Because of the nation-wide manifestations tomorrow, and therefore us being grounded the whole day) we decided to go for a beer together with Desiré and Theo after I finished my first day of transect-walking, to celebrate this (almost) first week of field work.
We ended up by a plastic table with a mended leg, standing on a big open space covered in dirt with a bottle each of Brakina. The moon was half-smiling, just like expected this close to the equator. In Tanzania, I told the others, the moon lies down completely.
We drank, and talked about politics and travels and laughed at mine and Elli’s bad French and by the time we got back to the guesthouse, I was quite drunk. We made dinner. I was starving. I ate tons.
Then I started peeling a papaya, which no one wanted to share with me, so I ate it all myself and started thinking about the monkeys in the park in Villa Tunari, Bolivia. They got papaya every day, there were enormous amounts of papaya in the food storage in the main building. And the monkeys’ favorite part of the papaya was the seeds, back and shiny and round.
These Burkinabe papayas don’t have seeds, for some reason. Poor monkeys, loosing out on their favorite treat.
Katja Malmborg 