1/3rd gone.

A month gone already!

It doesn’t even seem like summer and it is already a third of the way gone.

This week was a lot of neat sights and a lot of work in the field, which is okay with me because I always discover new thing when in the field.

Saturday I went to one of the first “western” buildings built in Uganda. The first Anglican missionaries to Uganda built Namirembe Cathedral in 1915. When I was there they had two weddings going on, so I couldn’t go all of the way inside, but everything look amazing, especially for being built ~100 years ago. The cathedral was built on the site of an old cemetery where some of the first explorers are buried; some grave sites that I saw were as old as the 1880s. After the cathedral, i went to Owino Market. This is the biggest market in Uganda, and it was crazy. So many people pushing and shoving to buy just about any thing you every wanted. The section with all of the spices smelled so good.

Sunday one of the Makerere University interns, Emma, invited me to the zoo. When thinking of going to a zoo in a developing country I though the worst, you know, animals in cages that are too small, no open space and all that stuff. But, in reality, it was the total opposite. It turns out that what the locals call a zoo is actually a rehabilitation and recovery park for animals that, for what ever reason, cannot live in the wild. The Ugandan Wildlife Education Center is sponsored by several international NGOs and has many of the animals that are threatened or endangered in Uganda. It was good to see all of the things that I wont be able to see, even when I go on a safari.

This zoo was also very different in the fact that it had several of the, more or less, harmless animals just roaming around that park.

Emma is a forestry/agriculture student and knows most of the plants that grow in Uganda, and their unique attributes. I, as an anthropology student, know a lot about primates. So when we got to the various primate exhibits we would sort of exchange facts about the things in the enclosure, him the plants and me the animals. It was really fun to learn about the various floras that were in each of the enclosures and why the zoo decided to include them in the enclosure.

The zoo also has a huge beach that is on Lake Victoria. Lake Victoria is the largest body of fresh water I’ve seen, absolutely huge. When Emma and I headed to the beach we walked out to the dock, which apparently is usually used for weddings. As we were standing there talking we watch to kids from the neighboring house swim under the protective fence that encloses the Wildlife Education Center and swim under the dock. When we walked to the platform that goes underneath the dock we saw that they were fishing. Emma talked to them in Luganda, it turned out that the park was protected and therefore has the best fishing.  These boys would catch that fish with a fishing line that had a hook on one end and was attached to an empty plastic water bottle that was tucked into their waistband. The water bottle serves two purposes, if a fish is on the line they will be able to feel it and if the park authority sees them they can make a speedy escape with the fish and the line secured to them. Its amazing, the things that are born out of necessity. 

After the zoo, Emma and I went to the National Botanical Garden, which is where the first Tarzan movie was filmed, to go geo-caching.  He had never hear of it before and seemed to have a lot of fun, on the ride back to Kampala he told he three or four times that he wanted to do more.

Monday at work I did another grant proposal, they staff at the NGO told me I was good at it…we’ll see if we get the money.  On Monday afternoon we decided that we would head out to the field early on Tuesday and not return to Kampala until late Thursday or Friday.

Tuesday was the usual field visits, we had some visitors from Kenya who are in-charge of the branch of PROMETRA from the country. They wanted to see how PROMETRA Uganda worked, as it has been established for much longer than PROMETRA Kenya. In talking to them, they said that they would be willing to show me around Nairobi, so a trip to Kenya maybe in my future. At one of the villages the kids told me that I looked like a soccer player from Manchester United, Wayne Rooney…(I had to look him up) I think the only characteristic that we have in common is that we are both white. Hahaha

Wednesday was the healers training, I sat in class two again. Today’s topic was ‘head problems’ like meningitis, encephalitis and the like. After lunch I headed up to the clinic to observe the patient visits and the documentation some more.

Thursday and Friday were tiresome. Thursday we visited a healer who everyone called Mama Nakate, she goes to the Prometra training every Wednesday. We were at her house to collect seedlings for the new nursery so that the healers could harvest their herbs from the PROMETRA nursery, thereby preserving the forest ecology. Mama Nakate owned a lot of land; she had several people working for her to grow the various crops for market. Was we were walking back to the car, she started talking to me in Luganda, David was there to interpret. I turned out that she offered me some land and a wife if I wanted to stay in Uganda, this was the third time I’ve been offered a wife, but never land. I was shocked; in Uganda land owning is a big deal. I turned her down though…

Thursday evening I got a chapatti lesson. Chapattis are an import from India, and the most delicious street food in Uganda. Its basically just toasted flat bread, but it tastes so good. Geoff, a 14 year-old kid who works at the forest school, taught me how to make them. All you need is some flour, water and oil; I was shocked when he told me that because it they taste so good for just being flour. Geoff and I took the 15 minute walk to the closest village to buy the supplies. Earlier in the week Geoff started calling me his brother, but on the walk he tried to convince me that we were twins…I wasn’t buying it. Haha All you do for the chapatti is make the simple dough, roll it out and toast it on a flat pan…crazy that its so simple, definitely a skill I will take home.

Friday we spent most of the day down by the nursery, finalizing the structure and working on the next project, a demonstration orchard. We needed to measure a lattice so that the trees would be planted in rows; here we planted most of the seedlings that we collected on Thursday.

This week seemed to go by the fastest yet, and I am already not wanting to go back to school. 

Oh well, new experiences, new adventures.