Airfield

It feels so quiet here since the drama -- almost too quiet, but Adam and I slowly but surely finish our preparations for the “evacuation” of the chimps.

Life has been somewhat peaceful ... avocados are in season again and we made some guacamole yesterday. A welcome change from poondoo or beans!

It continues to be Africa™, though -- our cat, Chaussette, who was allowed to run around during the night (even outside, since she’d go out the window),was (we guess) bitten by a snake.

I looked for her all morning and finally found her, cold and rigid, under our windowsill. We buried her in the yard, one more thing on the “to do” list. She was a good cat, and sweet.

Death is just a part of life here. I guess I’m not even allowed to complain.

We visited the airfield this morning, finally finished being cut yesterday. It’s about 1km long and 16m wide, and surprisingly flat! It was encouraging to see, since the pilots coming out to get us were quite worried that a Jungle Airfield would be completely unsuitable.

Imagine that nightmare -- standing in the airfield with all of our luggage and the Aketi Five, only to have the plane be unable to land and turn around and leave!!

Cleve is anticipating Major Drama with the local officials, and we’ve continued to withhold the actual date of our departure from everyone here to prevent just that -- I think really, though, that after this last drama, we are both just tapped out.

I know certainly that I don’t have much energy left to worry about anything that might happen. Especially after having to collect the dead much-loved rigor mortis cat, I don’t have much energy to devote to Doom-Anticipation in general.

In the realm of excitement, however, is the reception of the eBooks and Cleve’s work out here -- Science magazine might put in a piece about our rescue of the chimps -- and I can’t say that I haven’t always dreamed of being in Science! (or Nature!)

And really, that’s it. This is another entry I’ll wait to post -- it’s now only four days until the grand success of our hopes for the Aketi Five!