Monkey Island

There is an island here in the middle of a river, about 1.5 hrs drive from the city. This island is inhabited by about 200 chimps who used to be lab animals at research insitututes. The pressure from advocacy groups to stop experiments on chimps, coupled with a lack of funding, has resulted in closings of such institutions and thus, in a need to find a home for all these primates who could not survive on their own in the wild given their instincts have been dulled a great deal or altogether lost as a consequence of being used to measure the effectiveness of the newest hepatitus vaccine and other fun activities. In any case, these lucky 200 got moved to this island to spend the rest of their lives in peace and quiet. They are fed every dady and you can take a boat out to supplement their diet by throwing bananas which they will greatfully accept and devour. Of course, one cannot actually disembark on the island of the island as the animals may get aggressive, but the boat will get fairly close to them without touching the shore. Apparently, the signs of aggression are a positive development as this means they're becoming more accustomed to living on their own and choosing an alpha male (I'm sure it was a very democratic process) to be their leader and look especially threatening if humans try to get too close. This rather large chimp comes forward and proceeds rocking from side to side, making loud noises and clapping his hands.

After the monkey island visit, we procceeded to a beautiful ocean beach where we spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing and bbqing. I found a hermit crab who was strangely not amused by being picked up and used as a photo prop and who ended up puncturing my finger with his very sharp claws. Ouch. I guess I'll have to settle for people or nonhazardous fauna in capturing my memories on film.

I was trying to be a "stealthy" photojournalist this morning as I decided to walk to work and actually take some snapshots of the city.

Oh yes, that's me. My friend Aquila took me to a salon in town to get my hair done this weekend. I've always wanted to have braids and I knew that these things take a while but OH MY GOD, I sat there for 5.5 hours, and this is with 2 girls working on my hair!! It's a very painful experience and I really thought I wouldn't have any hair left in the end, but it turned out quite well, though it's taking me a bit to get used to sleeping with all this hair. Also, putting it up into any kind of ponytail is a 20-min ordeal and I have to use these gigantic-size hair ties to fit all of the hair in them. I'm sure washing it will be interesting since it will make the fake hair REALLY heavy and then I just might lose the poor little hairs that actually grow on my head and are currently being subjected to carrying around 10x their weight in fake hair :)

Nonetheless, I love the results and have been getting complimented by the locals everywhere. I think in every place, when "foreigners" embrace something from the local culture, it makes the host culture feel good, at least that's how I feel when someone wants to learn and adapt some of my country's culture and traditions.

Anyway, all is good, still dealing with the worms, since there are no testing facilities here, they specimen have to be sent to Ghana to determine the type of pesticide that needs to be used. The danger is that they will lay eggs that would hatch in the next season and then things will really be bad.

Had my first beach outing this weekend, there are so many gorgeous beaches in this area, I was invited to a birthday party of the Ukrainian contingent's commander. I was the only girl :) The party was great, there were sailors, pilots and army soldiers present, all very warm people and it made me proud to hear my people speak about their motivation to serve their country and through it, helping the world via an international body like the UN. We dined on freshly-caught calamari and barracuda :) I was promised to be invited on the next fishing trip though judging by my last deep-sea fishing experience, I may have to spend it inside the boat trying not to lose my breakfast.

OK, have to get back to work now, enjoy the photos, stay tuned.