Gas

On Monday morning on my way out of town to Sette Cama, we went to the Shell station to buy all my boat fuel. I had to buy 300 liters (that’s a full size oil drum plus 4 extra 25 liter jerri cans) because of the amount of lagoon we’re trying to cover. There are no stores or supplies in Sette Cama, so you have to bring everything you need with you. The fuel transaction took over an hour (partially due to the pace of life in Gabon, partially because of difficulty getting the top open on the drum, confusion over cost, etc.). I also bought the oil to mix with the gas and the whole thing was absolutely the most money I have ever spent on fuel in my life. It’s a bit stressful for me because I’m doing this project on a shoestring budget and fuel cost is hard to project a year ahead when you are writing grant proposals. So on this day I was especially thankful for Andy Holman, an individual who made a nice donation to my project last August, which ended up covering about half of my fuel costs that day. I guess the good news is I have been able to put every cent I’ve gotten directly towards necessities for this project. The bad news is that I’m trying to cover huge areas and logisitics here are both difficult and expensive. So if anyone else out there would like to contribute, please let me know and I can tell you how to direct a donation to Wildlife Trust so that it goes specifically to Gabon manatee research. This will be my one and only shameless plug for donations.