Finally, two birds with one stone, I get to see the famous Kibale National Park in Uganda and visit Amy working on the conservation education project she volunteers for (Kasiisi Project)! In addition, swam in a crater lake, went chimping with the tourists (that’s chimp trekking in the guide books), heard elephants low warning grumbles in the bush on the way to the outhouse, saw many cool monkeys off the back porch, learned what a mango fly is (fortunately not the hard way this time), and got to see a very nice research camp (Makerere U. biological field station - MUBFS) that has housed many great researchers and numerous friends during PhDs etc….and that was just the weekend. The actual business part of the trip was to work on setting up a nice ecosystem health project on emerging infectious diseases in Queen Elizabeth NP on the way.
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| a really nice lodge where we had dinner and swam in a crater lake! |
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| interesting things in the forest |
So, details…….Kibale NP is a huge, but somewhat fragmented forest habitat national park famous for its chimpanzees, and made more famous for those who care about chimp research by Richard Wrangham of Harvard, who also happened to be one of the first two students of Jane Goodall in Gombe NP. A looooong line of very good researchers (henceforth called chimpologists) have been hatched from this project and gone on to do amazing things in that world and for ape conservation! So, for an accidental chimpology hanger-on like me, its pretty interesting – not quite a pilgrimage, but I do have the history down since Im loosely affiliated at times with this community. However, its also famous for those who study monkeys, which is a little more unusual in many sites…..and spectacular they are!! When you get to the camp, you definitely see who the alpha research projects are, since their houses are the older ones deeper in the forest, set away from the other, more short term houses. Dr. Wrangham’s wife, Elizabeth Ross, has spent her time in the forest doing amazing things as well, the project Im most familiar with is the Kasiisi community education project that Amy works on. She has a volunteer gig helping them increase the scope of each school’s wildlife club (required by law, how cool and forward thinking is that?). The interesting thing is that these guys live at the research camp as well, so you get this thriving community of educators, researchers, field assistants and spouses, and local people.
After getting over the fact that this is a place with chimps, very cool monkeys (I think 11 spp.?) and elephants all in the same place, you settle down into a great life of interesting conversations, local food which is fantastic, and intra-camp history, politics , sub plots and soap operas, just like any other research site or business – it was nice to be a fly on the wall!
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| red colobus monkey |
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| Wrangham's field house |
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| baby baboon |
Speaking of flies, everyone there is pretty freaked out about these flies called mango flies. Apparently, they lay eggs on clothes when they are wet and when you put those clothes back on, your body temp or pH or something causes the eggs to hatch and the larvae then burrow into your skin where you then get a nasty hive-like lesion until it decides to come out….painfully. It seems like the treatment is like that of bot flies, where you cover the air hole with something like nail polish to suffocate them and then squeeze them out – nice! The prevention is ironing of all washed clothes, so everyone looks very nice in their pressed field clothes!! Im gonna look these flies up later and see how much of this story I got correct.
The best part was that I got to see Amy do her thing with about 50 kids at a school on the final afternoon, and I have to say she has found her calling….I was very impressed and proud at how she led this crowd of African kids in conservation songs and wildlife fact quiz games – very cool to watch someone in their element – maybe she will post some of the video I took! I cannot tell you how amazing this stuff is to watch – a whole room full of kids singing at the top of their lungs about saving the forest, and other, older kids hanging from the windows and crowding outside the doors to be a part of it – very cool – you can see that interesting education can make a difference!! Then we went and visited the sustainable tree planting project that the kids did around the school grounds. Congrats to the project and Amy, this was truly cool!
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