Weekend Round Up

Saturday

Today I went to visit the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary. We took a rickety old boat to the island, a journey that took an hour and a half. It was myself and 9 Aussies who were on a tour together. It rained a lot the night before and the lake was a bit lumpy-- we got pretty wet. Ngamba is a 100 acre island in Lake Victoria 23 kilometers from Entebbe. This sanctuary was developed in 1998 to house orphaned and abused chimpanzees in East Africa. It is currently home to 45 chimps and they have free reign of most of the forested island. Thiese chimps have been rescued from every abusive sitution-- private ownership, circuses, and babies for sale in the villages. Others were caught in poachers snares and severly maimed. Many die upon their arrival at Ngamba. They are eaten as meat in the Congo or used for sale of thier body parts for witchcraft in Uganda. Often just the mothers are killed and the babies are sold. The caretakers told a story about once some soldiers came for a visit and the chimps saw their rifles. Remembering the horrors that had befallen them, they disappeared into the forest. It took them a month to come back to center. They now live relatively happy lives on the island, although some of them are still not right in the head and display various obsessive-compulsive behaviors.

The chimps get fed four times daily, and they know exactly their feeding times. At 11am they descended out of the woods, and let the entire island know it was time to be fed. They were so loud that my ears rang. They came screeching into the clearing, running around like madmen and pounding the ground. Chimpanzees have a very sophisticated political hierarchy, so a handful of fights erupted. I can't even begin to describe how awesome it was. I took a couple of videos to show you the chaos. One chimpanzee learned a trick whereby she stood on two legs, raised her arm with her palm up, stuck out her tongue, and made a pphhllft sound. She always gets food. Another low ranking female namedl Becky, who has some psychological problems, had a total meltdown and threw a temper tantrum because she wasn't getting enough food. Don't worry, I have that on video too.

Before the island was purchased, people from the nearby islands would come to Ngamba to cut wood. They were warned of the chimpanzees arrival, but never having seen one, they figured they could shoo them away like a dog. Instead, the chimpanzees chased them off the island. There is a particularly naughty chimpanzee who harrasses the fishermen. One day he jumped into one of the fishermens' boats. They subsequently jumped in the water, and the boat and the chimp drifted off. The sanctuary got a call a few hours later alerting them that there was a chimpanzee in a boat in the middle of Lake Victoria, and would they please come get him. When they got there, he climbed onto the roof of the boat, crossed his arms, and gave them a triumphent stare.

Each of the female chimpanzees have birth control implants, but since they are only 97% effective, a little baby chimpanzee popped up last year. They named her Surprise in Lugandan. The rest of the afternoon we lounged by the lake on paradise island and had a really nice lunch. A couple of Nile moniter's meandered through the cape. They were gorgeous, and the size of my leg!

Sunday

Today I awoke to no power. Apparently they shut down the grids from time to time. I wanted to do a little shopping in the morning and decided on Owino Market. The book at the house describes it as a local place where I should be prepared to drive a hard bargain. I've done it in Zimbabwe, why not here? I called a taxi and instructed him to take me to Owino. He was quiet for a second then he started driving. He asked why I wanted to go there, and I said I wanted some authentic African women's wear, not like the clothes in the shopping malls. He didn't understand, so I said I wanted girl stuff. He was quite again, and then he said that would not like to take me to Owino, explaining that as a foreigner I would get ripped off. Rather, he wanted to take me shopping at some local stores where the prices were fixed. I happily obliged, and off we went to buy some girl stuff. It was funny to see such a big, touch guy (his name is Patrick and he is actually much taller than most Ugandans) go into a shop and inquire about head scarves, or to see the panic arise in his eyes when I asked him which shirt he thought would look better on me.

We had to stop at a tailors, so while we were waiting he took me into Owino to see what I was missing. His instructions were to keep close, don't stop and talk to anyone, and put a death grip on my purse. The market was worse than I ever imagined. It was covered by tarps and garbage bags which made it about 95o in there. The ground was wet and covered in garbage. The walkways between stands were less than a meter wide, so you had to push through people like you were in a mosh pit. The market is the size of a football field, so Patrick ended up getting us lost in the caverns. Eventually we spotted a ray of sunshine and headed for it. We had a good laugh about it after we escaped.

After the shopping trip, Patrick dropped me of at the lab and I worked for the rest of the day. Pretty uneventful. Enjoy the pictures from Ngamba Island. The very last photo was not taken on the island, but in Entebbe. It is a hungry vervet monkey peering into a shop window waiting for it to open so she could steal some food.

xo...G.