Finally recovered

After 4 days of taking turns in getting sick everybody is feeling

better. Lets hope we are all stable. It is also nice to have the

termites in the toilet so you can observe them while you are stuck in

there...

More visitors this week! Alex Jordan, an Australian Cichild researcher

we already met in Bern in august, came along for the afternoon on

Tuesday. At this point none of us were really talkative unfortunately.

We hope to meet him again soon as he will be staying at Mpulungu.

Yesterday Christian Sturmbauer, a researcher from Graz and 4 belgian

students (Arnold, Pascal, Lulile and the funny guy, I can't remember

his name) from Leuven University visited us for dinner. So many

Biologists! all interested in Cichlids! Lake Tanganyika is definitely

not only a biodiversity hotspot but also a hot spot to find

biologists.

The visit to the village was very interesting. I took video material

that will be available here when we are back. The Headman of

Kasakalawe showed us the school and the "clinic". Kasakalawe is a

village with approximatly 10000 inhabitants. It is loosely organized

under Mango trees. Most houses are circular, made of stones and bricks

covered with hay. Each room is a building. There lots of chickens

around. I was impressed the most by the crowd of kids following us. It

started with only 3 or 4. We took pictures with them and they had fun

watching them afterwards. More and more came along and wanted to pose

for the pictures. At the end I think at least 100 kids were following

us round the village. Some small guy was reeaaaly scared when we

walked by his house and started screaming and ran away. I never felt

so scary.

The clinic has neither doctor nor medicine and the school has just few

chairs. However the school seems to be developing in a good direction

and they even learn ecology and anatomy of insects there (we saw it on

the black board, yeah!).