Sunday December 21st, 2003
The rather ambitious goal of today was to head down to Karagua, the other village involved with the Gorilla Habituation project. We fell a bit short of that. I spent a full day trapsing around Lomié trying to track down Achille, who was in Among Mbang, either sick, or visiting his girl on the side; trying to get a car to take us down, trying to get food for the trip, sending Mary and Ludo to get water from the pump; trying to get into the CIAD office to get the tents and sleeping mats… I started negotiating at 9 am, and it didn’t stop until 8pm.. with.. well, not much accomplished. I mean, I had some fun doing the over the top negotiating, but I think that the others were a bit nervous about all of the yes/no/yes/no/maybe nature. The status at the end of the day was: one tent and food. No other tent, car, permission to go (well, a note really).
My guests spent the day relaxing around the house… sitting on the porch, and watching Lomié pass by. Everyone stopped by to see who all was there. One drunk crazy man with a bad arm kept coming by. Begging for money. Every time I approached him, he stuck his bad arm out and started to yell that the white man was beating him, then he would collapse on the ground in a heap, again, keeping his bad arm in front of him like a shield. I picked him up, and escorted him away. He came back every hour or so, only to be chased away each time.. and not always by me. My neighbors show far less tolerance of him. My drunk landlady made a visit. Justin, the baka con-artist made a visit. So between negotiating and chasing away crazy people and drunk people begging, I had a busy day with some of humanitiy’s more irritating social traits.