Truck, Marché and Bonobos

Photo of the truck
I wanted to post some pictures of the truck and other things but, for some reason, they're not coming up...Hum, I might switch from hello to the new picture blogging feature.

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The Grand Marché: Monsters, Inc.

Last weekend, I went to the Grand Marché in the middle of the capital.

While people don't bug you at all here like they would in Senegal ("come on, you want to buy this, yes you do", "Ma'am you're so rich you ought to buy this", "what, you're not paying any attention to me? Are you racist?"), it is still a daunting experience nonetheless.

First off, the Marché is huge. It spans quite a few blocks. It sells anything and everything under the sun. If you're looking for a faucet, envelopes from the 60s, multicolored plastic flip-flops, vegetables, shoes, baskets, live fish swimming around in buckets, cut-up crocodiles (by section, would you like the tail or the snout?), machetes, grubs as big as your toes squirming around in hot and spicy mix, half-dead tortoises, second-hand undershirts, Chinese pink underwear, sugar by the scoop, manioc floor or plungers, go to Grand Marché.

Just be careful not to walk into the pile-high garbage heaps or step into the black stream in the middle of the alleyway. That shit might burn through your bones.

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Bonobos

I also went to see the Bonobos! Bonobos are monkeys (yikes, someone correct me please) that can only be found Congo, in the area bounded by the Congo river.

Because the adults are heavily poached (they make a nice BBQ steak), the babies slowly die of starvation or are brought to sell in Kinshasa--which is highly illegal of course. The Bonobo Sanctuary recuperates these poor few ones and pairs them off with a Congolese woman. With them, they learn appropriate social behaviors, they learn how to eat alone and become independent. Which is no small feat considering these bonobos have seen their parents die and have all survived the gruelling journey from the center of the country to Kinshasa. The bonobos in the sanctuary are now so comfortable with the place, that they have started having babies themselves.

The bonobos are very sexual monkeys (*giggle*) and they tend to rub themselves and each other, visitors or no visitors. I would hate to have to enter the enclosure :) What a job.