Red carpet for spotted hyenas

Last night at the hyena feeding was pretty amazing. There were five hyenas and forty-five people, including a busload of dutch tourists heavily armed with cameras and camcorders. The constant camera flashes and the crowd of people prompted one local to comment to me, 'Paparazzi'. And that's exactly what it was like. But the hyenas took it all in their stride and were in amongst the crowd, taking their strips of meat from the hyena man.
This is confusing, because the following night there were only 5 people at the shrine, yet the hyenas were skittish as anything and Bebe was the only one brave enough to feed. I can't quite work out the reason but i think it has something to do with the hyena man changing the seat that he usually sits on, and possibly the changes being made to the drive as part of the new roadworks. It's hard to determine what they see as threatening, though.

This town gets more interesting. There is a boy living here who goes around the streets accompanied by three baboons. One usually rides piggyback on the boy, and the other two hold his hands. It seems people get annoyed by this boy’s baboon friends, as they go into shops and eateries and even chase children. I’ve been told that they pilfer people’s mobile phones and hand them to the boy, who sells them and buys food for them. Not sure if this is true but there were a few people that were quite irate at this band of mischief-makers.

This is Bebe. She seems to be intrigued by the farenji (European) who turns up night after night and she stares at me with those big beautiful eyes of hers.