My American agronomist friend Rhoda and my Haitian bird guide friend Louiders finally got to meet! Rhoda came up to spend the week with my team at HAFF (where she was a former intern) and we went on a bird hike with Louiders, who I met in 2009 and trained to be a birding guide. Rhoda gave the two of us and Kristin a tour of the trails in the 40-acre HAFF compound in Bohoc while Louiders pointed out the birds, a black tarantula in a dark tree hole, and even a skinny green snake in a tree. As a bonus, Louiders taught Rhoda some of the plants she wasn’t familiar with (including the banza, a vine with an edible root). We saw a termite mound and all the trails it made in the tree, a cricket that blended in perfectly with tree bark, and a walking stick (known as a devil’s horse in Creole). Louiders filled us in on the misbelief about cicadas (lasigol in Creole). Louiders told us the cicadas grow bigger and bigger until they finally explode and die! I figured out he was seeing the split skin left behind when the cicada molts from a pupa to an adult.
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| Rhoda & Louiders |
*Syzygy - a straight line configuration of
three celestial bodies. Also the book
by Frederik Pohl that I read on this trip, losing it twice – once for 2 days in
my bed, and once at the Miami airport with my boarding pass in it (quickly
retrieved from the snack counter where I left it).
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| banza vine |
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| cricket |
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| starfruit |
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| eating starfruit |
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| Rhoda and me in front of a termite mound |
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| Dark termite trails along branches of a flamboyant tree |
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