Salama! We are officially out of the forest indefinitely now. Our last rain forest stint was bittersweet. I'm going to miss our team a lot, but I plan on keeping in touch with them as much as possible. I have so much to update since I last posted though.

Back in early November, Erik left to return to the states for two and a half months. He is required to spend some time at the Duke Lemur Center in North Carolina, giving lectures, attending meetings, etc. Although it was a bit troubling being the only Americans around at first, Emily and I adjusted well to being in Madagascar alone. We have a lot of friends in Sambava and the surrounding villages to look after us. Now that Erik is gone though, we have a lot more responsibility. We resupply camp, make sure everything will run smoothly in our absence, pay all the salaries, handle all the money (it's a lot of money...), update the spreadsheets, and make sure all the data is backed up and safely stored away for Erik's return. It's a little nerve racking being in charge of so many things and I'm a little worried we might forget something important before we leave.

Otherwise Erik's absence, our time in Sambava during November was relatively uneventful. However, our last full day in town there was a house fire on the main road by the market. I was on my way to check my email one last time when I looked to my left and saw flames coming from the windows of a small building. A crowd was starting to gather as thick black smoke filled the street. I approached some people and asked the painfully obvious question, "Misy afo?" (Is there a fire?). They responded affirmatively. I didn't really know what to say or do after that. I doubted there was a number I could call for help or some kind of organized fire department to handle these kinds of situations. I simply responded, "Oh, ratsy be!" (Oh, very bad). A few minutes later, enough people had noticed the fire that I felt safe leaving it to some of the men who had already started getting buckets of water to put it out. I walked briskly back to the hotel and called Emily to make sure she avoided that area on her way home. I have to admit, it was all an exciting change from the monotony of data entry and vocalization editing. It was also nice not to be the center of attention as I walked down the street. Everyone's eyes were on the fire and not me for a change. You'll be happy to know that nobody was hurt as well.

We left Sambava the following morning, about one hour after the results from the presidential election were official. The staff at our hotel were happy about the re-election; everyone around here really loves Obama. We then made our usual hike back up to Camp 2. We needed 30 porters to carry all the food we had bought for the month. After we spent one night back at Camp 2, we trekked the next two days to the Summit with Manitra, the master's student from Tana, and Razaka, the public librarian from Manantenina. As I mentioned before, our plan was to see the sunrise on the 9th. On the 8th we walked to Camp 3 and rested for the long and difficult hike in the morning. We left Camp 3 around 2 AM on the 9th and walked through the jungle with our headlamps. It was rough. My mantra was, "one foot in front of the other." The whole last hour I hummed that song from "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," the Christmas clamation movie from 1970. Sometime around 3:30 AM, while I stumbled over rocks and crawled on my hand and knees, my light went out. It was only for a minute or two, but during that time I looked up and saw thousands of stars. That was the motivation I needed to continue. The sky was clear so we would be able to see the view from the top and all our efforts would be rewarded. Sometimes people make it all the way up there only to have clouds blocking everything. We beat the sun to the top and sat down around 4:30 AM to wait for it to rise. It was cold. Hanover winter cold. And the wind didn't make it any better. The vast expanse of mountainous rain forest that revealed itself made it all worth it though. Completely untouched and unexplored mountains for hundreds of miles. I think even trying to articulate what we witnessed that morning would do it a huge injustice. The colors in the sky as the sun crept over the few clouds in the distance were breathtaking. I need to upload some pictures when I have more reliable Internet. Then I think you will understand. Emily and I made a pact to come back to the Summit when we are 44, exactly twice our age now. Overall it took us three days to hike around 20 km. Although this doesn't sound like much in three days, you have to remember that it was all uphill, quite literally. We were using ropes to scale almost vertical rock faces on more than one occasion. I couldn't walk the next day, but I'm so glad we decided to go. It was definitely the best experience I've had in Madagascar thus far, although a close second would be hearing the Indri call in Andasibe.

 

Emily and me on the summit

After our summit adventure, we continued our work. It was the same old stuff, scent-marking research and vocalization recordings. Forest time is slow time though.

We didn't have too many surprises. There were interesting tourists here and there (including a bird enthusiast from San Fransisco, a CNN travel anchor, two English guys that reminded me of Dumb and Dumber in the best ways possible, and a UPenn student who grew up less than an hour from my home). Then there were always the critters that scared me half to death thanks to the spider incident in July. I rely on being blissfully naive and ignorant about them all. One day I saw a centipede scurrying across our floor. Centipedes wouldn't be too scary, except for the fact that they are incredibly fast and extremely poisonous. One bite on the foot and you won't walk for at least three days. In my terror, I ran out of the bungalow and down to get Emily. By the time we returned, broom stick in hand, it had moved out of sight (probably waiting in one of our bags for one of us to reach in looking for socks or something). We couldn't find it though and decided to pretend we had never seen it. Blissfully naive. I'm not going to lie, I didn't sleep much that night. Unless you are a small child, there is nothing that can kill you in Marojejy. There are many of things that cause a lot of pain, but they are rarely if ever encountered. We only had to be aware of scorpions, said centipedes, and two poisonous spiders. Like I said before though, blissfully naive.

I still don't know what this is, but it wasn't welcome on my shoe

 We've also started yet another side project that will be ongoing for years to come. Around the middle of November Jackson, another park guide and member of the Simpona support team, came up to camp. His mission was to take pictures of both babies. We plan on devising a way to quantify pigment loss over time. Silkies are unique compared to most other primates and mammals because they lose pigmentation in their skin as they age, especially on the face and hands. Kris, the oldest baby in our group who is five months old now, is already starting to show some depigmentation around his mouth. Every two months Jackson will go up to Camp 2 to take pictures of the babies as they develop. The pictures will then be analyzed to chart depigmentation rate. Hopefully this will help the scientific community understand why this is happening. Some people suspect vitiligo (the same disease Michael Jackson claimed to have), but nobody is sure. Jackson (the guide, not the pop star) stayed until the end of November and got some good pictures that I'm sure will be the first steps to understanding this phenomenon.

The food didn't change at all. Seraphin got a little creative with his bean recipes though. Our favorite was white beans made with coconut. However, we did have a pretty severe mouse problem during our last month. They ate everything including bottles of soy sauce and vegetable oil. They left their traces everywhere too. Hardly a day went by that I didn't see Seraphin picking mouse poop out of our rice. Blissfully naive. This problem curtailed though when a Madagascar tree boa moved into our kitchen with about two weeks left. We named him Frank and he became our "namana be" (best friend).

Frank

Around the same time Jackson came up, lychee season started. If you don't already know, lychees are a type of fruit that are harvested like crazy here in November and December. I had tasted lychee flavored things before in the states, but I had never actually eaten one. They look like dried out strawberries and you peel off the rough outer skin to reveal the white, almost opaque fruit inside. Once the skin is removed, it kind of looks like a small jellyfish without the tentacles. You can eat the whole thing, except for the pit which is oblong, smooth, and dark brown. Gerlain told me you can make chocolate from the seeds, but I'm not sure if he was lying. That's a common theme here. Everyone jokes around so much, you're never sure if they are telling the truth. All in all I would say a lychee tastes like a sweet plum. We would go through hundreds in just a few days.

Lychee

The weather was so so. Some days it would be hot and sunny, but other times it would rain for a week straight. The rain made everything one hundred times worse. It's hard to be enthusiastic and eager about going into the forest when you know you will just have to stand in the rain for seven hours straight. The rain also exponentially increased the number of leeches we had to peel off our bodies. Emily holds the record with 38 in one day. My own personal record is a meager 26, but that's fine by me. We also had our first thunder storm. It was more like heat lightening than anything else, but there is something calming about being secluded in the middle of a rain forest with nothing more than some light rain, sporadic thunder, and a few frogs to lull you to sleep.

We threw a "party" in camp for Thanksgiving as well. On November 22nd, Emily and I took off from work and helped Seraphin cook something of a feast. Seraphin made his usual rice and beans, with some dried fish thrown in there for a little flare. Emily and I pulled out all the food we had been saving for a special occasion. It was carbs on carbs on carbs. We were able to make mac and cheese, popcorn, carrots with garlic and onions, cucumber salad with vinegar, cheddar garlic herb mashed potatoes, crepes, and biscuits slathered with peanut butter and nutella (those were a big hit). Considering we cooked everything with charcoal and it took about five hours to finish, I was pretty proud of the results. We stayed up late (8pm, oh boy) and listened to Christmas music after dinner. I had enough battery left on my iPod to get through a good portion of my Christmas playlist. "Last Christmas" by Jimmy Eat World got everyone dancing around the kitchen. I missed my family a lot, but considering the circumstances, I think we made the best of it.

Thanksgiving dinner

Our last day of data collection was a rough one, both physically and emotionally. I was on vocalization duty that day, but for some reason our equipment decided to be fickle with its battery life. It made getting good recordings very difficult. We were also in the bad part of their homerange where the trails are few and challenging. This was only made worse by the fact that when you carry the vocalization equipment, you only have one hand free to save yourself from falling. The rule since July has been, "if your butt doesn't touch the ground, it doesn't count." I think I only fell about three times our last day. Pretty impressive considering we sacrificed our bodies on a regular basis to save the thousands of dollars worth of equipment. I did get some pretty nasty bruises though. As much as I wanted to head back to camp to nurse my many wounds, it was hard saying goodbye to the silkies one last ime. They really did become part of our Madagascar family, each one with their own personality. The last one I caught a glimpse of was Kris, the five month old. He was hopping back and forth between his mother and the new baby yet to be named from October. He had grown so much since we first saw him when he was just over a week old in July. I will really miss them all. They made my job easy. I didn't mind watching them for hours on end. A combination of their majestic appearance and entertaining antics always made long work days go much quicker.

Our last dinner with the team was somber. We were all a little nostalgic and in awe of how fast the last five months had went. Our goodbyes were teary, but I'm confident we will stay in touch. Walking down the mountain and out of the park was surreal. We knew the hike almost by heart, and it was strange thinking we may never travel it again. I welcomed the cold Coca Cola and a hot shower when we finally reached Sambava though.

We will be working here in town until December 13th. We have over 30 hours of vocalization editing to do, not to mention the countless loose ends we have to tie up before we leave for Tana. Once in the capital, we will spend two nights taking in the last bit of Madagascar. Emily and I plan on visiting an orphanage just outside the city limits. One of the tourists who came up in August runs it. He's originally from New Jersey as well, so we naturally bonded. Be on the look out for one last post from Mada sometime on December 15th. Until then, veloma!

Ready for endless hours of editing