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.