Amazing Animals

Amazing Animals

In each place that we went on our safari trip, our guides were amazingly knowledgeable, helpful, and patient, and they always ended by asking us to please share what we had learned with our friends, so we could spread the news and desire to save and protect these amazing animals.

I was hoping that my trip would help me re-fall in love with Uganda, since I have been feeling frustrated with it lately.  I loved the beautiful scenery, and I found one very valuable reason to be proud of my current country: they are doing amazing work to preserve and protect their natural resources.  For a third-world country, this is rare and commendable.  For instance, my parents said that when they were in Cameroon, they didn't see any monkeys in the forests because they had all been killed for meat, and even in the national parks the game was thinly spread.  So I am sharing some of these valuable stories with you.

Entebbe Wildlife Education Center:

Once upon a time, this was a zoo, but at this point it is designed for rescue and education.  The animals are mostly rescued from poachers or other disasters, so there are no non-Ugandan animals, and no Ugandan animals which haven't needed rescue (for instance, no elephants).  They work to help them live a natural life, and engage the visitors in understanding their lifestyle and needs.  On our first visit, a guide came over to our little group and accompanied us for our whole visit, sharing many stories about the animals and keeping the kids engaged and learning.

Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary:

Rhinos became extinct in Uganda during the unstable years of dictatorship.  This group has imported six white rhinos and provided them with a huge natural space, and is monitoring them as they breed.  They have had seven babies so far.  When they get to 14, they will start re-introducing them to the National Parks where they would have naturally lived.

Rhinos are currently being killed at the rate of one per day.  Their meat is inedible and they are peaceful animals, so the only reason for their murder is their horns.  They are actually made of the exact same material as fingernails and hair, so all of the "magic" potions made from their horns would be the same if they were made from fingernail clippings!  

Rhinos have a social order, but spend most of their time alone, because otherwise they would fight for dominance.  However, the children might still stay close to their mother.  When she has a new baby, she will chase the older children away while she takes care of the new one.

We were able to get very close to four rhinos as they were grazing.  They were surprisingly graceful animals, and just magnificent to be near.

Chimp Tracking in the Budongo Forest:

It is amazing how similar chimpanzees are to our own selves!  Their faces and hands are expressive.  They live in groups of 40 to 130 individuals, which proves that they are very intelligent to be able to understand that many inter-relationships.  Another proof of their intelligence is that the babies are still juveniles and stay with their mother until they are about 10 years old, which is about a quarter of their entire lives.  Both of those are about the same proportions as human beings!  The mothers are loving and attentive, and play games with their babies and educate them.  If a mother chimp dies, other chimps in her group will adopt the babies and take care of them as their own.  A mother might have another baby every 2-4 years, and have up to five babies in her lifetime, and she continues to take care of all her different-aged children -- again, strikingly similar to our own biology!  Chimps do not pair up in permanent partnerships, and different male chimps are allowed to present themselves to a female in heat, and then she can chose whom to mate with and in what order.  (Hopefully not an exact human parallel!)  If a male chimp gets mad about being scorned and decides to hit the spurning female instead, the other males in the group will come and rescue her.

Chimps live in large communities, but during the day they go out in different groups to feed, which might only be a few individuals.  They had many different calls to communicate with each other, including drumming on certain trees to report to each other across the forest.  For instance, while we were there, five chimps came across the road, called and discussed with other groups, and soon 18 of them came back to the first side!

Chimps eat primarily fruit and leaves, but also a small percentage of meat.  I had known that, but assumed that it was small rodents or birds.  It turns out that the group we visited really loves to hunt the colobus monkeys, and different groups have complicated and specific ways that they hunt their game and then share it with the group.  For instance, in one group only the hunters get to share the meat, and in another they might share first with the dominant males or the juveniles.  

Chimps are still hunted for their meat, and because African witch doctors like to use their teeth and bones in their potions.  Also, people capture the young chimps as pets or for display.  Several chimps in the non-zoo were captured from the wild and put in small cages in someone's house, and they charged people to come into their living room and see them.

They were beautiful, graceful and powerful animals.  It was a privilege to be able to spend time near them.

Murchison Falls National Park:

This has been a national park for some time, since before the dictatorship years.  But I am not writing a history of the park, but about some of the things that they do to protect and build pride in the animals and the heritage.

For instance, 25% of the park entrance fees goes to the villages in and around the park.  This money is allocated to help them raise livestock, put up water treatment facilities, or whatever other projects the village deems useful.  They do this so the local people will see the park itself as a resource worth protecting, instead of poaching game for meat or for sale, or killing the majestic predators to protect their livestock.  It is a long, slow road to change traditional ways of thinking about the animals.  Like many poor people, it is easy to think about having meat for today and tomorrow, and more difficult to think about preserving income for years and generations.  

They are also trying very hard to education visitors about things like not feeding the animals, taking things out of the park, and littering.  These are VERY difficult concepts for the African mentality!  Every game drive has a ranger accompanying the party, and visitors are not allowed out of the main areas.  They frame this as protection for the visitors, but I suspect it is just as much to protect the animals from human stupidity.  

They have recently discovered oil within the park's boundaries, and we saw a couple of oil wells.  When we asked the ranger about it, she said that she doesn't know if the oil wells will be able to coexist successfully with nature, but that the company did a lot of research and worked very hard with the locals and the experts to try and make it fit in with the park's needs.  In a place like America, this would be expected, but here in a poor country like Uganda, even making the attempt is commendable.

Animals like giraffes have disappeared from most of the other national parks, including Queen Elizabeth which we had visited earlier.  They are working on figuring out how to reintroduce them to their previous native habitats.

There are many National Parks and National Forests in Uganda, and they seem to be working very hard to protect the areas, education the locals, and welcome national and international visitors and give them pride in their natural resources.  Hotels are carefully limited in the parks, and all of the ones we saw or heard about were careful with their resources, blending in to the surroundings, hiring locally, and supporting artisans and workers who helped the park.  For instance, the gift shop in the Budongo Forest sold greeting cards decorated with wire from snares set all over the forest.  The income from projects like this allows the de-snaring projects to continue.

Our safari trip was very expensive by Ugandan standards, and a big investment even by our American ones.  First of all, I felt like it was worth it to give the girls -- and all three children, actually -- pride and joy in Uganda, and to give them a chance to have memories of something very special about their country.  However, as we made our journey, I felt like it was money well spent for other reasons as well.  A poor country like Uganda cannot support its natural resources on its own, like the US does (at least in part).  It is us, the visitors and the people who care, who keep everything going.  Our fees are literally saving the lives of animals and even entire species!  For instance, we paid over $100 for the group of us to go track the rhinos.  You can buy a lot of groceries for that kind of money around here!  Was it worth it for an hour or two?  It was an incredible experience, and I do think we will remember it for a long time, but it is also keeping those 14 incredible animals from being killed for their horns, and hopefully eventually bringing rhinos back into the wild all over Uganda.

And on a final note, just an interesting fact about birds.  Over 1,000 species have been identified in Uganda, including many that live only here, and more are being discovered all the time.  The fascinating part is that this is MORE THAN HALF of all the bird species identified in Africa!

Travel Notes: Zoo and We're Off

I have been trying to keep this blog mostly focused on the process of adoption, the emotions that we are going through and how we are dealing with them, and our inter-cultural relationships.  However, right now I am going to write a few posts about the kind of tourist-y things we have been doing while my parents are here, which might be a little more travel-blog-y!  Well, we're traveling in our own very particular three-crazy-children kind of way!

On Tuesday we went to the zoo, or rather, the Uganda Wildlife Education Center.  It is very well done, and all the animals have been locally rescued, mostly from poachers, and are housed in well-designed and large enclosures.  Going around the zoo is a nice walk through wide paths through woods, with Lake Victoria off on the side, and then one can eat fresh fish and chips looking over the water to foreign countries.

We hired a car to drive to Entebbe and we TRIED to get going early in the morning -- good practice with getting all six of us out the door!  It was a lot easier trip in a private car than in the two minibusses that Emerson, Davey and I had used several months ago, although I think the chaos level in the car was actually louder!  All three kids took off running around, but as soon as we saw the first animal in the distance -- which were some different antelope species -- Buttercup immediately changed her mind and wanted to go up in the wrap right away, and stay there the whole time!  I had brought the one recently rescued wrap that I hadn't had a chance yet to use for the day: Didymos Cinnamon Pfau.  Because a pfau is a peacock, so obviously I had to wear the peacocks to see the peacocks, right?  I wrapped Buttercup really high, so her shoulders were up above mine, so she could look around really easily and reach out and touch things, so she had the best view of anyone!

We arrived mid-morning, and it had been a cool and rainy night coming into a hot sunny day, which was the perfect time for the animals to be out and active, especially the big cats.  We watched the leopard climbing a tree and pacing around, the lions jumping onto a platform and rubbing their faces together, and the cerval cat playing with sticks and insects like a domestic kitten.  We stayed and watched them all for a long time.  We also saw different birds, grazing animals, primates and all kinds of Ugandan wildlife.  I figure that maybe now we can recognize them when we have a chance to spot them in the bush.... or if we don't see them in the wild we will have at least seen them in Africa.... or we have a chance to see them up close and really observe their beautiful colors and unique features.... or we are simply giving the children more chances to "go see animals"!!  

We tried to talk a little bit about the zoo's mission and how some people are mean to animals but we want to respect them and not hurt them.  The older children found a sign with a picture of a rhino with his horn cut off and they were very upset; Hibiscus almost cried and Emerson came up with a whole plan for when he grows up he'll run a zoo where he saves de-horned rhinos and takes care of them.  However, I think at this age the children are mostly seeing our respect for the animals, and their own instinctual admiration, and that is the most important key for them growing up to think wisely about conserving our wonderful world.  Although whenever Hibiscus starts getting frightened about a big animal, she immediately thinks that she should go get a gun a shoot it!

Our animal plans continued on Thursday when we left for Masindi, toward the north-west of Uganda.  Although not nearly as far as our last safari trip, it was a long way with kids or backpacks on everyone's lap!  But we've made a lot of familial progress in two months, and we survived the whole journey without ipads OR vomit!

We planned to walk around Masindi the first afternoon, but it turned out that the whole town was about three blocks!  We walked along the streets with their little shops in the concrete block buildings, a few cars or people or boda-bodas passing by slowly, looking to see what we could see and also maybe to grab a snack.  Then we went through the gate into the market, and this is where the life was!  There were rows and rows of vegetables and fruit, baskets and oil, and then through another concrete wall into rows of clothing, soap, fabric, plastic ware, and other sundries.  And then we found the chapatis, roasted maize and popcorn -- then the kids were happy!

`The Drama of a Small Day-Trip

Day-trip to the Zoo

Yesterday we took our first trip out of Kampala, to the neighboring city of Entebbe.  The airport is in Entebbe, so we came from there, and it is only 23 km away, so it seemed like a manageable project.  The first day that was completely open was yesterday, a Saturday.  When we had dinner with our upstairs Kenyan neighbors on Friday night, I mentioned the trip and the younger boy looked so excited that I invited him along.  David is 10 years old, slim, with a quiet but earnest demeanor and a sudden smile, both thoughtful and playful.  He and Emerson get along very well, and I think Davey enjoys how he can both teach and be protective of Emerson, and also how playing with a little child can allow his own playful side to come out.  So it was an adventure going much farther afield than we had been so far, but it felt like even more of a risk to be adding someone to our familiar little party!

This will not be so much of a story about what we saw, but just about the process of traveling around here, and things that I felt were interesting to observe.

Kampala is kind of like an octopus city, with a central downtown and then arms going off in different directions (I think Ugandans are not really city-adapted people, and the city needs to sprawl a great deal in order for everyone to have their gardens and banana groves and goats).  We live down at the end of the Gaba Road tentacle, and we needed to take the minibus into town and then walk over to to catch the minibus out the Entebbe tentacle.  On a previous trip, we had found where all the minibusses heading out towards Entebbe start out; the only confusing thing about the minibus system is getting in the correct place where the minibusses go where you are going.  There are no maps or bus numbers or official routes or anything, but if you stand on the correct road the minibusses going by will take you where you want to go.  So all that seemed straightforward enough, until I realized that it usually takes us about an hour to get downtown, and the guidebook said the busses to Entebbe can take an hour.  I realized that our little outing would require as much driving time as going up to Portland!

The advantage of taking minibusses through Kampala over driving to Portland, is that there is always something interesting to watch.  There are always people and shops and goats and quite a bit of beautiful scenery; since the whole area is set on hills, often you can get quite a view.  The disadvantage is that minibusses are not built for a comfortable ride!  Usually small children ride on laps, but I found out something worthwhile about travelling with two children: the three of us could fit in along two seats.  You pay the bus fares by the bum, not by the head, so I don't think it matters how many children I bring, it matters how many seats I fit us into!

I thought we were taking the bus all the way into the end in Entebbe, but the driver stopped multiple times to let people on or off in the greater Entebbe area, and at one of those stops I saw a sign for the zoo.  We jumped off as fast as we could (which isn't very fast!) and started walking.  It was a little strange for a while, as there were no more signs and we didn't know where we were on the map, but after half an hour or so we did indeed make it to the zoo.

The zoo is actually a wildlife conservation and education area or something like that.  For children, it doesn't matter, as they just want to flit around and see the crocodile and the lion and the pythons (at least, those are the boys' picks!).  For adults, it is significant because all the animals there were rescued from poachers or otherwise were damaged or couldn't live in the wild, which besides being good for the animals means that they are all native to Uganda and can also be found in the national parks.  I figured it was kind of a primer to later taking a trip to the parks: I'd get a good look at the animals to be able to know what they are if we see them in the wild!  Uganda has many different kinds of antelope species which I've never seen before, of different sizes and descriptions, and they were interesting and graceful.  Other than that, a zoo is kind of a zoo is a zoo.  Other parents will know that it is really more about managing the children, and trying to get them to really look at something rather than running off and complaining, than it is about deep contemplation of the animals!

We had lunch in the zoo restaurant.  You see, this is the way my exploration of Ugandan cuisine is going: when we go out, it is part of a larger trip, and we end up somewhere kind of isolated which serves Ugandan "fast food," which consists of: chicken and chips, sausage and chips, fish and chips, liver and chips, plain chips.  This is how, a month into it, I have not yet had matooke or most Ugandan sauces.  That, and that children's portions do not exist, and the plates tend to be large, so I order something that Emerson and I can share, and we all know how fond he would be of Ugandan stew -- it has stuff touching other stuff!  Horrors!

The restaurant was on a patio overlooking Lake Victoria.  Where we live is on Murchison Bay, so we see the great lake but we also see the shore on the other side; this was looking out into the endless waters.  Davey got excited to think that it went straight on to Tanzania!  Of course, in this amazing setting, the boys were mostly interested in watching a make-shift raft haul stones out into building a breakwater -- well, we didn't know what they were making, so that involved quite a bit of speculation.  There was also a lively game of Go Fish.  Watching children this age play games with each other is so interesting, because they are still so stuck on rules and exactness, and yet they still can only understand their own perspective -- which wants to win.  So they would play along for a bit, until one boy saw a way that he could get more pairs, and the other boy would get all up in arms because he was cheating, and then promptly try it himself on the next turn; lots of quarrelling and everyone happy as clams.  It was an interesting observation from a child development perspective... and much more enjoyable when I was not trying to play myself.

Lunch also presented an interesting observation in hosting/guesting.  In America, if a child were tagging along with another family's outing, the parents would probably send their child with everything they might need and lots of specific instructions, including money to pay for anything.  In fact, they would probably ask the hosting parents exactly what to bring, and include extra.  Davey's parents didn't ask me anything about how long we planned to be gone or what to bring; he just showed up wearing neat clothes and looking quietly excited.  I have read that in Uganda, the job of hosting is to provide everything for your guests, so I wasn't completely surprised.  (As opposed to America, where the host is supposed to offer to pay for everything, but then the guests are supposed to argue about it and try and pay for themselves, and maybe they are more polite if they manage to convince the host to pay, or really they weren't supposed to -- I really kind of like the straightforward expectation better!)  But apparently, the polite parents' response was to tell their son to only get the cheapest things.  After a careful examination of the menu, Davey ordered plain chips for lunch.  I asked what he wanted to drink, and since even water costs money, he looked at the menu again and asked for soda, which is slightly cheaper -- but Emerson was having juice, and the waiter suggested juice and he agreed, but then realized it wasn't on the menu and he had to ask the price, embarrassed.  It was more expensive than soda, and he looked very flustered, but by now I had noticed the pattern and insisted to the waiter that he was still getting the juice.  (I've never seen the family drinking soda, so I doubted that he actually preferred it.)

Which leads to another interesting observation.  I suggested that both boys use the bathroom before lunch, and Davey immediately agreed about washing his hands (they are very meticiulous about washing hands before eating here), but told me that he never uses public restrooms.  And he didn't, the whole day.  I thought maybe he meant that he snuck into the grass or something, but he was never away from us long enough to do that, either.  Our trip was over 11 hours, and he drank two or three big glasses or bottles of water or juice that I saw, so I don't know how he managed it!  Which points to an interesting connundrum of African travel: you know that it is hot and sunny out, and that you should stay well hydrated and drink lots of water, but you never know when or how it will be possible to go to the bathroom.  Actually, the bathrooms here are a great deal less disgusting than they might be, but unless you are in a tourist area they are fairly few between and difficult to find, so it's quite a project to go and get to one.  It's especially a project when walking at 4-year-old speed.  Little boys are apparently allowed to pee on the street in a gutter or something, and I've seen men going behind a building, but those options are not available to the adult female!  I would also like to point out, with amusement, that the proper, delicate American lady turned out to be significantly less fastidious about her bathroom use than the African boy!

After the animals, lunch, pictures on the beach (Davey's suggestion), and a toy helicopter ride (Emerson's insistence), we headed out to the botanical gardens, which luckily were only a 15 or 20 minute walk away.  They were supposed to be quite nice and offer the chance to see many different butterflies and birds, and trees that the British had planted from all over.  It was a pleasant walk, but I think it would have been much more interesting with some information about what was going on.  Apparently they have guided walks, but even if we could have found the right spot I didn't think that would work very well with the boys.  Also, there probably would have been more butterflies and birds if it were morning or evening, not the middle of the day -- but that's logistically impossible since it's a 2-hour trip to get there, and I don't want to be out in the dark.

However, after a little while, the boys found good boy-ish things to do, that were totally unrelated to the purpose of the botanical gardens, except that nature is a good place to be a kid.  There was a rainforest-y area in the middle, built up with uneven stone stairs and stone gutters for streams to run through. (They say that these were built during the filming of "Tarzan," although my guidebook is not convinced.)  Davey was fascinated how clear and clean the water was.  He suggested that I could fill my water bottle and use the purifier on this water, since it was so clean (he was also fascinated by the purifier, I think!).  Soon they were both splashing in the water, and Davey washed his face and Emerson washed his shoes, and we followed the stream up and down. We went down by the lakeshore, and the boys scrambled down towards a little pool, where Davey thought he could catch some minnows to show Emerson, but the fish had no intention of being caught!  We found a beach-y area with seashells, and Emerson gathered some "treasures."  

At the meadows towards the top of the park lives a large group of vervet monkeys, and this was fascinating too.  They are light brown monkeys about the size of a Sheltie or so.  They were mostly running around on the grass, and it was quite something to see their little fingers and little faces, so like ours!  It was one of those funny times, when it seems like you are looking right at a picture, and yet the picture is really real, and it's striking how just like the picture it is!  At least, that's how I felt watching them groom each other, or stare over at us.  They were also very playful, with a lot of little ones running around.  They were not afraid of people, and the boys walked towards the nearest ones, obviously enjoying the suspense of knowing they weren't supposed to get too close, but what about a little bit closer?  And what happens if I clap, or stomp my foot?  One of the males involved in such an experiment ran towards the boys instead of away (probably having just such experimental thoughts in his own mind!) and both kids were totally startled!

Emerson also had a very Emerson-y adventure in the botanical gardens.  We were allowed to walk on either the grass, which was mostly clipped like a lawn, or on the rutted dirt roads.  The grass allowed closer inspection of trees, but had a lot of bugs in it.  Emerson was feeling cheerful and running ahead along the road, and he fell full-length and full-speed, banging up his knees and tummy and hands.  Unfortunately, he had done the exact same thing the day before, so he already had open skin on one knee and he easily re-opened the same scrape.  Oh, the drama, the agony!!!  I will spare you the details, but there was at least half an hour of full-fledged screaming, which I think was more than strictly necessary.  One of these days, I am hoping that Emerson's sense of public scrutiny will kick in, and it will occur to him that maybe it is a little embarrassing to throw a giant fit, or scream endlessly about one scrape, when friends and strangers are all around and trying not to stare.  Meanwhile, there is a reason why Mama keeps the first aid kit in her bag, as it tends to come in handy quite often.  I am never quite sure whether I am proud of his tenacity, to keep running ahead and acting crazy even though he knows he might fall, or think that perhaps a little extra caution might be a reasonable addition to the wild running.  He has a dramatic fall every couple days or so, and although most of them don't produce blood, they all produce copious crying and look like they really would hurt.  I think most little children fall a lot, and I remember having frequently banged-up knees as a kid, but I don't know that so many of them scrape their tummies and their foreheads with the violence of their tumbles!

We began our long trek home, and luckily found the bus stage towards Kampala quite easily.  Then there was a bit of a funny story.  A few minutes into the trip, Emerson started to complain that his tummy hurt, which lately often precedes a bowel movement.  He agreed with my suggestion, and said he wanted to get off right now and go poop.  But where to get off?  (See the previous discussion about toilet availability!)  I didn't want to ask the driver for a stop, because they will just stop anywhere, so I thought when he did stop and it seemed like it was a built-up area we would get off.  But there never seemed to be a good time, and then we were out of Entebbe.... and Emerson fell asleep. I don't know how he can sleep on the minibusses, which are not only uncomfortable, but also noisy and windy, but he does!  He slept all the way to Kampala, and then we spent quite a while searching for a restroom, and finally found a public one.  It was a squat toilet, of course, but Emerson insisted that it was only for peeing and he wouldn't even try and go poop!  I was glad that we hadn't made it off the bus, if it turned out he wouldn't even try!

We didn't make it home before dark, but we were on the minibus out of Kampala before dark.  I haven't heard anyone talk very much about safety around here, but I personally think that I don't want to be walking around downtown Kampala after dark.  In our own area, the village market area is always still full of people, including many women and children, in the hour or so after dark, and our apartment is only a couple hundred yards past the end of the busy part, so I feel like that is relatively safe to walk through.  I don't know how ordinary tourists go to dinner and go back again, since dinnertime is after dark, but it will continue to be dinner at home for us!

And that was our day, with some fairly interesting sights, but mostly the small adventures that tend to surround children.  The conclusion was that we were both so tired we slept so late that we couldn't get to church this morning!