Future Veterinarian of the Jungle

The monkey passed his 4 week check up, and is in the top 85th percentile for a monkey his age according to Doctor Asher.

Brother and Sister

So…will our monkey grow up thinking she is human and think Boaz is her brother? We have 2 names we are thinking about: Mo (as in Mohawk or MO-nkey) and Kemie, which is sort of like the Baka word for monkey “Kema”. What do you think?

NOT A JUMP ROPE!

Here's picture of an 8 foot long cobra that our neighbor Oto (the fellow on the left) found and speared to death in the forest...about a half mile from where we live. YIKES!

Workin’

We hired these 2 Baka young men to dig a new trash pit for us. It is hard work, but they are really enjoying getting paid! This pit is getting really deep! Next project: build a fence around the pit so no one falls in!

Little girls and kittens!

I’m positive that my parents can find a picture (slide!) almost identical to this one from when I was little. This is Nandry and one of the new kittens the kids played with at the “Sisters” (Nuns) at the Catholic Clinic in Dimako. We spent a Sunday afternoon there sharing photos, eating yummy food and sharing about life here in Cameroon. 3 of the Sisters are from Poland, 2 are from other countries here in Africa (Burundi and Congo). Our common language that we speak together is French.

She’s sucking her big toe…can you do that (and enjoy it)?

The Monkey's still hanging on

We've had this baby monkey now for 2 1/2 weeks, and he's thriving. He drinks milk from a bottle and has started taking little bites of banana with his teeny tiny teeth. We think he's going to grow up thinking that Asher is really his big brother. Asher loves to walk around with the monkey clinging to his arm or leg...sometimes on his head like in this picture. Any suggestions for a name? So far our only ideas from the kids (besides all of the "potty" words that they think would be so funny to name a monkey) are"Peter" and "Monkmonk".

She really does wear them!

Every other day or so, she slips these on her feet and walks 2 miles to the village on the dirt roads that are extremely muddy this time of year, and then back again. She also puts them on and walks the half mile between her house and our neighborhood a couple times a day. Many times, however, the Baka take off their shoes when they go into the forest...which is exactly the time that I desire to have my shoes on the most!Today when I went outside, I saw her sitting there with her shoes on the ground next to her. I made a deal with her. If she let me take pictures of her shoes...I would buy her new ones the next time we went to town. She laughed with the others gathered there under the cooking shelter, and agreed to it.

700cfa

Shoes like these, when new, cost about 700cfa which is almost $1.50 US.Yet, this Baka woman doesn't have the money for getting new ones. Sometimes she works, but that money is quickly eaten up as she buys a small amount of rice or peanuts, dried fish, a bouillon cube and a pack of cookies for her kids. Every once in a while they will buy about 20 cents worth of kerosene so they can use their lamp. Anything left over gets spent on village wine.There are others, who have no shoes at all.

Distraction of the week

Kema - is the Baka word for monkey. We aren't sure what kind it is, but we were told that when it grows up it will be yellow. Sunday morning, one of our Bantu neighbors brought this little monkey to us. They shot and ate the mother. They told us that if we didn't take it, they would just let it die.He's probably only a week or 2 old. The bullet that killed his mother grazed his head above his ear, so he has a bit of a wound there. I'm personally not too thrilled about having a monkey for a pet, but Nathan and the kids are having so much fun with him. He was very skittish at first,but has grown calmer over the past 6 days. He loves to be clinging to something (he'll grab your foot as you walk by...and today he got hold of the cat and the cat couldn't shake him off!). We are feeding him milk with an eyedropper because he is still too young to eat solids, though he enjoys trying to eat banana.We've heard that it is illegal to domesticate a monkey (it's also illegal to kill one). We will be checking with the "Minister of Forest Conservation"near us to see what we can do.

Marital Disputes in the jungle

Late Sunday night, as we were putting the kids to bed, we heard different
sounds than usual coming from outside. It's normal to hear the Baka singing
and laughing, and the soft chatter from the folks sitting around the fire.
We asked the kids to be quiet for a few minutes, so we could listen. It was
coming towards us, from up the road. It sounded like the wailing/mourning
sounds of a drunk person. And indeed it was...and they had alot to wail
about.
Sinyon and his wife Mali were coming our way. Mali, who is rather tiny and
only comes up to my armpit, was yelling at Sinyon, and he was the one
wailing. They had both been drinking.
A few minutes earlier at their house, Sinyon had said or done something to
infuriate Mali and she came after him with a machete. Sinyon put up his arm
to block his face and the sharp part of the machete hit him on the wrist.
Nathan, the "designated EMT" of our team, did the best he could to wrap
Sinyon's wrist and stop the bleeding. It was dark, there was no where we
could take him or nothing else we could do medically for him until morning.
We sent him off with a bottle of re-hydration drink to sip during the night
and told him to hide the machete from his wife.
The next morning we took Sinyon to the Catholic clinic that is in a little
town called Dimako, 15 minutes away by car. The nurses there looked at the
wound, thought it was beyond their expertise, and told us that we needed to
take him to the hospital (another 45 minutes away...and not always staffed
or well-equipped enough to be called a hospital, in our opinion). One of
the nurses had pity on Nathan, knowing how many times we've had to take
people to the hospital for emergencies, and she said, "let me see what I can
do". She proceeded to sew together a cut vein and then the wound itself.
She had to wrap his wrist with a splint to immobilize it, because the
machete had sliced through his bone.
Back home, we chatted with Mali. We said that it was not good that people
drank and chased each other with machetes. She just shrugged.

THE CAST IS OFF

Boaz got his cast off yesterday (Thursday) at a hospital 4 hours away. We
got up early and were there around 10:45am. We got an X-ray, in which the
bone looked ok, but it was a bit blurry and smudged. So we got another
X-ray, in which the bone still looked ok. They removed the cast for us.
Boaz was extremely brave throughout the whole thing.
Bo is still not on his feet yet. His knee is very sore where the cast was
and he's not feeling at all like walking on it. We brought home a pair of
crutches which the doctor told us Boaz should use for the next few weeks to
keep the weight off of his leg. We are working on getting Boaz to use them.
He's still a bit unsure. He's happy to have the cast off and be able to
bend at the waist and scratch all his itchies.
Praise the Lord for giving us safe travel and that Boaz' leg looks good.
Continue to pray that it will heal normally and nothing further would bother
it (like his brother or sister crashing into his leg or him falling hard on
it again).