 during the day so anytime I'm in my room I basically keep the fan on. We're still pumping water and taking bucket showers but we're basically living in Shangri-La now! I have my old room back but all to myself. Most of the people still remember me from last year, it's nice to see friendly familiar faces half way around the world. Even the mice remember me... I've got one pooping around my room but I have yet to catch him.
I've started some prelim stuff for my project - tagging trees, collecting samples, setting up equipment. Setting up my 3m long tree pruning pole was quite an operation. There were basically no instructions and the diagram was microscopic. I had the wildlife officers (Jonas and Isaac) helping me put it together. Half an hour later, we finally have something that cuts branches! Some of these trees at BFMS are small enough that I can start real data collection without climbing the tree. However, some of the trees are 40m tall before you reach the first branches. I don't know if I can even get my field assistants to climb to that height just for safety reasons. Thank goodness Pascale is here with us so we can work out the issues/problems right away. I can't afford week long delays with the e-mail system here!
I can't believe I've only been gone just over 1 week. It feels like an eternity!
posted by Avatamsaka Monastery Choir at 3:19 AM
1 Comments:
Hello
It's always nice to find a place that feels like a home away from home.
LEs
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