Monday and Tuesday

Monday

Well this morning started at 6:30AM when my alarm went off to wake me for cooking duty. Ben, Sophia, and I slowly but surely made porridge for the rest of the group. Around 7:30 people started showing up. I unfortunately had another case of sickness. I fear there is now a rumor going around the group that I am having morning sickness and therefore must be pregnant. Fortunately that is not the case; I just have a stomach that hates mornings! Actually I have narrowed it down to either one of two things: hot chocolate or malaria pill to early. The last two days I have had hot chocolate in the morning and taken my malaria pill before my food settled in my stomach. I have donated my chocolate mix to the group so I won’t be drinking it in the morning so lets see if that helps and I will also try to coat my stomach with more food before I take the pill. It’s just hard to do as my stomach never wants too much porridge.

Anyways, after breakfast Lucy and I had to give a talk to the group. Lucy went first and just explained what anthropology is and how we are using it while we are here in Uganda. I then gave a lecture on primates and my personal experiences working with JGI and as a zoo keeper. I didn’t think I would have much to say and no one would be interested but it turned out to be a great talk. I gave my talk and then I had tons of the volunteers asking questions and all quite interested in it all. A lot of good topics came out of it and we had a great group conversation for quite some time after I was done talking. I got compliments about it all day long and even tonight someone came up to me and told me how wonderful of a speaker I was and how interesting I am to listen to! I wasn’t expecting that so that was extremely nice.

After the talk everyone broke off into their groups and started their work. Lucy and I wrote up some notes from our interview we did yesterday at the school and then Lucy went off to survey visitors of UWEC and I started getting the questionnaires filled out by the handshake volunteers for some anthropology research being done back in the UK. That has taken me pretty much all day and I still have tons of more volunteers to do. The questionnaires are quite lengthy so it’s a bit tedious. I also spent a lot of the day researching JGI-Uganda and talking to the video team on what exactly they wanted me to ask during the interview with them. I also received great feedback on the interview I did of Gerald on Ngamba Island. I was told it is the best interview they have so far from the trip and my questions I came up with have been great. So I am finally feeling like I am “making a difference” and helping out the teams.

Cooking dinner tonight was so insanely annoying. I’m not quite sure why but people were getting on my nerves quite easily. I think mainly I just didn’t feel like be creative and cooking dinner for everyone (it takes about 2+ hours) but as my family knows I just get in crabby moods every once in awhile and then I get over it. I am over it now, but lets just say people are lucky they survived dinner with me.  I joke 

We had a two course meal of squash and potato soup and pasta with tomato and eggplant sauce. It was pretty impressive if I say so myself. Have to thank Steve, our truck driver, for his expertise. He’s a cocky Australian who it always trying to see how he can annoy you (which was really working tonight) but he knows his stuff!

After dinner we watched a few clips from www.ted.com about the XO program (one laptop per child). We are going to a local school in the coming days who have the XO laptops and we are also designing a new game for the laptops that teach about primate conservation. The XO program is a great idea so I am really excited to see it being implemented in a local school and see just how beneficial it is.
I finally figured out how to post pictures (decreasing the size of them by a lot!) so I will be posting more from now on!

Oh I think I might get to go behind the scenes tomorrow in the chimp areas, so I am very excited about that!!! Will keep you all updated.

We have to move out of the dorms tomorrow night because a large church group is coming to stay, so we are moving to Bandas. Four people to a banda and they have electricity, private bathroom, and HOT SHOWERS!!! We are so going to die once we start living out of tents in another week. We leave here on Friday or Saturday so everyone is trying to enjoy the luxuries now.
Alright, I am exhausted, I am going to sleep.

NIGHT!


TUESDAY

Today was a busy and exciting day. Lucy and I went out after breakfast to to do surveys around UWEC. In about one hour we did about 6 total (not the best, but better than other hours). At 11 we met up with Jess (the photographer) and Lisa (volunteer and wife of one of the creators of the handshake). Yesterday Lisa and Lucy set up a meeting with one of the chimp keepers for today. So we went and met up and he showed us all around the indoor quarters and then he took us out back and walked to some bars behind the quarters. Some of the younger chimps came running up and started to stick their hands through the bars and the keeper told us we could touch them.

This caused a big moral problem with Lisa, Lucy and I but we still ended up doing it. We held their hands, scratched their backs, and took pictures. Unfortunately, I hadn’t showered and I had terribly ugly clothes on which made me look a thousand times bigger than I am so the shots are crap but the experience is there. Still kind of upsetting though, since the keeper shouldn’t have allowed it. He doesn’t know what kind of diseases we might be carrying and it would had been so extremely easy for a chimp to bite one of our fingers off or worse. It has really made me think, but I’m not really sure what to make of it all yet. All though I should be against it I am not going to lie…I am really really happy I finally have touched a chimp (that wasn’t under anesthetic).

After that and lunch I joined Eileen and Sophia to interview Peter from JGI. I remembered hearing about Peter since I was working at JGI – USA so it was so nice to put a name to a face. He was so insanely nervous about being interview on camera but he did such an amazing job!!! He is a great speaker and very passionate about JGI and the work they are doing. We were with him for a couple of hours in the hot sun standing the entire time. My poor feet are killing me and I now have a nice red nose 

After the interview was complete we moved to the “Bandas”. The bandas is more like hut that can house 4-5 people. We had to move into these on the other side of UWEC because UWEC needed the dorms to house a church group. Each banda has their own bathroom with a toilet and a shower with hot water!!! I was the lucky one and has the first shower. The water was in fact hot but unfortunately there was no water pressure. I can’t complain though, because Jess had the shower next and she said she had no hot water. Whoops, guess I took it all. I did try to conserve it but I guess I didn’t do good enough. Poor Jess, Katie, Sophia, and Eileen are now all fighting over who gets the first shower in the morning in hopes they get the warm water.

I am extremely tired at the moment, hence the crappy blog today. Guess I should get some sleep and hopefully tomorrow’s blog will be a bit more exciting. Oh I downsized some of my pics last night so once I have access to the internet sometime tomorrow I will be posting some pics!!!

NIGHT!