Headed Home

We drove all the way from Budongo to Entebbe, leaving demolished gas stations and craft stores in our wake. Nana and Denise fly home tomorrow, hopefully with a better opinion of Uganda than when they arrived. Nana has learned about red birds, blue birds, and mixed birds, and how to pick the best seat to avoid falling geckos. Denise has learned to love the Red-Eyed Dove and African tea, and that one should go to bed early because the morning is full of strange bird/hippo/monkey sounds.

We consider it a success!

The 3rd Chimpanzee meets the 1st Chimpanzee

Back at the Budongo EcoLodge, where Jess and Andrew somehow managed to upgrade themselves from a dormitory room to the room next door to Nana and Denise, a heated discussion was underway. Jess and Joyce, a guide, were working to convince Nana that she could take on the forest hike in search of Chimpanzees. When she agree, we tied her up, blindfolded her, put her in the van, and dropped her off at a trail on the side of the road before she could change her mind.

Having no choice now but to walk through the forest, we followed a trail with Joyce pointing out giant Mahogany trees and astutely ignoring all the poisonous snakes for Nana’s benefit. Chimps are often high in the canopy eating tender new leaves, but the first one we found was only about 20 feet off the ground. We watched for several minutes as he chewed on leaves and use leaf a tool to dip water from a pocket in the top of a snag. Eventually he climbed down and wandered off to a taller tree. As we hiked on we heard the loud bangs of Chimps smacking tree buttresses, followed by hooting and screaming. We spotted a couple more dark spots high in the canopy and craned our necks to examine them while realizing how lucky we had been to see the first one. Nana made it all the way back to the lodge, where we thanked Joyce for the great trip and promptly fell asleep!

For all the Ladies

After retrieving Nana, breakfast, and our luggage, we crossed back over the Nile for the last time (After Chris skillfully maneuvered around a bus full of mission-trip Americans-who had cut us in line- in order to get us a spot on the ferry). We headed south to the Budongo forest and an EcoLodge near the park gate. Finding ourselves there early and with little to do for the rest of the day, Jess managed to arrange a visit to the local women’s cooperative in the community just outside the gate. We spent the rest of the afternoon learning from Edna, head of the co-op, how to weave baskets and plates out of banana leaves and papyrus fibers. Denise demonstrated her weaving expertise while Chris and Andrew tired not to look bored and ignored the men-bashing conversation.

The next morning we returned to the community for a short walk organized by the women’s co-op. There were a few cows and crops and children along the way. We also stopped to hear stories by local men about courtship (something about asking the “kitchen” for a “chicken” and marriage as well as the birthing process (how they became experts I’m not sure, but birthing apparently involves grabbing the centerpole of the house). Jess translated the African English into audible American English for Nana, Andrew fended off hoards of small children, Denise took pictures of everyone, and Nana chatted up the German girls that had joined us. We were all impressed by the enterprising spirit of Edna and it was a nice pair of counterpart activities to all of our safari-ing which didn’t have any interaction with local people.

The Boat Trip (that almost Wasn’t)

The next day we had a relaxing morning, taking a short walk down to the river (watching out for crocodiles!) and scanning the river for hippos and other wildlife. A Goliath Heron stalked on the opposite river bank and an African Darter floated by, trying to swallow a fish it had impaled on its bill. Just as we returned from our walk we saw our first ELEPHANT of the trip, meandering through the marsh on the opposite side.

After lunch we re-entered the park and drove to the launch where boats cross the river (there’s a ferry but no bridge) and go to the waterfalls for which the park is named. We arrived about a half hour early so we waited in some shade and watched a Cape Buffalo across the water. As the scheduled departure time approached, the boats of a couple other tour companies took off, but we noticed that our boat was on the other side. They finally launched, but started going upstream with no sign of coming to get us! Jess was frustrated, because we had made reservations, paid for the ride, and the company had assured us that they picked up passengers on our south side of the river. Chris, our driver, made urgent phone calls to the hotel associated with the boat, but it still didn’t turn and we were all a bit perturbed as it was our only planned activity of the day. Fortunately, a British gentleman training some park guards in how to do monitoring on a motorboat overheard our plight, grabbed some lifejackets, and zoomed us across the river to join the cruise where they had stopped to look at hippos. The quick-acting captain works for the Uganda Conservation Fund, so we told him that we would tell all our friends and relatives- if you’d like to make a gift in appreciation or just learn more, visit their website)

The tour on the double-decker pontoon boat was spectacular and a nice break from our previous days of long car rides. We saw dozens of buffalo and waterbucks, warthogs and elephants, lots more snorting hippos and enormous, gaping crocodiles. It’s hard to imagine, but our guide, Amon, told us that in the dry season, there are even more animals down at the edge for a drink. Jess and Andrew chatted with Amon, who turned out to be a big fan of birds- he showed us African Fish Eagles and several types of kingfishers, rare Rock Pratincoles and a cliff where hundreds of Red-Throated Bee-Eaters had carved nesting cavities. The trip was capped off with a view of the raging, misty Murchison Falls, formed where the Nile drops through a narrow gorge.

We stayed for a few minutes before turning back for the port as sunset approached. Jess and Andrew took advantage of the hot showers and we continued our strategy of splitting 3 meals between the four of us, which was still too much food (apparently they think all visitors can eat a huge amount). After putting Denise and Nana to bed with the sounds of distant hippos and not-so-distant Vervet Monkeys, we hiked back to the campsite. When it started raining at 1am we moved the whole tent and suspect rainfly to the bathroom, where we slept soundly for the rest of the night.

Queens of the Nile

After a morning of birding (starting with some early morning roosters) we got back to the main road and raced our way northwest, passing many kilometers of rangeland and Lantana bushes sprouting along fencelines. We stopped for gas in the town of Masindi, then pushed on through the southern gate of Murchison Falls National Park, where we would spend the next several days. Once inside, we kept our eyes peeled for more wildlife. We saw mostly birds, but Andrew did have Chris slam on the brakes so that we could inspect a suspiciously leopard-shaped bunch of leaves in the branch of a distant tree. Continuing on and finishing off some packed cheese sandwiches, we turned and actually left the park, passing a school and a small community (many of whose residents probably work for the park or nearby lodges).

We stopped on the banks of the Nile River at a complex of open-air lodge buildings, appropriately called Nile Safari. Denise and Nana got set up in their fancy bathroom/canvas tent big enough for twin beds/porch overlooking the river, while Jess and Andrew made their way to a nearby field, where they set up a borrowed, moldy tent. While the matriarchs enjoyed their fire-heated, hand delivered by bucket, hot-water showers, Andrew and Jess enjoyed the cinderblock showers with slightly lukewarm cistern water of the campground. Not that we’re jealous...

We could hear hippos roaring on the Nile and see big groups of egrets roosting in the trees. A couple resident kites and barbets bounced between tree tops and there were just enough birds and lizards on the metal roof of the cabin to make Nana nervous. At night the bugs came out, and so did the bats and geckos. As we ate dinner in the open pavilion, we could see one or two geckos staking out a feeding spot at each lantern. Meanwhile the hotel staff was spraying who-knows-what kind of chemical insecticide in the rooms. As Nana and Denise settled in for the night, we made our way down the hill, across the muddy hippo footprints and up another hill to our tent. Fortunately we had a guide/bodyguard (with a small stick!) and there was a young night guard named Dominic at the campsite (with a spear!), along with a campfire and lanterns around the field’s perimeter. It all seemed like a lot of effort for one couple in a single tent, but we were grateful and quickly fell asleep with the sounds of hippos in the bushes and flickering shadows of spear-wielding men to keep us company.

Get to the Point

After a later than anticipated departure from Entebbe (due to a morning visit to a clinic to get Andrew’s side pain checked- no worries though, seems only to be a pulled muscle), and a couple hours of navigating through Kampala traffic, we finally hit the open road of Uganda. The vegetation gradually transitioned from wetter, cultivate farmlands interspersed with Papyrus swamps to dry, scrubby grasslands with an occasional Euphorbia tree playing the role of cactus. A couple of hours passed before a sudden left turn onto a dirt road, and a few kilometers later we came to a halt. In case you’re ever wondering, if you are ever going along in the middle of nowhere and come to a large gate, with a fence extending as far as you can see in either direction, cleared for twenty feet on either side and armed men in uniforms, you’re either going to prison or Jurassic Park. We knew it wasn’t prison, so our senses went on high alert.

So we crept along for a few more kilometers of scrubby landscape, looking for large creatures in the grass and behind the thorn bushes. We hadn’t seen anything but guinea fowl and a few (tricky!) by the time we got to the hostel complex, but after a quick bite to eat we headed back with our guide, Kawesa, to look some more. After a brief safety discussion (we even got to sign a waiver- doesn’t happen much in Africa!) and a description of the sanctuary’s history and mission we were on our way. The four of us were prepared to walk up to a kilometer off trail, but ended up only having to go a couple of hundred grassy feet (watching out for snakes!) to get to a patch of exposed clay salt-lick where we saw our first....Rhinoceros! -A big, muddy male. And while we were taking his picture and the guide was telling us how lucky we were (as all good guides do), a big mama rhinoceros and a smaller (but still enormous) baby rhino showed up. They did a little snorting at each other and at us and the guide had to move us a bit farther back (“If I tell you please to move behind the tree, please to move behind the tree. Please to move behind that tree. PLEASE to move behind that tree!). The guys with guns were assigned to protect the rhinos, not the tourists, so we figured they might not be much help if one of the animals charged and we followed our guide’s instructions.

After we had our fill of rhino stalking and rhino photographing, we moved on to let another group have a chance to look. The other animals were too far away to go searching for, but we were satisfied with our close encounter and finished off the day with a slow evening drive looking for birds and monkeys and smaller mammals in the bushes. However, as we came back to the hostel, our way was blocked by another rhino just 100 yards from our destination and we were warned that they were wandering all around us in the dark!

Off to a Somehow Good Start

Well, Mom and Nana arrived late Sunday night, fresh off a 36-hour flight from RDU through London. We didn’t make them repeat our experience of the midnight airport-to-Kampala ride of terror, instead putting them up at a quiet little inn run by a nice Irish woman within range of airport propeller sounds. Turns out, it was also just a couple of blocks away from one of the President’s estates, so when the sound of a loud party elicited calls to the police, they just shrugged and said that they couldn’t really do much because the party-hosts called the shots.

Despite it all, when we finally showed up after a long, dusty car ride from Fort Portal, the ladies were looking well-rested and refreshed. We took them out for a traditional Ugandan meal (pizza and sandwiches) before a short excursion to the nearby Botanical Gardens and the banks of Lake Victoria. We saw our first Black-and-White monkeys (Nana says all monkeys are “tricky” and to be avoided) and Denise spotted the first brilliantly colored Woodland Kingfisher of the trip. We also played with our van’s “pop-top” which allows us to stand in the car to watch wildlife, and met Chris, our driver (whom we ourselves had met only that morning). Chris has proven to be friendly and patient, and a skillful driver through challenging and unpredictable Ugandan traffic-- although he suddenly started driving at a snail’s pace when Nana got in the van and we had to encourage him to go faster or we would never get to our destinations! After another night at the hotel we set off for more great adventures!

If You Ain't Got Land...

What happens when a country has too many people and not enough land? This is not just a hypothetical problem in many parts of east Africa, where population growth rates are some of the fastest in the world. And the results can be catastrophic when politics and ethnic divisions are mixed in, as the world saw in Rwanda. We were sent a link to the recent National Geographic Article, “Rift in Paradise” and although most of the article focuses on problems in neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, many of the same underlying tensions are evident here in Uganda. Since part of our project here involves doing some mapping of properties around the Park, it has become apparent to us (and to our field assistants) how many of the properties have
been divided up amongst children or sold off for expenses. Many farms in our area have been split, some multiple times, in the last twenty years, and most have multiple families relying on the pieces for all of their food and income. Unlike Peru, the communities around us cannot even spare land for public buildings or a public soccer field (except for the one a few miles away, where the huge tea estate has provided one for its resident workers). We wouldn’t be surprised to hear a
similar sentiment to the one in the article: "The creation of this national park has made us so poor! People have to live on the land!" Of course, if there weren’t legally sanctioned (and enforced) parks, there is no indication that people wouldn’t just move in, clear the forest for crops, and fill up the rest of the landscape. But that is a hard argument to make to a family that has lots of hungry mouths to feed.

Papyrus Swamps

One of the interesting (and less well known) features of the landscape here are the Papyrus swamps- the most common type of freshwater wetland in East and Central Africa. The papyrus is tall enough for elephants to hide in, and provides a whole host of goods and services: materials for construction and crafts, filtered drinking water, reduced sedimentation, flood prevention, not to mention providing habitat for lots of different kinds of wildlife. It even does a little bit of climate regulation and carbon sequestration. Unfortunately, while these benefits accrue over time to everyone in the community, rapid population growth has led to people desperate for land, the collapse of community land management (ie “effective common property enforcement”) and
depletion of the swamps. While it’s technically illegal to cut/drain the swamps, once it’s done, there’s no way to prosecute the responsible party or turn it back to swamp, so the papyrus gets smaller and smaller. Several times we’ve come across places where swamps have been cut down or drained to grow vegetable crops, pasture, or eucalyptus.

Our friend, neighbor and photographer Ronan (http://www.ronandonovan.com/) took us (and his enormous camera) out a couple times to look for some of the endemic bird species in a nearby swamp, like the Papyrus Gonolek, White-winged Warbler, Papyrus Yellow Warbler, and Papyrus Canary. We got a lot of strange looks from the Ugandans walking by as we stared into the reeds, but managed to see a couple of the rare birds and Ronan’s gotten some amazing pictures of them. Hopefully they’ll be around for a little longer...

Plants are People too!

So, we’ve taken some heat for not having any plants on our species list, and to make amends, we’re adding a new inventory and a blog entry to admit our oversight. The simple reasons for our omission were twofold: 1) there are lots of plants and they’re very different from our US species, and 2) plants are harder to identify than animals and we didn’t have any sort of guide. However, now that we’ve identified all the primate species, and acquired a native tree guide from our neighbors, we would be remiss not to make some attempt at plant documentation.

As in all parts of the world, plants are the foundation of the local ecological system and are essential to human life. We’re not going to include all the food crops (corn, potatoes, sugarcane, different types of bananas, beans, yams, cassava, etc.) and cash crops (tea, eucalyptus, pine) on the list, but it is worth mentioning one special group of species on peoples’ land; as we’ve mentioned previously, land is intensively used and there are lots of convoluted boundaries between small properties (This makes mapping properties very challenging- as our field assistants can attest!). There aren’t a lot of rocks or permanent materials that can be spared for boundary marking, so villagers use a small group of plant species (many non-native) that aren’t
palatable to animals (i.e. their goats) to distinguish the divisions between gardens. Sometimes these grow into “live fences” around houses and many of the species have additional medicinal properties. And occasionally, while hiking deep in the forest, we’ve come across patches of these plants, seemly growing in the middle of nowhere, but giving a hint of where the compounds of now evicted landowners used to be. We’ve posted some pictures of them on the flickr site and will continue to update the plant list for our last few weeks here!

10 primate afternoon

Jess and I went on an eventful afternoon hike on Saturday. I was a little grouchy because it was the middle of the day, and hot, and I didn’t think the prospects of seeing any wildlife were good. We decided to do a loop trail that we had done several times before, but as dark clouds and distant thunder rolled in, we debated turning around. Shortly into our hike, near the top of a ridge, we heard a loud thump somewhere in the distance to our right almost simultaneously followed by a short scream very close on our left. Jess and I looked at each other nervously, and crept a little further up the trail. Then, a hundred yards to the left, we noticed a dark shadow in a short tree. It was a lone chimpanzee, munching on leaves and pulling branches in to snack on. We watched him for several minutes and noticed that he was missing a hand (many of the chimps here have been maimed by snares left by poachers), which, according to our chimp-researching neighbors, means that this was an animal named “Twig”. Excited about our discovery, we continued on the trail, and soon saw a small group of Mangabees, a less common monkey that looks like it has a light colored mullet against its dark fur. Continuing along, we came around a curve and saw a single L’Hoest monkey (a species we’d only seen twice before) sitting in the middle of the trail.

At this point we started to get excited, realizing that we’d seen several of the hardest to find species in the park. The most difficult species remaining was the blue monkey so we kept our eyes peeled and walked softly. We’d had no luck as we finished the loop, but as we rejoined the spur trail back to camp, we ran into two field assistants observing a group of Redtail monkeys (as part of a project to analyze the plants they eat). I noticed a couple Black–and-White Colobus monkeys hanging out with the group and told them about our quarry, to which they responded, oh there are some Blue Monkeys right there! After spending a few minutes watching the monkeys, we made our way back to camp, confident we would spot a few of the ever-present Olive Baboons and playful Red Colobus monkeys (actually pretty rare in Uganda but common around the station). Of course, this was the one day when they weren’t actually around, so we had to extend our hike up to the other side of the station, where a troop of baboons was lounging in the grass, perhaps after a long day of crop-raiding. Still no Red Colobus, but when we returned to our duplex, there they were, crashing about in the treetops as usual! We were very pleased with ourselves, having now spotted all 8 diurnal primate species in park in a single afternoon (9 if you count humans....)

Later in the evening, we decided to go for the “Grand Slam,” and along with our friends Aleia and Will, took our flashlights for a short hike in the dark. Flashing our lights in the trees we looked for reflective eye-shine and were quickly rewarded with couple small Galagos jumping between the tree branches. After a few more minutes of searching we returned to the station for a final effort. Just as we were about to give up we spotted our last target, a Potto hanging from a lower branch before he scurried up the branch under the glare of our lights. Success! All 10 species in a single day!

Earthquakes and Crater Lakes

As I sat down to write this, a low rumble started and our duplex starting to make small scratching noises. You hear the earthquakes more than feel them here, which is fine with us, although one woke me up the other night in a little bit of a panic. The reason for the dynamism is that we’re close to the Western Rift Valley, part of the East African Rift that bisects around Uganda, created by tectonic plates pulling apart. In addition to the earthquakes and volcanoes this produces, there are other spectacular features on the landscape- notable the Rwenzori Mountains to our west, along the border with DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) and the “Crater Lakes”.
Crater lakes are formed when explosive eruptions of gases blow off the rocks at the surface of volcanoes leaving a shallow circular depression. These depressions are filled with water to form lakes that pockmark the land, sort of like the Carolina bays (without the wind/asteroid assistance). We’ve visited two crater lakes near us- they are popular places for lodges overlooking the water, and some of them are clean enough for swimming (and hippo free!). Although we try not to think about how steep the slopes around the lake are and what that means for the depth of the lake (100+ meters!). It’s more fun to watch kingfishers and vervet monkeys while treading water or floating on your back.

Down on the Farm

We went south the other day with our friend Aleia to help
with her project on animal health at the forest edge. We found out that these
particular farmers aren’t having the same problems of losing their cows and
pigs to sickness that we often hear about in the more northerly villages where
we work, but on the other hand one had recently lost 4 goats to a python. You
win some you lose some I guess. Jess enjoyed the chance to be “off-duty” in the
communities and take lots of pictures, Andrew pitched in and helped catch
chickens and squirt the animals with tick spray. When the team would arrive at
a household, the family would move basically all the furniture that they owned
out into their yard where we would sit and entertain children and birdwatch and
eavesdrop while the team filled out forms. Then we witnessed some exciting
injection and bloodsampling procedures (unbeknownst to the villagers, Aleia is
also just learning ropes in terms of veterinary care). People here often
automatically assume that if you are white, then you know what you are doing.
They even thought that Andrew and I were also vets, until they watched Andrew
trying to spray down the cow. Fortunately, we made it to the end of the day
with all animals and people still accounted for and more de-wormer on
four-legged things than ourselves. We’ve
posted some funny pictures though.

Things that go Bump in the Night

The African night is not a quiet night. There are crickets chirping. And owls hoo-hooing. The buzz of moths to the outhouse light. Occasional monkey squeals. And sometimes elephants snapping trees. And the sounds of nearby farmers, beating their drums to scare away the elephants (or ‘njojos” as they’re called in Rutooro).

Sometimes the sky is clear and the Milky Way spreads out from the outhouse on one side to the elephant-fence on the other. Occasionally the moon comes out, and the few clouds catch the light and look like a scene out of the Junglebook. And sometimes, there are no stars and in fact there is no sky, but only a thick blanket of clouds and it gets very, very dark. And on those nights, if you shine a strong flashlight into the tree branches, you may find creatures that you have never seen or even heard about. There are Genets, which are like a cat with a long weasel snout. There are Pangolins, which are like anteaters crossed with a tank. The small, fluffy Bushbabies (or Galagos) sometimes sit still and wrap their tails around a branch, and sometimes bounce around, with only the red-orange reflections of their eyes to give them away. There are monkey-sloth Pottos and sometimes prowling Civets. The Chimpanzees have all gone to bed, in their nests high in the branches, and will not get up until morning. We are usually safe and snug in the mosquito net, but last night we went out prowling of these interesting creatures- Check out the photos (The Bushbaby is mostly all eyeshine up in the treetops but we had a great look at the Genet!).

The Muzungus go to church

Sunday was a happy time in our corner of the world- the Church of Kanyasohara (one of the communities we work in near the park) had a ceremony baptizing a dozen infants. We walked to the church with our friend Aleia, trying not to get shoes and pants/dresses too muddy. We purposefully arrived late, since we knew that the service was supposed to last several hours, but we forgot about how hard it is for 3 white people to be inconspicuous in a room of a hundred Ugandans. The three of us squeezed into a wooden pew in the back of the church, and as soon as we sat down a powerful wind and rainstorm broke loose and hit the church like a hurricane (it had been calm and overcast up until that exact instant). The banana trees outside were waving violently, and the rain and hail on the metal roof (which we were worried might blow off) drowned out the singing and drumming. The rain also forced half the church members to move their pews away from the open windows as it blew in. It looked so much like we had brought the wrath of god with us that we were all crossing our fingers that the locals wouldn’t think that we were bad omens or punishable delinquents for getting there so late. (But we were told that the service would last till 3pm, so 1pm seemed like a very reasonable time to get there... never mind that it started at 11.)

When the storm finally passed, half an hour later, the singing
and drumming and praying resumed. The songs and the clothes and the children
were all very beautiful. It was fun to see all the community members dressed up
in their Sunday best (really brightly colored and pretty fabrics) and they were
equally surprised by us since Andrew was in his jacket coat and tie and we
normally bump into people when we are all out in their fields and looking
pretty scruffy. The service was in the language of Rutooro, which added a
certain mystique. One of our field assistants came over to sit by us and at one
point when we thought we had just said a prayer he leaned over and informed Jess
that it was an announcement about a lady who was missing her cell phone after
last Sunday’s service. Another “prayer” turned out to be about how it might be
a good idea to plant some trees on the west side of the building to keep the rain
from blowing in so hard. Another unexpected twist was that the ‘offering’ was
followed by an auction- people who don’t have money to offer bring things like sugar
cane instead, and these are auctioned off to other members of the church right
on the spot in order to liquidate the value into more monetary offering. We
went home with a bunch of bananas and a bag of avocados. The chairman of the
village kept buying things on our behalf and giving them “to the visitors in
the back”, so we also bought him a pineapple.

Unfortunately we had arrived so late that we missed the actual baptism part, but the parents took
their children up to the front again for a final presentation. After the
service there was lots of hand-shaking and picture-taking. Then we were invited
to two separate dinners and present exchanges, in one case because it was our
field assistant’s baby, and in the other case as best we can figure, mostly
just because we are white. It is hard to blend in. We were basically the only non-family
guests at the first luncheon and Aleia and Jess were the only women sitting at
the table and not sitting on the floor (the traditional place for women, we are
told). The other gathering was for a wealthier family and half the church was
there, but even though we did not really know the family and had just met the
baby that day, we were still referenced in all the speeches and generally made
a spectacle of. But we are on the lucky side of looking different- we look
different and people automatically treat us well, which would not be the same
if we were Indian or Asian, and which would also probably not be true if we
were a Ugandan visiting some places in the U.S. Being white here is like an odd
free-pass, where you are automatically made welcome and important (despite all
historical events that should make this not the case, from colonialism to
commercial exploitation), and on the one hand we feel really grateful for the
way that people give us the benefit of the doubt, and on the other hand we feel
just very awkward- not being sure what the customs and expectations are, not
being sure how to earn the way that we are treated. We gave baby Martha a bag
of sugar with a bow of pink flagging tape and an origami giraffe. Everyone else
gave money. But I think she liked the giraffe, until she smushed it.

One of the reasons they have big joint baptisms here (and our
Ugandan friend Richard told us that they have 3 or 4 of them a year) is because
of the huge number of kids in Uganda. We had heard that Uganda’s population was
growing fast- so Andrew looked it up and the country has the 2^nd
highest birth rate in the world, the 3^rd fastest growing population
overall, and half the population is under 15 years old. So basically a tidal
wave of new Ugandans are coming along and it isn’t clear what that’s going to
mean for the country, especially given the current shortages of food staples
like sugar or if everyone decides that they’d like to have meat with every
meal. We were slightly encouraged by the fact that the importance of family
planning and education was talked about at both celebrations afterwards, with
the family patriarch standing up and giving a speech about it at the second
one. It seems like there are some big transitions happening here now, both in
terms of expectations and in terms of philosophies, but there is so much that
people here are up against, and the playing field is nothing close to level, and
it is really unclear to us what sort of hopeful future is available to this
part of the world where the people themselves are quite “developed” but the
country is still “developing”.

Daily Life

Monkeys surrounding the bathroom. Occasional earthquakes. Frequent power outages. Even more frequent thunderstorms. Enormous elephant footprints all around our compound. Those are just a few of the surprises that it has taken us awhile to adjust to here in Uganda. But we’re happy to have settled into our work and lives and now we would like to tell you a little bit about them.

Our 3-room, cinderblock duplex is beginning to feel like a home we could stand to live in for a few more months, especially thanks to Jess’s recent strategic negotiations to acquire art and furniture from a departing colleague. The dark walk to the pit toilet is still somewhat threatening, although it occasionally has added intrigue depending on what interesting types of moths and katydids are attracted to the single florescent lightbulb outside. The kitchen has been much better than expected, with Andrew returning to his daily egg-and-toast breakfast expertise, followed by more skillfully crafted lunches and dinner leftovers compliments of our hired local ladies, Florence and Margret, who work for us and our duplex neighbors. They provide amazing (and very rich by Ugandan standards) meals that include things like eggplant stew, pumpkin stew, tomato stew, cauliflower stew.... The second, non-stew food group includes fried things, like samosas, sweet mendazis and delicious (and ubiquitous!) chapattis, which are like pitas, but moister and better. (Probably because of all the oil it’s fried in). Beans and rice, cabbage salad, and fresh fruit like pineapple, avocado, and papaya provide the finishing touch for diverse vegetarian meals. I’m pretty sure that without Florence and Margret we would have no idea what to do with local produce and would be eating pasta every night, like we did for much of the time in Iquitos. However, we are not the only ones who enjoy their cooking, so we still have to be careful about leaving food outside of cupboards and metal containers, as the mouse population in the kitchen has gotten high enough to inspire nightly hunts by the men of the duplex (this seriously involves two guys with sharp sticks and a pan). Florence and Margaret also wash our clothes, bless their hearts. They said that Andrew is like a baby because he is all the time playing in the mud and getting his clothes really dirty (Fortunately they can’t tell the difference between Jess’s clothes and Andrews.) They also iron the clothes to kill the mango fly larvae that would otherwise burrow into the unwitting wearer and begin to grow beneath the skin. Distressingly, Jess is having some trouble with elastic parts of certain clothing items not being ironed well enough.

As for local wildlife (beyond the backyard baboons), we have discovered that geckos are very good house companions, both because they absorb a lot of Jess’s affection for salamander-y things, and because they eat bugs (which we have a lot of). Unfortunately, they eat so many bugs that they also defecate all over the place. So do elephants. We haven’t yet seen any real live elephants, but we see their poo and footprints all the time, both around the station and in the farm fields where we work. These footprints are over a foot and a half in diameter and often several inches deep. It’s hard not to imagine a dinosaur. You would think that we would see something this big running around our camp, but they are actually very sneaky and move mostly at night. That’s fine by me, I’m not sure I want to meet one too close.

After our workdays tromping through local people’s fields to measure their crops and wildlife damage, we return home and try to take a quick, refreshing (cold) shower while it’s still light outside. It gets down in the 50’s when it is dark and when the clouds aren’t out, you can see your breath, so it’s good to give yourself time to warm up again before bedtime. I saw a recent “health” article in the local Ugandan paper that warned that showering with warm water could be a harmful shock to the nerves. Which made me wonder, how many years off my life have the shocks of cold water here and in Peru already taken? (Also, how low are the requirements for writing newspaper articles? Other examples: “Health Benefits of Drinking Urine” and “Police Chief Encourages Motorcycle-Taxi Drivers to Practice Better Hygiene”). When Jess is feeling truly extravagant, she heats a couple kettles of water in the electric boiler for a soothing bucketbath. The kettle also works for making tea and sanitizing water, and, if the country runs out of propane (which it seems to be on the way to doing), it may also be our only means of cooking that does not involve locally produced charcoal.

So that’s the current state of our life here. Now that we’ve got the hang of things and have provided a bit of an overview of our setup, we can write a little more about our impressions of other events and issues going on around us. We get internet in certain spots in the yard and phone signal up the hill a ways, so when the power is on and it isn’t raining, we can be pretty well connected. But a lot of the time those things don’t converge, which is why we’ve been a little slow to get this blog up and running. But we’ve posted some new photos and are hoping to write at least one entry every week, so stay tuned for more communications from the bush!

Arriving on the Far Side of the Moon

It was when the baboons started wandering past our window that it started to sink in that we were going to be spending the next four months in Africa. First three, then a half-dozen wandered out of the forest, and the apes kept coming, powering their muscular shoulders along until they reached a comfortable spot, where they proceeded to groom, stretch, and chase each other around our outhouse. It had been a long four days, with a thirty-six hour span of flights from Madison to Kampala, followed by a doorhandle-clenching drive west to the town of Fort Portal, and a bumpy ride over the clay roads to the Makerere University Biological Field Station (MUFBS) in Kibale National Forest, so honestly when the monkeys strolled by the house they didn't distract us much from thoughts of sleep and food. And they weren't so troubled by us either. Thus our cohabitation began.

Over the next several days, other species of monkey appeared in the trees around our small semicircle of concrete duplexes: Black-and-White Colubus monkeys, Red Colubus Monkeys, and even a few Red-tailed Monkeys. The forest is full of chimpanzees (that's what many of the researchers and local assistants here are studying) and they are known to go after the aforementioned species for a tasty snack, but the chimps stay a bit away from the field station, so we think maybe the small guys like to hang out here where they're safe. There is also a resident bushbuck, and serveral civet cats filling in for raccoons as nocturnal backyard skulkers. Our human-primate neighbors are mostly researchersor volunteers with the local schools. A bit farther up the hill from us, where the cell phone signal is decent, there are some classrooms, a small library, and dormitories where short-term classes of international undergraduates pass through. The station is at the end of a dirt road winding past many many villages of primarily Tooro people who cultivate right up to the edge of the park. Some speak English, but many speak only Rutooro, though all the children know how to say, "How are YOU?!" (always yelled, even when only a few feet away). We are frantically trying to pick up some Rutooro, or at least learn key phrases. When we got here we couldn't even say hello, which was immensely frustrating. Suffice it to say, we've found ourselves in quite the foreign land. Now we're working on getting over the overwhelm and mustering some energy to explore it.