FIRST DAYS IN UGANDA
Greetings from Uganda!
After almost a year of preparation, I made the trip from Edmonton to Entebbe. That is 18 hours of flying, and a jump of 9 time zones into the future. A long travel day means little sleep, airport food, and deteriorating personal condition. Luckily, the planes had free entertainment in the form of headrest video, and British Airways had a decent selection of movies and shows for the longest legs of the journey. (By the way, British Airways also offers free wine with dinner, and the food was surprisingly good for plane service!) I watched part of three movies (I won’t say which ones, because I fell asleep in the middle of each one, which is not a vote of confidence), but the highlight of the in-flight entertainment was BBC television shows, “The Wrong Mans” being the clear favorite for me.
My field season was scheduled for April through August, because I am a teaching assistant at the University of Alberta during the fall and winter semesters. In equatorial Africa, there are not the four seasons we are used to in North America. Instead, there are wet seasons and dry seasons. April through June are the height of the wet season, and this was apparent upon arrival – a heavy rain was falling in Entebbe when we touched down and collected baggage. The plane landed at about 10pm local time, and there was a similarly large plane preparing for departure – this meant chaos as arriving and departing passengers competed over the covered walkways between the airport and the parking lot. Luckily, we were met by a truck from Uganda Wildlife Safaris (UWS) to take us to the Cassia Lodge in Kampala for the night.
I may not have gotten a good view of the city when we first arrived, but I more than made up for it the next day. I needed to get a SIM card for my phone, so that I could have a local number to communicate with the crew. This meant a trip to the mall in Kampala, and an introduction into real traffic.
sunrise in Kampala
Traffic and road congestion was redefined for me on this rip through Kampala. There are few sidewalks, so pedestrians walk in the road. Roads are not repaired often, meaning there are large potholes to swerve around. Ugandans drive on the left – the “wrong side” for North Americans. I was also warned that there are really no traffic laws, and that included stop signs. So I went to the mall in Kampala as a passenger in a Toyota Land Cruiser, and it was an experience to remember. Trucks – large cargo trucks – are swerving around potholes and then back into their own lanes (or what looked like their lanes, as there were no lines on the road either), and lots of horns blaring and engines racing. Add to the large vehicle chaos the presence of boda bodas – motorcycle taxis that weave in and out of traffic like a penguin evading a seal – and you have real traffic problems. Boda bodas are dangerous – some estimates are that three boda boda drivers are killed per day in traffic accidents – but they seem to make good time through snarled traffic, so they remain a popular and effective way to get around. Car and truck drivers almost ignore boda bodas, and it is accepted that it is the boda boda driver’s responsibility to get out of the way and yield to larger vehicles. If a truck driver treated a boda boda like another vehicle on the road, then traffic would never move in Kampala, where I estimate boda bodas outnumber other vehicles at least five to one. This many vehicles on the road means that traffic jams are common, which leads to more honking, more boda boda weaving, and more commotion. There also appears to be no zoning in Kampala – industrial complexes are next to houses and schools. Markets, shops, kiosks, and (for lack of a better word) shacks are selling all sorts of things in every open place. Advertising is ubiquitous – huge logos are painted on buildings that probably don’t sell the product depicted, but it doesn’t seem to matter. It is an amazing disorder, but it seems to work for Kampala. After a white-knuckle ride to the mall, I bought a SIM card for my phone for less than a dollar. Consider that for a moment, and multiply that by how many people in Uganda have cell phones (over 80% in my estimation!), then think about how much your mobile phone provider charged you for the same thing. Conveniently, you can buy airtime at most stores in Uganda (even here close to the field camp), and with a few keystrokes on your phone you turn the airtime into data. I cannot tell you how convenient this is, and I hope that mobile phone providers in the US and Canada start going for this system! After sorting my phone, I went on a short trip to the supermarket to collect some supplies for camp. I think this store sold everything except clothes. Appliances, hardware, food – a true one-stop shop. Uganda is a small country in central Africa, and its small size and remote location means that it can’t manufacture everything it needs, thus products and supplies come from all over the planet. I bought a toothbrush from the UK, cookies from India, a hairbrush from China, and a Coke Zero (which a 500 mL bottle also cost less than a dollar – do you hear that, Canada?). There were also products from Kenya, South Africa, UAE, and even some from Thailand. Uganda does make some of its own products – I hope to cover the diversity of these in a future blog post.
I will be spending very little of my time in Entebbe, Kampala, or other cities. Most of my time here will be spent in the UWS Mayanja Camp. There are a special set of safety considerations for my field work in Uganda, and I met with the staff of UWS to cover some of these topics. Most safety briefings I have attended or led consist of things to look out for, personal protective equipment that may be necessary, or special issues that come up as field work progresses. I am used to statements like, “If you see a hazard, here is what to do.” These safety talks I am used to offer some uncertainty. The safety talk at UWS was not so passive. This safety briefing included statements beginning with “when you fall through the papyrus,” or “when you get a cut,” Or (my personal favorite) “When you get malaria…” We covered topics of wound care, what water was safe to drink, they symptoms of malaria, and the types of wildlife to look out for. When I arrived, there had been sightings of a lion near the camp, hippos in the river, leopards in the papyrus, and pythons attacking sitatunga. There also was mention of crocodiles, but not as much as these other four. Armed with this new set of information, instead of feeling overwhelmed, I was feeling pretty excited to get to the field site and see my first sitatunga!
first sitatunga
Be sure to tune in to the first Wildlife Discoveries podcast, where I will talk about the details of my research project and what we hope to learn. The first webisodes will feature a tour of the Mayanja River Camp, as well as my first forays into the papyrus to set up some camera traps. The next blog post will feature some of the wildlife I encounter during the field surveys – there is a lot to see and experience in the Mayanja river ecosystem!