Without a paddle...

According to my soon-to-be-expired entry visa, I’ve been here for three months now. To be honest it feels more like a year. I’m not quite sure what to put that down to, long days, new stuff to learn, some type of “Africa Effect” maybe? I really don’t know.

The view from the balcony in Entebbe

A re-enactment of the nightly "bed invasion" at the Entebbe Office

The last month has been a bit more “business as usual,” yet I’ve still managed to do some new stuff and come back with a few stories. Achievement for the month is the fact that I am now a certified chimpanzee tracker, which means I can take people into the forest to find the chimps. I did have to sit through a week of training run by Disney (yes Disney… we even watched The Lion King!), but as they say – “no pain - no gain”.

Funnily enough, the first day after my training when I got some time to go on a full-day habituation patrol, the chimps nearly had me twice! First was in the morning, it had rained hard all night and I was sitting under a tree with another guide watching some of the chimps feeding. One of them must have put its weight onto a log which was dead and weakened by the rain, because it snapped and fell towards us. I’m talking a proper big ole bough here, something you could make a canoe out of!

It’s amazing sometimes what you can do in certain situations. Before I had even thought about it Id put one foot onto a tree stump and pushed off into some kind of spinning dive backwards. A move I could never hope to replicate under normal circumstances. Fortunately, Justin, the other guy had rolled sideways, also avoiding death-by-squishing, so we both sat in silence for a minute while the chimps in the tree shrieked and screamed about it all.

If that wasn’t enough, throughout the day we were watching a male called Shaka, who is known for being a bit of an “angry man”. On this day he was constantly getting shut-down while trying to mate with one of the high-ranking females. Unfortunately for us, we walked straight into him and his home boys on one of the paths.

"Shaka" having a wee sulk after lucking out with the ladies

The chimps in the forest have never attacked a person, but they do charge now and again if they are startled. Shaka, who was clearly having a bad day, stood, picked up a branch and started screaming at us. When these guys get angry their hair stands on end making them look enormous. They’re also 5-8 times stronger than humans! Justin was whispering to me “Get down, be small”. In this situation you’re meant to crouch down, not make eye-contact and put your hands in your armpits (otherwise they might rip off your fingers!). My heart was thumping and it took all my will power not to turn and run. After that I had to concentrate my energies into not wetting my pants. I’m serious, it nearly happened!!! Fortunately for us, Shaka’s posse wasn’t in the mood to back him up, so after a bit more screaming and stick waving he hurled the branch into the forest and ran of screaming. ..

Nile Rafting

I’ve been sitting at the keyboard for the last ten minutes trying to think up some superlatives to describe how amazing this was. I can’t really do it justice with one so I’m going to have to make up a new word to encompass a few. It was RANG’n (Radical, awesome and gnarly).

I should also mention at this point that all the rafting photos below I have taken from the Adrift Rafting website, as you couldn't carry a camera and I was too cheap to buy the trip photo CD. But I can honestly say they are a fair representation of the trip I was on.

Actually I did take this one, it's the view from the bar at the camp

I went out to Jinja by myself, but fortunately there was a massive group of people doing the two-day trip so there was a good crew. The rafting is done just after the mouth of the Nile and the rapids are the largest commercially rafted anywhere in the world. After the usual safety run-down we jump in our boat with our guide Tutu, who was “The Man”. As the rafting company is run by New Zealanders it was kind of amusing to have a Ugandan guide who constantly came out with lines like: “Sweet as bro” and “No worries mate”. We did a few warm ups, back paddling, turning, and then practiced flipping the raft and not panicking when you get sucked under a rapid. At this point it might all sound a bit dodgy, but it’s a really professional operation, we were accompanied the whole way by a safety raft and fifteen or so guys in kayaks.

We get to the first rapid, which from our vantage point in the boat you could see the river drop away into a roaring cesspool of froth and waves. We paddle up to the rapid with Tutu yelling in the background “Forward! Forward! Right Side! Forward! Harder! Get Down! Get Down! Hold On!!!” We drop into this rapid, the raft bucking beneath us and all I could see in front is a wall of white water! Next thing the raft is thrown in the air, sideways, onto another bit and then we’re off – all still in the boat. As I said, RANGn!!!

The only photo of me in a boat

We hit a few more rapids in this way, and then we went for our first “swim”. I figured that when we did flip the raft Id be tossed in the air, hit the water and float for a bit. Well. Pretty much one second I was in the raft, the next I was underneath it. I tried to get out from under it, but the old sense of direction wasn’t really happening and I kept popping up into the boat. Fortunately, just as my lungs were starting to question my brain on the sudden halt in oxygen flow I popped up alongside the boat, still in the rapid. Tutu at this point had recovered the upside down boat and is standing on top of it. Once he was happy that everyone was floating and accounted for he starts whooping and doing back flips on the boat. Nutter.

After 30kms of river we got to the camp where we stayed the night, then the next day, got right back into it. The second day had a few long sedate stretches which meant we could lie on the raft, sun bathe, swim and take in the scenery of the Nile… but it also involved a few more wild rides and crazy flips along the way. At the end we get to a rapid which has a continuous standing wave. First the guys brought out a whole lot of body boards, so we could jump into the rapid and ride for as long as you could hold on for.

There's always one...

Then we let some air out of the rafts and took those into the wave. This was awesome; it was like being on a rollercoaster with the raft jumping about but staying in the same spot. All up it was one of the best weekends of my life and something I’m planning on doing at least once more before I leave Uganda!

Flip and Flop – R.I.P

Sometimes, the most simple of possessions can take on a sentimental value. This happened with Flip and Flop, whose obituary follows:

In memory of Flip and Flop, who sadly perished in the jungles of Africa on February 24^th 2009. Flip and Flop were purchased in the Beijing Silk Markets, June 2007. Mainly by Marcus as he is better at arguing with people than I am. Originally one pair of blue and one pair of brown flip flops, an “altercation” over who got what colour, followed by some throwing of said flip flops, resulted in us both owning one of each. Flip and Flop have pounded pavements, climbed mountains and generally kept my feet from mankiness in 55 cities throughout 19 countries over 4 continents. Guys, you’ll be missed.

A New Messiah?

Uganda has a rather strong Christian presence, many people are very religious. It seems to be the fad to name your business or taxi with certain religious quotes. Some of my favorites are: “Jesus-Loves-You Stationary – for all your school supplies” and “Praise-The-Lord Dry Cleaning”.

It’s also interesting here that Jesus appears in many forms. Sometimes he comes in classic white;

Sometimes in cool black;

In reality, being of Middle Eastern decent – he probably bore more resemblance to the guy on the right…

But I digress.

Now there’s a new kid on the block;

Obamaaaaaaa!

Even though I’m willing to bet that 95% of Ugandans wouldn’t know the meaning of the words “Democrat” or “Republican”, as far as most people here are concerned there’s an African guy in charge of America now! Slowly we are beginning to see signs of this new messiah. The ever popular Jesus calendar for sale in the markets is slowly being replaced with Obama calendars. New businesses are springing up, painted in red, white and blue with names like “Obama Beverages and Dry Goods”.

In Barrak We Trust. All Rise.

Game Drives, Bike Rides & Police Bribes

Month 2: Still happy, still healthy, still breathing, visa extension granted – all positives.

For everyone that’s been asking, I’m glad to inform you that nothing else (that I know of) has laid eggs in my body and spawned out of my pores. In fact my body appears to have “Africanised”, I’m able to eat and drink all the dodgy local stuff, and my dust induced cough seems to have subsided. I’ve even aclimatised to the heat – the other morning our weather station recorded the lowest temperature this month. It was 22 degrees and I was bloody freezing! Spent the morning walking round in a beanie and a hoodie!

Mentally I’ve become desensitised to a few things that probably would have shocked the old Kev a bit. Had another two deaths this month. First was the small daughter of one of my trail cutters. I got told about her one morning, rushed her in to hospital, but she died a few hours later. Kind of depressing as I think she had a severe case of dysentery, which may have been cured had the family acted earlier. Problem is that no-one has any money to do anything about these types of things, so they’ll either leave it, or pay the local witch-doctor a chicken to dance about and blow some smoke. You can imagine how effective a cure that is…

A typical house in the local villages

Second death was a few days ago when someone’s mother died. It was weird. I went to the house and actually sat next to the dead body and talked to the family for a while. It wasn’t until I left that it actually registered I had been sitting next to a corpse.

Same goes with firearms. Especially back in Entebbe/Kampala, any shop worth robbing has an armed guard (the video shop for example). My friend was in the bank yesterday, and as I was waiting outside I started talking to one of the guards. Once again it wasn’t until I left that I even thought about the fact that the guy I was talking with about the local bar scene, was standing there holding a semi-automatic machine gun.

But anyway…enough about me…

Chimpanzee Rescue Squad!!!

I got a call one morning from my boss, who is a wildlife vet (how cool a job is that!). Someone in a village about 80kms from me had reported a chimpanzee that was caught in a trap. Peter (my boss) was coming up from Kampala but he needed the tranquilizer gun and medi-kits from my site. So I loaded up and went out to meet him.

Some dickhead had set a bear trap right near the edge of a village, they mean to catch bush pigs or duiker in these, but where they had put it I’m surprised a kid didn’t stand in it! The chimp had sprung the trap on its wrist, and by the time we arrived, had dragged it a wee way into a swamp. After finding and sedating the chimp it took three people, all physically straining, to actually get the trap back open!



Miraculously no bones were broken (about a third of all chimps found in these traps need amputation) there were just a few abrasions on each side of the wrist. Peter and his team cleaned out the wounds, checked the rest of the body (all OK), then gave her (it was a young female) a shot to wake her back up. We spent the next hour watching this chimp come out of a sleep, which kinda reminded me of getting up on a Sunday morning and finding an extremely drunk person waking up on the lounge sofa. The other day I ran into one of the guys who is a ranger up that way who told me that the chimp has joined back up with the local population and is even using the hand again. Nice

Dirt Bike 101

It recently came to my attention that our site has a dirt bike; it’s been on loan for a while and is now back. After a couple of days of looking at it, my inner child (who frequently hijacks my rational thought process), and peer pressure from some Swiss researchers, convinced me to have a go.

I did get my motorbike learner license in New Zealand, yet this consisted of me riding round some cones in a garage and proving I knew which lever worked the brake. So, after checking with someone how to change gears I jumped on and managed to get out onto the road without stalling. Unfortunately the road outside is on a slope and kinda narrow, and I didn’t have the confidence to slow down and turn around. The only option was to keep going so I ended up riding the 30kms into town instead. By the time I hit town I felt pretty confident on the bike. I had a few people to see; by the time I finished the clouds that had been building for the last week had gotten very dark and ominous. I had no money to stay in town and you don’t want to get stuck in the dark out here, so I didn’t have much choice but to head back.

This is Seamus the local rock lizard

No sooner do I get on the road, does the first proper rain in months decide to fall! When it rains here, it rains (the other day we had 60mm in 20 minutes!). Sometimes I wonder if god/buddah/yoda/whoever is messing with me, surely they could have waited til I got home?

It’s a simple equation: dirt road + rain = mud slide. It was not fun, it was long, it was cold, it was stressful, and my “I-am-a-super-awesome-dirt-bike-superstar” attitude quickly dissolved. But after slipping, sliding and stalling all the way, I somehow made it home “sans-crash”.

After this experience I’m deeply grateful to the New Zealand licensing authority, who tested my knowledge of “minimum parking distances from a school crossing” before they let me ride one of these things.

Murchison Falls

Last weekend under the guise of “market research” I took the work van and a few friends and drove further into the national park. About 40 minutes from where I am are the Murchison falls, reputedly one of the most spectacular falls in Africa, where the entire Victoria Nile crashes through a narrow cataract on its way to Lake Albert. The sheer volume of water moving through this thing every second is indeed worthy of a few superlatives (insert your own, I’m tired), and the sound of water on rock is deafening.
Some bright spark in the 19th century tried to build a dam across the top of the falls, which you can see in some of the photos. A great concept, but sometimes you just can’t mess with nature and it got washed away pretty promptly.

Now and again whilst traveling you come across things that are just impossible to do justice with a few photographs (unless your name is Marcus Tillson of course!), but here are a few anyway…




Game Drive

After the falls we stayed the night at a backpackers and got up at “I’m-to-hungover-to-be-up-this-early” AM to get the ferry across the Nile to the game reserve. This has to be one of the coolest things I have done in my life. You take your car on the ferry, and then have a couple thousand square kilometers to drive wherever you want.

Going early in the morning ended up being a good idea, as you get this amazing morning light from the sunrise, and of course all the wildlife is a bit more active too. As you begin the drive you see an abundance of antelope: Hartebeest, Waterbuck, Ugandan Kob, Bushbuck and Oribi – if anyone’s interested.



There are also a good number of buffalo and warthogs around too.

After a bit we came across our first elephant, standing nonchalantly next to the road. People have been killed in the park by charging elephants so if you see one you just have to stop and wait it out. It took a good 40 minutes of eating and scratching its bum on a tree before it moved on, but as I’ve said before – seeing something like this in its natural environment is amazing, and doesn’t even compare to seeing one in a zoo.

Driving down to the delta next to the lake we saw quite a few of giraffes, and then in the lake a massive herd of hippos. We also saw some crocodiles in a river (no photos sorry, I was driving). Funnily enough, somewhere in the middle of the lake is an invisible line which marks the Uganda/Congo border. On a clear day you can see the Blue Mountains of the Congo. Also interesting is that the other shore of the lake is LRA rebel territory.

The 'ippo is 'appy!

That's Congo on the other side. No sign of Kony...

Whilst stoked with the day it was a tad disappointing that we didn’t see any lions or leopards. Apparently in the dry season they keep themselves well hidden, I suppose this means I’ll just have to go up there again!

Why not hang out with your wang out?

The reason for some animal scarcity is that the park, while amazing, is still recovering from un-restricted hunting in the 60’s and 70’s and heavy poaching in the 80’s. Where you may now see 4-5 elephants, you used to see hundreds. But now with proper protection from the Wildlife Authority, numbers are coming back slowly.

I also found it cool that not even one hour away I work in a tropical rainforest with chimps and monkeys, yet up here is a completely different savannah environment with a totally different sub-set of animals. Good diversity Uganda!

When the van breaks I get the Land Cruiser - Im trying to help it on its way...

Pineapple Bribes

I was driving back down to Entebbe the other day when a traffic cop waved for me to pull over. The traffic cops here are a bit of a joke as apart from the odd motorcycle they don’t have any vehicles. So if you are speeding past, they wave you down and you don’t stop, there’s really not much they can do about it.

Anyway, I was in a good mood, so foolishly I stopped the van. It was a “routine stop” but it all got a little complicated when it came to the matter of identification. Id left my international license in the other truck. As mentioned earlier, my New Zealand License is for a car and a learner motorbike. So while having a full car license, I also have the word “Learner” emblazoned above my ID photo. As far as the cop and most Ugandans are concerned, New Zealand could well be a former soviet state – my point being that; here having a NZ license is about as effective as holding a weight-watchers meeting at McDonalds.

To complicate matters, my visa (in my British passport!) is a tourist visa, and I was driving a van with NGO (Non Government Organisation) license plates, meaning that this was obviously a work vehicle, and I’m not meant to be working.

I tried to explain all this best I could. The cop was pretty relaxed about it all, but told me he’d need to take my details and then Id have to take my international license and work permit (which I said I had) to the central police station in Kampala. I was informed that there would also be a fee that I would have to pay. I suddenly clicked where all this was going, so I asked if the fee was payable to him. He gave me this look that quite clearly said “How obvious do I need to make this? Just give me some money and you can go!”

Fortunately most of my cash was in my bag so I pulled out my wallet and gave him the 15,000 shillings (about US$7) I had in there. This clearly wasn’t quite up to the accepted amount for a no-license bribe so he asked me what else I had. Next to me on the front seat was some fruit Id just brought and a packet of cigarettes. He told me that if I gave him the smokes and the pineapple then I could be on my way.

Now this is when things turned serious. Id spent a good while selecting that pineapple; it was near perfect and had a scheduled appointment with my belly later that evening. I tried to negotiate with a few mangoes and an avocado – but the cop had also realised the power of the pineapple, so finally I reluctantly parted with it. I did eventually buy another pineapple, but it just wasn’t the same.

The moral of the story: Don’t stop for the cops. Always hide the pineapple.

That’s all for this month, in next month’s edition – well who knows, I’m sure something will happen between now and then!

Kwa Heri!