Yesterday, I saw monkeys! Seeing monkeys in and of itself is not that big a deal, but it is the first time I've ever seen monkeys at one of our project sites. Most of the places where I work are, let's say, very agricultural, and there's not that much room for wildlife. But the Congo basin, as I've probably mentioned before is the site of the second largest rainforest in the world and even in the farm communities where we are (just beginning) to work, there are still pockets of forest left. It is one of our hopes that, together with farmers in the area, we can intervene to not only help people protect their precious farmland, but also to help them protect the wild areas that still remain nearby. This is in a sense the notion of preventative medicine versus curative medicine. Or dealing with the problem early instead of waiting til things have gone way too far.

And just so you don't think that there are monkeys just falling out of trees everywhere here, you should know that in order to see these ones, we started hiking around 7 am and reached the spot in the photo around 8:30 so, hiking over what I would say is pretty rugged terrain.

It's true that this photo looks a lot like a picture of a bunch of trees, but I swear to you that there are monkeys. Had I taken video, you would see the branches moving around as they jumped from tree to tree.