Triple Dutch

Tuesday, 19th July. Semliki Time: 09:14pm

Bad news! According to a respected geographer of my acquaintance, Mongolia is about to go through a terrible famine. As far as I understood it, the reason for this famine is that no one gives aid or sends food there because no one’s ever heard of it. And because no one's heard of it, the news media ignore it -- a vicious circle. So go out and tell your fellow man about Mongolia before its too late! There’s still time to save them, whoever they are.

I don’t have time for a long blog entry today, but I never pass up an opportunity to register my disappointment in humanity, so here’s a rant for you. Today we were joined by three Dutch tourists. They had to be the most rude and stupid people I’ve met all year. They turned up at the camp without a ranger, despite the instructions given to them by the Chimpanzee Project. Because of this, they had to borrow ours. Not only that, but despite the fact that we were planning to leave at 7:15, they got impatient and forced us to leave at seven. This was before I’d eaten breakfast or done my toilette and so, bursting with hunger and the rather urgent desire to put the E in MRS GREN, we headed out. They took photos of everything. Seriously, At one point we went past a spider, a completely mundane spider, and the camera zoom lenses were whipped out. Deciding that they might be decent souls who just didn’t understand, I tried to tell them about the Semliki chimps they had come to see. Alex and I tried to explain the uniqueness of the habitat, chimpanzee tool use, chimpanzee ('proto-')language capabilities. They didn’t give a flying funk about any of it. It was clear they were just here to take a few pictures of the chimps and didn’t care about their behaviour, relationship to humans or the uniqueness of the ones they were looking for. To add insult to injury, when some black and white Colobus monkeys turned up and I was talking to Alex about them, the woman turned round, put her fingers to her lips and made a loud, patronizing shushing sound. I almost came back with a “Dear Lady, if you want to bring your own ranger, you may ride your high horse around the forest, but while borrowing our ranger, please at least do us the decency of letting us speak to each other”. Instead I said “I.. I think they heard us already, you see”.

Not only were they rude, they were completely unable to navigate the forest. They wobbled across bridges, fell over their own feet, fell over each other’s feet and fell down short hills. I thought I was clumsy, but having watched them try to climb over a log-bridge without a railing, I now consider myself a balletic and graceful creature of poise, art and finesse. Providentially they didn’t get to see chimps, but when they left for the swimming pool, they didn’t even say goodbye.

In other news, we were practically ‘dogged’ by baboons. They followed us everywhere we went. Have you heard about Chanel perfume? A particular Chanel scent is loaded with civet pheromones and attracts jaguars. I reckon the baboons were attracted to the Dutch woman's smell. They couldn’t have come for the personality.