Welcome to the Jungle!

Kev’s 2008

Looking back it does appear that I haven’t written anything on here for a year or so, seems Marcus has been having all the fun!!! So, a brief re-cap of 2008…

After traveling nearly consistently for 12 months it became apparent that my savings were not going to foot the bill for much longer. I needed to earn some cash. So I moved to London, lived in a great part of town called Camden with some very awesome flat-mates, and luckily got a wicked job as a Product Manager for a bicycle company.

In October I flew back to New Zealand to surprise my family for my brother Dan’s 21st birthday, and to catch up with the remaining crew there. It was great to go back and made me appreciate what a wonderful place New Zealand really is.

He used to be my little brother!

Then flew back via a month in Thailand. Had the time of my life destroying my liver on the beach and met heaps of top people. Got “stranded” on Ko Phi Phi with the Bangkok airport occupation and had to go overland to fly out of Malaysia

...two days later after an express stop back in London to re-pack my gear I landed in…

Uganda

If your geography is anything like mine was a year ago then you may only have a hazy idea where this country is. Basically it’s on the edge of Lake Victoria bordered by Kenya, Sudan, D.R. Congo, Rwanda and Tanzania. Smack on the equator.
What an earth am I doing in Central Africa? Well, a year ago in Barcelona I met a girl who had volunteered for the Jane Goodall Institute, who work mainly to protect chimpanzees. She gave me a contact email and long story short; here I am a year later. I was originally coming over to work on the marketing and development of eco-tourism projects. But due to a sudden departure of a staff member and my convenient arrival, I’ve ended up as the manager of a Chimpanzee Trekking Eco-tourism site!




Kaniyo Pabidi

Kaniyo Pabidi is a forest inside the Murchison Falls National Park, but for some reason outside the protected conservation zone. Within the forest are around 600 chimpanzees whose habitat and livelihoods have been seriously under threat from, among other things: illegal logging, snare traps and poaching.

The site I run has 5 cabins and a 16-bed dormitory built in-between the trees for visitors to stay. In the daytime our guides take people into the forest to view chimpanzees in the wild. The place is awesome, all the power is solar and all water is gathered via rain-catchment. There are around 20 staff including tracker/guides, trail cutters, chefs, house-keeping, security and maintenance. All the profits made are used to pay the 50 or so rangers who patrol the surrounding forests and to provide grants to local community groups to set up small businesses. Many of these businesses work in partnership with the site, selling us produce, washing the linen or making merchandise for the shop. It’s a bit of a change managing Ugandan people, among other things I’ve never had to factor witchcraft into a decision before!

My cabin, not exactly roughing it...

The forest is a fantastic place. Apart from the chimpanzees there’s an abundance of birds, monkeys, baboons, bugs, plants and the occasional lion or leopard! I get in there as often as I can get away from the day-to-day running of the place. It also smells fantastic, kind of a cross between incense and fresh fruit.







My best experience so far was catching up with a group of chimpanzees who had just caught a colombus monkey. It was actually the first time I had gone in the forest, (and Im still kicking myself for not taking a camera!!) the sound of them shrieking and hooting while hunting was something else. Nothing like you hear in a zoo, it was so loud it scared the crap out of me! We watched as three of them sat in a tree and literally pulled the body apart like it was a bread roll (an adult chimpanzee is 5-8 times stronger than a human!). This story sounds a little sick, but when you see something like that happen in the wild it is truly amazing!

Chimpanzee chewing gum

My worst experience with wildlife has been the baboons that come around the site looking for food. One day I was walking down by the staff kitchen when I saw four of them really close to the building. I was carrying a couple of jerry cans which I banged together as I yelled at them. Three scampered away, but a big male turned around and just looked at me. I foolishly looked it in the eye and banged the cans again. Next thing I knew this thing opens its mouth showing off these massive teeth, barks and runs straight at me! In a situation like this you’re meant to stand your ground and they’ll back off… F*** that, I was out of there! Sprinting back up the path I broke both of my flip-flops and cut open my feet! By the time I reached the Visitor’s Centre it turned out the thing wasn’t chasing me at all and the guides were all laughing at their crazy Mzungu boss!

Note to self: Start wearing shoes

Lion Rock: Where the lions go to roar and where I go to chill/get cell phone reception. No scheduling conflicts thus far...

When I’m not skiving off in the forest one of my main jobs is to do the “shopping” in Masindi, the closest town which is about 30km away. It’s great fun, I sit there and literally argue over the price of fish in the market. The butcher consists of a shed with a carcass hanging in it. If you ask for 5kg of beef the butcher turns round and hacks at the carcass with a machete and you’re away.



Driving

Driving in rural Uganda is a bit like an old-school spacies game. You’re constantly dodging things: potholes, livestock, people, other vehicles… There are also some rules:
* Hit a chicken. Stop and pay the owner 5,000 shillings.
* Hit a goat. Stop and pay the owner 25,000 shillings.
* Hit a person. Don’t stop, don’t pass go; just get the hell out of there!


Ugandans are big on mob justice, if you do hit someone and stop there is a high likelihood that a crowd will appear and proceed to beat the living sh*t out of you

My African Super Van!

The Funeral

One night after a long, hot day of doing the supply run and then the weekly accounts I got a call around 6:30pm from one of our guides. The 2 year old child of another one of the guides had died. As no-one has a car in these parts, they wanted me to drive the parents and the body back to their home village! Even though I was buggered I could hardly say no, so I got in the van and drove out of the park to the nearby village.

When I got there it was like a scene from a war documentary. Women were wailing, screaming, crying – men drinking, it was chaos. The father and some of my other staff who live in that village came and spoke to me and asked if some others could come in the van. “Sure”, I said. Next thing I know people are piling in, there was even a fight that broke out! The van has 13 seats, I’m pretty sure there were around 25 people in the vehicle that night!

The road in the direction we were heading is infamously bad, rutted and full of massive potholes. With a full load it was a nightmare, an 80km trip in 2nd and 3rd gear! Not to mention the fact that it was my first time driving at night over here! We finally turned off the main road onto something that resembled a recreational 4WD track. If that wasn’t enough, all the women, seeing as we were close to the village kicked off with the wailing and screaming again! We then got to what was literally a goat-track that led to the village. I drove down it in 1st gear all the way, grounding the chassis a number of times. When we got to the village there was no light, everyone piled out, more wailing as the body was taken somewhere and then all the men stood around and talked. After a couple of hours everyone bar the family got back in and we went back home the way we had come.

These monkeys are extraneous to the funeral story

Health and Safety

It seems that since I’ve got here that my immune system has packed up. I perform minor surgery on myself every few days, pulling things out of my legs or cleaning out infected jungle wounds. The “highlight” so far was a small itchy bump that came up on my forearm. I didn’t really worry about it, but after a week it just got bigger and bigger! I was sitting out the back of the restaurant with a couple of the staff when they saw it and said “You have mango fly!”. Next thing I knew one of them grabbed my arm and another started squeezing the wound with her finger-nails. A bit of blood and puss came out, then all of a sudden this live, writhing worm thing popped out! It was like something out of the movie Alien! I was so shocked a let forth a mighty stream of profanity which scared the guys a little (Ugandans don’t swear!), then they pulled this creature out. It was a white larvae type thing, all up about the size of a cigarette butt that had grown from an egg in my arm!

Clearly this is a stock image, but it looked a bit like this!

Apparently what happens is mango flies (which look a lot like common house flies) lay their eggs in damp clothes. Then when you wear the clothes the eggs burrow into your skin and the larvae starts to grow. Gross man. Problem was that afterwards I was paranoid that everything on me contained a mango fly! Fortunately I haven’t had another, yet.

Entebbe and Kampala

I work for three weeks out at site then come back to the main office/house in Entebbe for a few days rest (aka - office work and getting stuff fixed in Kampala!).

Kampala is the capital, and like most large cities in the developing world it has a few nice parts but is generally a chaotic mess of traffic, dust and noise. Driving in rural Uganda is one thing, driving in Kampala is another... The general idea is to get where you’re going any way you can using whatever means possible. Some good tricks are creating your own lane and using size to bully smaller vehicles out the way.

On the contrary, Entebbe (30kms from Kampala) is a beautiful, relaxed town on the shores of Lake Victoria. Our office/house looks over the lake and is close to the Botanical Gardens which are a great visit to go see exotic birds and monkeys! It even has a couple of good bars and restaurants which are nice after a few weeks of isolation in the forest.

A water plume on Lake Victoria

Jinga

I managed to get to Jinga for a couple of days with my mates Ash and Charlie. Jinga is at the source of the Nile River. It’s a pretty chilled out place and is famous for white-water rafting. Incidentally the main rafting company is owned by a kiwi guy I met out at KP, so next month I’m hoping to get back out there and do some Grade 5 white water!

Like this!!!

The source of the Nile

Xmas in Lira

My boss Peter, who is a top dude, invited me to have Christmas with his family in Lira – which is in the North. It was stinking hot but I had an amazing time, everyone was really hospitable and I tried a million new foods (his Mum couldn’t stop feeding me!). The highlight was barbeque pork ribs Ugandan style! (they slaughtered a pig on Xmas morning and we cooked it that arvo). The “low-light” was the three hours we spent in church on Christmas day. The service (mostly preaching) was in the local Lu’a language, it was stifling and I was hung-over. All-though it was the first time I’ve seen a live chicken go in the collection basket!

Step 1: Place ribs on barbeequeStep 2: Drink beer for a few hours and occasionally turn the meat Step 3: Talk about how good it looks and how good a chef you all are

Step 4: Eat it!!! - It was fantastic.

After Christmas we went to Peter’s home village in a place called Apach, where I slept in a typical African banda, which is a mud hut with a thatch roof and a floor made of dung! It was a really cool experience sleeping with the chickens, goats and other miscellaneous wildlife!

Incidentally for New Years I was working, it was quiet and I went to bed before mid-night!

So to finish…

All in all, I’m absolutely loving it. Even though some busier days I work from 7:00am to around 10:00pm and finish the day covered in sweat and red dust – I probably couldn’t be happier. The people here are great. Everyone is generally happy and friendly, even though many of them are shockingly poor, they will always greet you with a smile and go out of their way to help you. Funny how people here with not much, seem a lot happier than most people in a place like London.

It's considered a good omen to have twins in Uganda

Mmmm... Unprocessed chocolate!

Next update will probably be in a month or so when I’m back in Entebbe with a half decent internet connection! In the next month I hope to spend a lot more time in the forest, play rugby for Entebbe, learn some more Swahili and hopefully explore Murchison Falls and see some big game!!!

Laters!

Kev