After various planes, trains, and automobiles (if trains are boats, that is), I’ve made it to Gombe and western Tanzania has chosen to greet me a thunderclap and a general sogginess.  I came in May partially because the rainy season tends to pack its bags at the end of April, but instead it is lazily sitting on the sofa watching reruns of Criminal Minds.  I’ve done an anti-rain dance or two, but that only seems to anger the sky more.

I managed to land in Kigoma without event.  Lisa O’Bryan, fellow Gombe researcher (though she follows those silly chimps instead), stood patiently outside the airport arrivals lounge in order to greet me.  After waiting for my bags to arrive on the baggage carousel (i.e. tossed through a hole in the wall), we climbed into a Jane Goodall Institute Land Rover and bumped into town.  There we procured various toiletries and foodstuffs, swimming from shop to shop, but mostly we huddled under the awning at the local internet café (interestingly named “Baby Come and Call”).  We spent the night at the Aqualodge, a tried and true though decrepit favorite, and then waited patiently to collect another researcher, Kara, from the airport while rain fell in sheets.  We were accompanied by the fourth in our 4-umvirate (don’t know that word), Jessica, a fellow baboon researcher, but the plane never came.  Too much rain.  So we stayed another night and ate a fancy meal at the swanky hotel down the way and collected Kara from the airport between rain clouds.  As an added bonus Anton drove us past the crashed Air Tanzania plane that remains limply broken at the edge of the airfield; despite crashing several weeks ago while trying to take off (no one was hurt) no one has managed to do much with it.

And then we went to Gombe.  Despite some sprinkling, we made it mostly dry, but over the past couple days rain has come down at various intensities, including a right soaking we got this morning.  A sprinkle that made me reach for my raincoat turned into an onslaught that had soaked me before I could pull out the heavy artillery (a $5 poncho).  I huddled under a tree, my head bowed, looking up once to see a male baboon, Sufi, similarly huddled in a neighboring tree.  His head hung, his arms were squeezed to his sides, and he had a look of total misery and resignation.  I imagine I wore a similar expression.  Eventually, Faridu collected Jessica and me and we plodded home, freshly showered, and I have now passed the last 5 hours watching the rain fall and fall while using my headlamp to read Steinbeck.

Fingers crossed for a dry tomorrow!