Ants, rain, and baboons

The little lodge where I’m staying has ants. It doesn’t just have a few ants that get into my food (although they do) or crawl on me while I’m sitting on the couch (although they do)-- there is a whole master colony of ants that live in my bathroom door and come out in droves every night. Kathryn and I are driven to the safety of our rooms after the sun goes down just to avoid being taken over by the masses of ants. This is not news. These ants have been living with me for my entire time in Africa. On Tuesday night, though, something happened to the colony. Instead of a million ants crawling around my house, a huge group of them emerged that could fly. This was too much for me to handle. After killing the ten or so flying ants in my room I went to bed early and just hoped they’d be gone in the morning. That night there was the biggest storm that we’ve seen yet. It rained for hours. Eventually the rain managed to work its way past my tin roof and leak onto my bed. Yesterday morning, after a restless night dreaming of ants and getting splattered with water, I was just about ready to say goodbye to Africa.
Then, yesterday, I made my first trip to Makasutu Culture Forest. This forest is a privately owned protected area with a beautiful eco-lodge on the premises. I am interested in including this forest in my research on protected areas, but it has been difficult to get there, because they only accept group tours. My co-workers did me a huge favor by driving an hour out of their way to drop me off at the forest, with the promise that they’d be back for me in a couple of hours. When we arrived, however, the guides were preparing to go home- we were too late. After driving around the forest for a bit, we ran into a car with the official Makasutu stamp on it. Yahya, our car’s driver who seems to be friends with half the country, shouted hello to the driver of the Makasutu car. That driver happened to be yet another one of Yahya’s friends. This country is small enough that everyone always seems to know everyone else, which often helps facilitate situations like this. It’s a country where it is a reasonable expectation that the President would show up at a picnic to fundraise for new boats for the oyster women. It’s a country where, in reading scientific papers about the area, I usually recognize and am personally familiar with about half of the names, having been here only six weeks. It’s a country where when someone dies or is born the entire village shuts down because everyone must attend the funeral or naming ceremony.
Yahya explained our situation to the Makasutu driver. The driver brought over the park manager and gave me the phone number of one of the owners of the forest, a man whom I have been trying in vain to contact since my first week here. I couldn’t believe the good luck. On the way out of the forest we saw a troop of about thirty migrating baboons with babies on their backs. Yahya warned me to be careful if I ever met them by myself. Apparently, the baboons do not fear women. We watched them pick through the fields looking for bugs for a while then drove home. The trip made me remember why I love this country.