Halfway there!

C & I are heading toward Tulear to pick up her boyfriend (P) as well
as the new assistant (Ay). P will be here for three months or so and
will be helping out with data collection, and Ay will be around until
the bitter end (and then some-- he'll be killing time until World Cup
in June -- anyone need an assistant for a few months?). More people =
more data. Woohoo! I just hope that the computers hold up for the
entire time.

But, bigger news is that fieldwork is halfway done! It alternately
feels like time is flying by and that I don't have enough time to get
things done and that the next 5 months will be a long haul. In terms
of the ease of research, we're definitely coming into the more
difficult aspect of data collection. The infants are hopping all over
the place, putting things in their mouth, eating, spitting things off,
running running running and playing around. They're incredibly cute,
but as C would say, completely head wrecking. Watching mothers has now
turned into watching 2 animals at once so that you can keep track of
what the kid is doing too. We're also coming up on the beginning of
the rainy season, so it means hot and humid, as well as wasps. But,
the leaves on the trees are coming back, so it's getting easier to
identify the sticks that the lemurs have been chewing the buds off of.

Beza feels like home -- or as close to home camping/pit
latrines/sifaka hopping by your window actually can feel. When people
come through it feels like strangers are now in my kitchen, living
room, and bed room all at once. Not a few times have C and I looked at
each other with indignation when a new group of tourists rolls through
and deposits their bags and cigarette butts all over the place. In the
last group a very well meaning, and by far the nicest French tourist
thus far asked if we got exicted to see all of the vazaha come
through. I was forced to deflect the question into something less
controversial (like what time are you leaving in the morning?) rather
than answer her question with an honest 'no'. I'm still not totally
down with the amount of squatting life entails here, or that there are
more buckets in my life now than probably ever before, but, it's still
homey.

It is also incredibly surreal to be living here all of the time. This
happens most often when sitting at the table eating lunch. Orange
group will come through the house and all you can see are black and
white tails floating by the edge of the table. Occasionally when you
look over you see one of the females sprawled on the tile floor like a
dog trying to get cool, or maybe the face of 300 poking out from
around the corner in one of the bedrooms. Sometimes I have company
during lunch -- Bumps will come and sit on the edge of the table or
perched on a chair to watch me, see what I'm eating, see if it's
something she's interested in, and maybe just hang out for awhile.
Having lemurs on your table/in your kitchen/bedroom is a much
different experience then, say, some baboons or vervet monkeys. The
lemurs don't get too pushy, aggressive, or poop on everything when
they're in the house . This is a courtesy that can't really be said
for the monkeys.

Another surreal lemur moment came when I was sitting on the floor of
my tent and heard a low growl. When I looked up all I could see was a
disembodied sifaka face looking in and then hopping by. The animal
life definitely keeps us amused.

So 5.5 months down and 5 more to go. Future highlights include a
second visit by M & F's research team in December and J's dissertation
defense in January. With my research team doubling in size, I'm sure
there will be new adventures to be had, new animals to be caught, and
intrepid stories of wasp stings to be relayed. I'm looking forward to
it all.