Adventures in Gombe: Termite collecting and the unforgiving forest

I am often asked to blog while in the field, and I never do.  That is because my time in the field is rarely anything exciting enough to document day-by-day.  I usually wake up, go get in a good day’s work of whatever I am doing – excavating or collecting termites – come back, have dinner, and go to sleep.  However, my time at Gombe has been one of the biggest adventures of my life.  My first two days in the field were exceptional, so I’ve decided to write a day-by-day diary.  I'll  update this post as I go.
Last update: 11/30/2016

Also, please excuse any typos.  There have been lots.  I've caught a bunch of them, but I am sure there are more.  There's even one in the weblink to this blog because I had one in the title when I first posted!  But as you will see, on day 2, I hurt my pinky, so I've had to re-learn typing with my left hand!

Day 1:

​First off, I traveled to Tanzania essentially straight from the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association which were held in Minneapolis, MN. My week prior to leaving was about as hectic as any I have ever had since I was not only packing for both trips but also making sure my students were set with all they needed before I was gone for a couple of weeks.  My trip here went incredibly smoothly.  My checked bag made it, which was something that wasn’t true when I traveled to Croatia last year, South Africa this past spring, or to Eastern Tanzania this past summer.  My ride was waiting for me at the airport and after everyone ran their errands in town, we were on the boat to Gombe.  The boat ride was something I had romanticized in my head.. Traveling along the coast of Lake Tanganyika up to the most famous chimpanzee site in the world.  And indeed, it was a beautiful trip.  We were at max capacity in the boat with 12 people, the goods for camp, and my luggage, but we made it safely.  At camp, I have my own room, complete with bed, bedding, pillow, and mosquito net.  Gombe is definitely a plush field site compared to most.

Day 2

Gombe is pretty high up in elevation.  Base camp at the lake is 770 meters, and the chimps will trek up over 1200 meters.  I was warned that there is a little bit of an acclimation period for this (which I was glad to hear since it gave me an excuse for any poor performance besides just being incredibly out of shape!).  So our first day we took it easy.  I am here with my friend and colleague Rob O’Malley (and grant Co-PI) who has done an extensive survey of chimpanzee termite fishing at the site.  For the most part we are just visiting termite mounds for which he has record of chimpanzee fishing.  We scheduled the trip for November because this is usually the rainy season, which is when the termites are most active, but alas, the rains have not come.  By sticking to lower elevations, the mounds are wetter in these locales, and the termites still active enough to collect at least a small sample.  We hit six mounds and got samples from five of them.  A very successful first day.  On our way back to camp, on an easy trail with only some small rolling hills, I caught my toe on a rock.  I actually rarely stumble when hiking, and when I do, it’s easy for me to catch my balance.  However, this particular stumble (which was at the end of the day, on the way out, which is when most injuries happen since you are tired and your guard is let down) I tripped at the beginning of a downhill.  When I went to catch myself with my other foot, the ground was much further down than I needed it to be.  So I bit it hard.  Completely face planted.  I thought at first that I hit my head, but in actuality my right elbow took the greatest impact, traveling up into that shoulder. It’s sore but fine.  However, what I did not know at first was that I fell on top of my left hand.  When I stood up I realized that my pinky was bending in a very unnatural direction.  The thoughts that went through my head were 1) I really do not want to have to take the boat back to town after only one day to go to the hospital, and 2) I really should take a picture of this!  I didn’t do either, fortunately for the former, regretfully for the latter.  Our field assistant Halfan popped my finger back into place without any problem and no extra pain on my part.  I now just have a swollen, purple finger that is taped to the one next to it.   No big deal, really, but it is so unlike me.  But alas, everyone falls at some time.­­

Day 3

We had rain last night!  A good 45-minutes’ worth!  So we used this as an opportunity to go to the mounds at higher elevations hoping it was enough to soak them a bit and wake up the termites.  The goal was to make it to 1020 meters since that is the highest mound that Rob has recorded.  There was a good path that we could take up that wasn’t too steep and we stopped at other termite mounds along the way.  When we finally got up to where the mound was, it was only 50 meters off the path, so should’ve been easy to find.  Wrong.  This area was covered dense thicket.  Vines on vines on vines.  I had encountered some of this the day before and felt like the forest was trying to eat me alive because some appendage was always trapped.  Today was better, though.  I was much more confident throwing my weight around and could see paths more clearly.  However, my legs were tired, so lifting them to step over vines that were a couple feet in the air often took a few tries, so I was far from quick through the vegetation.  We finally got to the mound, and after pretty unsuccessful collections at mounds on our way, we managed to pull a decent sample.  Success!  Thank god.  We now had to make it back through the thicket back to the path.  We had no visibility due to the dense undergrowth, but thought we knew the best way to go.  Holy cow were we wrong.  At one point I was climbing over dense vines that were suspended easily two feet over the ground.  This is where I made the contribution of “there has to be a better way,” so I too am at fault in this whole debacle.  We turned left, continuing to climb over and under the thicket, only to be greeted by a cliff face.  Our guide Nuhu (Helfan has been Rob’s guide till this point but had to go into town to see a dentist) thought we could make the climb, and going back didn’t really seem like an option either.  If we wanted out, we had to climb.  We climbed a 100m cliff face using vines and other vegetation (There were two spots where it was a literal wall about 4-5 meters tall.  Words cannot explain how absolutely crazy it was.  For the second day in a row I felt like I was in a bad movie.  Fortunately the adrenaline kept my left hand feeling fine, and I was able to grab vines without any issue, but there was definitely a spot where I went to reach for the next vine, and there wasn’t one.  At that moment, the exhaustion set in, and then the panic.  I started to slide back down the loose dirt on the cliff face.  Anything that might have been just out of reach was now far beyond anything I could manage and I did not have the energy to pull myself up with my now completely suspended arm.  Fortunately Nuhu had gone ahead of me and came back and fed a vine my way for me to grab.  Literally threw me a life line!  I also had Rob behind me creating a foothold with his hand.  After clearing that ridge, I needed to catch my breath, but the rest of the climb out went fine.  I immediately proclaimed that we were not collecting any more termites for the day, and we began our long trek back down to camp.  Once there I took the most glorious soak in Lake Tanganyika(1) and reveled in how amazing of a life I lead.

(1) This is another charm of Gombe – other places on the coast have liver fluke parasites, but here the waves are rough enough that they don’t survive.  Also, there are not bot or mango flies! Which is the hell I’ve heard the most about from my primatologist friends.  So wet clothes are not breeding grounds for eggs of parasites that will burrow into your skin once they hatch.  Again, this place is pretty magical.

​Rob managed to take a pic of me climbing some vines before things got too hairy.  The dense vegetation was easy to climb.  This was not true the whole way up!

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Day 4

Today’s goal was to collect termites from the grassy areas that are directly behind camp.  Previously we have walked a good ways down the beach before ducking into the forest.  Rob mentioned that I would get to experience “mango trail”, to which I must have made some sound implying “Oh, that sounds lovely” only to be corrected that it is one of the toughest trails here at Gombe.  No warmup down the beach, just straight up the hill behind our house.  Much of the way was a steep staircase of roots where I used my hands often to scramble.  I did not have an easy time of it.  I think I tapped into everything I had getting up that cliff yesterday and left very little in reserve for today (the kinesiologist in me kept thinking that I should have eaten sooner when I got home yesterday in order to replenish my glycogen stores!).  We had Halfan back with us today and he would ask if I was OK or needed help, and I kept saying “I am capable, just tired.”  At one point the path went along a ridge and was sloped slightly downhill. It was covered in leaf litter (which makes the ground terribly slick) and there was a steep drop-off; my very tired self was weary here and my cautious steps took forever. I felt pretty terrible about my performance.  We finally made it up to the area of the target mound and had to scramble up the hillslope off the path.  I found that when using my hands I would often rest my weight on my knuckles.  Truthfully, knuckle-walking never really made sense to me, but today I got it.  Not sure if hilly terrain has anything to do with the adaptation, but it very well could, and that’s probably how I will think of it from now on.  Anyway, after collecting our data I asked Rob, the bearer of the GPS, how far we had gone in elevation.  I was expecting we were somewhere midway to how high we were yesterday, expecting 850m or so, but was pleasantly surprised to learn that we were at 1000m.  I felt a little less bad about having a tough time of that uphill knowing that we covered 250m of elevation in a very short time.  Going downhill was much, much easier.  I am quick on my feet, and am fortunate enough that I have never had trouble with my knees.  I easily kept up with Rob and Halfan, earning some of Halfan’s respect back.
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Today was the first day we encountered the chimps!  The valley behind camp is their core area, so the trail system is the most complete and there is always a good chance of seeing the chimps.  We came across the mother-infant team (Jane Goodall Institute field assistants) along the trail on our way across the valley to visit some additional mounds.  There were probably about six chimps in the group, with two very young juveniles. Watching the juveniles is seriously endless fun!  They explore and play and pretty much keep moving nonstop.  After a short while, the group took off uphill, so we continued on with the rest of the termite mounds on the day’s list.  Rob has been collecting data since the beginning of the month, so we are reaching the end of what we set out to do.  We pretty much hit all our targets now, so for the next couple of days, we may just go out and find the chimps in hopes that one of them will lead us to a good termite mound where they want to do some fishing. 

Today is also Thanksgiving.  I am very thankful to have opportunities like this and to have been able to have made a career out of it.  The fact that I have a job where I use the degrees I earned is something I never take for granted. 

Day 5

Today was a good day in the forest.  I am getting much more comfortable navigating (most of) the terrain.  The leaf litter on the hillsides is still a tough one for me, but I am able to make up lost ground by trail running when the path changes back to rocks and/or roots.  We followed the chimps for most of the day, and they kindly stayed to the trails for the most part, which makes the lives of the observers much, much easier.  Additionally, we are not collecting behavioral data for the chimps, so if they run off, we can just leisurely work our way along a set of paths and catch them at some other point.  Standard protocol for collecting behavioral data is a "focal follow" where you pick a chimp and stay with them, no matter what.  In that case, if your chimp runs down a ridge, so do you, unless you are willing to lose your target, and thus lose the data.  For this reason, primatologists are the most hard core field researchers I know.  They will do almost anything to keep an eye on their chimp, including getting themselves in some pretty precarious situations.  I am grateful that my work here does not have that sort of intensity, however, we are clearly abiding by the same general code, getting ourselves stuck at the bottom of that cliff on Day 3 for a termite mound.
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My most frustrating thing today is being reminded that I am a terrible photographer.  I really don't know how to use an SLR, and the "auto" settings clearly don't cut it.  I am going with the method of "take a ton of photos and hope one by chance turns out well."  

Tomorrow is Rob's last day in the forest.  We are praying for rain!  We want ALL the termites to come out!  There was a storm cloud and some thunder this afternoon, but it passed us by.  Maybe it hit somewhere else in the park, and maybe that bodes well for the conditions to bring rain tonight.

Day 6

What did I learn today?  I learned that Rob can be really fast through the forest!  It is his last day out, and I am unsure whether that’s related, but he took the lead on many of the trails, when previously we have both been following Halfan. He’s definitely in better shape than I, and more used to the terrain as well, but sometimes it would just be his long legs covering the ground better than mine.  I could not keep up.  I also think fatigue from the past 4 days is setting in, so I am taking tomorrow off from trekking and going to stay in camp and get some work done.  It is the middle of the semester after all, and I have a few things I need to turn in to my department for Monday.

We followed the chimps today and stuck with Tanga who is a committed termite fisher.  She definitely tried to fish at one mound, but had no luck and moved on quickly.  However, watching her break a branch from a tree to use as a tool as she was on her way to the mound was a cool enough sight in itself.  She grabbed it at least 20 meters before the mound, so there was no doubt where she was headed or what she intended to do.  I will have three more days in the forest before I have to leave and I will stick to this method – follow Tanga.  Not only do I know that she is eager for termites, but she is also the mom of that adorable four-month-old baby that is in some of my photos.  When the baby is awake, she is incredibly cute, swinging from the trees, chewing on mom’s foot, or other curious baby things.  She is also very entertaining when she is sound asleep.  She gets a tight grip on her mom’s fur with her hands, but not with her feet, so if mom gets up to move, she dangles like a ragdoll, and it is immensely entertaining to watch Tanga try to reposition her to the center of her back.  This also keeps Tanga from moving too quickly through the forest, so I believe she is a focal target that I can actually manage to follow.

After we were done with the chimps for the day we decided to visit the Kakombe waterfall.  This is one of the touristy things I was going to do after Rob left, but it was relatively on our way home, so we decided to go.  The path to it was a very mild incline, but I was spent.  I was almost regretting the decision to squeeze it in at the end of the day.  But wow, was it worth it once we got there.  It’s a pretty tall waterfall, about 25 meters or so, and you can get right to the base of it.  The cool mist was revitalizing for body and soul.  Locally it is thought of as a magical place, and I could definitely feel why.

Speaking of magical.. on a completely different note, last night I had a chocolate brownie cliff bar and I put Nutella on it.  Holy wow.  To me at that moment, it was the most delicious thing I ever ate.

And now today's batch of my favorite photos:
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Day 7

I spent today in camp.  I was able to get quickly through the few back-home, school-related tasks that needed tending to, so spent most of the day enjoying a book in my house (The Sellout by Paul Beatty, “a satirical opus on race in twenty-first century America,” according to the back-cover quote from O magazine.  I highly recommend.)

However, even in camp, there is no shortage of wildlife encounters.  I had a stand-off with a “small” centipede (about 5 inches long).  It was on my floor, and although I did not want it in my house, I did not feel the need to kill it.  The trap-it-under-a-glass trick that I learned from my mother wasn’t exactly going to cut it, but I did manage to modify the technique using a Tupperware (transparent so I could keep an eye on the thing) and use a broom to sweep it out of the house.

Additionally, there is a troop of baboons that lives in camp.  Normally I only see them when I take a walk across camp to the office to access the internet once a day.  More times than not, they are directly on the path and I have to navigate right-of-way with them.  The seasoned researchers here pass them with very little notice; however, they make me a bit nervous.  I tend to hang back and hope they cross out of the way before I need to pass.  Today they have been very fascinated with my house.  They have been hanging around all afternoon, and this morning they used the house as a jungle gym, chasing each other all around and over the metal roof, causing quite the ruckus.  Maybe this is their normal routine and I am just not normally here to witness it, however, I do make sure to keep the door locked at all times because I know they want nothing more than to raid the kitchen.

A little bit of rain today, but not much.  For the past few days there have been some rumbles of thunder and a drizzle here or there.  I am hoping this bodes well for a big rain in the next day or two.  Not only would this increase the chances of me seeing some chimpanzees fishing for termites (I really just want to have my own photo that I could put in my book) but I might also then catch the swarm of reproductive termites that come with the rains.  These alates are the termites most widely eaten by people and generally cause excitement as well for the nonhuman primates.  I have never gotten to witness a swarm.  This is the third time I have purposefully planned my trip to Africa to correspond with the rainy season, and I have a couple more days where I can still make the third time the charm.  Fingers crossed.

Rob is now making his way by boat back to Kigoma where he will begin finalizing our permits for shipping out our samples before flying back home on Thursday.  I am very grateful to him for joining this project.  Before he left, he gave me a few more photo gems that he had taken.

Day 8

Well, those photos just about sum up my day!  I am one happy camper!

I was a little nervous about how the day would go because we did not know exactly where the chimps were since no one was with them last night when they nested. But fortunately, they were pretty low, which is where the termites are most active.  We found Tanga around 9:30 and she pretty quickly broke off the path and headed to a termite mound.  I was pretty pleased with my strategy and how well it already seemed to be working.  However, she had no luck and quickly moved on.  As we were on our way up the path, we were met by a JGI field research who told us he saw Glitter fishing at a termite mound.  The mound was only a short ways away, but I expected that she would be finishing up when we got there.  However, she stayed there and fished, along with her daughter Gosama, for about a half hour!  It was truly ideal.  Glitter is a well-habituated and friendly-to-people chimp and her daughter was the same.  I was able to get into a position where I could get a clear view of them at the mound (vines and branches almost always ruin the shot) and I took a bunch of pictures.  Like 1,000 pictures (switching between two cameras, both on continuous shooting).  I managed to get a couple shots with which I am truly in love.

This first shot is from early after my arrival.  When I got there, Glitter was committed to looking for a tool, but Gosama decided it was time to nurse.  I got to witness a full-on chimp toddler temper tantrum.  After getting her tool, Glitter settled into a good spot for fishing and let Gosama nurse. Getting to see this and capture it is especially exciting for me because a lot of what I discuss about edible insects is how important they are being a nutritious animal-based food that females can access even with baby in tow.

​After Gosama was done nursing, she wanted to fish where mom was fishing, ultimately chasing Glitter to another hole on the opposite side of the mound.  She was just as adept of a tool user.  The one thing I noticed is that she had to search for new tools more often than her mother, so she still has some to learn regarding which materials make the best tools.  

Then after fishing for about 10 minutes, she went over by her mother and decided that that location was a better place to fish.  Glitter let her and headed back to her original spot.  THIS is the shot I traveled to Tanzania for.  You can even zoom in and see the termites on the tool.

I find it fascinating the different ways chimps eat the termites from the tool.  At Gombe (at least with these two.. I guess I don't know if other individuals do it differntly), the termite end of the tool is rested on the opposite hand and the termites are picked off the tool and the hand with the lips.  At the Goualougo Triangle in the Republic of Congo, the other site I am most familiar with because I watched/coded videos of tool use for part of my dissertation, the chimps take their opposite hand and run it down the length of the tool, ending up with a handful of termites that they then throw in their mouths.

​After hearing some vocalizations up the hill, Glitter and Gosama left the mound to rejoin the group.  Up there, the chimps were getting excited about possibly hunting colobus monkeys.  I stayed with them for about two hours to see if they would have a successful hunt, but today wasn’t the day.  It was still interesting to watch them climb up the trees and wait in almost total silence.  For the most part, if the chimps are not eating fruit (or nested for the night), they are on the ground lounging, grooming, etc.  They also are very vocal and loud (that's how we can find them in the forest).  So it is clear that they were all working together up in the trees hoping to catch a monkey.

Shortly after getting back to camp, it began to rain!   It rained really hard for a couple of minutes, but then has been consistently raining almost two hours now with no signs of stopping.  This is good news.  Maybe I will get my last wish and see those flying termites.

Day 9

After such a successful day with the chimps yesterday, I decided to spend the first part of the morning taking a touristy hike up to "Jane's Peak."  I am told that before the chimps were habituated, and before their regular movement patterns were understood, Jane Goodall would go to this place and listen and watch for chimps across the valley.  Now it is a beautiful vista with a bench for tourists to enjoy.  It was a little cloudy/foggy today, so it is tough to make out the lake in the bottom photo.

After Jane's Peak we hiked to go find the chimps.  I was hopeful that the rain yesterday would mean lots of fishing today.  When we got to where they were, a JGI researcher showed me multiple videos of chimps fishing.  I was worried that I threw away my window by going to Jane's Peak, but we caught plenty of activity still.

First was Faustino, an adult male.  I saw him fish for a bit yesterday as well, and today was the same thing.. he likes fishing where there is no way for me to get a good shot past the vines!

After watching him till he moved on, we walked up the path and found Dia (edit from previously mistaking her for Dili), a young female, at a termite mound right on the trail. Unfortunately, her back was to me, and she is a much more shy chimpanzee than any of the others I had previously photographed, so moving into a better position was not necessarily going to be easy.  I felt like the paparazzi in the brush trying to position my camera just so in order to get a shot between branches.  This actually worked quite well, and after I was pretty sure she was fine with my being there, I was able to move into more comfortable positions and get another great set of termiting photos.  I now have a bunch of good ones and it is going to be tough to decide what goes in the book!  After my first pass through the photos, these were my favorite "classic" fishing photos."

But the other thing I managed to capture from Dia was a lot more of the whole process.  Like using her hand to break some of the mound to create a good opening for fishing...

And waiting for the termites to come and bite the tool.  It vibrates when it's ready!

And carrying the tool in her mouth to find a new location.

And finally, that satisfied look when she knows she found a good place.

I am grateful to Dia, and all the chimps, for letting me experience this with them.  I only have one more day in the forest before I begin my long trek home.  I will go out with the chimps tomorrow just to soak in some more of this magic before I have to leave.  I will probably try to get more termiting photos because that's why I am here, but I also hope to just hang out with them, my camera put away, and take it all in one last time.

Day 10

Today was my last day in the forest, and this should be my last entry here, barring nothing crazy happens during the long journey home.  I kept my promise and left my camera in the bag, but I got to see fun things like dominance displays (one heart-poundingly close to me), someone building a day nest, and an amazing courting of a male by an estrus female.  She was doing all the best flirting, including some bipedal standing.  

I want to take a moment to post these photos from the other day of Tanga and her sleepy baby.  After I had already blogged about it, I saw them at it again.  I managed to capture a shot of how Tanga kicks up her leg to try to reposition the infant.  It made me giggle every time I saw it.

I knew this trip would be great, but I have been sort of surprised as just how much I have been in awe of the whole thing.  This is not my first time seeing wild chimps, or even to see them fish for termites.  However, the last time I was at a chimpanzee site, I was at the savannah site of Fongoli in Senegal.  There are a couple of big differences.  
1) The obvious.. the different environment.  The savannah habitat is important for my work since a lot of reconstructions of hominid environments have suggested savannah/open woodland, but in terms of visiting it, it is most like the environments I work in when working at a fossil hominin site, whether in East or South Africa.  I really enjoy being in the forest.  The forest has always been a place I have gone for fun; I just enjoy the sounds, smells, and everything about this environment.
2) The weather.  Although I was hoping for more rain because it makes the termites more active and I wanted to get to see them fly, it has made for a much more enjoyable day-to-day.  The weather has been mostly humid 75-degree (F) days.  Although I get drenched in sweat everyday, 75 degrees is about as good as it gets.   And the sweatiness just makes jumping in the lake feel that much better!  At Fongoli, it was dry, which was nice, but it was almost always over 100 degrees.  I feel like 103 was the norm.  Not only was this pretty miserable for the people, but the chimpanzees were also not very active.  
​And 3) Habituation.  The Gombe chimpanzees are the best habituated chimpanzees anywhere.  Jane Goodall first came here in 1960, and now there are teams of people who are out with the chimps every day.  Although some distance is kept between the people and the chimpanees, it is not uncommon for a chimp to touch a person, either just through passing, to play, or by a dominance displacy.  At Fongoli, Jill Pruetz began habituating the chimpanzees in the early 2000s (I believe) and only one or two researchers are out with the chimps on a regular basis.  Additionally, the habitat of these chimpanzees neighbors local villages, and there are known instances of people shooting a chimpanzee that has come close to their home.  Therefore, it is important to the researchers at the site that the chimpanzees maintain a healthy fear of people.  Almost all observations were done through binoculars in order to see well-enough what the chimps were doing.  

​Here are two photos from my time at Fongoli, you can see the habitat and also how the closest I ever got to a termiting chimp.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, it's magical here.  I am saying my goodbyes to the things I love about it..

​The forest..

The lake..

And of course, the chimpanzees..

Thank you all for reading along.  I am glad that I kept this record of my trip, and knowing I had people reading kept me posting.  And just so you know, if you want to add it to your bucket list, there are indeed chimpanzee safaris here at Gombe.