Mpanga Forest Trip
This morning I and a some folk from the Respond office went on a field trip out of Kampala. I walked into Wandegeya and caught a taxi downtown to meet up with everyone at the Sheraton, where Lis, who just came in from the US Friday night, was staying. Lendell and his wife Kate and 14 month old baby Naomi picked us up, and with me in the navigator’s seat (I am the map and brochure queen for those who don”t know)we headed out of town on the bypass ring road, and then west to find Mbamba forest. The bypass is only a few years old and saves an enormous amount of traffic getting out of town. During the weekend it isn’t too bad but the traffic during the week truly is hellish. Combine volume with a variety of drivers, including the aggressive, inexperienced, and incompetent, and boda boda motorcyles who make their own lanes and traffic rules, add a splash of pedestrians, and you get part of the picture. The bypass goes through what was papyrus swamp and rural areas until recently - it is not the most affluent area with small shacks and shantys, pits where bricks are being cut out of the clay, wandering cattle, and piles of garbage (more on that later). Plus the road is also used by bicycles carrying people and masses of gear. We successfully found our way round the ring and round the roundabouts on it to join the main Mbarara road heading west.. The first section is very urban and built up, with a solid row of shops and markets along either side. There are also homes, some quite impressive with ornate gates and fences, and some no more than shacks. With time the scenery becomes more rural, with more green space and fewer shops. There are several market stands with a variety of fruits and vegetables - tomatoes, banana, plantain, passion fruit, pineapples, huge spiky jackfruit to name a few. There are also racks with large woven baskets in one particular area, probably closer to the extensive swamps that appear to encircle the region.
We found the Mpanga Forest Reserve with no problem. Navigating in Africa is not always that easy, but in this case the location was exactly as described and the sign was intact. We pulled into a small clearing with welcome office, thatched picnic shelters, and masses of butterflies. The air was just alive with them - all sorts of shapes and colours - iridescent blue and green, several reds and oranges, white and black, and pure white. Tiny ones, large ones, several varieties of swallowtail. None of which agreed to sit in place in the sunshine for photographs. While we signed in and paid our admission several black and white casqued hornbills sat up in the top of a tree calling and making a heck of a ruckus before flying off into the forest.
We followed a main trail for about an hour to the edge of the swamp through lovely tall forest, apparently second growth but still impressive. There were huge fig and strangler fig trees extending way up into the canopy. The butterflies were there all the way, particularly in clearings or by the several small streams. We heard but did not see red-tailed monkeys, as well as a variety of birds. Part of the trail passed through “spider alley”, where large webs were suspended across the path by a single guyline and manned by good-sized red and black spiders. Lendell was sent first to identify and hold the guylines as it turned out none of the rest of us relished the thought of walking straight into a web. We also saw a variety of mantids, grasshoppers, and several convoys of some sort of army ant on the move. I was the only one in boots, the others were in Tevas, and both the women managed to get rather painful ant bites along the way. Naomi happily waved at the butterflies from her perch in a backpack and then napped on the return trip.
We pooled food items for a picnic before heading back to Kampala - tiny sweet bananas, tiny VERY tart oranges (not a big success), avocado, meat pies, and some enormous pink heavy coconut covered cookie things I picked up at the bakery in town. Baked goods may look like items from home, but they rarely taste the same. All in all a very successful expedition.
On Garbage
Much of what I’ve seen of Uganda is terribly litter strewn, with much of Kampala and around the university really eyesores from that respect. But there are signs encouraging people not to litter, and in the downtown there are many women sweeping the streets and making piles. But I think the big problem is what happens next. One can pay for private garbage pickup from ones house, and presumably there are land fills it goes to, but I don’t get the impression that there is much of a public system for removing garbage and street sweepings from many private and public areas. In the area on the university campus where many staff live, in not exactly up-scale accommodation, the system seems to consist of making big piles, then goats, dogs, marabou storks and pied crows remove the edible/recyclable items, and then the rest is burnt. Unfortunately a lot blows away or doesn’t burn and the surrounding area is liberally strewn with plastic bags and other refuse.
On the World Cup Final
I had dinner tonight (8:00, early by Ugandan standards) with a faculty member in the Wildlife Department I have been trying to track down since I arrived. We had a modest Indian meal in a café on campus which I searched for on several occasions last fall and never found. What I took to be a laneway was actually a small road. Doesn’t help that I was always looking for it in the dark. It was a bit of a classic meal get a menu, order off the menu, be told some time later that what was you ordered wasn’t being served tonight, ask what was being served, and discover that only about 3 dishes out of the 3 page menu are actually on offer. But the food was good, and we had the entertainment of the startup of the world cup on the television and several small and totally mangy kittens slinking about under the tables. After some planning about our holiday in August, Lu ordered me a taxi to head off to a restaurant to join the group from the PREDICT office for the final. I now have the phone number for Peter, who is apparently a reliable taxi driver and charged me about half of what I paid last time for a similar distance trip. Lu’s housekeeper did the fare discussions for me!
The restaurant bar was totally packed with a selection of vuvusela players. I eventually found the group and we watched the game together. It was mostly composed of females out for the social aspect rather than the football, so we could engage in the sort of observations that I had to keep to myself last night with Roger - That one’s headband looks funny, how do you the other one keeps his stockings up over his knees without them falling down, those shoes are really yellow - that sort of thing. Partway through the second half Lendell got a text telling him there had been a bomb blast somewhere and that all expats were being told to leave bars and go home. We were out of there in less than 2 minutes leaving our drinks on the table. The Americans take this stuff really seriously, and this group had lived in places like East Timor so there was no mucking around. So I had to wait for the results of the game until the next day.
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