Habituated

This weekend we had planned to visit the Nyungwe Forest and hoped to see a large troop of "habituated" chimpanzees. But, alas, several things happened to prevent the trip; an appointment for Doug on Friday, (which was later canceled,) a bout of gastrointestinal rapid transit, and the RAINY SEASON! Nyungwe Forest is a rain forest, and the local people looked amused when I told them of our plan.
Instead we visited Lake Kivu at Gisenyi, close to the border with Democratic Republic of Congo. We stayed in a lovely hotel room with a view out over the lake, a good solid bed, and a "real" shower. The only glitch was that we had not gotten visas for the DRC, and today when we tried to cross the border into Goma, we were told we would have to go back to Kigali(a three hour bus ride)and speak to the embassy on Monday in order to qualify. Doug made a run at the official to stamp our passports, but she didn't budge. Oh well, we saw the Congo even though we didn't actually set foot in it.
On the bus ride home from Gisenyi, I was thinking about that word, habituated. Applied to the chimpanzees, it means they have seen enough humans to be undisturbed by them and to behave normally in their presence. I believe I have been habituated to several things while living in Africa these last six weeks:
1.Sleeping in a mosquito net and more importantly getting out of it to the bathroom
2.Smelling the pungent body odor in a bus loaded with damp human beings
3.Soup for breakfast in hotels, usually left over from dinner the night before
4.The 5 a.m. call of the muzzein for the local mosque
5.Saving napkins from restaurants for future use as toilet paper or towels

None of these behaviors seem unusual to me, although they took some getting used to. I suppose when I return to the U.S. I'll have to be re-habituated to America...