April 30th - Greg mans up and resolves to *dominate* Nigeria

I have no idea if I want to stay out here all bloody year.
But if I do not, it will be my choice to leave.
I will not be chased out by Nigeria being crap.

April 29th - Greg mashes his ankle.

Hello all and sundae.

This one's a bit whiny and angsty. Maybe the mounting number of people asking me to come home is starting to get to me. Maybe I don't feel like I'm getting anywhere.

Tell you what though. I am seeing some COOL things.

April 19th

The bride and groom will now engage in a ten minute dance-off...

April 20th

This happens to people who refuse to use bad pens:

 

I tried to take picture of cute birds in the streets of Calabar. I ended up with a pair of photos of birds and litter.

April 21st

April 22nd

I call this one "Man Guarding Cement"

I was, for a brief half hour, the manager of a tailor's.

...which apparently sold products to enable the breathing-in of small folks.

April 23rd

Beware of evil demon ant-dog-aliens with faces that open sideways. Sound advice really.

April 24th

Monkeys: Good at escaping. And also yoga.

April 26th

Me fixing up monkey enclosure. With help from the monkeys. Obviously, the machete is for self defence.

Rural Nigeria. It is important to have a posh phone. And this creates a market for charging shacks.

(The shopkeeper may have had a 5c hidden away in the back)

April 27th

Photographing leaves to keep myself calm. You're damn right I learnt to self soothe...

April 28th

Getting shit done. It's what I do. Also, photos. I do them too:

A - Walking past a papaya plant. One falls off. You discover that it is the BEST PAPAYA EVER.Then and *only* then is a food photo justifiable. Maybe also if it has a brain in it.

B - Dead leaf chameleon. Epic. Very (VERY) laterally flattened. Behaves a lot like a wet dead leaf.

C - Shrooms. 

And finally, D - A soppy one for Guen. The rest of you can look away now.

April 18th - Things start to heat up...

Howdy y'all!

If that's a contraction of "how d'you do", then should it finish in a question mark?

Hmm. Interesting.

Also, this has been puzzling me for a while, if you pre-bend a piece of homogenous material, say glass, so that when gripped from one end at constant gravity, it's a straight line, is the pre-bend a Fibonacci spiral?

And my third question, this one for ten points, when is Nigeria going to "kick-off"? Within or not within the next six months is my personal time frame. I have never, apart from the US, seen a less sustainable country, and the US seems to get away with it by personally acknowledging that they're ridiculous. Nigeria has no such self-awareness and, hence, bits of the UK government's Nigeria Map, keep going red.

Interestingly, I don't think it'll affect the monkey conservation programs too much. The people, yes, the programs, possibly not. We shall see.

So: news:

Apr 11

 
Apr 12

Nigeria's version of this:

Apr 13

Someone trying to help me out with my leg:

Apr 14

One of the things I saw on the road. That, my friends, is INEFFICIENT in terms of aerodynamics, but very efficient in terms of wheels per unit load.

Apr 15

Antlions making the dust at the hospital look like the surface of Mars:

Apr 16

Saw these fruit on a tree with flowers that looked like strawberries. Obviously that caught my attention:

Turns out, I think, that the flower is a two parter. It's a PROPERLY bizarre system.

Apr 17

The local people able to snaffle cheap cement from the factory know JUST how to use it:

Apr 18

And a spikey spider, because, as we all know, I go a little bit mad if I don't get to take pic of bugs.
God I miss my big camera sometimes. :(

April Tenth: On the effects of central blindness on explorers.

What's up, my ninjas?

So, yeah, I was off the radar for a few days, apologies. I *did* relay a message through the camp radio to another radio operator, to a worker in Calabar to post a "Greg is still alive" message on my FB wall, in fact it was part of my conditions for staying later. But you know how it is: Some people are arseholes.

With no further bitching...

March 28th

And here's a big tree in Rhoko forest I forgot to show you:

March 29th

"Got that bitch a gift-wrapped motorcycle tyre. Bitches love gift-wrapped motorcycle tyres."

March 30th

This one's for Chris.

March 31st (Apparently there are 31 days in March. Who knew?)

Other interesting things in Tinapa: This film studios pretending to be Jurassic Park and this packed shopping mall.

April 1st

Things you very often see while driving in Nigeria: Evidence of machete attacks, scrap being used as cars and art being used as trucks.

April 2nd

All of these were shot either from my cabin or from the camp kitchen. Including that 45kg adult male drill monkey. Epic, eh?

April 3rd

Bugs! Whooooooo! (The last one is for Guen, she's got a bit of a thing about weevils)

April 4th

The mountain, me on the mountain and the rock.

Some butterflies I saw on the way home yesterday.

April 5th

Got stitched up and then went to find bugs to make me feel better. I checked out their tree-top walkway. I also took the doctor and the manager on a moth hunt. We found an ant and a millipede.

                                     (Those tree ants are using a larva as a glue gun. Awesome)

April 6th

April 7th

Miracle berry. Awesome. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thaumatococcus_daniellii

And that guy was living in the puddle in the middle of a dead banana leaf.

April 8th

The jungle guides all have better phones than me. Also, here's the worlds least happy kite and the worlds most happy monkey.

April 9th

Some bugs for my bug peops. These are less beautiful, but more interesting. One is Cordyceps the other is a LAND CADDIS FLY THING!!!!

April 10th

So, yeah. I got it done: