An update of many things and nothing

Yes, I realize it has been a long time since I posted anything, but really—there hasn’t been much to say. After we got back from Costa Rica, I spent a week out with the North Group—the group of Wrinkle Belly. One of those days my new Guatemalen friend Tax’a came out with me. The monkeys were in rare form that day: they were up on Spondias Lane interacting with the North-north group and at one point the two groups even traded places. I’m not kidding. Wrinkle Belly and his comrades went out to the scruffy territory that appears to belong to the North-north group, while the North-north monkeys came on down to Spondias Lane. At the end of the day, they traded back and each group ended up on its own turf. Strange monkey business, that. I keep saying, everytime I think I understand the monkeys, they do something that totally baffles me. Martin, are you still reading the blog? Do howler monkeys typically do this? Anyway, I also discovered that there was a brand new baby in Wrinkle Belly’s group: this makes 2 newborns that I have seen in this group during the 3 months that I’ve been here.

I’ve spent this week with the South group—the group of Uno. Again with the intergroup interactions and overlapping homeranges. I had some trouble on the first day out with them—I got all tangled up in vines and fell down, wrenching my knee at an unholy angle. But there doesn’t appear to be any permanent damage, and the next day I was pleasantly surprised to find that there appears to be a newborn in the South group as well. According to my observations, there have been 2 births in the South group since I began, so a grand total of 4 births in both of my study groups. The mother and baby were quite popular among the group; everyone wanted to get a look at (and a smell of) the baby. From time to time, the mother would hold the baby upside down by its tail and sniff it. In addition to following the mother and newborn, the highlight of the day was when they went to a mango tree that I had never before noticed in their core homerange and began to feed on unripe mangos. I don’t know why this thrilled me, but it did, to no end. Even though the two groups have overlapping homeranges to a certain extent, at their cores, there appear to be some differences in the trees present, which I am sure will result in dietary differences. If nothing else in this dissertation works out, at least I’ll have that to write about.

And by now I’m sure you’ve all heard that Daniel Ortega won the presidential election in Nicaragua last Sunday. Although when I checked Google News and even the BBC the next day, the only headline was that Britney Spears is getting a divorce, so maybe no one outside of Nicaragua has heard about the election afterall. Anyway, it was kind of exciting to be here for the election. Nicaragua takes its democracy seriously. Sales of alcohol were prohibited for 48 hours before the election, and all campaigning/advertising was stopped 72 hours before. (However, one of the radio stations played “Give Peace a Chance” about a billion times on Sunday—that was Daniel Ortega’s theme song). Rob and I walked to town to see the voting going on: almost the whole town of Mérida was lined up by the school to vote, and vendors were selling food and baggies of juice (yes, the juice bag is a popular Nicaraguan beverage). I’m told that 72% of Nicaragua’s eligible voters voted in the election, and I’m not surprised at all that they chose Ortega. Let’s hope he lives up to his promises.

So for an update about nothing, its gone on and on. Thanks for reading, until later then!