Animal Refuge; Conrad Travels North

On Saturday morning, I put my foot down and said that one-way-or-another I will leave Kampala and see some animals. I had been in Kampala and outside of rats the size of Master Splinter and storks so ugly their own mothers have disowned them (picture a vulture with a throat sack that looks like a foot-long condom dangling from its throat) I have not seen anything that makes me want to hum the Lion King soundtrack. My supervisor from Canada was in town and had a rare day off, so we decided that we would go to Entebbe and check out the Animal Refuge.

The journey there was an adventure from start-to-finish (as it often is in Uganda; you arrive somewhere and your adrenaline is flowing so much you wonder how the rest of the day can top it). We started by getting a friend, Ashraf, to help us locate a boda to take us to the Taxi Park. He has a secret whistle with one of the boda drivers which he did off of the balcony of the restaurant – it was oddly reminiscent of a scene from Zorro. I sincerely hoped I wasn’t expected to next jump off the balcony onto the back of the boda. However, this leap might have been safer than the impending ride. It was rush-hour on a Saturday morning and we were heading to the belly of the congestion – the downtown transport centres. And oh yes, the national football team was playing that day and the downtown area was filled with cheering fans dressed in the tri-colors, blaring into Vuvuzelas, cheering and hawking all sorts of Uganda goodies. The path we took can only be described as chaotic and I smashed my knee into the side of a car on one particularly gravity-defying turn. The taxi park is like an ant-hill, with vehicles everywhere and people running around. The services are competitive so the second you enter, several drivers compete to get you into their vehicle.

I should interject and clarify that “taxis” actually mean “mini-bus” in Uganda, or “Mutatu” in the local vernacular. They are taxi vans as we would recognize them, colorfully decorated with biblical passages and either Manchester United or Arsenal decals. Each one is usually operated by a pair, the driver and the hawker. Their goal is to fill to the capacity of 14 (!!) as quickly as possible before heading out on a pre-designated route. These Mutatus head to all corners of the city and all corners of Uganda.

We quickly discovered the Mutatu heading to Entebbe and packed in with 14 people. The trick to being a passenger in Kampala traffic is to distract yourself so you don’t notice the chaotic merges and turns. The trip to-and-from Entebbe have blended together in my mind, but many topics of conversation were discussed, and at various times I found myself singing choruses from a Backstreet Boys, Ace of Base song, and the full version of the Prince of Bel-Air theme (I’m special that way). The trip to Entebbe was relatively uneventful outside of an argument between the hawker and one passenger which resulted in a tug-of-war over a jacket. We weren’t entirely sure where we were going, so we kept our eyes peeled for likely signs that would indicate that one of the Entebbe stops was close to the animals. Luckily we saw two statues of rhinos and that gave us the necessary hint.

The refuge was interesting, although as we traversed the site, we noticed that there were a lot of the predators that we couldn’t see. Considering the large amounts of emergency phone numbers, emergency gathering points we saw, you could not help but have Jurassic Park flashbacks. I spent a lot of time glancing into the trees to make sure I wasn’t about to be pounced on by an oversized Tabby.

The twin highlights of the visit were the rhinos and the chimpanzees.

The rhinos were truly docile and majestic and seeing them, I simply can’t believe that people would poach them for simply their single horn. As wonderful as this horn is, it doesn’t come anywhere near the beauty of the animal. There was a pair grazing and I spent several minutes watching them. They like most of the animals in the refuge, were there because they had been rescued from either poachers or private collection (in this case, I wasn’t clear which one exactly). The chimps were too human to believe. You could clearly see them thinking, and their motions were so life-like. They hammed it up for a group of children who were chanting “monkey! Monkey!” at them, and when they were tossed sugar-cane, they carried it in their mouths like cigars, making them look like a private eye from some silent feature flick.

The final noteworthy story is the "mugging" Kate received. Early in the day she had observed the gang of monkeys which was loitering around the property, and she had narrowed her eyes and said that she was sure one of them would try to steal something at some point. We managed to go a visit with limited attempts at purloining by the simian sabateurs. Finally, during lunch, we noticed one monkey edging closer and closer to the restaurant. Disappearing out of our field of vision, it suddenly appeared in the restaurant with a loud Kung-Fu scream, grabbed the remainder of Kate's scone, screamed at her a stream of monkey profanity, used it's tail to spill soda all over the table (no doubt it's version of a smokescreen) and took off to the other side of the mesh. It there sat, glaring challenging at us, while it ate the whole meal, jamming it's little monkey cheeks greedily like a pudgy kid from the "the Biggest Loser" who had just raided a Dunkin' Donuts.

On Monday morning we headed up north. Snacks in hand, I strapped myself into the back of a mighty Landcruiser and we started the journey from Kampala (the very south of Uganda) to Pader district (one district shy of the Sudanese border; the region which had suffered the greatest under the civil war with Kony and the LRA). Our driver, Vincent, calm as a Jedi master, sporting trendy aviators, navigated the roads with the expertise and charm revealing his 18 years of traversing most of Uganda and Rwanda (during the conflict). Ugandan roads have stretches that remind me of the trans-Canada … but few and far between. A lot of roads are equal parts road and pot-hole (and often, more the latter). On three occasions, upon reaching Pader district (and on the return journey) we had to drive through a newly-formed creek.  The venture through these improvised paths was caught by me on film and will eventually feature on this blog (and my official one). It led to me developing the catch-phrase, “AMREF: no roads, no problem!” During one of these harrowing passages I turned to Kate and we hypothesized about the result of attempting to drive an American-made vehicle through one of these roads. All I can say, it might improve the roads, because it would probably just disintegrate into the potholes and provide traction for Landcruisers to drive over.

Some other observations / tid-bits during my drive:

•         The occupants of the cars and the children (many, many) alongside the road seemed to play a mutual game. For them it was spot the AMREF vehicle / muzungu … for us, it was making sure we returned as many waves as we could. If we had turned this into a game of “punch buggy” the occupants of the car would have shoulders as bruised as their tail-bones. The smiles of the children – as cliché as this sounds – definitely made the bone-jarring ride all that much quicker.
•         We got to see the River Nile during a stretch of the Gulu highway and I won’t bother describing it, but will say that photos and video don’t do this mighty river justice. The Nile’s mystique was enhanced by the baboons which would panhandle for bananas on the side of the road. I have been told by another driving friend of mine, Ben, that at times during hungry times the baboons have actually stopped traffic and outright demanded food from the passing vehicles.
•         No matter which part of Uganda you go, you will find football jerseys, especially Manchester United and Arsenal. The best part is spotting some truly rare players’ names on the back, such as Chamakh (!!), Anderson and Fletcher. It is truly amazing, and it really makes me appreciate all that much more the love of football to see people ploughing traditionally in a field, grass / brick huts in the backdrop, sporting matching Paul Scholes jerseys.
•         Construction closures are harrowing experiences. On the night return, there was about 20 vehicles / taxis / trucks trying to pass through the gap simultaneously, while a construction worker tried to navigate them like Tetris blocks. My friend Moses described driving in Uganda as “survival of the fittest” and this is definitely one example. As soon as an available gap emerges – or there is no one standing behind the barrier – you either gas it through the gap, or drive over the barrier. During our night return, the lane which should only allow a single stream of traffic through had traffic going in both directions, with smaller vehicles (read: not petrol or teetering produce trucks) had to go on the construction lane, which had been strewn with small boulders to prevent heroes like us from driving on it. I am not exaggerating when I say, I have a blister on my butt from the bumps which ensued.
•     While Uganda doesn’t have drive-thrus, it has the next best thing: road side hawkers. Halfway between Gulu and Kampala there is a stop where about thirty-to-forty hawkers try to sell you numerous food, drink and non-edible products, should you slow down.

Once in Pader, we had a brief meeting, ate, checked the hotel rooms for spiders (well, this was me … I had seen a doozy in a roadside washroom earlier) and went to bed early for our field visit to a school.

I won’t delve too deeply into our visit to the school, since it will feature in my professional blog, but it was an amazing experience to see so many children wearing their uniforms running, playing and singing in a school that had been started at an IDP camp a few years ago. The children definitely provide a symbol of optimism in a region that has seen such a traumatic couple decades (thousands of children in this district had been abducted by the war to be turned into soldiers, slaves and bush-wives). It was here that I took another of my favorite photos of the trip thus far: children being children, chasing a football around a field. I particularly like the one child standing there with his pack-sack, eager to get to join the game. Towards the end of the visit, some of the children sang as a round of harmonies (they were quite good), which they will feature in an upcoming song competition.

I didn’t get home till 9:45 pm in the evening, tired, hungry, but very, very satisfied with my journey. I was greeted warmly by my friends at the restaurant (who acted like I had been gone a week; the manager of my apartment even called to see if I was alright!) and after eating a plate of fries, calling home, went to bed and had an amazing sleep.