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!
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!