Chapter 17
Madeleine and
Christiana had laid out a buffet meal for dinner with saka saka and madesu
(rice and beans)as well as fufu. Saka
saka is a common dish in Africa made from ground cassava leaves which are mixed
with a peanut paste and cooked in palm oil.
Kerry joined Mike, Patty, Roger and Spencer already sitting in the
dining area. Patty was holding Fanny, while she fed her pieces of melon.
Mike asked
Kerry, “So how is our newest member of the family?”
“Oh she’s going
to be just fine. I gave her a broad spectrum antibiotic which should clear up
her raspy breathing. I’d say she is about 16 months old.”
“That old?” Mike
asked
“Yes, judging by
her teeth which are just coming in.”
“How long until
she can be reintroduced into a colony?” asked Patty.
“Oh that will
depend on her and how well she can get along with females as she gets older.
She’s at a disadvantage without a mother to teach her the social graces.” said
Mike. He added, “It will probably take
three or four years to fully integrate her.”
“Wow, that’s a
long time. So, at some point she will have to head out in the jungle in search
of a new colony?”
“That’s right.
The problem is that with all of the habitat loss due to logging, the colonies
are getting further and further apart and females get killed when they leave
the safety of the colony.”
“That’s sad.
They need to make the whole valley one big park.”
“Yea we tried
that. The locals are completely against
it though. There is strong Congolese resistance to establishing national
parks. We’ve had to lobby the government
for protected areas and corridors to provide for the genetic viability of the
species.”
As they spoke, Celeste
and Rebecca sat down. Patty returned Fanny to her cage and washed up for lunch. People got up and served themselves from the
buffet. Christiana poured everyone glasses of chilled tamarind juice from a glass
pitcher.
Mike sat at one
end of the table with Celeste and Rebecca on his left. Patty and Roger sat to
the right of him with Spencer and Kerry on the far end.
Ted and Amber
sat at a table by themselves. Amber was brooding. “I wish you spent as much time looking at me
as you do all the other women.”
Ted stuttered,
“I… I’m not looking at them. I was just thinking about something.”
“Well why did
you sit there then?” She asked, pointing out how Ted had taken a seat with a
good view of the other group.
“Oh for Pete’s
sake, why are you so insecure? We’ve had this discussion before and I’m sick of
it.”
Amber pushed her
chair away from the table, “So am I.” She walked off towards their tent on the
lower terrace.
Following that
body changing shot of fetal testosterone at about 8 weeks, human males develop
two and a half times the brain space devoted to sexual drive in their
hypothalamus, compared to that of females. By the time a young man is in his
late teens, he is hard wired to be on the lookout for and to seize varied
sexual opportunities at a moment’s notice.
If testosterone were glasses of milk, a nine-year-old boy would get the
equivalent of about a half a glass per day while fifteen year olds get the
equivalent of two gallons a day. This
generous daily dose of testosterone is delivered to their blood streams
throughout middle life and doesn’t taper off until well into a man’s golden
years.
Whether or not
males intend to pursue females, they are hard-wired to check them out. Continuously running thoughts flicker in the
background of their visual cortex around the clock, day in and day out and when
they see, smell or hear sexually capable females, their primitive brain reacts
long before propriety gives them cause to behave themselves. This includes the
colour of human flesh, full red lips, the shape of the female body and it’s
parts, especially curvy hips, buttocks, feet, legs, breasts, necks, faces, and also eye contact. And if that isn’t enough, images of female
nudity or suggestive scenes give men mind numbing jolts of testosterone and
that neurotransmitter of ecstasy called dopamine. The slightest suggestion of sex triggers an
intense rush of ‘desire and reward’ in the pleasure centre of their brains.
Ted thought
about following Amber, but he was tired of having the same argument over and
over. He dished himself up some food,
took his chair and joined the other group, sitting between Spencer and Kerry.
“You two aren’t
arguing again are you?” Kerry gave him a gentle punch in the shoulder.”
“No, no.. still…
I don’t know what’s gotten into her. It
seems everything I do gets under her skin. I can’t make her happy no how.”
“Maybe she’s
going through the change?” Rebecca suggested across the table.
“Yea I think
that’s part of it. I just can’t live with her anymore. She’s just so
irritable.”
Menopause, taken
from the Greek words men- (month) and pausis (cessation), typically occurs in
the female human in their late 40’s or early 50’s. This “change of life” typically
signals the end of a woman’s fertile years and a reduction in female hormones which
are manufactured in the ovaries. The transition related to menopause tends to
happen over a period of years and is a natural consequence of aging. Symptoms include irregular menstruation, hot
flashes, night sweats, tender breasts, vaginal dryness ,increased stress,
forgetfulness, sudden mood changes and irritability. The drop-off of progesterone in the luteal
phase, or latter part of a woman’s cycle is linked to irritability, and she is
more likely to interpret what she sees, hears or experiences negatively until
she receives an increase in estrogen in her follicular cycle at the beginning
of her cycle.
Human females
spend over one third of their lifespan in the post-reproductive phase of their
life. Evolutionary scientists
hypothesize that the purpose of menopause is to allow mothers to redirect their
effort from trying to conceive new offspring to ensuring the survival of existing
children. One other school of thought
suggests that menopause promotes the survival of grandchildren through the
assistance of their grandmothers. There
is some agreement that post-reproductive women, especially maternal
grandmothers, feed and care for children, adult daughters, and grandchildren.
Some evidence suggests that cavemen hunter/gatherers contributed to less than
half of the total food requirements of cave women and their cave babies, so
that foraging grandmothers had to help out if their children, and their
children’s children were to survive.
“You could
always do what the bonobos do.” Kerry smiled.
“Oh, what’s
that?”
Kerry raised her
eyebrows at Ted. “Ease the tension a little bit with sex.”
Ted smiled back.
“Do you mean with her or with you?” he laughed as she slapped his shoulder
playfully.
“Her!”
