Africa!!!! Gatwick-Dubai-Ethiopia-Entebbe

Hello all,

I’m sitting here on the plane from London to Dubai now. I must say, Emirates airline is wonderful so far. Finally a plane that lets me charge my laptop while in the air! The seat televisions even have a Seinfeld channel (!!!) which if you know me is quite pleasing.

Once I made it to the gate I ran into (or they ran into me) four other volunteers. I’m actually sitting next to one of them right now, Lucy. She is planning on attending Oxford Brookes to obtain her Masters like I did. She will be on the anthropology team doing research during her time here; however, she does not know what they will be researching yet. Guess we will find that out Monday night when we meet the organizers of the group.

Well nothing big to report; guess I will go back to watching the channel dedicated to Flight of the Conchords. Hilarious.


Hello,

I have arrived in Uganda! I have been here for pretty much 24 hours now although strangely it seems much longer. Been going non-stop so I guess that is it. When we landed in Entebbe airport the weather was lovely. Sunny with a nice breeze. We first had to go through a health check point and tell them we did not have swine flu (big outbreak in the UK right now). Then we stood in line to buy our visa to get into Uganda. All nice and simple. We then picked up our bags and headed outside to find our driver we had arranged to pick us up and to take us to our dorms at the UWEC (Uganda Wildlife Education Center). He was there waiting for us with his pickup truck. Put all our bags in back and squeezed in to the truck with just enough room. The roads were nicely paved and traffic wasn’t bad like I had expected it to be, but I guess Entebbe is still small so it will be worse when we get into Kampala (which I think we will be doing tomorrow when the handshake expedition actually starts). We are lucky in that we are staying at UWEC for the first week or so during our expedition which means we get to stay in their dorms and don’t have to camp yet. The dorms are quite nice and the whole group fits into the room.

When we arrived at UWEC the supervisors of the expedition as well as some other volunteers (all coming back for another year b/c they all loved it so much last year) were already here. All lovely people. Majority are females (as you I find you find with any primate related work). The majority are British as there are only 3 (including me) that are from the States.

We dropped our bags off and changed into some clean clothes (I have been wearing the same jeans since I left Columbia, MO on Wednesday!). We then went and walked around the zoo (aka UWEC). They have animals all over the place in exhibits and also just freely roaming. The vervet monkeys are free roaming and are not scared of the visitors at all. Have some great shots of them, expecially of a mother and baby so I will try and upload some soon.

We stopped and had lunch in the zoo the food was good, but unfortunately I became quiet ill after the meal and was sick. I quickly got that out of my system (literally ) and I am glad to report I have felt fine ever since, but never nice being the first person to get sick on the trip. Oh well, let us hope that is all that will happen.

The chimp exhibit is quite nice. I am actually sitting out front of it right now as I write this in a word document and will then update onto the net once I make it back to our wireless service. When I first saw them yesterday they were all quite active playing and chasing each other around. Lovely to see. The UWEC is right on the banks of Lake Victoria. The lake is mammoth and as you sit on the banks it feels as if you are staring out into the sea as their our large tides and no end in sight. However, you can see Ngamba island from here. For you primate people reading this you will know that is where they have reintroduced chimpanzees into groups onto the island so they can live freely with out fear of human encroachment. We will be visiting there in the next week so I am quite excited. For a little bit we were worried we would not be allowed because of the outbreak of swine flu in the UK but now they say we can go we just have to wear masks.

After the walk around the zoo we headed back to our dorms and met up to go downtown for dinner. Two locals from the zoo invited us out to dinner. About 15 of us went to 4 Points restaurant. I had a delicious greek salad with such fresh vegetables. Was very tasty. We made it back to the zoo dorms about half past nine and we were all exhausted. Many of us quickly through up our mosquito nets and headed to bed. My mosquito net is awful! It keeps the bugs out and looks quite nice but the black netting is so hot and is so close to my body there was no air flow. I was miserable all night. Thinking I shall have to switch to normal net in the coming nights. I slept well for about 2 hours, but I woke up about 12 wide awake and took me many hours to fall back asleep.

This morning we woke up and had a much needed shower, unfortuantly the showers are ICE COLD. Not a hint of heat, but I shouldn’t complain because once we leave here I am sure will be “showering” out of a bucket.

Had a nice cheese omelet with the group this morning for breakfast and then we dicided to take a walk into town. Entebbe doesn’t have much so didn’t stay long, just picked up a big jug of water (yes I am staying hydrated family!) and a Ugandan sim card. I haven’t put money on the card yet, but as soon as I do I will let you guys know my number. I know I have texted some of you on my US phone, but I must stop now as I fear the bill when I get home.

Well I am going to take some pictures of the chimps napping across the moat from me now and then head back to the dorms and trying and upload this. Will try and write more later.

Leslie