Compliments of the chef

'You are looking so fat. Your body is nice', said Rosetta our compound cook when I emerged dazed by the African sunlight at 7.30am this morning.

As Ivan has been living in Yambio, the project has had more of a permanent presence than through the visits I was making last year. This is a more sustainable model for pushing through on key activities, and maintaining strong relationships. It's also fantastic when visitors such as myself and Nicolas arrive as permissions and plans are already in hand rather than the frantic scrambles I was doing last year whenever I arrived and needed to go on a field trip.

We were assigned a couple of Wildlife Service rangers, Wilson and Anthony, to travel with us to meet the rangers already stationed at our focal field site. We camped at the ranger post which over the last six months since I was last here has evolved impressively in its re-established location close to the Game Reserve boundary. For the previous several years, and during my first visits, because of threats from the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) it had been moved to one of the nearest communities ten kilometres away at Namama. Now the rangers are building tukuls (huts) and cultivating maize, groundnuts and passionfruit to ensure they can feed themselves sustainably. Aside from the extra rations we provide, in the current economic climate there is no government funding for conservation work except for some ranger salaries received several months late.

The journey was fair as recent rain has been lighter and Ivan is a skilled off-road driver. Although dry-ish, the change in the road condition since this time last year is marked and is caused by an upsurge in teak extraction and tractors ploughing through. In the meantime one of our best Wildlife Service drivers, John, also an excellent bush mechanic, has been transferred to Mundri in a different state. I'll write a recommendation letter at the national level in case it is possible to recall him. Gripping on to a handle in the vehicle as we careered through huge ruts left by teak tractors, I realised my shoulder pain in recent months is due to several long journeys like this one; joints nearly jolted out of sockets for hours on end.

Saturday night at the ranger post was relaxing. We were fed rice with 'kebe-kebe' (a type of lentil), which we were told is bought from the Congo-South Sudan border market from Congolese who have received it from the World Food Programme. Quite a moral dilemma, but rather too late when it's sitting cooked on your lap. And no time to dilly dally with the huge number of insects dive-bombing the food (many of whom were successful during the cooking stage and were ingrained into the mush).

I've got a camping spot just to the side of a huge decaying mango tree. Mango season has been the last six weeks, now sadly ending. Overripe mangoes are plummeting to the ground close to my head and there's a precarious looking dead branch that may not last the next storm.