Tread Off My Tires

We started off this week trying to finish what we began: contacting LC’s and getting them to sign the letter we generated for being in the area. Making contact with the LC’s makes it easier to work with communities and it’s the polite thing to do. It just takes up so much of your time.

Monday, we were on MUBFS side of the park getting signatures and greeting LC’s. We spent over an hour and a half waiting for the LC 5 (highest LC) to sign the damn paper. I watched as all these people barged in front of us. In the end though, he was really supportive. He happened to be a former researcher who studied ecotourism and insisted that I get a copy of the district tourism report. He put in some calls to this guy, Sam. We went to the building but the document was in a locked room and so we can’t retrieve it until Wednesday (hopefully). Did some other signatures but missed a few because of market day. We called it an early day and I came home to work on some spreadsheets.

Tuesday, we went to Bigodi to work on getting signatures there. And we ended up with a lot more than we expected. Peace knows EVERYONE. It was good to see him again and Bigodi is a pretty peculiar place—a little crazy but with really nice people. There are still a few more signatures to get but we definitely made progress.

Note to self: Make sure your old pair of tennis shoes are still in good condition. I thought mine were and didn’t notice they were falling apart until I was walking and walking felt funny. My entire bottom of the shoe came off! Well, it’s hanging on the tip. When we go into Fort Portal tomorrow, Erimosi will take it to a shoe guy in the market to glue it

on. Everyone tells me that they are still a good pair and that the problem should be fixed with no problem. I’ll test it out. I may have to get Scott to bring over my other pair of old tennis shoes so that Abe can bring them. I should have just invested in a good pair before leaving but just didn’t have the time. I’ll know better for the next time.

Anyway, I ended up buying a pair of flip flops and wearing those the rest of the day. And if it couldn’t get any better with my relationship with “tread”, I blew out a tire on the vehicle on the rocky terrain. Well, it wasn’t a complete blow out. Got out to have lunch and heard this hissing noise and the tire going flat. We changed the tire and put on the other one we had. Took the flat tire back to Bigodi to get fixed and to put air in the tire we put on. Everything is cool now. The tire is fixed but needs more air. We’ll do that in town tomorrow while the tires on my feet get glued on too.

I was reunited with my 3 yr old “boyfriend” again. He’d forgotten about me and didn’t really know who this crazy white lady was. But then he started coming around and waved good bye to me and blew me a kiss. I took Peace and Erimosi back to wait on the tire and get a soda. As we were sitting there, Aaron (my little boyfriend) comes running looking for me. I see this little guy walk past the restaurant we were in—this little shadow. Then the breeze picked up the curtain and I see him staring at me. He comes in and has a sip of my soda, waves goodbye and goes back to his grandmother. Later he comes around and is in my car wanting to drive away with me and tells me that he’s going to marry me. He’s as cute as buttons!

We saw Adeeryi, the old woman that seems to have been adopted by the project. Every time she sees us, she starts to cry. She is looked after by the school children she lives next to. Someone was able to bring water to her place and now someone is building her a new house. She’s been ill and told us that she spent 3 months in the hospital this past year. We’re going to bring her some food when we go toward the end of the week. She’s such a sweet woman.

Finally, we went to take a look at a new place called Chimp’s Nest. Not expecting much because it wasn’t even thought of last year, I was blown away by what they already had. What a nice little place to stay! All locally made and tastefully done. The guy who owns it is Dutch and said that he would be happy to participate in my research. I was very happy to see that I had another interesting place to look at. I’ll show pictures when I get home. While the internet lines are faster here than they are on my office computer, I don’t want to mess with the mojo with uploading right now.

Came home just before the rains hit. We hadn’t had really any rain since I arrived—which is good for driving but not good for anything else. Our huge water container was empty from when they fished out the dead lizard and cleaned the tank. We’ve been taking water from another container and that was was getting low too. It just didn’t rain, it poured! For a straight hour it rained heavily and the wind was blowing and it was actually getting on the porches. It’s still raining now at 8:30pm but it’s getting lighter. There were puddles all over the place but when it let up, the ground soaked it up quickly. My very dirty and dusty vehicle was washed clean of the dirt. I think we got a decent amount of rain in the water container—now I hope it stops. If it keeps raining through the night, then the roads are going to be a wicked pain in the ass tomorrow.

The weather went from pretty hot to “Damn, I need a sweater,” with the incoming rains. It’s nice that these houses are pretty insulated and you can feel the degree difference when entering. I still have the tea going for more warmth.

Jolly is trying not to cook as much food but she still doesn’t quite get it. How many different carbs could you possibly have at one meal? So far for me, I’ve counted 4! I’m hoping that if she sees that I have devoured all the vegetables and left much of the carbs, she’ll get it. She brought over matoke—the potato banana that I could care less for. This is going to be a work in progress if I am to “reduce” my size.

Tom Gillespie’s students came in last night. Haven’t seen much of them but I’m sure they are good people. Tom is good people and I can’t imagine him bringing in crap. I think once they get used to the place, they will be more sociable. I hear the Chapman’s and their army of students are coming in Thursday. I may have a roommate. I’m not too excited about it but what can you do? Hopefully I’ll still have my bedroom to myself and just have to share the common area. It’ll make exercising a little more difficult but I’ll figure it out. With all these people coming in, I’m not really sure where Abe and Joel will stay. I’m not going to worry about it until closer to time. Can’t do anything about it now.

Ok, I see that I’m rambling now. I’m sure things will get more interesting next week when I actually start interviewing people and things start getting interesting around camp. I’ve been hanging out with Katrina since she’s my neighbor and she’s cool. We’ve been eating dinners together and decompressing from the day’s work. She’ll be heading out soon though. Anyway, hope everything is well on your end and I’ll report back with an update by the weekend sometime. =)