The Case of the Missing Tail

Now I don't want to blame any one dog in particular, but recently (and I am willing to accept that this just may be a coincidence) while we were dog-sitting Lilly for our friend Carla our cat Moushi's tail got mysteriously broken. The vet told me it looked like the result of a bite and he wanted to amputate the thing down to a stub as he thought it would look prettier. I informed him I preferred to think of Moushi's comfort and balance rather than worry about my social status reflected through the cuteness of my cat's tail. Luckily for Moushi (aka "Moushi-Mout-Mout") my persistence paid off, and he ended up only loosing 1/3 of his tail and has everything bandaged up nicely like this:

Twin brother Pousse (or Poes if you're Dutch) is less than impressed with Moushi's new look, as you can see here:
While I know many people might say that it's a bit unfair of me to blame Lilly the visiting dog for poor Moushi's predicament since we too have our very own dog (Mooie who replaced Koumba after she met with a car one dark night). In an effort to clear any confusion though I thought I'd let you make up your mind by having a look at the two dogs in question. First up is Mooie, who clearly could never harm a poor kitty tail:



And then there's Lilly:









Well OK, so she doesn't look exactly like that, but you get the picture.

African Jack-o-lanterns

During the week leading up to Halloween I began a search for pumpkins by asking around if anyone had seen any for sale or did they perhaps know someone who would know. (Pretty much everything here is carried out through word of mouth.) I remained optimistic until the very end, as a number of Gabonese actually knew which vegetable I was talking about and mentioned that they had seen them for sale in the past, but couldn't remember where or exactly when it was....

The day before Halloween I gave up the search though and went for the next best thing - watermelons. Our Wednesday replacement guard Hervé was in for a surprise that day when he was told we needed his help in creating a spooky-faced-hollowed-out-watermelon that we would later put a candle in and place on the fence in front of the house. Once I drew a picture of the face he understood generally what it should look like but still seemed confused as to why anyone would do this and what was that candle idea all about?

See here for Hervé's bemusement:
I wasn't too sure what the final result would be once it was dark out and candles were lit, but we all had a lot of fun working on our new jack-o-lantern concept. Of the 4 of us though only Hervé likes watermelon, so he lucked out and got to eat all the contents.
He may not have understood why we would waste such a perfectly good fruit, but he sure was a good sport! Here is our first creation:

And our two halloween beauties that afternoon (Hervé got really into it and came up with the idea of carving out a hairline, as can be seen on our friend on the right)
When I first set them out in front of the house to "scare the neighbors" -as Jourdain and Cilia had explained to Hervé'- I was moderately satisfied, thinking that somehow orange just looks better and these are not terribly authentic looking.....until I set the candles in them and .........

in the end they looked just as good as any I had ever made in the past!!(With the exception of Hervé's hairline which was in fact a great idea!!)

Loango Park II

More scenes from Loango. Come see it with us!!

Above - on the river Below - spot the croc!

Getting to the lodge can take longer than expected

Above - stuck in deep sand Below - driving into the river to board our boat
Looking over the list of activities upon arival at the lodge I saw a canoe coming towards us from a distance. While watching them approach I complained plenty to Diane that we were not informed by staff that this was an option for us and that I really would love to canoe through the mangroves too, blah blah blah and how unfair. Within just a few minutes I realized the ladies I had been watching were possibly not canoing down the river for leisure purposes....

A true mix of French and African cultures in a village en route to the lodge

Birthday Guy

I sure wish I knew how to get this film to work, rather than post this as a picture!! Anyway, happy birthday, Papa/Bubba from the 4 of us in Gabon!!

Loango Park I

A while back Olivier and I spent the weekend with our friends Didier and Diane walking through the jungle and savanna at Loango Park, a (or should I say the) nature reserve here in Gabon. As you can see here, it was elephant season that period, and while I may look all giggly here hangin' with the elephants, I was in fact pretty scared and telling Ol to hurry up and take the picture already! These guys are known as "forest elephants", which are chocolate brown in color and live in the jungle most of the time, coming out in the savanna to graze from time to time. While they are not as large as the grey elephants from Eastern Africa I'm used to seeing in children's books, they appear slightly less cuddly in person than what I had imagined, and they made threatening noises and gestures when we approached at times. Needless to say, this is the only picture of me and elephants in the same frame.

The resort itself is first rate, and definitely a surprise gem in the middle of this country (with oil reserves why bother to seek out tourists?). While the water in the river was brown, it had a golden tint given off by the numerous minerals that give it its color. For any of you planning to visit, this is definitely the place to spend a long weekend, as each season brings with it a new set of wild animals to see (leatherback turtles in Dec/Jan, elephants in March/April, followed by hippos and later whales and dolphins in August/September). The jungle treks are quite an experience too, with monkeys jumping from tree to tree up above throughout your walk.

The Dutch man (former Shell Oil hotshot I hear) who owns the resort has set up many projects to protect the local animals, including what they call "Gorilla Island", which is an isolated area where gorillas caught in the wild to be sold on the market are taken and slowly rehabilitated with the cooperation of a Dutch gorilla/monkey zoo in Holland. It all sounds nicer than what we saw (they are cooped up on the island), but it was amazing to see these lowland Gorillas up close. When trying to cuddle with a 3-year-old gorilla (Cecilia's age and not much different in temperament) I got smacked and bitten a bit, as can be seen here below. Luckily Cilia never got into biting very much.

They've got a wonderful site too, so spread the word and maybe tourism in Gabon will one day be affordable:
http://www.operation-loango.com/