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.
This Fall, Jess (Abwooli) and Andrew (Araali) are living and working in Kibale National Park, in western Uganda. The hilly landscape is overlaid with a patchwork of communities, wild and wonderful, human and otherwise. To help understand how the park affects local livelihoods, we are working in four communities bordering the park to measure how land-use by farmers and crop-raiding by wildlife has changed over the past 20 years since Jess's advisor did her PhD here. This blog is meant as a way to help us document our thoughts and experiences, and hopefully will allow our friends, relatives, and colleagues to share our glimpses of this part of the world. Thanks for reading and let us know your thoughts!