Sunday 21 October 2018

Day 3- Monkeying around on the beach

Today, we had a simple and quite relaxing program... or so we thought! However, Africa came in between and its famous African time... usually on a time zone of its own!
In the morning, we all managed to leave on time or just about to get to Tacugama, the Chimpanzee sanctuary in Sierra Leone...on our way, we were reminded of the fragility of the world we live in, with the still very obvious remains of the landslide from last August in the area of Regent, when hundreds lost their lives in seconds, God bless their souls. We arrived at feeding time, and some of the behaviour observed were not dissimilar to some of the behaviour that can be observed at break time in our own boarding houses- stealing food from each other, hitting each other to get to the food first and then running away with more than your share...at least according to the boarders on the trip!!!! Yes they were cute as buttons...until they decided to throw stones at you, as Molly and Toby discovered! The display of dominance in the social pen, and the teasing of the younger ones was also reminiscent of some of the things seen around the 'cage' and LG building in school... so in short, yes, Chimp share around 96% of their DNA with humans, and it shows!

Then, after a quick but very nice sandwich lunch at the accommodation, we waited, and waited...and waited some more for the buses to come and take us to Kitty's beach cottage in the village of BawBaw, on the Peninsula along the Atlantic Ocean, and below the Sierra Leone... the mountain Lion, which gave its name to the country.
We eventually arrived there around 3pm, and our students wasted no time in diving in the ocean. Of course, we played football - well, I watched our students play the Ballanta teachers/ students team, to break the ice... and then, never wasting an opportunity to practise- such commitment is to be applauded - our first team Cricket captain, Toby, led the way to a cricket encounter like no others. Musa, one of the BAM teachers, is a keen cricket player and had brought some plastic bats and other bits and pieces. Molly joined in as well! It was great to watch!

And after 3 hours or so, we made our way back to LACS, for a well deserved aubergine and rice stew, a bit of rehearsal for Sunday's concert at the church...and our first full on rain storm!
Another long and fulfilling day! Tomorrow, students will start taking turns in writing the blog... so over and out for now!
JDA