Kirsty's Weekly News

On Sunday I had a nice day off as Kame Kake (the name of the bonobo group that I'm following) decided to cross the Kohora river 8km away. They moved so far away that on Monday it took us 3 hours just to walk to their nest site. 
I followed them from bed to bed on Monday, thinking that since I had gone all that way I could get a good two sessions worth of data, rather than just doing the morning. I left the station with three trackers at 04:00, arrived at the nest site at 07:05, followed the bonobos until they nested again at 17:00, and made it back to camp at 20:15. I would have been longer except Jean-Marie came to pick me up on his motorcycle! 

I must have walked almost 25km. Peanuts compared to yesterday!

"Papa" Tawashi, 42 years old and counting

Having thought that I would take Tuesday off, I decided to go out again thinking that I wasn't quite deserving yet of a day off. Monday had been an excellent day for data collection and I hoped for the same on Tuesday. The bonobos were much harder to follow, and kept moving North West, further away from camp. We left camp at 04:00 and one of the trackers led me back at 15:00, so we would make it out of the forest before nightfall. Bokondie and I walked through a nest of ants accidentally, an event called "safariari", and I discovered that "ants in your pants" isn't as funny as it may sound ;) I tracked our walk back on my GPS and it was 16.9km away-meaning that we walk at least 34km!
Needless to say I'm putting my feet up today, and doing some peaceful data entry.