Hats Off to You

After 10 weeks of rarely speaking to any one, I feel like I'm losing my ability to speak english because I don't excersice it enough. Luckily, however, the first weekend I was in Kansas I ran into two boys that went to my highschool at the Wakarusa Music Festival. Of course, I hadn't seen them in two years but I still took down there numbers thinking that I wouldn't actually need them. I am so thankful for that glorious moment. It took me 8 weeks but I finally got desperate enough to call them. I have spent the last two amazing weekends at their house. They took me to hippie shoppes for clothes and music(in the middle of Kansas, who would of thunk?), bars, house parties in Kansas City and in general some cool spots. I still don't talk to any one for five days at a stretch but it is nice to socialize on the weekends and I think I am regaining my oral skills so that I am not a total hooligan when I go home next week. Anyways, this reminds me of a story of how I could have always had it worse--

Two summers ago I worked at the Cheetah Conservation Fund outside of Otijiwarongo, Namibia. I met a man named Andrew who was getting his doctorate based on research about jaguar and hyena behaviour from the University of South Africa. One slow day at the research station, we went to climb the plateau overlooking CCF so that he could track a jaguar that he had collared some weeks before with a corresponding GPS. I don't remember how the conversation began exactly but he began to tell me how he came to live at CCF. He told me that some months before he was living alone in a field house located in the South African savannah for 10 months conducting research. He didn't come in to contact with anyone for the entire 10 months and he had 14 more months until he finished his project. He said that it felt strange at first not speaking to any people but he slowly adapted to his loneliness. Finally, the tire to his truck blew when he was out tracking jaguars in the middle of the night. Without a spare, he ran many frightened miles back to his hut imagining that he had become helpless prey and that he would be ripped apart by the same jaguar he had been hunting moments ago. When he returned home, he decided it was time to look for different accomodations. He searched for a place and a person that could house his project for many weeks. He said that he almost gave up and had resigned himself to the fact that he could die in the African wilderness and no one would ever know. However, Laurie, the founder/programmer of CCF and also a terrific lady, agreed to let him stay at her research station for the remainder of his project after just one lucky phone call. Her research is so successful that CCF is bordering on a resort. He had the freedom to conduct his research but there were also alot of people living on the site so that he could keep his mind sharp.