Gonzaga University Psychology Program in Africa

p1250308.JPG Photo of Dr. Mark Bodamer — field researcher in action.

I’m sorry its taken me a few days to get back to the blog, but I thought I would share a few more reflections and some highlights of the first week.

 The first few days were spent getting oriented, talking about plans, schedules, expectations, and (very importantly) safety. Mornings began with an early group (”dawn patrol”) rising (at about 5:15!) to walk up to the project with Dr. Bodamer. Four students at a time signed-up for dawn patrol. The small group gave Dr. Bodamer a chance to talk individually with each student, and the early hour was a magical time for watching the chimps wake-up as the sun rose. Students not on dawn patrol could walk up as they wanted to (and as they woke-up), as long as they were in pairs, for safety reasons. The second morning, I walked up with the late group (we left camp at the leisurely hour of 9!), and stopped at the first enclosure (about 2 miles from camp) to watch a mother and her baby (mother-baby observations became a favorite for the students). We were allowed to stay up at the project as long as we wished to (although the later we stayed, the warmer it got), as long as we were in pairs. I enjoyed watching all of the activity around feeding time (about noon); some chimps would come into the cage areas to eat while others would stay outside or take their food up into the trees. It was pretty clear who the dominant chimps were — occassionally fights would break out. Chimps were fed a diet of mealy balls (which the students would help prepare) as well as fruits and veggies and a big stein of milk!

Most of us would head back to camp for lunch, enjoy some “down-time” sunning and reading in the beautiful 70 degree weather before heading out to the danbo to play with the children. Very quickly the children and their families embraced us and invited the girls over to have their hair braided (Brittni, Jessica, and Katrina were the first to get their hair done!). Even without speaking much Bemba, we communicated very well. (In particular, I understood very quickly that my hair was way too short to be braided — this was accompanied by much laughter on the part of the young girls who were playing with it!.

Evenings were spent with several students cooking (we organized five cook teams to rotate the cooking) and enjoying the meal and each other’s company (dining took place in an open air, but covered area in the center of camp). Most evenings ended (for me anyway) with a meeting to discuss plans and to engage in reflection. One of the first reflections was on the lows and highs of the trip so far (just two days in); most students spoke about the poverty they had seen and their understanding about how many families and children had been touched by HIV/AIDS; conversely they also spoke about how much joy the children expressed and how open they were to us. In that reflection, I was moved (again) to tears by our students — I told them how proud I was of them for embracing the opportunities we had been given and how glad I was that we were all opening our hearts up to the experience.

I’ll post more later and will add a photo gallery soon (that will illustrate much of what I am writing).

This entry was posted on July 2, 2007 at 12:32 am and is filed under Dispatch from Zambia, Reflections . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.