Wednesday Part 2, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday

Wednesday Part 2

The tree house was amazing (but SCARY)!!!! Gemma, Katie, Jess, and I went to the treehouse at around 6pm to see it before it got dark and to have our hot showers! We had 50 litres of hot water for four girls, the first three lucked out, but Gemma (the fourth) only had about two minutes of hot water. In between each other showers (and the bitchfest we had about not getting to go chimp trekking) we were sitting out on the deck of the treehouse looking out into the forest when a snake slithered out from underneath Gemma’s chair. Gemma stayed calm and just said “oh look, a snake” I on the other hand saw it and screamed like a little girl!!! It was very skinny and long and red. We never found out what type it was, but he seemed very scared of us because he tried to get away from us quickly. He slithered off the deck and onto a branch nearby and stayed there and relaxed for the rest of the evening. Jess took lots of pics but I didn’t get any of them as I was of course to scared.

After that exciting event Gemma went in for a shower and Katie and I were hanging out on the deck when we heard a very loud noise on the otherside of the tree house. It was a very large sound (as if a monkey just jumped on the tree house) and Katie and I jumped and held each other  We yelled to Gemma and she said she saw something small crawling up between two track with a very long tail. She guessed it was a big rat. Whatever it was, it made a lot of noise!

After the showers were done and we heard enough noises to freak us out we headed back to the campsite for dinner. After dinner we had a few drinks at the bar and then had to have a guide back down to the tree house (after dark you have to have a guide take you back).

The bedroom was amazing. You had a 360 degree view of the forest with one double bed, one twin bed, and then a twin mattress on the ground all with big mosquito nets already set up for us. Unfortantly, because of staff meeting and a long dinner we didn’t get there till late so we were all pretty tired so we just went to sleep quickly after we got there. The sleep was amazing. Katie and I shared the double bed and honestly it was an amazing sleep. It was so nice to have a mattress after a few days of camping. Supposedly there were chimp hoots in the middle of the night but I slept like a log so I didn’t hear them (but that is okay because I have heard them lots lately from the campgrounds).



Thursday
In the morning we had to wake up and be at breakfast at the restaurant (it came with the tree house deal) at around 7 (as we had to leave soon after for a day trip). WE got up, packed up, and said good-bye to our lovely treehouse, but before we left we saw some L’Hoest monkeys jumping from tree to tree a little ways back. So nice to see!

The breakfast was so nice. Anything is nicer than porridge. Unfortunatlye, Katie woke up feeling very sick so she didn’t eat (she didn’t even go out to work for the day at the school).

We went to Kisisi Primary School to see the XO laptop in work. We arrived and met with Jeff (one of the two guys who helped get the XO project working at the school) to learn about the XO program there. They had received 100 laptops and have 160 kids working on them (so actually they just use 80 of them and have two per child). They have only been working with them for three weeks and they can’t leave the school with them but they hope in the future they can let them take home (just right now the security is just not good enough). After that the education team and anthropology team went to a Primary Five class (the grade that is being trained with the XO) and sat in on their science class for about 45 minutes.

We then let them go to lunch while we went back to our truck and cooked ourselves lunch. After lunch the P5 students had their laptop lesson so we sat in on that. Each one of sat with a pair of students and watched them play on the laptop. The laptop is on a different program system so we didn’t understand how to use it so the kids had to teach us (which was just a cool experience since just three weeks ago they probably had never seen a computer in their life). I sat with two sisters called Annette and Aisha and played the different games on the computer with them. Their English was decent and their spelling was amazing, the only sad part was when they asked me if I had a father and I said “yes” and then asked if I had a “mother” and I then said yes, I then asked them and found out that they were orphans. Both of their parents had passed away…most likely from Aids (as that is usually the case around here).

After the laptop lesson the school day was over and we were getting ready to leave, but of course before we left we had about an hour of taking pictures with the kids and amazing them with being able to see a picture of themselves (always one of my favorite experiences of all our outings).

On the way back to our campsite we picked up Ben and Kate!!! They had been released from the doctor’s care in Kampala so caught a bus out to Kibale to meet up with us. Kate is still ill but is doing much better so she wanted to get on with her trip. The doctor says all of the volunteers should go and get tested for amoebas before we leave Uganda as the doctors back home probably won’t think of testing for it if you start to feel sick, and supposedly you can have amoebas before you start to feel sick. I probably won’t have time to get checked before I leave here but I will ask Dr. Chapman to check me out when I get back as I am sure he will be happy to do.

We were all exhausted when we made it back to camp so we all decided to just eat at the restaurant that night. Unfortunately, Africa doesn’t rush to do anything, so our orders took over 2+ hours to get. After a very late dinner we then went quickly to sleep.


FRIDAY
On Friday we had to leave by 8am to meet at Ugandan Wildlife Authority headquarters. We had a quick meeting there just to learn what they did before a smaller group of us (Fiona, Katie, Gaynor, Gemma, Jessica, Lucy, Kate, David, and I) went around with UWA to their many community projects.

For the little outing we all climbed into the back of one pickup truck (throughout the day I say we had about on average 11 people in the back). I was a bit worried about the adventure before we started because I was worried about my neck, but by the end of the day I still had no headache and an amazing adventure of standing in the back of the pickup truck experiencing Africa.

Our first stop (after a very long, bumpy, dusty, scary road) was at a village that did a beekeeping, goat management, pineapple gardens, and a fish farm. Check out Jess’s blog about the day on the main website (www.primatehandshake.org) as I am way to tired to explain it all at the moment.

The next stop was at an elephant trench. A lot of elephants in the area raided the locals crops so the locals hate the elephants. To try to stop the killings they have created a 3 km long elephant trench (deep trenches to make it hard for elephants to cross to get to the crops) .

Our third stop was the entrance of the Wetland Sanctuary. We didn’t walk around (as we are suppose to go back with the whole group next week) we just stayed there to eat our packed lunch, check out the womens handicrafts (for purchase of course) and to interview the head of the wetland conservation.

Our fourth and last stop was at a women’s drama/music group. They were amazing and I took lots of video of them singing and dancing about conservation themes. We also go to go see their handicraft section (for purchase of course). One disgusting little tidbit about this part of the trip is that while we were walking to the handicraft I felt something go down the back of my pants. It really started irritating me so I started to worry that it was a bug, so I warned the other volunteers around and said I was “going in”. To my horror, I felt something on my bum but as soon as I touch it it moved to the front of my pants!!! I then warned the other volunteers that I was “going in” again but from a different angle and this time I caught it and when I pulled it out to see what it was, it was a HUGE green bug that flew away!!!!!! It was horrifying!!!

We then caught a very long truck ride back to the camp (over an hour at least) where Gemma, Fiona and I stood up the entire time. It was so dusty and dirty on the ride but it was so fun and it made the hot shower we got when we got back to the camp a thousand times better.

This was our last night at this camp so after the shower we had to repack our bags, pay our bar tab that we had been collecting over the days and catch an early night sleep.

SATURDAY
We woke up and left about 9:30 after eating breakfast and packing up our tents back onto the truck. We then headed off to Queen Elizabeth National Park for our mini holiday (within our working holiday). The drive took about 6-7 hours so we had to stop and have lunch on the side of the road on our way there.

We arrived at our campsite which turned out to be right outside of QE Park and right next to a large lake. Oh and did I mention there were LOTS OF HIPPOS? Hippos in the water and hippos in our camp! We quickly set up our tent, grabbed a drink at the bar/restaurant and then jumped back on the truck to go through the park for an evening safari. Before we even got into the actual park we saw elephants on the side of the road. They were beautiful, a bit far away for a good picture with my camera, but still close enough to see them. I think that was the number one animal we all wanted to see on safari so we were all very happy. Once we were actually in the park we saw many buffalo and warthogs.

After a couple hours of driving around we headed back to our camp. When we arrived back to our camp before we even made it all the way into the campsite we encountered tons of hippos. There were probably more than ten hanging about. (Ten equals tons when you are talking about wild hippos walking around you campsite). When we parked and got out of our vehicle we heard that a hippo was by the campfire so we ran over there and he literally was right next to the campfire!!! Luckily, the guards were with us and stayed with their torches on the hippo until the hippo walked back down the hill to the water.

We have run out of gas to cook with so now we are stuck to cooking everything over fire, which is nice but takes bloody ages to get it done. That being said, we didn’t have dinner until about 11 at night. The exciting bit of the night really didn’t come until after everyone went to sleep. In middle of the night Connor got up and went to the toilet. On his return to his tent he saw a hippo standing right out front of the entrance to his tent (which was right next to Jess’s and I’s). He of course didn’t want to disturb it so he ran and jumped on to the truck. He ended up being stuck on the truck for the rest of the night with no blanket or light. He said he poked his head out of the truck once and saw that another hippo was standing right next to the exit of the truck.

Throughout the night we were all woken up by hippo noises all shaking in our tent scared we were going to be trampled by a hippo any second. Even though it was a bit scary and we could have been killed if the hippos decided to step on our tent instead of around them it was all really exciting! Unfortunatly didn’t get any good pictures of them up close because couldn’t use a flash (for fear of scaring them) and it was extremely late at night.


Sunday
Sunday morning we had to wake up and be on the truck to leave by 6:30AM so we could go on a sunrise safari drive around Queen Elizabeth Park. We were all tired but all very excited to see some wild animals. Once again we really lucked out and saw tons! We first ran into some elephants, then some hyenas passed the road right behind our truck, then many warthogs, buffalo, “bambi’s with horns and just bambi’s”. With some others, I took a position up on the beach (part of the truck where you can look out from the roof) which I think was the best location to be during a safari.

We then went back to our site just to pack up our tent and load everything onto the truck to get ready to drive back to Kibale. We all were tired of eating porridge so we all splurged (a whole 4 dollars!) on a nice sit down breakfast at the campsites restaurant. After that we headed back out to the park for one more drive thru before we went back to Kibale. Lucky we did because we got to see a lioness and a leopard!!! A bit far away but looked nice through the binoculars (thanks Bruce!).
The drive back to Kibale was long and dusty so when we arrived at our new campsite in Kibale we were all exhausted. We set up our tents in the dark, took a very nice long and much needed hot shower had dinner and then passed out.