Saturday

Saturday, August 1

We were all loaded on to the truck and ready to head out of UWEC at 5:45AM. It was a struggle to get everyone going in the morning and as soon as we loaded everything on and turned on the engine we all passed out again. I unfortunately have a very hard time sleeping sitting up so I just sat there with my eyes closed.
We drove into Kampala for a very quick stop at the one and only 24 hour grocery store in the area (or country perhaps) to pick up some snacks and anything else we thought we might need when we arrived in the forest.

Throughout the day people were going in and out of sleep only to stop for random bathroom stops on the side of the road. I must say I am not a fan of going to the bathroom off the side of the road and I am most certainly not a fan of going to the bathroom off the side of the road when you are in middle of Africa and there are biting ants running across your feet in the bush. Anyways, we all survived our random stops and made amazing time to Fort Portal (last major town before you go into Kibale). The roads from Entebbe to Fort Portal were not bad at all like we expected. Nice and paved and less pot holes than many of the roads I see back home.

We stopped at Fort Portal for one more bathroom break and to exchange money to Ugandan Shillings before we turned onto the dirt road winding into Kibale National Park. The roads were bumby, red dust was fly everywhere and trees were poking through both sides of the windows causing the passengers to duck a lot of the time. The small huts along the road housed many young children that were so happy to see a Muzungu. “HI MUZUNGU!!!! HOW ARE YOUUUUUUU?” was what we heard from all of them chasing behind our big yellow truck waving with such beautiful big smiles.

Although this road was only about 15km to Chimps Nest (our campground) I would say it probably took us over an hour to make the trek. We did run into a problem when we were nearly there because a very large tree with very large branches was sprouting out on to the road making the path impassable with a large truck like ours. After about a 30 minute discussion on what we should do we discovered we had passed the campground just before so we just had to back the truck up and take a different road down a small hill.

We arrived to beautiful surroundings. There was a clearing cut out for where we were to camp our tents and the view is of beautiful forest as far as the eye can see. Supposedly when the fog dies down you can see the highest point of Uganda from the spot, so high there is snow. I haven’t seen it yet but I will be keeping an eye out for it.

We were shown how to setup our tents and chose “tent buddies”. Jessica and I decided to share a tent together. She is the American photographer for the trip if you have forgotten. We set up our tent and laid out our mats and sleeping bags. Everything else will be staying in the truck for safety reasons, less chance of the locals, human and non-human, stealing it. Security can be a problem for us since we all sit out in the open with big expensive equipment, let alone the huge satellite we have set up next to us so we can have internet. The kids that follow the truck around then go back to their villages and share the information so we just have to be careful.

I was on cook group for the day, so Sophia and I (Ben no longer is on our team since he is back in Entebbe with Kate) were left on our own. Luckily once other volunteers were unpacked they started to come over and help. Unfortunately I think we put a bit too much cayenne pepper in it so it was too spicy for many. Oh well, I hate cook days!

After dinner and clean up I went and took a shower with warm water! Oh and we are back to flushable toilets!!! After dinner a few of us joined together to play trivia. A few of the people on the ride to Kibale created the trivia so the rest of us created groups and played. Laurence, Jess, and I (Connor half way through) were a team and there were two other teams. We came in second only losing by a point. They did have a bit of debate because their answers were wrong on two occasions. What is east of New York? I of course said Newfoundland yet many had not heard of it (the Irish girl did though). They also said there are only 6 apes but there are in fact 7 (they forgot siamang). I think we should have got extra points for that but to no avail they did not give it to us.

Once the game was over we all went to bed. Sleeping in the tent wasn’t bad at all. We all fell asleep quite quickly. It started raining in middle of the night which woke me up for a just a little bit. It was kind of a surreal feeling. I just woke up and realized where I was. I was on the outskirts of one of the major wild chimpanzee hotspots sleeping in a tent in the rainforest listening to rain hit softly on the tent. Such an amazing feeling!!!