For the love of baboons

Talk of the Quad: Poop culture

In an age when the Internet allows universal anonymity, we begin to expect privacy as an unalienable right. When confidentiality is not an option, many people find anxiety in taking a stance—or a squat. In reality, we are much more than icons on computer screens. When it comes down to it, people are all people. And everybody poops.
We are all united in this reality. Any two humans share on average 99.9 percent of their genes, meaning most Homo sapien physiology is identical. Pooping is a unifying characteristic of humanity: all genders sit to poop (or hover if you are a hypochondriac). We all eat and so as a result we all poop. And that’s okay. It’s great, even. So why can taking a seat at the porcelain throne be so stress-inducing?
One hypothesis is that many Bowdoin students seek to project an image of perfection, even at the cost of their own well-being. The counseling staff at Bowdoin is acutely aware of this—Director of Counseling Services, Bernie Hershberger, says he especially enjoys aiding students with perfectionism anxiety.
For some odd, socially constructed reason, we seem to think it is vulgar and uncivilized to poop. Thus, to be perfect, we must never poop. As a means of striving for this ideal, we make every attempt to conceal our “indecent” behavior from our peers. Though we have not spoken to Hershberger about whether poop anxiety is often brought up in counseling sessions, we noticed that when prompted, most of our friends immediately gushed over their awkward restroom escapades. And yet, most students would never bring up poop anxiety on their own in a conversation for fear of deviating from the cultural norm.
A 2011 study at Emory University showed that chimpanzees who frequently fling feces have more developed motor cortexes and connections to a section of the brain used by humans for speech processing. Simply put, smarter monkeys throw more poop. Meanwhile, our human society finds it impolite to discuss such a dirty matter. It is possible that we attempt to hide our digestive measures as a means to separate humans from animals. However, if our closest living evolutionary relatives embrace poop as a means to display intelligence, I am not opposed to flaunting the existence of my own bowel movements (though I will still stick to speech over throwing feces as my preferred form of communication).
A great source of human anxiety is the desire to fit in. Given that everyone and their RA hides the fact that they poop, we tend to deny the existence of our excrement. Everyone has read “Everybody Poops,” by Taro Gomi—an important contribution to the literary canon of defecation. Some people, though, are loath to identify themselves as poopers. This is the great contradiction: we accept the generalization that pooping is part of the human condition, but singling one specific person out is, for some reason, embarrassing. Pooping has become taboo.
Despite this personal acceptance of pooping as a biological actuality, it can be stressful to be sitting on the can in my signature leopard-print slippers only to have another dorm resident come in to brush her teeth or do her hair. There’s no hiding. I’m being outed as a pooper. Although my bathroom guest will not say anything, we will both know. And it causes an unnecessary and unspoken power dynamic between the two of us that would be completely rectified if only people were to talk more openly and casually about pooping.
That’s the thing about this physical process—it is much less social than other bathroom activities. A casual chat over mutual urination or a recap of the day’s events while popping a pimple is normal. But something about that basic human communication while a mass of processed food is travelling out of a bodily orifice into a shared toilet makes people shut right up.
Whether they talk about it or not, many people actually enjoy the process of pooping primarily because they find time for solitude on the peaceful potty. Whether it takes one minute or an hour to process the day, pooping is a sacred time to digest it all.
However, we cannot always afford the luxury of a private toilet at the College. In fact, for many of us, our “movements” tend to be in relatively public places.
What to do when you sit down to do the deed and another lonely pooper wanders in with the same intention? In a multi-stall bathroom with two (or more) students waiting to poop, anxiety can mount. Who will release the Kraken first? Sometimes, overwhelmed by the tension in the room, the only option is to flush the toilet, zip up your pants, and find a different, less populated bathroom.
Thus, it is crucial to find your own favorite place to do the do. We all have beloved personal pooping places. However, we are unable to disclose our favorites here, for fear of the overpopulation—or worse, toilet clogging—of the most serene pooping sanctuaries. We can say, however, that you cannot select your pooping bathroom: it must choose you. Much like Olivander’s wands, when you come across the right one, you will know.
While this article presents poop anxiety with jest, we hope the absurd nature of hiding our body’s actions permeates through the humor. We all do it, and hopefully through lighthearted discussion, we can replace awkwardness with pooping solidarity.

Talk of the Quad: Race is real

“Oh my god, that’s so Asian!”
That’s how a student on my study abroad program responded when I told her how to spell my last name.
What’s so Asian? That it’s not spelled like “King Kong”? Does adding the “h” really make it that much more Asian? I would never tell someone they’re “so white,” because what does that even imply?
I’m studying abroad in Nantes, France for the semester and never have I been so aware of my race. When I walk into class with my hair ungroomed and sticking up everywhere—resembling the hairdo of an anime character or K-Pop star—I inevitably hear “dude you look so Asian today.”
If I receive a good exam score, my friends will say that’s “very Asian” of me (because, apparently, intelligence and race are mutually inclusive). My host family considers me Vietnamese rather than American, and when I tell someone I’m from the States, they re-phrase: “No, where are you from, your family?”
To me, the French are more direct, not skirting around issues considered “politically incorrect” in the States. The attention I’ve received for being Asian isn’t malicious or discriminatory, but it is constant, making me want to untangle what exactly it means being Asian-American—while stateside and abroad.
My parents fled political and religious persecution in Vietnam by boat in 1989. After my sister and I were born, we immigrated to the States from the Kuala Lumpur Vietnamese Refugee Center. I spent the first five years of my life in the heart of Seattle’s Chinatown-International District, where I heard more Chinese, Cantonese and Vietnamese than English when walking down the street. In 2001, we relocated across Lake Washington to a predominantly white suburb, where we still reside.
My childhood was a game of switching cultures on-and-off: observing Vietnamese New Year in traditional áo gấm and then watching Tom and Jerry, eating cơm tấm for breakfast and then hot dogs and coleslaw for lunch, and trying to find the English equivalent of Vietnamese words—a struggle I now face with French.
During my mid-teens, my dual-cultured life was the source of a lot of angst. I resented going to youth group with all the Vietnamese families in Seattle, many of whom were recent immigrants—I preferred being with American families. Eventually, my parents gave in: bánh mi was replaced with sliced white bread, and weekly Vietnamese culture and language classes ended. I was never ostracized at school, but I was tired of being embarrassed when my parents, with their thick accents, had to speak to my teachers or when my friends would tell me that my clothes smelled like rice.
Coming to Brunswick was essentially removing myself from my roots, something I didn’t realize until Winter Break in 2012 when, after I expressed my disdain for having to go to Vietnamese Christmas mass, my sister retorted, “Well, that’s because you’re just white-washed now.”
The Class of 2016 is 493 people strong, with 156 students self-identifying as students of color, including 53, roughly 10 percent, as Asian. Before leaving home, this ratio did make me a little nervous—was I going to stand out? But since arriving on campus, I don’t spend that much time thinking about the implications of being a minority at Bowdoin; my experience in our little bubble of political correctness and support has been comfortable and safe.
The two new diversity initiatives on campus, A.D.D.R.E.S.S. and Inter-Group Dialogue, have been facilitating conversations about race, which I find incredibly important because many people don’t know how to confront racial issues. When people found out there was another short Asian student who wears skinny jeans and likes photography my freshman year, I kept getting compared to him as if we were each other’s competition. Please, there is no competition—we’re two completely different people.
Catalina Gallagher ’16 told the Orient earlier this month that, “Part of the reason that people are on such different pages often is that we just don’t talk about race. It’s uncomfortable.” And it’s because of this that I was a little apprehensive about writing this article—because it’s uncomfortable and I’m perhaps making it a bigger deal than it is. But this “big deal” is a reality I have to live with.
In the whiteboard photo campaign (organized by A.D.D.R.E.S.S)—which posed the question “what does race mean to you?”—there are responses saying, “It means nothing.” This couldn't be further from my experience with race: it shapes almost every experience I’ve had, and will have, with the world.
It’s undeniable that my experience in France would be different if I were, say, blonde and Caucasian. People wouldn’t stare because I’m the only Asian in a bar, I wouldn’t have to repeatedly tell people I’m not from China, and people I hook up with wouldn’t call me “my little Asian.”
Phrases like “that’s so Asian” are dividing mechanisms, ways to gather all the stereotypes and throw them into one sweeping generalization in order to differentiate us. At Bowdoin, my identity is very much separate from my race; people know me for my personality or skills. The very fact that people have seen me and pulled their eyes back into slits during my time abroad says enough about how my race is at the forefront of my identity. And I won’t even get started on sexuality.
At Bowdoin, I’m Asian-American; in France, for the most part, I’m just Asian. Associate Director of Health Promotion Whitney Hogan wrote “personal narratives” on her whiteboard for the A.D.D.R.E.S.S. campaign, and that’s exactly what’s being disregarded when race is used as the primary identifier: my history, my stories and my experiences are dismissed.
What’s being left out is my parents’ immense sacrifices and struggles to carve out a life for my sister and me; it’s the process of assimilating into American society; it’s my cultural heritage and how my upbringing has given me a more enriched view of the world; it’s how I’m able to share stories about growing up in the States and about Vietnamese customs with my host family.
I’m still trying to figure out what being Asian-American means to me, and it’ll probably take a lifetime, since meanings change as circumstances and situations do. But after two months in Nantes, one thing I’ve discovered is it’s not so much about definitions or classifications. It’s about how my Vietnamese and American backgrounds interlock and fit together to form just a small portion of my identity.

Talk of the Quad

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

October 24, 2014

Throughout South Africa and much of the world, baboons are considered aggressive, menacing pests. They are frequently shot on site, intentionally hit by cars or electrocuted. Their strange and, to many, ugly appearance has only contributed to their bad reputation.
As baboons lose their habitats and are forced to search for their food in cities, more and more killings take place. Environmentalists have neglected to combat this problem and tourists have been taught by local guides to fear these creatures.

After working with orphaned baboons in Tzaneen, South Africa last summer, I found that simply spending time with the animals for which we have preconceived notions of barbarism and mistrust shows us something important: baboons are incredible animals who can love, feel pain and live in communities. They deserve our consideration and protection.

Riverside Wildlife Rehabilitation and Education Center in Tzaneen was started to help the orphaned baboons left behind by the ongoing habitat depletion and baboon killings. Riverside is now home to nearly 600 monkeys and is run by a few hired workers and many volunteers. I was lucky enough to be among them.

All of the work at Riverside focuses on one goal: the successful rehabilitation and release of orphaned and injured animals back into the wild. Though seemingly simple, the survival of reintroduced animals is dependent on a highly refined process committed to proven methodology and intellectual engagement. This method seeks to ensure that the troop of baboons ultimately coalesces, breaks reliance on people, and promotes species interdependence.

During my time at Riverside, several orphaned baboons came in: Cayman, Julian, Dobby and Maya. Like many other monkeys there, they had been found injured on the side of the road, kept as pets, or turned in by the people who had killed their parents.

Maya, whose parents were shot, had been chewed up by a dog and was at the point of starvation when a kindhearted woman discovered her. With scars running up her back and right arm, Maya did not do a lot to dispel notions that baboons are not all that attractive, but I loved her right away.

After getting stitched up and receiving a surgically implanted micro chip, Maya—then just a couple of months old—began the first stage on the long road to release: around the clock, “on-demand bottle care.” Maya would need to be carried around by volunteers who acted as her mother and nursed her back to health. In order to prevent Maya from becoming too attached to any particular volunteer, shifts were taken with as many volunteers as possible.

After a month of waking people up all night and stealing my peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches at lunchtime, Maya was ready for the next big step: to be introduced to the other 26 orphaned babies.

Baboons are extremely family oriented, and have an innate tendency toward establishing close personal relationships. Those in the current troop have learned how to survive, gather food collectively and perhaps most importantly, maintain the peace.

These personal relationships were abundantly evident even among the babies, who were deeply reliant upon their friends for comfort. For example, when the one-year-old baby George (named after the Prince who shares his birthday) needed stitches in his foot, his best friend Loopa was taken to the clinic to keep him company. George, who had been extremely agitated when taken to the clinic, was so happy to see Loopa that he stopped whining and immediately relaxed.

This interdependency extends beyond individual relationships too. Cold winter nights bring all monkeys in the troop together quite literally. Each baboon grabs on to the back of another, so that what was once 26 babies becomes, for about eight hours a night, one giant spoon. Because they are so family oriented, the monkeys are hesitant to take on strangers and Maya’s introduction took several days.

Maya will spend her “childhood” with these 26 other baboons, who will one day be part of her troop in the wild. While the other babies did not seem keen on sharing their home with a new baboon, within three days she was one of them. Although they were only about one-year-olds themselves, Jeroux and Mordechai, the two largest male babies, insisted on carrying Maya everywhere for her protection.

Upon any sign of danger, which was indicated by an alarm call, the babies formed a “mob” all around Maya. When Cayman, who is somewhat smaller than Maya, arrived later in the summer, Maya was among the many who helped to protect him when the alarm went off.

When Maya is old enough, she will be moved to the “middle” enclosure, a larger cage for “teenage” baboons of about 1-2 years old. There, her interaction with humans will be decreased and she will be exposed to an environment that more closely resembles the wild.

Finally, at about two years old, she will begin the process of being introduced to the “main camp,” which currently consists of about 80 adult baboons—the troop with whom she will spend the rest of her life in the wild.

The introduction into the main camp takes careful planning. Maya will spend time in an introductory enclosure, which borders the main camp so that the baboons can interact and get to know each other through the fence through grooming and greeting actions (what we call lip-smacking and butt scratches).

The troop must spend at least a year together in captivity without human contact before it is ready to be introduced into the wild in order to make sure that they can fully coalesce into a functioning troop with the deep, lasting relationships that will ensure success in the wild. After the troop has sufficient time to fuse, the final step in Maya’s journey is the release.

The site of the release must be carefully picked to guarantee that the habitat is stable, has a good water source, contains similar fauna, and is far from human civilization. Scared by their new surroundings, they could disperse and, in the absence of troop support, die. In order to ensure that they become comfortable with their new surroundings an enclosure is built at the release site. They will remain in this enclosure for two weeks, ensuring that they will not disperse upon their freedom. After two weeks, the electric fence is turned off and bridges are built along the exterior.

It is likely that Maya, who will be about two years old when the release occurs, will be among those to take the first steps of freedom. The troop will be monitored actively for six months, and later through the use of microchips to evaluate and improve upon the methodology. Riverside currently has a 92 percent three-year survival rate. Maya has a good chance.

However, Maya should have never been at Riverside in the first place. She should have never been orphaned. Her habitat should have never been depleted. The animosity and mistrust that resulted in her parents being shot was misplaced. Spending the last three months with baboons has taught me that really getting to know animals can show us things we would have never suspected. Baboons have a language of more than 140 distinct sounds and are capable of complex abstract thoughts and emotions.

But even more important than their intellectual abilities is their capability to feel pain, happiness and love, just like we do. We need to think about how we can best help others, especially primates and other animals. Wildlife rehabilitation and baboon rehabilitation in particular, is grossly underfunded and understaffed. These really are incredible animals, and their conservation, both in rehabilitation and education, needs to be a priority.

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