WEATHER: Muggy and warm 27C
HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY: Seeing the Chimps and visiting a local school
BUMMER OF THE DAY: I now have an after cough from my cold
BUYS OF THE DAY: My 2AUD bracelet from a singing group of children that performed for us
WORD OF THE DAY: Outrageous banter
ANIMALS SEEN TODAY: Chickens, dogs, a cat, thousands of butterflies, dung beetles, African ants and CHIMPS
CAMP SITE RANKING: Same camp as last night – no change to rating
It was so good to not have to pack up our tent this morning. Breakfast was at 7am, so a leisurely wake up and the 1st group left for the chimps at 7.30am. We got an hour before the truck came back for us to take us to the village walk, so I washed some smalls and got onto writing yesterday’s blog. As my laptop was nearly dead, I was attempting to charge and use my Playbook at the same time, and the keyboard was doing funky things while it was charging, but unplug it and it works fine, so I typed up half the day and then it was time to hit the road. I did bring my laptop with me, in the hope when the bus was running it may get some extra juice in it, so I could get my blog writing completed.
We drove for about 10 minutes to the start point of the village walk, where we said good-bye to Jools and got a local guide called Bernard. No he wasn’t a Bernie for short, which would have been super cool. The ‘village’ wasn’t a main street kind of village; it was spread over farmland, plantations and housing. We started our walk what looked like the ‘shop’ section of the village. Lots of males, leaning on motorbikes as we walked past. One of the shops that stood out the most was what looked like the ‘butcher’. He had small hut, where he had a table on the outside that had pretty much a cow, all chopped up and ready for sale. Literally all chopped up. The head was there, the tail was hanging off the table, the stomach lining was hanging like a wall painting against the hut and next to the head was a cow pat, I shit you not, a cow pat!!! Surely you can get them for free somewhere?
Our first stop was at the local school. Today is Wednesday, so school was in. Bernard was a pupil at the school once, so he knew some of the teachers still. We were introduced to the vice principle of the school and the head mistress and got a walk through the ‘office’. They certainly were organized and had all the classes up on the wall, how many boys and girls per class, total attendance etc….. The classes don’t work on age; they work on you attending school for 7 years, so you could have a 5 year old and a ten year old in the same class. The attendance for the 5-7th years are lower, as most of the girls will leave school and get married, so from 1st year of 135 people to 7th year 15 people. Big difference. There are 365 students at the school and they have 9 teachers – imagine that – classes of 60!!!! Our kids back home are learning to slip, slop, slap. These kids are learning about HIV and Aids and not to accept ‘free gifts’ eg: sex, not to have sex at school, to look after the environment ………. It really is a different part of the world here. We were lucky enough to get invited into a class room that had 58 students in the room the size of a standard living room. We got a beautiful welcome with 58 voices welcoming us to their class. There was no power in the room and the kids were all standing 5 deep from the front desks. They then performed about 5 songs, a poem and a small skit for us and I tell you the singing was giving me goose bumps. They are learning English, so all the songs were sung in English and they are about important things that they are learning at school. HIV / Aids, looking after each other and learning to say sorry and they all make mistakes. It truly was a moving experience and I was lucky enough to get some of the songs videoed – so it will be great to look over that again and I will definitely be posting them to Facebook to share them all. It was brilliant.
So leaving the school and all the happy smiling faces we then walked for about 15 minutes to the village healer. This is like the medicine man. He looks after all ailments and cures everything with local herbs, trees and plants. We were invited into his hut and we sat on mats on the floor and he sat in front of all his medicines and then explained them all to us. The medicines themselves were something. He had animal skulls, concoctions in bottles, tree leaves and sticks and berries and all sorts of other things. He didn’t speak English, but Bernard translated it all for us and he walked us through his medicines and where they all came from. He had the raw product and then showed us what the by product was. The main thing that concerned me, was since I have this stupid cough now, he had a remedy for this, and I know this sounds mean, but I was really hoping he wouldn’t offer me anything, because it all looked a little manky in the bottles. Maybe it might have worked, but maybe it may have given me an upset stomach as well. But he didn’t offer me any medicine, but he did ask if I was married to which I said no, to which he replied I should be at my age, to which I replied I was, but I’m not now, to which his reply was a hand in marriage – to him!!! I believe that makes my second proposal in 5 days in Africa. Maybe I am going to really like Africa – I could be the WO-MAN!!!!
Our last stop was another 15 minute walk through the plantations on the locals mud track to an old woman’s hut. We were invited in and she told us a story on the traditions of how the marriages used to work in the older years. It basically was all arranged, marriages by the parents, and sometimes the couple would not even meet until the wedding. They would then register their names for the marriage and then the new wife has to live with her aunt and uncle for 7 days to learn how to cook, clean and run the household. After this period, the wife is then carried to her husband’s home and on the wedding night he assumes his wife is a virgin. If she is not a virgin, the wedding is off and she needs to name the man who she had slept with, and then the village hunt this man down and then ties the shunned woman and the man together and are left to die. Harsh tradition. It doesn’t work like this now, it has all changed, but her marriage was arranged (she was 65) but her children we all married without any interference from her in their partner selection.
So from here we made our way back to our drop point for our drive back to camp. The walk all up took nearly 3 hours and I am so glad that I did it. It was worth the 30,000 shillings (15 USD) and I would have paid that just to visit the school. That is something that will stay as a highlight of my trip so far. It was uplifting.
After lunch and about an hour free time, we were driven at 1.15pm to Kibale National Park which was about a 15 minute drive. We were all kitted out in long pants, thick socks, pulled up and our pants tucked in (nice look) and a long sleeve shirt. The pant bottoms were tucked to try and stop the safari ants (fire ant equivalent) and also to keep leeches out as well. We got a welcome spiel to the park and the dos and don’ts of the etiquette of chimp viewing. They were: Chimps can catch your diseases; you must not enter the park if you are sick (I was on the wave length I was no longer contagious). Don’t leave litter in the forest. If you need to urinate or defecate you need to step off the path and dig at least a 130cm hole along with the toilet paper. Keep as quite as possible in the forest, you will see more. Keep at least 8m from the chimps at all times. Don’t mimic the chimp’s vocalizations as you don’t know what you might be saying. Don’t eat near the chimps. Don’t chase the chimps (yeah right). Do not use flash photography. Okay so they seem like a pretty stock standard set of rules. Let the chimp hunt begin.
Uganda has 10 national parks and they are broken into 2 categories, rainforest and savannah. The chimps live in a rainforest in Kabale National Park. The area became a national park in 1991 and the chimps have been a major tourist attraction to the area. Our guides name was Gerard and he has played and hunted in the forest since he was a small boy and became a park ranger in 1991 when it opened. He said you could drop him anywhere in the rainforest at night and he would be able to find his way out. He was really cool. They do have a sign saying that since they are wild animals there may be a chance you may not see the chimps, but it is a strike rate of 90% so there is a pretty good chance all the same. The morning group saw chimps, so he said that raises the chances to 99%, even better. The down side to the morning group, as it was a little wet, they didn’t come down from the trees too much, so with it being a bit drier, we hope to get a little closer.
So we headed in and within 5 minutes we saw a red-tailed colobus, he was a fair way up in the trees, but it was out first sighting all the same. We started on a track that took us over some boardwalks and deeper into the rainforest before we saw and heard our first chimps. There are about 120 in the one family we were looking for and we found about 3 of them perched high in the tree tops. There were about 5 groups of people all walking around the forest floor trying to get some good pictures, but they were just too far away. All the guides for each group had walkie talkies and were keeping the other groups up to date on sightings. There were times we got off the beaten track (literally) and we were going overland through the shrubs and the plants to get to where we needed to be. We finally hit the jackpot with 3 male chimps that were quite active and in a reasonably good distance for the camera to reach and I got some flipping good photos. The other monkey Efuzi, was the last one we got to watch for about 20 minutes as he ate a late lunch and we got within 6m of this guy and also got some great snaps of him. So we had a successful day of chimp hunting and after it was all done and back to headquarters we were in there for around 2 hours. I think the main highlight was getting to listen to them, it was a bit surreal, as they do sounds like the monkey noises you hear in toys or on TV, but to hear them so loud in the forest was pretty amazing.
The truck wasn’t back for us yet, so we decided to start walking back to the camp site. On the way out of the gates we got a group photo at the entrance and I got my second Bernstar jump of Africa with the sign. I have to get back on to that as I had slacked off in Portugal and London. Tut tut tut. We had walked about 25 minutes when the truck came hurtling down the dusty road, so half of us got a lift back and the hero’s walked the remaining 20 minutes back to camp.
With a quick shower, I sat down to get some blog writing done for an hour before we got a visit from a local dance troop of children that came to dance and sing for us. The dance company had only recently formed in March this year, so they are still trying to raise money for costumes etc., but they were pretty good. The ages ranged from I’d say 5-16 years of age and they did a really good job. Some of the songs we had heard at the school that day, but their singing just puts a smile on my dial, and when they see you smiling they just smile back. It is a win win. The children are either orphans after losing their parent to HIV or from broken or abusive homes, so it great that they can also be doing something positive for themselves as well. After the performance, they had bought local items for sale and pretty much everyone bought something from them which also helps with the funds and there was also a little basket for tips, which again we all put money into. It was a great way to finish the day.
Dinner was a local fare tonight of matoke, chiapatee, lamb curry, ugali and jackfruit for desert and we had to eat it as the locals do with no knife and forks, all with our hands. It was a bit of a mission, but we got it all done and it was quite delicious. I wasn’t a fan of the ugaki ( a white ricey, starchy thing) But at least I tried it.
So it was nice to finally do something a little different and not have sat on a bus all day. It was great to get out and about, including not having to pack the tents up this morning as well. Our nightly meeting went through what we were doing tomorrow. We are heading for Queen Elizabeth National Park but isn’t as far to travel as the last 2 days of driving, which will be nice change. We were given the heads up that there has known to be hippos that travel the 1km from the lake to be found in our camp site and there has also been a popular hangout for snakes, as they like to curl up under you tent where your body warmth is! GREAT. To stop them trying to wriggle in your tent we were also advised to have the zips at the top of the tents and not at the bottom – ah hah, they are cunning animals. The other advice still sticks from Lake Nakuru and if you exit your tent at night to shine your torch to see if any pairs of eyes are staring back. Well Afke and I are pretty good and once we are zipped up in the tent for the night, we don’t move till morning! But thanks Jools for the heads up with hippos and snakes!
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