Favorite Animals

I’ve been called out. It’s going to be very very hard for me to lay out my favorite animals in very many categories.

Favorite Primate: Mountain Gorilla, Lemur (tie). I also have strong partiality to bush babies. I do not care for the old world or “simple” monkeys. I think the chimpanzee and orangutan are fascinating, but neither have enough honor to rank in my favorites. Both are scandalous drunkards, rabble-rousers, and sexually incontinent. If you can possibly avoid it, do not live with a monkey.

The Mountain Gorilla is immensely powerful, yet peaceful. They have the most powerful bite of all mammals. A male gorilla can turn a car tire inside out with its hands, for fun. They are entirely vegetarian and avoid not only confrontation, but contact of any kind with other large animals. They are serene, immense, silent, hermetic, and steadfast. I love the deep black of their coats and skin. I love the overabundant muscularity coupled with grace. They are very highly intelligent without being combative.

Lemurs I will not say much about at this time. They do things in schedules. They…accept imitation well.

Favorite Monotreme: Duckbill Platypus. It’s hard enough being a marsupial in this world, what with having your entire ecology overturned by imported toads or rabbits. But being a monotreme is another level entirely. Try being a mammal that lays eggs. There are only two such animals on earth. You are probably aware that the platypus is weird. But I would wager even money you don’t know the half of it. For instance, it’s bill is actually an acute electromagnetic field sensor that can find creatures buried in mud. The male has a barb in his heel that is venomous. Venomous mammals are rare people, but there is only one vertebrate on this earth delivers venom using a claw.

Favorite Fatigue Hunter: African Wild Dog. A little known but fascinating mammal, it received brief notoriety in the “Planet Earth” television series. The species uses well-coordinated attacks with strategy yielding very high success rates. They are wildly colored. They symbolize to me the true spirit of dogness. I hang my head when I think of the domesticated fops paraded at dog shows.

Favorite Multi-Optimized Animal: Frigate Bird. When you really get to know the animal kingdom on this Earth, you realize that most creatures are optimized to do one thing really well. Well, the frigate bird is special in that it is supremely optimized in two ways. The bird takes long migrations for nesting and feeding seasons. It is a highly efficient long-range flier. The frigate bird feeds by snatching sea-fish from the water, so it also requires very high agility. If you have ever been impressed by seeing a hunting bird dive into the sea and return with a live fish in it’s beak, consider this: the frigate bird makes a habit of stealing those fish, out of the other birds’ mouths…while flying. Like most things, living or otherwise, that are highly specialized the frigate bird has a sparse yet fine beauty.

Favorite Ruminant: American Bison. Cape Buffalo comes in a close second here. Giraffe is also a strong consideration. What is more hoary, tougher, longer suffering than a bison? Possibly camels. But the camel is a whiner. It is one thing to face into a blizzard. Bison march into them. Behold a bison, and know what it is to never yield the essential.

Favorite Animal which is Probably an Alien Race Observing Us: Cuttlefish.

Favorite Extremely Rare Animal: Pangolin. Both times I visited Maasai Mara National Park, I asked our guides to let us know if anyone on the radio net mentioned a pangolin siting. The first guide merely laughed saying that he had only seen one once in his life. The other didn’t even know what it was. And these men LIVE in the animal’s habitat. Also, pangolins are bipedal. Stop and think about that for a moment if you can.

Favorite Safari Animal: Warthog. Can there be an animal with more sass? They peel out when they run. They can chase lions away.

I could go on here. I could go on and on. And maybe on another day I will. I could talk about moray eels and pygmy marmosets. There are grey parrots and dung beetles I haven’t mentioned. And don’t even get me started on who is really the villian among the lions and hyenas.

The animal kingdom is richer, and weirder than we imagine. A lifetime of consuming every fact of the natural world I could has shown me that even with all the media we have dedicated to it, the wonder and unknown is still considerable.

Also, it seems like I am blogging again.

The Best Girlfriend in the World

3D reborn HDR

Originally uploaded by ukweli

Her name is Maureen. She has waited very patiently for me to return from Sudan for over a year. One might think that was enough. It was more than enough, really. But did she stop there? She did not.

I’ve been riding this bike frame for 9 years now. It was a hard day for me when I sat on the top tube and it suddenly was entirely separated from the seat tube. It honestly felt like a pretty bad omen considering the timing–days before I left for Africa. I look forward with relish to reassembling the thing from the ground up. Maybe I will finally build those disc brake wheels I’ve thought of for years.

I was simply flabbergasted when Maureen slid this thing out of a large box she had in her closet. I would not have guessed in 100 years that she had accomplished this for me and kept it secret. There is quite simply no material gift in this world I would have been more delighted with.

Maureen, you are a gem. I don’t even know what else to say.

The End is Nigh

There is a time to face facts. With the Kororak Primary School that time is now. The first school building simply will not finish during my time in Sudan. I admit to real disappointment.

My replacement–an engineer from Kenya named Moses Wandabwa–is with us now. I have given Moses all the information on the school, and I am confident that he will have little difficulty seeing it to completion. But there is a pang. If you have ever handed someone else a crying baby with a suspect diaper, you may recognize the feeling.

In the end, it was the mobilization of basic materials that slowed us. Sand, gravel, large stones, and water were and are needed in an abundance I could hardly believe. The community was very willing to help, but the work was simply monumental. There was just no speeding it up. Gravity is not someone you can get into a hurry. I know this.

I predict two more full weeks to completion of the first building. I would expect the next building to follow in less than a month and a half. As it stands now, the first building has three trusses erected on steel beams and about half of its first meter of stone wall complete.
————-
Toby days remaining: 4

Foundation Pour

I started my day today with the following:
1 fried egg on bread
4 tablets Coartem
1 pill multivitamin
1 pill probiotic
2 tablets extra strength Maalox PLUS
2 pills acetaminophen
500 ml Coca-Cola

Given that breakfast of champions, it is probably safe to assume
anything suspect I now relate is due to hallucination. I don’t normally
ingest quite so much chemistry in the morning. I have been caught in
what I now believe to be a cross-fire between several body ailments. It
is exceedingly unpleasant when hunger makes you nauseated, nausea makes
you thirsty, and drinking water makes you hungry.

Cement was poured into a hole in Kororak today.  PICTURE There is no turning back
now. There is every reason to hope we can have masons bringing up the
walls before the end of this week.

I had intended to pour the remainder of the foundation tomorrow.
However, one of our tractors’ trailers broke down. This means we won’t
have sufficient sand tomorrow to mix concrete. I dare say that in the
course of my time here, there has rarely been a week that one of our
trailers was not broken. Sure, the X-prize is cool, but if you want a
real design challenge try building a trailer that will operate for three
successive weeks in Nuba.

Toby days remaining: 14

Kororak Primary School Underway

Grass burned in Kororak today. After a short meeting with a few members
of the school committee and teachers of Kororak, we chose a site for the
first set of classrooms. The committee has wisely decided to place the
two buildings at opposite sides of the ample playground. Anyone who has
witnessed the synchronized shouting that serves as a memorization
technique in African primary schools will appreciate the acoustical
foresight of this decision.

Our chief Marcos is gifted when it comes to official action. He took the
siting as a queue and immediately set the 7 by 30 meter swath of earth
on fire. Nearly burning down the former school was perhaps a subtle hint
that everyone is very ready for some new classrooms.

A leader from another community has already approached me about a school rebuild in their area.

Toby days remaining: 25