We finally arrived in Buton Island after our plane was delayed for over an hour and I met up with a couple other OpWall Staff in BauBau (capital of this particular region on Buton Island), and got into a van to get to the site. We arrived around 2200 and there was a science staff meeting going on which I joined in on but I missed most of it since we arrived so late.
The village I am living in is called Labundo bundo, and it is by the Lambusango Forest. I am staying in the house of mama eva, who thankfully lives right across from the dining area. The way it works here is that we stay in the house of someone in the village, but then there is a big dining hall that all the school groups/students/volunteers/staff for operation wallacea eat in. I am sharing a room with the small mammal scientist (Helen), but also in the house is the herpetology scientist (Inga) and the tree climbing expert/leader (Vickie). There are approx. 80 people here right now for OpWall, and about 70-90 people who actually live in the village (I think there are 45 houses or so here), so basically each house has someone from opwall living with them! Each week there will be new school groups that come (16-17 year old kids), and more dissertation students will be arriving again in July. The volunteers here just basically go around helping all the science projects going on: bats, birds, small mammals, large mammals, primates, herpetology (snakes, lizards, frogs, etc), civets and tree climbing.
I am going to have 6 dissertation students. As of right now (first week here, but by the time I post this, it will be old news), the dissertation students are doing jungle training and a bunch of introduction type courses/projects around the site, so I won’t start working with them until probably the 2nd of July, once they are done all this other stuff. So as of right now (my first 4 days), I’ve been going out myself just to get acquainted with the forest and the primates and try to familiarise myself before I need to start training others. I have been going out with the guides, who have already been following the monkeys for about 4 weeks now, to re-habituate the groups after 8 months of not being studied.
There are 3 monkey troops that are followed here- the first is called La Pago, which are a completely forest group and when I’m going to work with them, I’ll be camping out of the village in a node camp for a week or 2 (looks like it will be for 2 weeks). The following group is called Kakenauwe, which lives in a forest, but come out occasionally to go into farmers fields. And the final group is called Kewelli, and they live in a really small forest patch which is surrounded by crops so spend most of their time in farmers fields. I have spent 2 days with Kakenauwe and 2 days in the farms with Kewelli. The monkeys in these 2 forests are very different in their behaviour- I think because the one that lives mostly in the fields have such easy access to high energy foods, they can spend more time just “monkey-ing” around and seem to be a lot more social and interactive within the group that they forest group, who need to spend more time during their day actually looking for food. So in my last two days in the farms, I’ve seen some pretty cool and close up behaviours!
People who have been living/working in this area for the last 18-20 years said that the rain we are having now is the worst rain they have ever seen. There have been 2 days so far that have been consistently torrential downpour all day/night, which is quite unusual. Normally the heavy heavy rains only last a few hours at the most (from my experience at least), but not allll day. I just heard this morning, that the other day it rained 900ml! Oi! I think it will be more today actually – it has been raining non-stop since about 11pm last night (it is now 9am), and doesn’t show any signs of letting up or slowing down. I honestly don’t know how the clouds are holding all this water in them! Apparently many of the crops have been destroyed already by all this rain, including rice! And you know there needs to be A LOT of rain to drown rice fields! And rain like this makes most jungle-y activities much more difficult and dangerous so most people can’t even go out, but if they have set traps out then they have to go out regardless. The forest ground here is limestone, and basically looks like coral reefs throughout the forest (dead/white coral of course). It is quite hilly, so taking a wrong step in the forest and slipping is can be quite dangerous. I’ve already cut my hand here, and now I need to take really good care of this cut so it doesn’t get infected, as infections can happen quite quickly and be quite severe in this humid environment. But just to set the record straight – when it is nice here – it is NICE here. I am going to try to remember to bring my little thermometer out with me next time but I think its probably getting to about 40 during the days (when it’s not raining).
Sorry this is so long winded – just wanted to give a bit of background as to what exactly is going on here!! Tomorrow is the official day off, even though today has turned out to be one as well due to the rain, and then starting with the students on Friday (2 July).
Miss you all!
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