Strangers Like Me

Well, this isn’t a blog post I’m super pumped to write. I’m currently sitting in the Freetown Airport lounge waiting for my flight back to D.C. I gave my ankle two weeks, but when I was still having lots of trouble with it early this week and my chronic nerve pain started acting up, I decided to get it looked at again. Oh man was that an experience. After grocery shopping, my group dropped me off at a nearby hospital to get new x-rays, a second opinion, and hopefully some stronger pain killers. That doctor wasn’t super helpful; he gave me two anti-inflammatories and told me to rest it.

True to her nature, my mom was not satisfied with this answer. She did some research for a hospital with better recommendations and made me an appointment for the next morning. The doctor I saw, the only one working at the time, was an unsympathetic cocky jerk. He had me do x-rays AGAIN, took one look at them, and told me I had an avulsion fracture and would need surgery. He even asked if I wanted to schedule a surgery right then. It happened so fast that I was almost too stunned to even speak. I told him I wanted to hold off and address my nerve pain in the meantime. I’m pretty sure he thought I was making that up because his immediate response was “well there’s no way for you to really know if it’s nerve pain”. He followed that up with suggesting I manage my pain by stopping all of the meds that have been helping me for years and only take Tylenol.

I hit my limit after that comment, so after a very nice nurse got me to stop frustration crying I left and went to see the orthopedist he recommended. He also diagnosed the fracture, but with much better bedside manner. He sent me to yet another hospital to get a boot. At this point, my group had needed to return to the sanctuary, so I was left to find a taxi. The driver misheard me when I asked to go to “Treasure Medical” and took me to “Treasure Restaurant” instead. He parked the car and we just looked at each other very confused. He finally got me to the right place, where two really nice guys dug around a giant plastic trash bag of left and right boots and (seemingly arbitrarily) selected a right one for me.

That night I decided that this was all too much. Crutching around the sanctuary had gotten really hard, my ankle wasn’t really healing, and I was pretty miserable. I knew that no matter how hard I tried or how amazing the setting, I wouldn’t be able to do my research or enjoy this experience the way I want to. So I made the decision to go home to Maryland for a month, rest up, do some PT, and head back to Sierra Leone (hopefully) much stronger and healthier. At the very least, I’ll finally have access to ice packs.

It was disappointing and difficult to accept that, based on my physical health, the best option right now is to press pause on my dream. It really doesn’t help that I’ve been blaming myself for twisting my ankle exercising the night before leaving. I’ve been playing the “woulda, coulda, shoulda” and the “what if” games with myself. It’s taking a lot of effort, but I’m trying to be grateful for the support and flexibility I have received and reframe this as an opportunity to work on the reading and writing portions of my project snuggling with my favorite girl in front of the fire. So see ya in five weeks, Sierra Leone!

Today concludes my first full week at Tacugama and it was all over the place. There have been a few days that I’ve felt up to crutching to the other side of the sanctuary where there is an office overlooking a few of these enclosures. I could sit there watching and taking pictures for hours. Something about them is just hypnotizing. They’re so clever and funny and nimble. Sometimes I’ll be sitting at the desk inside doing some work, and when I look up there’s a chimp sitting on top of the pole staring intently at me. They’re kind of fascinated by me too. The path to the office goes along the side of one of the enclosures, so each time I go the chimps walk along side me. They always look confused and I can practically see them thinking “What is this strange human doing with those big metal poles? Why doesn’t she just walk like the rest of them?” Safe to say we provide entertainment for each other.

On a sadder note, yesterday was pretty rough around here because we had two chimps pass away. One had been sick for awhile, the other died suddenly. It was very, very obvious how much everyone here cared based on how they grieved. For me, that was a bright spot in the sadness of yesterday. For me, yesterday really reinforced that being in a group with other people who also care deeply about animals and give so much to help and protect them was is very powerful.

I’m still reliant on crutches for the most part. Today I did manage to take a few steps without them for the first time, so look out world! My skills on crutches have gotten pretty good, especially since I have to crutch “off road” in order to go anywhere. I’ve gotten quite a few compliments on how quickly and adeptly I can get around, which I think just means I’ve had wayyyy too much practice on crutches. I’m really, really hoping to get off of them soon. It’s getting more frustrating that I haven’t even been able to take the sanctuary tour to see all of the enclosures. I love being here and seeing and hearing the chimps that I’ve been able to, but some days I haven’t even been up to leaving the house. Next week I’m hoping to at least make it out for a beach with other volunteers. On the bright side, if I had to get injured this would be the time to do it. The conservation manager is out of the office, so I wouldn’t have really been able to get started on my project anyway. Plus I still have a massive stack of articles to read and this is giving me lots of uninterrupted time to get caught up.

I think the only other things are that we currently have a rat the size of a small dog regularly come and steal food and I taught a group of Europeans the time-honored American tradition of TP-ing peoples’ houses. Ya know, normal stuff.

Well, after months of waiting and 36 hours of travel, I finally made it to the sanctuary! Unfortunately, not a lot has gone according to plan. Late Monday night I sprained my ankle pretty badly. I’m talking golf ball sized lump, nasty purple bruises on both sides, mainly confined to the couch sprain. With less than 24 until I had to go to the airport, we scrambled to get to a doctor, buy a brace, and get x-rays done while still leaving time for me to finish packing. It was definitely not how I pictured my last day at home and all the last minute errands took up a serious chunk of the time I had planned to use for some final JoJo snuggles. Getting out the door was overall a lot more rushed than I had wanted, but we made it to the airport fine and my mom insisted I let them push me to my gate in a wheelchair.

On my flight to Casablanca, I took advantage of the empty seats around me and reclined, propped my leg up, and slept about as well as I could all things considered. We landed at 10 AM Morocco time, which was 4 AM east coast time. I stumbled sleepily through customs and somehow made it onto a train to downtown. I didn’t really know where to go after that, so I just started crutching my way vaguely in the direction of the ocean, still lugging 35 pounds of stuff on my back. I ended up at the Hassan II Mosque, which was massive, stunning, and right on the water. The whole building was covered in beautiful, intricate mosaics of blue and green, almost perfectly color coordinated with the ocean and sky in the background. I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the city and market place, then headed back to the airport.

I landed in Sierra Leone exhausted and sore at around 4 AM. After a shuttle, a ferry, and a car ride, I made it to the sanctuary at around 7 AM and almost immediately fell asleep. And that’s pretty much all I’ve done since I’ve been here. Today and yesterday have just been spent laying around resting my leg and catching up on sleep. I think the most exciting thing that’s happened was my shower tonight which was ice cold, pitch black (my light died as soon as I stepped in) and virtually one on foot in my Crocs. Nothing says thrilling like a game of Russian roulette trying to find a bar of soap in a Ziploc bag without grabbing the wrong end of a razor.

I’m super lucky that my supervisors and the other volunteers have been so kind, patient, and flexible with me. But it’s killing me that I’ve been here two days and still haven’t seen the chimps! Pretty much all the spots the are visible are along terrain that would be tough to navigate on crutches. But I’m pretty sure I’m spending tomorrow in an office with a view of some of the enclosures. I can hear them making noise all day long, so that’s helped build some excitement!

The greatest danger to our future is apathy.

— Jane Goodall

Insert cliché post about how I’ve never done a blog before but will give it a try because I’m about to do something cool, blah blah blah…

As much as I feel like these intro posts exist on every single blog published by privileged Americans traveling for extended periods, I probably should actually introduce my project a little bit. I’m FINALLY less than a week away from going to Sierra Leone to do my capstone for my master’s degree. This trip has been pushed back not once, not twice, but three times due to medical and family issues. And now that it’s so close, I’m doing crazy stuff like treating my clothes with permethrin and crossing my fingers that my visa and passport will be all set before I leave.

I’m also still working on trying to nail down the details around my project. I’m partnered with the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary, an amazing organization that is part of a network of great ape sanctuaries across Africa. They do a lot of incredible work around community education, as well as rehabilitating and reintroducing chimps to the wild. Their most recent goal is to start an anti-poaching program. Currently, we think that bushmeat hunting and pet trade demand account for most, if not all, of the poaching happening in the National Forest around the sanctuary. To confirm this and to gather background data around how best to proceed with an anti-poaching program, sanctuary staff and I will most likely be conducting wildlife valuation surveys in the villages nearby. This is the very first step in creating an anti-poaching program because the surveys will hopefully inform what kind of approach will be most effective in getting local people to be invested in anti-poaching.

Stay tuned for updates on whether or not I actually make it to Sierra Leone, how the project goes, and what this beautiful country is like in person!

“We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill, going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new course”

Fun fact about me: I LOVE quotes. I have notes on my phone with dozens of them, journals full of them, post its scattered around my room. I believe that words hold so much power and frequently have the wind knocked out of me from the sheer beauty people can create by stringing them together in just the right order. I chose this one to introduce myself because this trip feels like a big moment, like I am at a major crossroads and hopefully headed down a direction that will jumpstart a career in anti-poaching.

For the next 3 months, I am headed to West Africa, Sierra Leone specifically. The plan is to help Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary start an anti-poaching program. For anyone that knows me, it should be obvious that this opportunity is a dream come true. For as long as I can remember, I’ve known that my purpose in life involved learning from, working with, and protecting animals. I have wanted to work in anti-poaching specifically for years now. And somehow, I got lucky enough to work on an amazing and worthwhile project right from the beginning AND get school credit for doing so. I am heartbroken and filled with anxiety around leaving my dog JoJo for so long, but I know in my gut that this is an opportunity I could never pass up.

I’ve decided to attempt a blog for a couple reasons. First, this is a project that I am so over-the-top excited for and want to share with my friends and family. A blog seems like the quickest and easiest way to get updates to people. And secondly, I have always been a very private person. Recently, though, I have done a lot of work in letting people in more because this is a very isolated way of life. It is very outside of my comfort zone to share this experience publicly, but in a good way, in a way that feels like growth. So we’re giving this a shot!