Racoons AKA Baboons

African Racoons

Dear Folks. We are back from Akagera game reserve. What a wonderful place! It is close to Kigali-21/2 hour drive-and peaceful with very few visitors. Camping turned out to be a great idea-a break from all the dust and noise of Kigali. There was only one light visible at night from our campsite-the local hotel-all the rest were stars, and we sat in perfect silence listening only to birds and bat chirps overhead.

After driving around the reserve seeing hippos, giant crocodiles, a huge variety of birds, zebras, impalas, gazelles, giraffes we had a great lunch at the reserve lodge and then with the help of our guides set up a megatent!!. In the morning, Martin and I got out of the tent first and munching on apples, with our backs turned, did not notice the baboon sneaking for the entrance of the tent. This was a fearless huge male baboon-AKA raccoon-a foot from tent’s entrance-right next to Kwesi’s head. Needless to say we yelled loudly. While eating breakfast we had to persistently charge him with a tent pole to keep him at bay-yikes!! This makes raccoons look tame-you should see the teeth on that guy too!

So we are back at the apartment-still trying to solve issues-we finally have got some laundry done, got the place cleaned, and clean towels and sheets and I just found a great little cheap restaurant down the road.

Kwesi is working away on his presentations-and I am going to try to get a basic pharmacology review done tonight-for the first years. Across the board these guys do not know how the drugs they use on a daily basis!. They do not seem to have received any introductory course in anesthesia-and so I am going to try to do a crash course for the first years on Wednesday.

Hope all of you are well, and the weather in Halifax is being cooperative-we actually have had a few days of rain here which has been good to try to dampen down the dust.

Love Jennifer