christmas in uganda.

January 8^th, 2011

Well, this is long overdue. December was a bit of a roller coaster. Writing this blog has been weighing on my mind for some time, and now that the holidays are over, I figure it is about time to update my life over the past month and a half or so.

Let me begin by addressing the mystery illness I spoke about that is hitting the north. About two weeks ago, after nearly two months of this fatal illness stumping the WHO, CDC, and Ministry of Health, it has been discovered that it is yellow fever – and anyone travelling to Uganda is required to get this vaccination, which was a weight off my shoulders. Unfortunately for Ugandans who live in the north, nearly everybody has not been vaccinated. The government has since announced that in light of this mini outbreak, there would be a push to increase vaccinations to combat the spread. Yellow fever is transmitted through day-biting mosquitoes (as malaria is transmitted through night-biting mosquitoes).  We can only hope for the best.

The pictures! As mentioned, most are from Kidepo National Park. My last weekend in Kitgum, I was fortunate to be offered a trip to KNP for the weekend, in the far north-east of Uganda, in Karamoja. Karamoja is a region in Uganda inhabited by the Karamojong – pastoral cattle herders. It is certainly the most beautiful place I have seen in Uganda. Poaching has been a large problem in the area, which has led to a sharp reduction in game population.  During my stay in Kidepo, I met two American hunters who were there for 12 days on a game hunt. One of them invited me to tag along, and so I joined him on the hunt for a couple days – I had no idea what to expect! For all I knew, you drive out there – find your animal (buffalo in this case), shoot it, and game over. But it’s much more of a process and experience than that. Unlike a safari, where you are restricted to the vehicle, this game hunt allowed us to get out of the truck, and use locals from the area, who have grown up on the land, and we would track the animals. So every step, you have to be alert (buffalo are considered one of the most dangerous animals – extreme temper and stubborn), head on a swivel at all times. There are times when the grass would be taller than me, and so there could easily be a herd of buf lying in the grass which you could just stumble upon. It was thrilling. But these trackers were incredible – reminded me of Mantracker or Man vs Nature – seeing signs (more than just dung and tracks) I would have never picked up on in a hundred years.  In the end, I didn’t actually see the American shoot anything (which I think I might be thankful for), but we did get to see zebra, buffalo, giraffe, antelope, not to mention spending time with and getting to talk to the locals who have grown up with this as their backyard was just incredible.

Coming back to Kampala, I had been in touch with Steph (the other intern) who had been working hard on developing and administering health surveys in the villages around Kabale, for the development of a comprehensive Lake Victoria health project. She asked if I wouldn’t mind helping out with entering the data. Thinking it might be a job that would take until Christmas at the most, I agreed - only to find out there are over 25,000 surveys that need to be input, and is still keeping me busy. Thankfully, I think next week will be the last week, as I think my eyes are turning into rectangles after looking at Excel spreadsheets eight hours a day!!

The holiday season was different this year. It never actually felt like it was Christmas – there is something about 30 degree weather that just doesn’t let you believe Christmas is approaching. Some of the shops and stores would put up a sorry looking Christmas tree, or have some Christmas music playing, but it was all very phony. However, as Christmas was approaching, Kampala was becoming more and more like a ghost town every day. Many people leave the city to spend the holidays in the villages with their families. As the streets emptied with people, they filled with police and military. Al-Shabab, the radical militant movement in Somalia responsible for the two bombings in Kampala during the World Cup, threatened more attacks on Uganda over the holidays and the reaction from the Ugandan government was present everywhere you went in the city. You could not enter a store, restaurant, church or bar without being fully pat down. Checkpoints were set up all over the city to search vehicles.  Even now, as Christmas and the New Year have passed, there remains a strong police and military presence around the city. A coach bus in Nairobi, Kenya destined for Kampala was actually blown up with a hand grenade just a couple days before Christmas. To avoid all of this, Erica (who flew to Uganda for Christmas this year!) and I decided to get out of the city and do some travelling!

A couple days before Christmas, we headed west to Kibale National Park, and stayed at this place in the Kibale Forest called Chimp’s Nest. Kibale is home to several families of chimps, and so we decided to go Chimp Tracking. A guide from the national park took us on a four hour hike through the forest as we tracked the chimps. After a couple hours of searching, we stumbled across the chimps. It was remarkable to see them in the natural habitat – making their way up, down and through the trees, and then just lying around the without really caring about us being some eight or ten feet away! From Kibale, we made our way south to Lake Bunyonyi, the second deepest lake in Africa at over a kilometre in depth. We spent Christmas here in furnished tents overlooking the lake. It was gorgeous, being up in the mountains. It was considerably cooler than in Kampala, because of the elevation. We took out canoes a couple times, which was great when one of the local guys decided to give me a quick lesson on how to paddle straight, after seeing me paddle in circles for 20 minutes! Our time out on the lake was cut short each time as each afternoon nasty storm clouds would roll in with some torrential rainfall.  After Bunyonyi, we spent a couple nights in Kampala before heading on a safari at Murchison Falls National Park. It was actually more than just a safari, we also got to take a rather miserable four hour boat ride up the Nile to Murchison Falls in the pouring rain, and then climb to the top of the falls as well. From the pictures I had seen, I wasn’t expecting much because I kept comparing it to Niagara Falls. But when you get there, and actually see the power of the water crashing down, it’s quite incredible. The falls themselves are only about 50m from top to bottom, but the narrowest point is about 7m, and when the entire Nile is filtering through this one gap, you can imagine the force of the water!  The safari was quite good – we saw most of the big animals, except for the cats (lions and leopards). There were heaps of giraffe and hippos, saw buffalo and elephant. The entire time I was trying to wrap my head around the fact that these were wild animals – I am so used to seeing them in a contained and controlled area at the zoo – but they are free to roam because it is their land which makes it really fascinating.

For New Year’s, there were continued threats from al-Shabab and with so many parties going on, the group of us decided it was probably safer to have a house party – something low key. One of my friends here was house sitting at this nice place in Kampala, and so we ended up there for a BBQ and some drinks, which was a nice way to ring in 2011!

On another note, some other big news here in East Africa is the Sudanese referendum, which begins tomorrow! It is quite exciting – this time next week, it is widely believed there will be a new and 193^rd country in the world! The current President of Sudan, al-Bashir, made some promising comments last week about respecting any outcome of the referendum, which we can only hope he keeps; otherwise there could be some insecurity. For anyone interested in following, Al Jazeera (http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/spotlight/stateofsudan/) and the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12070034) have some pretty good coverage. Let’s hope for the best!

Until next time.