Thursday August 5, 2010. Sleeping with the chimps

Thursday August 5, 2010. Sleeping with the chimps

This morning we packed up and I dropped the girls and our overnight bags at the zoo restaurant by the jetty and dropped the vehicle off at the Ngamba office to be guarded until our return. We and about 20 students from a school in Kampala loaded onto a large wooden “canoe”, actually a motor boat with a sunshade and benches along each side, put on our life jackets (required by the captain) and set off for Ngamba Island, 1.5 hours (at our pace) out into Lake Victoria. The lake is like glass, which is great, and the last few days it has been terribly rough. Sarah is premedicated with Gravol just in case, which keeps here very quiet for the trip over. We chat to some of the students, who are in their last year or two of secondary school and are on a wildlife club field trip, and to the captain with whom I have an excellent discussion about fishing for Nile perch, which can get up to several hundred kg in weight. Along the way there are cormorants and pelicans keeping us company, diving for fish and swimming along the side of the boat.

Ngamba Island was originally and island of fishermen, but it was purchased from the Kabaka (the cultural king of the Buganda people) and the fishermen were moved to an adjacent island. A small corner is separated off from the forest by a high electrified fence, and that’s where the people stay. There are several high end tents up on platforms for expensive tourists, of which there are several, a small education rondavel, and the quarters for the staff and researchers. We offload with the students, put our backpacks in the research accommodation, and join the students for a briefing on Ngamba and on chimpanzee conservation (98.7% identical to us on DNA!). Then lunch – a Ugandan buffet for the students as well as for us. We sit with Herbert, an IT guy we were chatting to on the boat who is out here for the day to sort out a few computer things. He, as well as many of the students, are keen to talk to us and find out about us and about Canada, He invites Elizabeth to say grace over lunch, but we let him go ahead and bless the food.

After lunch the chimps get their 2;30 feeding. We walk up onto a raised platform on our side of the electric fence and the staff bring buckets of fruit, which they pitch over the fence to the waiting chimps, who stand and beg, stash food in their feet and hands, and generally scuffle to see who gets the best stuff. Some of the food falls between us and the electric fence, and the chimps use sticks to pull the food over to their side and eat it. The noise they make is almost unbelievable – hooting and shrieking as if they are being murdered – chimps are not a quiet species.

We spend the afternoon hanging out chatting with the students, with some South African and Australian tourists who are staying in the fancy tents, and looking at the birds –which are lovely. There are huge numbers of cormorants, plovers, including a pair with a nest that dive bomb us when we get close, egrets and kingfishers, yellow-billed kites soaring overhead, and black and white pied hornbills honking from the forest nearby. Not to mention weavers and swallows and all sorts of small passerine birds. Late afternoon the caregivers for the chimps start to prepare their evening meal – chunks of posho and fruit. The chimps know what time it is and gather by the wire waiting for the doors to open so they can go to their night quarters, a series of large wire enclosure with hammocks for them to sleep in. Right next to the research and staff quarters. So they come in and all get their dinner, and then we get our dinner. We shower in the outdoor showers, with the sun setting and the stars coming out, and then its time for our dinner. The three of us, Shayna, an American volunteer doing research here, the vet Dr Joshua, and all the caretaking staff eat in the lounge together. Sweet potatoes, lakefish, beans and rice. Actually very filling and good. Accompanied by the television – two of the guys are apparently hooked on one of the soap operas that Betty and I watch so we all catch up on what is happening to the cast of characters before everyone heads off to bed.