Forest Break
Door: Henk
Blijf op de hoogte en volg Henk
18 April 2010 | Ivoorkust, Abidjan
Forest Break
So here i am again in Abidjan in a hotel near the Centre Suisse. Having a break of 7-10 days between our work in the forest. At least we have to arrange here that our visas are going to be extended.
I have been now for 4 weeks in the forest of Tai national park and I really like it there. It is amazing to realize you are really in the middle of a primary rainforest with all the interesting trees, plants, insects, mammals and monkeys. All the things I have done here you probably already red on the blog of Mark, who talked on the phone and someone else typed it out. So I won’t tell everything we did and experienced here, that will be a long story :P
On the 19th of March I went to Tai National park, left early in the morning and arrived somewhere in the afternoon in the village of Tai. There I went together with Karim, my supervisor here, to some local schools to talk about the educational part of the pygmy hippo project. He wants to set up a program to make the children aware of what the pygmy hippo is and why it is important to protect it and its habitat. After that I went to another village where I met Mark who was attending a funeral. Not like we do it here but there they drink and dance for 4 days to celebrate it. I also met Agnes there. She is a French girl studying the sounds of monkeys and she lives at the same place in the forest were Mark and I stay. After that it was still one hour drive over a very bad road into the forest. The first days I settled down there, prepared the cameratraps, explored the surrounding forest a bit, made my first walk into the forest. It is really amazing to realize that you are really in the middle of a primary forest. It has something magic.
On Tuesday 23th we had the first day of setting out the camera’s. It was a little bit harder than we expected. Eventually we walked for 12 hours that day, most of the time off the normal walking pads following the compass straight through the bush. Mark already has made already some trips but this was the first real walk for me. In the forest it is around 30 degrees Celsius and a humidity of 80-90% so I didn’t had enough with my 2 liters of water. Also the bread we took for lunch turned out to be full of fungi. So at the end of the day I was more dead than alive and quite dehydrated :P. The next day I stayed at the Station, that’s our house in the forest, to recover from the day before. But Mark and Sio, our guide put out the next 6 camera’s. On Thursday I went again with Mark and Sio to put out the last 6 cameras. There I was better prepared, took my water filter and had proper food. Still we walked for 10 hours. In total we have 18 camera’s out in a block of 6x6 km.
We planned to let the camera’s out for 14 days. In the mean time we made some trips into the forest to explore some more. We had the idea to put the next round of camera’s along the river, the Nipla, at places where we think that pygmy hippos have their hiding places under roots of big trees, washed out by the river. Mark already went there and has seen 3 hippos there. We went again but this time we were not so lucky to see them but still found a lot of tracks and dung. So we decided still to hang out the camera’s there. We also wanted to go to the Meno a river even further into the forest and have a look there but all the leons, the walking paths, ended and we didn’t want to walk 6-8km straight trough the bush and back. We wanted to see how that river looks and how much traces of hippos we can find there.
After our expedition to the Nipla we had a party in the village just out the forest. There was a celebration because of the baptizing of one of the children of the assistants. I don’t know why but they named the little girl Agnes, after Agnes the French girl where the assistant is working for. I am wondering how long it takes before there is a boy named Henk or Mark :P. The party was not really about the baptizing, I think it was more an excuse to have a party with music, nice food and a lot of alcohol. And I don’t disagree with that :P.
On the 6th of april I turned 25, I am very old now :P. I felt really bad when I woke up, not of getting old but I had to run to the toilet for diarrhea. This was also the day that we wanted to retrieve the first 6 cameras. I was feeling sick but was unwise enough to go to the forest anyway. During the walk to the first camera I was getting sicker and weaker so I decided to go only to the first camera and then go back. It was very hard to find the first camera because there was no camera at that point. But suddenly something unexpected happened, I saw my very first Pygmy Hippo! Mark also saw is first one on his birthday, must be something magic of the forest. We eventually went to South camp, the camp with Chimpanzee researchers and the BBC filmcrew filming them, to ask for a GPS device. My phone we used for GPS already died because of the humidity and the other thing we have is also not really handy. After we had a GPS device I went back and Mark and Sio tried to find the camera’s. They discovered that my phone, that we used for putting out the camera’s had and error of about 500m to the north. That day Mark came back with only 3 out of 6 camera’s. In the evening we had a small party for my birthday with all the assistants, I showed them the documentary I had about the pygmy hippo in Tai national park. It turned out that some of them helped the filmcrew 12 years ago and they even know the person in traditional clothing :)
The next day I felt a lot better and with the GPS and the recalculated coordinates we found 5 out of 6 cameras back. Unfortunately in the evening I got sick again, now with a cold and a little fever. So the last day of camera retreavel I stayed also at the station, wondering how shitty my 26st year would be with a start like this :P. But after one day I felt better and Mark and I retrieved the 3 cameras we missed the first day. We did not had time to retrieve the last 2 and we left them for now in the forest. After one day rest we went to the Nipla and placed in 3 days the 18 cameras and they are now still there doing the work. Maybe just now a pygmy hippo crosses a camera.
Last Thursday we started our journey back to Abidjan for a small forest break. But that went also a little bit different than I expected. First was the idea that we drive together with the ambassador of the USA, who was visiting the forest and together with 2 german girls who did some research on Chimpanzees. But the ambassador decided to go by helicopter so we were only with the 2 girls. Also one of the girls forgot a bag with important data so after driving a while we could go back. So the first night we spend in Tai not in Guiglo where we planned to go. And on Friday we wanted to drive directly to Abidjan but the car broke down in Yamassoukro. That was not such a problem because we now had time to visit the large cathedral of that town. A former president decided to build one bigger that the sint Pieter in Rome. It is really impressive, over 120 meters tall, and sitting places for 7000 people. In the 8 biggest pillars were elevators that go up to 24 or 38 meters high. And then to think of all the money spend in an african country with all the hunger and so on.
Now I am in the hotel near the centre Suisse in Abidjan and first do some internet stuff. Later on we want to analyse some data (hopefully I can put some pictures online of the leopard, elephant, pygmy hippo, duikers monkeys and other animals we already have on camera).
Altogether it is a very nice experience to do this work here. All the nice fzorest around. Although it is not always easy and without risks it is very rewarding. Also really nice to meet a lot of new and special people here. In the forest we are around people from the BBC who also filmed the Planet Earth series and March of the penguins. In 2012 they plan to bring a movie out of the chimpanzees of Tai National Park :). Also a lot of primate researchers here. One of the girls we travelled with turned out to have held the famous gorilla Bokito in her arms when he was a baby :P My French was totally shit when I came here but now is already improved a lot. I can make clear what I want and understand a lot, but real sentences are still far away.
A thing what also is quite bizarre but also very understandable is the fear of viruses of outside. First thing is that the chimpanzee researchers and filmcrew all have to be in quarantine and when you want to see them you have to be for at least 5 days. A month or so before I came 14 chimps of one group died of probably just a human cold. And on the other hand all the computers they have there have very outdated antivirus software so any new viruses cant be recognized. some researchers already lost some data because of that.
I want to thank everyone for their felicitations for my birthday on hyves, facebook, mail and so on!
Mark also has a blog with now also some pictures: http://ivorymark.wordpress.com/
And I have some pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.nl/eshuishenk/Ivoorkust
And here I will put some nice pictures of the cameratraps :) http://picasaweb.google.nl/eshuishenk/Cameratrap
After our break I will stay until the end of July in the forest, so this will probably my only blog in a long time.
Update: Tomorrow morning (saturday 24-4) I will leave with a car to Tai NP again. See you all in 3 months!
So here i am again in Abidjan in a hotel near the Centre Suisse. Having a break of 7-10 days between our work in the forest. At least we have to arrange here that our visas are going to be extended.
I have been now for 4 weeks in the forest of Tai national park and I really like it there. It is amazing to realize you are really in the middle of a primary rainforest with all the interesting trees, plants, insects, mammals and monkeys. All the things I have done here you probably already red on the blog of Mark, who talked on the phone and someone else typed it out. So I won’t tell everything we did and experienced here, that will be a long story :P
On the 19th of March I went to Tai National park, left early in the morning and arrived somewhere in the afternoon in the village of Tai. There I went together with Karim, my supervisor here, to some local schools to talk about the educational part of the pygmy hippo project. He wants to set up a program to make the children aware of what the pygmy hippo is and why it is important to protect it and its habitat. After that I went to another village where I met Mark who was attending a funeral. Not like we do it here but there they drink and dance for 4 days to celebrate it. I also met Agnes there. She is a French girl studying the sounds of monkeys and she lives at the same place in the forest were Mark and I stay. After that it was still one hour drive over a very bad road into the forest. The first days I settled down there, prepared the cameratraps, explored the surrounding forest a bit, made my first walk into the forest. It is really amazing to realize that you are really in the middle of a primary forest. It has something magic.
On Tuesday 23th we had the first day of setting out the camera’s. It was a little bit harder than we expected. Eventually we walked for 12 hours that day, most of the time off the normal walking pads following the compass straight through the bush. Mark already has made already some trips but this was the first real walk for me. In the forest it is around 30 degrees Celsius and a humidity of 80-90% so I didn’t had enough with my 2 liters of water. Also the bread we took for lunch turned out to be full of fungi. So at the end of the day I was more dead than alive and quite dehydrated :P. The next day I stayed at the Station, that’s our house in the forest, to recover from the day before. But Mark and Sio, our guide put out the next 6 camera’s. On Thursday I went again with Mark and Sio to put out the last 6 cameras. There I was better prepared, took my water filter and had proper food. Still we walked for 10 hours. In total we have 18 camera’s out in a block of 6x6 km.
We planned to let the camera’s out for 14 days. In the mean time we made some trips into the forest to explore some more. We had the idea to put the next round of camera’s along the river, the Nipla, at places where we think that pygmy hippos have their hiding places under roots of big trees, washed out by the river. Mark already went there and has seen 3 hippos there. We went again but this time we were not so lucky to see them but still found a lot of tracks and dung. So we decided still to hang out the camera’s there. We also wanted to go to the Meno a river even further into the forest and have a look there but all the leons, the walking paths, ended and we didn’t want to walk 6-8km straight trough the bush and back. We wanted to see how that river looks and how much traces of hippos we can find there.
After our expedition to the Nipla we had a party in the village just out the forest. There was a celebration because of the baptizing of one of the children of the assistants. I don’t know why but they named the little girl Agnes, after Agnes the French girl where the assistant is working for. I am wondering how long it takes before there is a boy named Henk or Mark :P. The party was not really about the baptizing, I think it was more an excuse to have a party with music, nice food and a lot of alcohol. And I don’t disagree with that :P.
On the 6th of april I turned 25, I am very old now :P. I felt really bad when I woke up, not of getting old but I had to run to the toilet for diarrhea. This was also the day that we wanted to retrieve the first 6 cameras. I was feeling sick but was unwise enough to go to the forest anyway. During the walk to the first camera I was getting sicker and weaker so I decided to go only to the first camera and then go back. It was very hard to find the first camera because there was no camera at that point. But suddenly something unexpected happened, I saw my very first Pygmy Hippo! Mark also saw is first one on his birthday, must be something magic of the forest. We eventually went to South camp, the camp with Chimpanzee researchers and the BBC filmcrew filming them, to ask for a GPS device. My phone we used for GPS already died because of the humidity and the other thing we have is also not really handy. After we had a GPS device I went back and Mark and Sio tried to find the camera’s. They discovered that my phone, that we used for putting out the camera’s had and error of about 500m to the north. That day Mark came back with only 3 out of 6 camera’s. In the evening we had a small party for my birthday with all the assistants, I showed them the documentary I had about the pygmy hippo in Tai national park. It turned out that some of them helped the filmcrew 12 years ago and they even know the person in traditional clothing :)
The next day I felt a lot better and with the GPS and the recalculated coordinates we found 5 out of 6 cameras back. Unfortunately in the evening I got sick again, now with a cold and a little fever. So the last day of camera retreavel I stayed also at the station, wondering how shitty my 26st year would be with a start like this :P. But after one day I felt better and Mark and I retrieved the 3 cameras we missed the first day. We did not had time to retrieve the last 2 and we left them for now in the forest. After one day rest we went to the Nipla and placed in 3 days the 18 cameras and they are now still there doing the work. Maybe just now a pygmy hippo crosses a camera.
Last Thursday we started our journey back to Abidjan for a small forest break. But that went also a little bit different than I expected. First was the idea that we drive together with the ambassador of the USA, who was visiting the forest and together with 2 german girls who did some research on Chimpanzees. But the ambassador decided to go by helicopter so we were only with the 2 girls. Also one of the girls forgot a bag with important data so after driving a while we could go back. So the first night we spend in Tai not in Guiglo where we planned to go. And on Friday we wanted to drive directly to Abidjan but the car broke down in Yamassoukro. That was not such a problem because we now had time to visit the large cathedral of that town. A former president decided to build one bigger that the sint Pieter in Rome. It is really impressive, over 120 meters tall, and sitting places for 7000 people. In the 8 biggest pillars were elevators that go up to 24 or 38 meters high. And then to think of all the money spend in an african country with all the hunger and so on.
Now I am in the hotel near the centre Suisse in Abidjan and first do some internet stuff. Later on we want to analyse some data (hopefully I can put some pictures online of the leopard, elephant, pygmy hippo, duikers monkeys and other animals we already have on camera).
Altogether it is a very nice experience to do this work here. All the nice fzorest around. Although it is not always easy and without risks it is very rewarding. Also really nice to meet a lot of new and special people here. In the forest we are around people from the BBC who also filmed the Planet Earth series and March of the penguins. In 2012 they plan to bring a movie out of the chimpanzees of Tai National Park :). Also a lot of primate researchers here. One of the girls we travelled with turned out to have held the famous gorilla Bokito in her arms when he was a baby :P My French was totally shit when I came here but now is already improved a lot. I can make clear what I want and understand a lot, but real sentences are still far away.
A thing what also is quite bizarre but also very understandable is the fear of viruses of outside. First thing is that the chimpanzee researchers and filmcrew all have to be in quarantine and when you want to see them you have to be for at least 5 days. A month or so before I came 14 chimps of one group died of probably just a human cold. And on the other hand all the computers they have there have very outdated antivirus software so any new viruses cant be recognized. some researchers already lost some data because of that.
I want to thank everyone for their felicitations for my birthday on hyves, facebook, mail and so on!
Mark also has a blog with now also some pictures: http://ivorymark.wordpress.com/
And I have some pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.nl/eshuishenk/Ivoorkust
And here I will put some nice pictures of the cameratraps :) http://picasaweb.google.nl/eshuishenk/Cameratrap
After our break I will stay until the end of July in the forest, so this will probably my only blog in a long time.
Update: Tomorrow morning (saturday 24-4) I will leave with a car to Tai NP again. See you all in 3 months!
-
18 April 2010 - 17:59
Hans:
hoi
Wel oppassen wat je eet he,,het is hier nu mooi weer. Spreek je zo op msn?
mvg hans eshuis -
18 April 2010 - 19:13
Simon:
Hey Henk! super mooi om je foto's te zien en je verhaal te lezen. Wat een beesten in de jungle! En dat leger van mieren dat binnen is komen vallen haha. En zo'n enorme cathedraal is ook wel weer typisch voor afrika.:)
Nog een mooie tijd & hoop dat je veel zult ontdekken in de mooie natuur daar! -
19 April 2010 - 07:19
Estelle:
What a creapy little creatures! :P -
19 April 2010 - 07:55
Joost:
waaaaaaa al die ranzige beesten! Het is niks als insecten daar, of niet? :p
Succes in het bos! Ik hoop dat je mooie resultaten boekt.
Groetjes,
Joost -
19 April 2010 - 09:20
Rita:
Heej Henk,
Wat een groot verhaal en wat fijn om wat van je te horen na zo'n lange tijd. Ik heb je verhaal weer gelezen en je foto's gekeken en wat maak je toch super veel mee.
Vervelend dat je niet zo lekker was op je eigen verjaardag, maar toen dus wel een hippo gezien:). En wat een afstanden moeten jullie lopen. Had je in Nederland wel geoefend??;)
De foto's ook bekeken, zitten mooie foto's tussen, maar sommige insecten vind ik maar niks.. Brrr.. Maar goed: veel zul je in Nederland niet tegen komen.
Ik wens je verder weer heel veel succes, we zijn weer benieuwd naar je nieuwe verhaal in juli!
Groetjes Rita -
22 April 2010 - 18:48
Caroline:
Mooi verhaal en foto's! vooral de foto's van de cameratrap vind ik echt heel vet, had niet verwacht dat je zoveel dieren kunt zien! En zo te zien eet je ook veel rijst met saus ("riz sauce" heette dat in Burkina Faso)?
Groetjes uit Libanon! -
26 April 2010 - 15:55
Sander:
Henkie!!
Een wat late reactie, die je waarschijnlijk niet meer voor juli gaat lezen ;) Maar super mooi om te horen dat het goed bevalt!! Ben echt super benieuwd naar je gave foto's en verhalen als je weer terug bent in Nederland.
Veel plezier voor de komende tijd!
Groeten, Sander
PS: bij deze ook alsnog gefeliciteerd!! Had er nog wel aan gedacht op je verjaardag, maar ging er vanuit dat je het toch pas halverwege de zomer dan zou lezen :P Maar bij deze dus alsnog!
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