Writing Retreat and Old Friends

Tangawizi makes a pretty great hat. Totally not even a little distracting either.

​When I boarded the plane heading home from here last August (2017), I had no idea when I might be back. Well, I knew that, in my heart, I needed to be back as soon as possible but I wasn’t sure when possible was. Long story short, all the cards fell into place and my toes touched Ugandan soil last week. I moved back into middle camp for a summer of writing up data and running into the forest when I need to think things out for a bit before squeezing them out of my brain onto digital paper.

​Ask anyone in camp and they can tell you Thatcher is my favorite. She was born about 18 months before my pilot season in 2013 and since I met her that summer she has always been my favorite. I love her mother, strong and sassy Tongo, as well. Every season without fail since I began collecting data for my dissertation, it just so happens that Tongo and Thatcher show up for work on my first data day. We walked into the forest yesterday and there they were, almost magically, with Tongo’s newer infant, Tangawizi, in tow.

He’s a very curious, and very sneaky little ape…just like his older siblings.

Thatcher is six and a half now. It feels impossible. Her little brother reminds me of how tiny she was when I first met her- though now he’s older than she was then! He’s shown a lot of the personality traits that I love in Thatcher, like her curiosity, but he’s even less shy than she ever was. He’s never bashful about staring. 
As always, running into them fills my heart up in ways that are difficult to describe. All at once being in the forest with them feels old and comforting, almost like a holiday tradition- like mulled wine by the fire at Christmas- while also feeling exciting and energizing, like catching up on gossip with a good friend you haven’t seen in ages. And I have so much to look forward to this summer: two new babies to meet, their favorite fruiting season just starting, old friends to catch up with here at camp and quite a few new ones to make, chipping away at my mounds of data, all of it culminating in a big conference in Nairobi- heading back to Kenya after seven years. I suspect there will be a lot to write about…