The Pearl Of Africa

  Kibale National Park, Uganda
Thursday, February 12, 2009

Internet has been even more sparse than I expected and this whole 'blog' thing is proving to be quite the challenge...but, I'll do the best I can, although there's no way I can remember everything or paint the grand picture, here is a start.... 

We flew into Entebbe, Uganda. The sun was just coming up and fought as hard as it could to light the shores of Lake Victoria as we loaded off our plane and into our bus. I was feeling sad to leave Kenya. The charisma of the city captured a piece of me. The chants of "OBAMA" as we wove our way through rush our traffic, the colorful Matatu's (basically a taxi, but they are mini vans- drivers take pride in decorating them, usually 50 % plastered with pictures of Black Hip Hop stars ... little wayne, ludacris,...curvaceous women... Jesus... and of course, right next to him, Obama) and the sounds of people with places to go and others to see. That being said, it was time for a transition and we were headed to Kibale National Park, home to the largest biomass of primates in the world, an enviornmentally protected area in Western Uganda.  Less than 5 minutes on the road, it became apparant that Uganda was more poverty stricken than Kenya. 

No matter how many statistics I have been tested on in my development classes, I really never expected to see this many children. The side of the road was an ocean of children under 10. Five year olds have 2 year olds strapped to their backs with a piece of traditional Ugandan fabric as they bounce from side to side. Extended bellies peek out from under ripped t-shirts and giggles of "Mzungu" (white man) chase us for as long as their little feet will carry them before tiring and disappearing into the distance.
Pulling into Kibale was an interesting experience (for lack of a better word...). A luscious rainforest bounded by miles and miles of bare, dry earth. The next week was filled with interactions with community members living on the limits of the park and chasing pain in the ass baboons out of our rooms. [PHOTO_ID_R=kibale-national-park.jpg
My class was called AFRICA: Environment and Development and you couldn't have picked a more appropriate setting  to highlight the struggle that exists between the aforementioned. We met farmers who have their crops destroyed by animals from the park-elephants and baboons particularly,  mothers who struggle to pay for firewood that was once collected there but is now protected and a general sentiment of hostility from the local Toro people who once dominated these lands for food and resources but are now fined or jailed if caught doing so. On the other side of the coin, the park has opened a clinic for the surrounding communities and 20% of it's profits are directed back into community projects, additionally new economic opportunities resulting from tourism and through the growing of pine trees for timber now that firewood is limtied  have been born. I still haven't concluded how I feel about the park, we spent an entire course tackling these issues - and I wont bore you with the details, but it's something I had never really thought about before.

We were up before the sun one morning and the ten members of our class piled into our van and wound our way down the West side of the Rift Valley. Never before have I felt so excited, and so uncomfortable at once, as each corner we turned the cliffs under us were more steep and to cut a long story short, it took three and half hours to cover a distance of 75 kilometres. Case in point.  I was overwhelmed as we stopped the vans and looked down over the valley, it's hard to internalize that much beauty at once. Steep terrraces cut into the sides of the mountains and the red earth continued on for as long as my eyes would take me. I couldn't quite grasp the idea that I stood on one side of the river in Uganda, while I looked at the Democratic Republic of Congo less than a kilometre in front of me, and cringed when I thought of the political impliations that are defined by the course of the water. We continued down the road to visit a Pigmy community, one of the last in Africa..and yes, they are small... I was at least a foot taller than the King..(probably more.) This was another sad illustration of cultural devestation resulting from development. Just 10 years ago these people were self sustained and lived in the forests, clothes made from bark of trees, hunting and forraging for their survival. The government declared some of the forest in this area a protected area and negotiated to have structures built and a school for their community, so out of the woods and into the modern world they went. Today, a decade later, they are entirely dependent on surrounding communities for their survival, they no longer hunt or gather, but make their living telling their stories to people like me who pay a fee to hear about their traditional livlihoods.

I attended a Pentacostal church on Sunday. Again, I felt very conflicted. There was a lot that was beautiful under that roof, there was a lot that scared me. (For those that don't know, the Pentacostal Church is a rising phenonemon in Africa, loosely linked to Evangelical Christianity- largely funded by Americans and is changing the lives of people across the continent- providing a great deal of hope and backing some amazing progress throughout communities...

3 essays, a 300 page course pack, one too many 6 AM wake up calls and a final exam (all in 2 weeks...) later.We had completed the first session. Packed our bags and made our way to Jinja... and spend the next few mornings waking up on the mouth of the Nile River...No big deal... heh... Jinja was a lot bigger than the communities we have been in so far, so we excitedly charged into a corner store to snatch up chocolate and chips, onlookers probably assumed we had been in the forest for years... I attemped to use the internet there, but power is well, unreliable, and after 2 hours in an internet cafe, I had successfully sent one e-mail and had pursuaded myself not to strangle someone with the power cord about 20 times, as sweat dripped down my back in the 34 degree weather as the lady at the desk promised "last time, now you'll have power long"...

There's a line for the computers and I'm off to eat some breakfast ... but...I'm back in Kenya and will send an update the next chance I get.  I fell asleep to the sound of the crashing waves of Lake Victoria last night, and awoke early this morning to the sound of my professor inviting us on a 6 AM bird watch. All I could think as I dragged my tired, crispy body from under my mosquito net, opened the door onto my balcony and was welcomed by the scarlet sky was...  Seriously? Can this be real?