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| This is what was under the tree!! |
Another great spot in the park is the Kazinga channel - this connects Lake George and Lake Edward and has the greatest concentration of hippos anywhere in the world..
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| Yes - your bum does look big in that... |
The restaurant there has an amazing view over the channel - a real life wildlife documentary while you eat lunch - elephants even come to the restaurant looking for snacks!
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| Not all of the elephants are in the bush... this is the restaurant.... |
Not forgetting the cute mongeese under my table!!
And if you get bored of the lions, hippos and elephants there's quite a few other creatures to keep you interested...
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| Vultures on the lookout... |
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| Maribou Stork - a common scavenger in towns - bit like our seagulls but 20 x the size!! |
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| This warthog family lived just outside my room! |
The channel is home to people too...
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| Inside of Myeya Safari Lodge - I went for a drink then back to my cheap backpackers!! |
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| Sunset over the channel |
Leaving QENP I walked along a road looking for a matatu or boda - the guy at the gate had not told me it was forbidden to do this as technically I was still in the park... with its associated wildlife.. lions, elephant, hippos, water buffalo etc!! Oops! Luckily a boda did come along but not before I had walked 3 km!! I didn't see anything but I'm still rating it as a near death experience!
I headed up to Fort Portal - one of the main draws here is chimpanzee tracking
in Kibale National Park - not quite as awesome as the gorillas and certainly
not as peaceful - when not resting on logs they run around like lunatics -
screaming and beating on trees!
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| Spot the difference? |
I took a little side trip to the crater lakes south of Fort Portal - allegedly they are free of bilharzia - we'll see! It's pretty easily treated with a tapeworm tablet (praziquantel - same drug as we use in dogs and cats in the UK!) As well as bilharzia there is also the threat of malaria not to mention Sleeping Sickness spread by the very annoying tsetse fly! Oh did I mention Ebola and Zika viruses lurking in neighbouring countries? And if that wasn't enough there is also Mango Fly disease - if you dry clothes outside this fly lays eggs on your clothing.
When you put the clothing on a larvae develops which burrows it's way into your skin - a doctor has to get it out!! Rule No. 1 in Uganda - never dry your underwear outside!!
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| Living the good life for once!! |
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| Didn't even cross my mind!! |
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| Red Colobus... |
The Black and White Colobus is a beautiful monkey...
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| Orange and dusty - the murram roads of Uganda |
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| Crater lakes south of Fort Portal Western Uganda |
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| Blue Monkey |
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| Olive baboon with baby on board |
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| Don't leave your windows open in your jeep! |
From Fort Portal it was back on a very bumpy road - in a very crowded matatu -
which broke down everytime we went up a hill!
250km in 10 hours!!
Another town another national park - this time Murchison Falls which straddles
the Nile
I also saw plenty of Nile
crocodiles... which are incidentally very tasty barbecued...! I'd rather be
eating them than the other way round!
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| To swim or not not swim....? |
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Best not to swim..!!
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| The Nile snakes it's way away from the falls... |
Good game spotting here and I completed my personal big five (elephant, lion, water buffalo, rhino and leopard) by seeing a couple of leopards on an early morning game drive.
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| This is the leopard's tail as it disappeared from view...I did see all of him though - honest!! |
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| Jackal finishing off breakfast |
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| Charging our truck.... |
On the way out of the park I spent a night at Boomu Women's Group - started 10 years ago by an inspirational Ugandan woman called Ednah - this small collective weaves papyrus into baskets and runs accommodation and a restaurant.
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Preparing the veggies...
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| Steaming in pots over an open fire |
They also do village walks and cooking demonstrations. The walk round the village was a fascinating insight into Ugandan life. |
Outside of the big towns life in rural Uganda is at a subsistence level. People live crowded in houses they build themselves from mud bricks.
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| House under construction |
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| Mud bricks |
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| The dead are buried very close to the house |
One small building for sleeping, another for cooking and then a toilet in the garden. They grow small amounts of plantain, cassava, millet, beans and fruits.
Agriculture is very basic here - there is no mechanisation - the tools are the same as they have been for hundreds of years - the machete and the hoe...
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| Ednah hoeing up cassava roots for dinner |
Tea workers
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| Ugandan Market |
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| Cooking up Posho - maize meal - the poor man's staple |
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| Plantains and more plantains... |
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| Cassava drying in the sun - it can be ground into flour to make bread |
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| The market |
Open air butchers... no refrigeration here...
Plantain is called matooke here and is served with everything - usually steamed. Another staple is posho made with maize. Ugandans eat lots of beans and cassava roots.. so lots of carbohydrates and just little animal protein. Oddly chicken is expensive - and steaks are cheap - suits me!
Fruit and vegetables are ridiculously inexpensive - 2p avocados and mangoes anyone?!
The basics of daily life can be a struggle - people walk miles with yellow jerry cans to collect water - from streams or lakes. As you can see most people carry things on their heads...much easier than carrying in your arms...
Electricity is hit and miss - rural areas often have no supply and rely on small solar panels to charge a phone or power a light bulb. Even in towns scheduled powercuts are a way of life
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| Village of 1 man and 17 wives!! |
Families are large - 4 kids seems to be the minimum and 6-8 is not uncommon. I passed one village where a man had 17 wives and over 50 children - no other men lived there!! Imagine the nagging... :-)
Around 50% of the population is under 15 so there are massive pressures on the state education system - class sizes of over 100 are not unusual! As a result a lot of people send their kids to private schools where the class size is smaller - around 45!
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| Colonial Schoolhouse |
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| Modern School |
As well as utility and education problems health is a major issue in Uganda. HIV rates are one of the highest in Africa (8%l and TB is very prevalent also.
Birth control is available but not used hence the high birth rate and high STD rate - massive problems to overcome.
As well as western medicine there are many traditional healers and witch doctors. As well as seeking cures for illness many people just want to be wealthier and will seek the help of a witch doctor to do this. Sacrifice is still a common practice here - usually a goat (goats have a hard time here) however some witch doctors believe in human sacrifice and unbelievably occasionally small children are kidnapped from rural villages for this purpose...
Despite all this Ugandans are relentlessly cheerful and smiling - it's a great country to travel in - people are happy to help you out. Accommodation and food standards are not high but are fine for the kind of travel I'm doing! People come to Africa and spend ridiculous amounts of money in hotels - some are over $1000 a night (more than some Ugandans make in year!) but that money is not staying locally - it goes abroad - maybe not such a responsible way to travel..
In Uganda white people are called mzungos - cycling through the villages little kids would chorus "Hey mzungo how are you?" I would give a thumbs up and ask how they were - "Ama fine" they would chorus in reply!
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| "Hey mzungo! How are you?" |
I made a stop on the way back to Kampala at the Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary. Sadly in 80s rhino were poached to extinction
here - if fact government soldiers in the national parks slaughtered almost all
Uganda's wildlife - for food and for fun..
The sanctuary reintroduced 6 rhino from abroad about 10 years ago and since
then 9 more have been born - one day they hope to release some into the
national parks. Their rhinos are tracked
and guarded with AK47's 24 hours a day
.
Rhino horn can attract prices of $60,000 a kilo so poachers are willing to risk everything to kill a rhino. The major destination these days is not for Traditional Chinese Medicine but is Vietnam where rich businessmen use it as a hangover cure or give small shavings of horn to seal business deals..
Seeing them in the wild was up there with the gorillas - there are amazing animals..
I spent a few more days in Entebbe with David the Ugandan vet - he does some
work at the small zoo there and I got to meet a couple of orphaned cheetahs..
very odd stroking a cat the size of a Great Dane!
All through my stay in Uganda it was the lead up to a general election.
Tensions can run high and it was wise to leave the country before the vote.. it
was just as well I did as they closed all the borders and worse than that they
suspended Facebook!!
As I walked across the border into Rwanda I was very sad to have left - Uganda
is a special place and well worth a visit - I would call it Easy Africa - a
nice introduction to Africa if you haven't been before - just avoid election
times and of course dry all underwear indoors!!
Wandervet
The island is very close to the equator and you would have thought the sun might have come out now and again - we got 1 day out of 5! But I'm sure I will get no sympathy from you lot! 
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