The land snail experience

Land snails are a super cheap form of food that the locals eat. We decided to try them out.

The snails on the table at the market. It definitely freaked me out to see them crawling around on the table with their little antennae! I didn't expect them to be so big either.

 

 A picture of the produce portion of the market (the snails are in the lower left corner).

The lady at the market preparing the snails for us. What she did was take each snail, stick a rod into the shell, pull out the snail, and move onto the next one. That's what she is doing in this photo. She then trimmed them up for us and gave them to us in a bag.

The final product (thank you Rachael for the great picture) - the snails were sauteed and thrown in with rice, greens, spicy sauce, and served with a boiled plantain. The snail did not have much flavor at all, it was just really chewy. That's really the only way I would describe it: just chewy. It wasn't bad at all, but I'm not sure I could do it again, I kept picturing them crawling around on the table!

The pictures from the market are not that great of quality because I didn't really feel comfortable taking photos, let alone turning on the flash of my camera. It is a strange dynamic here with taking pictures. You don't want to offend anyone. This island is not really a tourist attraction - at all - and they are not used to seeing people take pictures. It's hard to explain, but I mean, wouldn't you feel strange if some young white girl came along and was snapping photos of the way you made your living every day because she thought it was foreign and amusing? Not to mention it is illegal to take photos of certain things in this country, such as the presidential palace or anything that is "of strategic importance" such as the port where the oil companies are located. The people are also sensitive about the country being portrayed in a negative light due to bad press it has received in the past, so taking pictures of anything that could possibly depict the country in such a way might upset someone.

A taste of Moka

 This weekend we took a trip into the town of Moka, where we will later be doing our field research, to get acquainted with the area and where we will be staying. It was great to get out of Malabo and be closer to nature. I didn’t want to leave and go back to the city!
                Moka is a really small village with people living in more of huts than actual houses. The weather is much cooler than in the city which was a welcome change.  It also rains a lot more and can be very foggy. It’s cool to watch the fog roll in and out; one minute it can be foggy and the next it is completely clear.
                We got our first taste of the jungle through a 4 hour hike. It was great to finally be in nature, but it was a pretty tough hike for me. The terrain is very muddy and slippery. Luckily it wasn’t raining; I can’t even imagine what it would have been like if it were! Especially on the way down where I was slipping and sliding a decent amount. There are only a few things you have to look out for while on the trails: traps which are set up for snakes or small mammals, snakes themselves (for the most part they don’t want anything to do with you and they are more of a concern at night), and most of all, the ants. The ants are pretty feisty. They’ll climb onto your shoes and into your clothes and bite you so you have to be pretty vigilant about checking for them.
                When we reached the top of our hike, we enjoyed the view of a huge lake. The original plan was to hike down to the lake itself, but it takes about an hour to do that and we were running out of daylight. We decided we want to go back to that spot and camp out for a couple of nights so we’ll probably hike down to the lake then. After resting for a little while we made our way down and headed to the house.
                After our hike we went to Kareem’s house – a very nice, funny Syrian guy who also works for BBPP. There are actually a lot of Syrians on the island; they do construction work (it’s the same with Chinese people, there are a lot of them here also doing construction). We enjoyed a feast of chicken and rice, beef kebabs, sausages, salad, fries, tzastiki sauce, and other things I can’t even remember. The food was awesome, especially after hiking and eating a lot of the same stuff for a while. We had heard stories about Kareem’s friend Machmud (no idea how to spell his name) killing a cow by tying a rope to its leg, throwing the rope over a tree, and tying the rope to his truck. He then drove so that the cow was hanging from the tree; then he went and slit its throat. Pretty brutal. We had heard this story one of the first nights here, and we finally met the infamous Machmud and learned that the delicious beef kebabs we enjoyed with dinner were from that cow. He was a pretty funny guy, he had a hookah to himself and barely ever stopped to breathe. He also cooked the majority of our dinner.
                It’s funny how generous and hospitable the Syrians are. If you finish your plate, they’ll just keep piling more food on. If you don’t want any more you have to leave some on your plate, otherwise they’ll never stop. It’s the same with beer. If you finish one, they’ll just give you another.
                When we got back from Kareem’s we went on a short night walk. The stars in Moka are amazing (when it’s a clear night, which it was – sometimes it can be really hazy) because there’s no light pollution. Andrew, the director of the research station at Moka (yes, there’s two Andrews), found two chameleons in a tree: one male and one female. We held them and checked them out for a little while. They are so stinkin’ cute and little. After bothering them for a little while we put them back in their tree and let them be. Can’t wait to do some real research on the little dudes! It had been a long day so we headed to bed. This time around we slept inside in beds but when we come next we’ll be camping outside in tents.
                On Sunday morning we just lounged around. In the afternoon, some men from Marathon oil came and barbequed lots of food – sausages, chicken, corn on the cob, three types of fish, and even some filet. Another delicious feast! We also hung out with an adorable stray dog that apparently hangs out there a lot. His name’s Titi/Abdul (he has two names, I prefer Abdul haha). Afterwards the UNGE bus came to pick us up and back to Malabo we went. Can't wait to get back to Moka though.

We stopped to look around and snap a few photos on our bus ride to Moka.

A butterfly I captured at our stop.

The visitor's center.

The research station house in Moka where we stayed the night.

The view of the lake from the top of our hike.

A house in Moka.

On the walk back to the house from our hike. You can see how foggy Moka gets.

On our little night walk - with the female chameleon!

A teeny little frog we also saw on our walk.

Abdul!

The male chameleon in the daylight - you can tell he's anxious due to his dark coloring.

A little snail.

The ants walking in their perfectly formed line. They're crazy!

Some Cebu (a type of cow) we saw on our bus ride back to Malabo - the same type that we ate at dinner in Moka.

Adjusting to EG life

Overall it has been pretty easy to get used to living here since I adjust to change pretty easily…

·         It's the rainy season here, which means it basically pours every day. But it will only really rain for a few hours, it's just pretty cloudy all day, and it's doesn't rain at night. Nights here are really nice; warm and dry. The rainy season lasts for about six months. The dry season starts right after we leave in January. Once the dry season starts it won't rain basically at all for six months.

·         There are lots of stray chickens, and roosters crow really loud in the middle of the night and wake me up. The upside: there is a momma hen and her cute-as-hell chicks living in our yard.

·         The water here is not safe to drink, so we brush our teeth with bottled water. This isn’t hard to get used to or anything but it’s extremely wasteful considering the island doesn’t recycle (it just doesn’t have the resources for it).

·         We have mosquito nets on our beds. The mosquitoes are not nearly as bad as I thought they would be, though, and they are not bigger or scarier than in the US like I thought they would be. I also thought they would get worse when we went to Moka – but apparently there aren’t even any there because it’s too cool for them.

Cheap, delicious African food

                Today I had my first taste of Senegalese food (traditional African) for lunch. The meal consisted of chicken, rice, fried plantains, salad, and of course a San Miguel (the main beer here, it’s a Spanish beer). This is pretty typical restaurant food here in Malabo. All together it cost 2000 CFA (pronounced say-fah), which is the currency here, a French franc. That’s the equivalent of $4, the beer being $1, and it was a lot of food. It’s a place where the locals go to eat. Definitely going back there, it was delicious and cheap! They put ketchup and mayo on everything, it’s pretty funny – there were two little dollops of it on the chicken. It’s pretty good though.
                The restaurants generally have kind of poor service. As an example, I ordered meat but they gave me chicken. Meals also sometimes take a really long time to receive – we had lunch at the Spanish cultural center the other day after Sipopo and it took two hours when we all only ordered simple sandwiches. That’s just the way it is here, but with places like this Senegalese restaurant you’re not supposed to tip at all. At nicer places such as the Spanish and French cultural centers or other nicer, indoor restaurants (most restaurants are almost fully outside) you are supposed to tip 10%. Politeness is also not a huge thing here; they don't really expect you to say "gracias" after receiving your meal or "por favor" when ordering it, and they are not exceptionally friendly. They are not rude either, it's just a cultural difference. They are pretty straightforward people. So the whole restaurant experience is another intriguing contrast between life in the US and EG.

The city built for 3 days: Sipopo

                We awoke early in the morning on our third day to get on a bus and see the city of Sipopo. This city was built entirely for the African summit, which is pretty ridiculous to me. Not only did they renovate the airport and the main road of Malabo, but they also built a whole city! It was interesting to see the contrast of the city of Malabo with Sipopo which was very modern. I wonder why the country’s money is not better allocated to other more pressing issues… The wealth in the country is extremely undistributed, with a giant gap between the poor and the rich. There are some people who have immense wealth, such as the president and his family. There are also a lot of fancy hotels (there is another Sofitel in Malabo, with a beautiful fountain and courtyard) where oil execs and foreign diplomats and other wealthy people stay. However, most live in extreme poverty with no running water and die of malaria - the image you may get when you think of an underdeveloped African country. There are very few middle class members of society. The house where we are staying is considered to be where an upper-middle class person would live, such as a bank worker.
                We went specifically to the hotel Sofitel, a French hotel chain equivalent to a Hilton, mostly to check out the beach there. The hotel has its own beach, artificially created, with a bridge to a little island. One of the employees took us on a tour of the whole hotel (randomly, it was unplanned), which included suites, a buffet, a spa, a gym, a pool with a bar, and of course the beach and the island (he was definitely just trying to get us to stay there). Again, it was weird to see a 5 star hotel in an underdeveloped country. The island was pretty cool; we saw it as baby steps to the jungles of Moka. I really want to post pictures of it, but unfortunately the internet is pretty spotty and very slow, so it’s extremely difficult to do so. We have little modems that plug into the USB port, but apparently the wireless is not much better. Internet is also not widely available. In fact, important figures such as the head of the environmental department at UNGE does not have internet in his office, or even his own printer.

The view from the bridge to the island.

The view from a room in the hotel - you can see how luxurious the resort was, which was strange to see in a country that is still very much developing.

The roots of a Ceiba tree on the island which I thought was really cool.

Ceiba trees have cool little spikes on 'em.

The view from a small bridge on the island.

The view of the shore and the hotel from the bridge, leaving the little island.

Why Bioko?

                The next morning we went to a presentation the grad students were giving at UNGE about the research they have been doing for the past month on the frogs in Moka, which is where I will be going to do my research project on chameleons. UNGE is Universidad Nacional de Guinea Ecuatorial - the name of the university here. It is basically a large courtyard and nothing more than that; my high school was larger. The students actually seemed really intrigued by the presentation and asked a lot of questions at the end.  They liked the fact that there is something so unique about their country that people come from so far away just to study it. It was interesting to see the contrast in the younger generation taking such interest in what the grad students had to say vs. the older generation at the airport being skeptical of our intentions with our scientific equipment. Apparently it’s a great thing that the presentation even happened because everything here is so unorganized and things usually fall through. Here you really have to be prepared for things to start really late or be cancelled and just go with the flow. I’m definitely learning to live on “Guinean time” and getting used to everything taking much longer than it would in the US.
                After a quick lunch at the house we had a siesta which is pretty strictly observed here, even more so than Spain. Everything is closed between 1 and 4 (and open from 7-1 and 4-7). Later we went to a hip-hop show at the Spanish Cultural Center. I witnessed some Spanish rap battles which were pretty entertaining even though I couldn’t really understand most of it. There were also dance-offs which were cool since I didn’t have to understand the language to enjoy them. Afterwards we had dinner there. The menu had lots of food from around Europe, including Italian pasta dishes, as well as some traditional African food. I just went with some pasta but I’m excited to try the traditional food as well as some more adventurous stuff like perhaps the land snails.

                So why am I here, of all places, studying abroad? Why travel all the way to an underdeveloped country just to take some classes? The short answer is that Bioko Island is one of the biggest biodiversity hot spots in the world.
                There is a string of volcanic islands coming off of the mainland, Bioko being the closest to it. It is different from the others in that it was connected to the mainland at one point. It shares species with the mainland and has some endemic species as well (such as the Fea’s chameleon which I will be studying). Due to its volcanic origins and the way it formed, there is some pretty steep, treacherous terrain that would be really tough to inhabit, which is why it hasn’t been yet. It’s pretty difficult to get to. For this reason, Bioko has some of the most untouched, pristine mahogany rainforest in the world that would otherwise have been deforested long ago. Researchers can look for weeks for primates on the mainland and find a few, while a researcher casually walking around Bioko forests will encounter many. And that is why I am researching here, as opposed to any other place. The only Americans that really ever come to EG are Huston oil workers or Drexel students, either doing the study abroad, co-op, or their PhD research. So it’s a pretty amazing opportunity to be here studying biodiversity and conservation in one of the best biodiversity hot spots in the entire world - that has barely been studied yet at all. I’m extremely excited to get to Moka and begin my research in such a pristine jungle. We are making a short weekend field trip there next weekend and I can't wait to see what it's like.
                Bioko is also different and interesting in that it was a Spanish colony at one point and is the only African country where the national language is Spanish (their own funky dialect). French is also pretty common, and there is a French cultural center in addition to the Spanish one. The guard who watches our house speaks French and is from Mali. Andrew (our resident director) can speak French so he communicates with him pretty well. In the central marketplace they speak Nigerian pigeon, which was explained to me as a strange Jamaican Patois (which is basically just bad English,  but theirs is even worse and if you speak regular English to them they wouldn't understand you). I have yet to experience that, but we are going on Monday to learn how to shop and bargain with them. There is also the language of the native people, the Bubi. I haven’t heard this yet either, but I believe they speak it in Moka. It is a less developed area than here in Malabo.

                                         

A map of EG: Bioko Island is the small island off the coast of Cameroon. I'm staying where the red star is - the capital city of Malabo.