I was telling my friend Ellen that I have been fearless, calm and undaunted on many aspects of my trip preparation:
"I'll probably get head lice?" "Dr. Keil, can I please have a prescription for head lice shampoo...."
"Oh, there are lots of poisonous snakes, including vipers?" "Could you please send me size 12 Wellingtons, and by the way, are they thick enough to stop a snake bite?"
"My Visa bill is $8,000?" "Nicole, could you please help me organize another bake sale at the office..."
"You say it'll be peak rainy / humid / hot season, and therefore rampant with malaria?" "Better make that FOUR bottles of DEET, order 2 vats of Gatorade, and ask the Canadian pharmacy to hurry with the Lariam.."
"Sacre bleu, Professeur! On top of 6 hours of French class a week, we have an extra writing assignment besides the regular homework????"
But the thing that CAUSES ME AGITA - the technology!!!!! No question. I'm terrified. My procrastination is coming out big-time. But it is so important for me to document this well, and take time to get comfortable with plugging in everything to each other, and knowing how it works. This has given me a 3-week-long tension headache.

"Eating Apes" and DNA

Dale Peterson in his book "Eating Apes" discusses the interconnectedness of us to the great apes. Some startling statistics: "Modern gorilla DNA is 97.7 percent the same as that of humans... And modern chimpanzee and bonobo DNA turns out to be around 98.7 percent identical to that of modern humans.." "And the mere 1.3 percent difference between humans and the chimpanzees and bonobos means that we are actually closer to them than zebras are to horses, or African elephants are to Indian elephants." (italics are mine)

"In more practical terms, those numbers mean that the next time you go to the zoo and wander past cages containing chimpanzees or bonobos, you might pause and look into the eye of a being who will indeed look back; and you should know that you (genetically almost 99 percent chimpanzee) are sharing a gaze with someone who is, according to the best measurement, almost 99 percent human. You are on one side of the bars, the chimps and bonobos on the other side, simply because those apes lack a little more than 1 percent of the requisite genes to be treated like humans. And if you linger to gaze at gorillas in the same zoo, remember that they are sitting on the other side of the bars or the moat not because they have done anything wrong, but simply and solely because they happen to be missing just slightly more than a percent of the human genome."

Jane Goodall and Dale Peterson

I'm doing my research for my trip, with a reading list supplied by CWAF. My current read is a book called "Eating Apes" by Dale Peterson, with photos by Karl Ammann. Dale just completed a biography of Jane Goodall; I just got to meet both of them at their book-signing last month at the National Arts Club. They were superb.

Jane spoke of one of her favorite fables. All the birds were competing to see who could fly the highest. The eagle was clearly winning. Just when the eagle would be declared the winner and was tiring, a tiny jenny wren who'd been riding on the back of the the eagle flew higher and won the day. Jane said she thinks of the people who have helped her in her life and career, as the feathers on the wings of the eagle, and thanked them all.

Welcome to my Gorillas and Chimp Blog Adventure

Robin Huffman here. I've started this, my first Blog, to let you share in my "summer vacation" plans. I'm a corporate interior designer in New York City, and am taking a 3-month leave of absence this summer to work as a volunteer at the Cameroon Wildlife Aid Fund, in Cameroon, Central Africa. Check out their website: www.cwafinc.org They rescue and rehabilitate orphaned gorilla and chimp babies to return them to the wild.

I'm in a flurry of activities preparing for my trip, getting all the vaccinations, and fundraising. It's going to be very exciting!!!!