Tuesday, July 21st

The expedition has begun! Woke up a little before seven this morning for a very painfully ice cold shower. The dorms were painfully hot last night so the water wasn’t as dreadful as the day before I suppose. We all had porridge this morning for breakfast before we were introduced to our traveling home “Knox”. The final volunteer arrived during this big, Conner, from Ireland. We made our introductions and then headed into the capital city, Kampala.

Kampala was about a 30 minute drive. The roads are pretty decent here so my neck is holding up alright so far. We made it into Kampala and stopped at a little mall complex which has some random shops are a very modern grocery store. We were there during lunch so we all packed up on snacks and food to tie us over for the rest of the day. We also had time to change our dollars into Ugandan shillings as we are all having problems getting people to accept our dollars (even though we were told dollars would be the best way to go). I also was able to top of my Ugandan sim card with some money so now I can text and call people without worrying about the bill! My number is in a different building right now so I will have to give you the number at a different time.

After shopping around a bit we took the ride back to the dormitories and prepared for a talk by one of the UWEC educators, Peace. Peace is an amazing speaker and so wonderfully energetic about everything going on here. She gave us background on the Ugandan culture and conservation efforts by Uganda. Did you know 200 species of birds live in UWEC 32 acres? The film team hopes to interview her one on one in the coming days so we can create a video.

After that meeting, the film team met up and discussed what we would be doing for the next month. I am quite nervous as I have no film experience, but it seems like it will be okay. One of the returning volunteers is also on the film team and last year she was exactly in my shoes, and she says she had no problem at all picking it up and being of some help to the team. During that meeting we learned we are going to Ngamba Island tomorrow! I am so excited! Ngamba Island is an island in Lake Victoria where chimpanzees are reintroduced to live out their days in the wild with less threat from humans. We are going to be there for the entire day so I am sure we are going to see tons of stuff. We will start filming tomorrow as well so I will start to learn some new skills!

Right now we are just relaxing in our little work area waiting for dinner to be cooked and served. Everyone will be assigned a team to go on rotation to cook all the meals. Luckily (form me as well as the others) my team is not today.

Alright internet is up and running now so I am going try and post this.