Anyway, so a little Hausa wildlife language lesson: Warthog= Giado, Monkey= Biri, Elephant= Giwa, Lion (which we werent lucky enough to see)= Zaki, Antelope= Barewa, Hippo= Dorina, Hyena= Kura, Crocodile= Kada, and Birds= Tsuntsu. Study hard. I will test you all when I get home.
I think my favorite part of the trip was easily the Elephant spotting- they're so big and beutiful and we got to watch them from pretty close. When I got back to the Musee a couple of the workers asked why I didn't bring one home- I told them I tried, but it when the parc people saw it in the car the refused and I had to leave it. :)
The Musee has been great- Rose, the other volunteer, has officially, as of a week and a half, completed her service and now I'm all alone at the Musee. No, it's really been great- I've tried to put in at least 5-7 work hours each day, and I'm enjoying the task of setting my own goals and creating my own projects. Things I've been working on as of late: The new baboon cage is nearly finished, so I've been working to furnish their cement cages with tree limbs, and reliable waterdishes- it's been a huge problem in the old cage- what they did was make a cement hole in the ground for water, which over the years cracks, water empties in about 10 minutes, and then he's left without for hours. Problem is, can't open the door to put in a new waterdish, so the poor baboon has to live with it. Right now I have a hampster-style waterer hooked to the outside, but it too rusts quickly, leaks, and will soon break. So, to solve the problem in the next cage (which they again put in cement holes for the water) I have some nice stainless steel water bowls to install. Wow, that was really interesting.. a whole paragraph on baboon waterers. Sorry. Anyway, I've also been working each day on a project started be the last volunteer, where the local hotel donates all their fruit and veggie peels/ meat scraps, etc., so each day a take a couple hours to collect it and feed it out to all the monkeys, warthogs and porcipines. I'm still working with the mule, just to get him out of his small inclosure to graze and use his legs- maybe someday to do pony rides, but I'm not sure, his hind legs are in pretty bad shape and his joints have lost a lot of movement probably due to arthritis. Anyway, I am also hoping to put together a brochure for the musee to help with tourism, and maybe eventually a website, and lastly, working to update all the animals information signs- a lot of them have worn off and you cant read the information anymore.
Ok. Moving on. A few of us went to a Niger vrs. Nigeria football game a couple weeks back- exciting!!! This was the first Niger game I'd been to- neirly everyone I talked to said that Niger never wins, blah blah... BUT, the game was great, and a lot of fun, and... WE WON! 2:0! It was a good day. Rose and I got all dressed up in our Niger jersies and face paint, hair bling, and then danced in the cheering section- all the cheer-songs were in hausa! My favorite one was at the end we sang, 'Nigeria, sai wata rana! or, 'Nigeria until another day'. Also, some of the people I work with said they saw me on TV.. "Balkissa! I saw you on TV! You were doing this (jumping up and down with cheering-arms motion)!"... great.
Ok, one last thing, one of the Jackals at the Musee, Wylee just had pups!! There are two of them- really cute. I'll let you know their names in a week. (Nigerien tradition you know :))
