QENP

Firday 1st June 2007 QENP Campsite No 2
Early morning coffee, and the Ruwenzoris tower to the north, the sun is climbing in the east, to the south the channel connecting Lake George with Lake Edward, two of the Rift Valley Lakes harbours grunting hippo and in the west the full moon is sinking over the bushveld, alive with the calls of birds. Man, its tough in Africa!!
Spent the day exploring having established that Nev’s head would just get in the way if her were to try to help to fix the Landy, and drove to various crater lakes, one of which was being used as a rice field, the other was surrounded by basking buffalo. The game was sparse and the park looks hopelessly undergrazed. These parks were poached out during the Amin era and are now slowly recovering.
Round the fire in the evening I posed an interesting question to each one in turn: “how long could you carry on living like this?”
Willy: could carry on for a while, but not indefinitely.
Ingrid: missed her Mom, her home, her dogs and her kids (in that order) and could quite easily go home now.
Brian: forever, but would like to slow down the pace.
Maureen: indefinitely, but the pace is too fast, not enough time to ‘smell the roses’.
Beryl: Only till the end of this journey as she misses her kids and is doing this really only for Dave.
Dave: Already bored with seeing new things every day, but will finish the trip and go straight home. (We all laughed at this, but he was dead serious!!!)
Nev and I feel the same: At this stage could carry on indefinitely although we do miss our family.
Interesting and very revealing answers indicating slight underlying tensions.


Thursday 31st May 2007 Queen Elizabeth National Park Mweya Camp
We woke to rain. What looked like a set-in 3-day continual downpour, and I was all prepared to snuggle in the tent until the sun shone again. However, we have a lot of Africa to see, and luckily the rain let up for just enough time for us to pack up. In the west the highest mountain range, and the highest peak of the range, Mt Stanley at 5109m revealed its snow/ice/glacier as the mist cleared for a few minutes. We are virtually on the equator, and to see frozen water and feel chilly temperatures here is amazing. The locals have resorted to subsistence farming and we chatted to one young man who was planting tomato seedlings using a sharpened stick as a trowel. He said he was an engineer (I think he was a wannabe engineer) but couldn’t get work and had to come home to farm. He was saving up to get married, and grew tomatoes, matoke, bananas and cassava to sustain himself and to sell. The total size of his property was 30mX40m , and he leased another property of about the same size on the steep fertile slopes of the mountain, and he, his brother and his brother’s family manage to live off those small pieces of land. The cultivated land up the mountain is steeper than those we have seen cultivated in Losotho. At the bottom of the mountains is a huge flat area which they don’t cultivate because it is less fertile, and they just use it for grazing. The road from Fort Portal to here is first class,(donated funds), but one cannot go very fast as every couple of Km there are ‘sleeping policemen’, a series of five severe speed bumps negotiable at only 5Km/hr.
The rain poured down again and a man rode his bike with a banana leaf as protection over his head. Hardly anyone was around, and even the goats were hiding from the rain under the overhangs of the shop roofs.
At Kasese Willy managed to order a new gasket for his Landy, and we are hoping the head isn’t cracked too. We limped south to QENP with Willy adding water to the radiator every 10Km or so. The rain stopped and the game viewing was fun.
Mweya campsite had ‘habituated’ waterbuck, warthog and maribu storks. One of which nearly managed to feast on Dave and Beryl’s fillet steak which was defrosting on their bonnet. Dave ran to rescue his supper and the maribu slowly stalked off in its slow haughty stride, eyeing the lost meal. As the warthog approached a nervous Maureen, Brian came to the rescue, but the warthog didn’t give way and Brian shoo-ed it, while bravely retreating.
Our drive revealed a pack of lions, three of which were reclining in the branches of an old euphorbia tree – a prickly cactus, whose thorns didn’t deter them at all. Nor did they deter a vervet monkey nearby who sat on the very top of a euphorbia surveying the area. A herd of the small elephants of the area brushed past the Landy as I snapped away, until a tsetse fly bit my foot whereupon I gave a yell which gave Nev and the elephants a fright. These elephants, ‘forest elephants’ are far smaller, darker and hairier than ours at home.
The Landcruiser’s suspension is causing a lot of trouble and its radiator has been leaking causing over heating.

Wednesday 30th May 2007 Ruwenzori Mountain camp
South again parallel to the growing Ruwenzoris, the famed “Mountains of the Moon”, completely covered in clouds. Will’s Landy has pooped a gasket and keeps getting hot, so we are limping along, waiting for the Landy to cool, refilling it with water, and limping on again. The mountains are clearing in front of me as I type, and are highly reminiscent of the Berg around Cathkin Peak. Three tiny kids are standing next to fence chanting the three English words they know over and over: ”How are you” . The men are drinking beer (except Nev who is drinking Fanta) chatting, and fixing Will’s two punctures. Maureen is resting, Ingrid is typing her journal and Beryl is reading while waving her fly swatter. All three other girls have had their hair shaved to a No6 or shorter. I feel mine is short enough as it is. It is quite peaceful here I this camp of soft soil. Nev has done the washing (he is so good about doing the laundry, and helping in general – got him trained? hehehe!!) I hope our Landy hasn’t sunk to it’s chassis in the morning.

Tuesday 29th May 2007 Kanyanchu Camp Kibale Forest
South again to the Kibale Forest where we booked to track some habituated chimps. We left at 2pm in small groups so as not to scare the chimps and walked for about an hour through tropical rain forest (it didn’t rain). The guides were in radio contact so when one of them found the chimps, they would all converge. Suddenly we heard the pant-hoot of the chimps, one started, and the others joined in until they were all calling in a loud goose-bump evoking crescendo. Then they were easy to find, but we were not allowed to get closer than 8m from them. A troop of about 25. Some were lounging on the ground grooming each other, others up trees eating. A female with a swollen vulva (on heat) approached and copulated with a male – it took about three seconds. They stay on heat for 4 weeks, copulating with most of the males, but during the 4th week, only with the alpha and his second. 15% of their diet (apart from leaves, bark and fuit) is meat. They catch and eat monkeys or antelope by working together and driving them into an ambush. They hold a sapling down, drive the monkey towards the sapling and when the monkey leaps from a tall tree to the sapling, they release the sapling which springs up and the monkey falls to the ground where the chimps are waiting for it. They eat in the trees, but travel on the ground. Females can change troops safely only if her baby is female. A male baby will be killed by the new troop. Fascinating.
We had a braai tonight in the light of a nearly full moon.



Monday 28th May 2007 Ambereere Camp
Today was spent skoffling again. I had to rearrange the Landy and put disused reference books somewhere out of the way, so that things I use every day are more accessible. Also catching up on the washing, and generally resting. Dave’s car alarm woke us (again) before break of day and he got teased mercifully about it. Dave and Beryl made some bread which they were so proud of, they even took a photo. I took a photo of them taking a photo of their bread!! We were afforded a taste, and it was very good.
In Fort Portal we came across a “milk factory” where the locals brought cans, plastic containers or whatever with the morning’s milk. It is sieved through a kitchen strainer (to remove the very few lumps of dirt),into a bucket. It is then tested for added water using a floating instrument and poured into a cooling tank. When cold it is decanted into 1litre plastic bags and sold for Ush500 (R2.30). the farmer gets Ush350 (R1.60 – delivered to the factory). The factory is a one-roomed shop with a1000l bulk tank, table and bucket right next to all the other little shops. The subsistence dairy farmers only milk the cows in the mornings so they do not need cooling facilities because the milk is delivered fresh straight to the factory. The calves run with the cows during the daytime, and shut away at night, and the cows are milked in the morning. The commercial fresh milk is sold in the shops for about R5/l and long-life milk for R10/l.
A tea ‘pluckers’ (not picker) told us he gets paid Ush5 per Kg (2.5c/Kg) for the tea they pick. Then told me, the ubiquitous “we are suffering” story which I don’t buy, but might get to some stinky rich foreign whites.
I bought and cooked some matoke and introduced the carbohydrate to everyone else, who said they taste just like potatoes. Now everyone is eating them hehehe.

Sunday 27th May 2007 Ambereere Camp
We traveled south to Fort Portal to the limestone caves and waterfall. The campsite was charming, pretty with flower gardens, lovely grassy campsite, and the water emanating from high in the north Ruwenzoris, so crystal clear, it was blue. It belonged to an ecologically aware 86-year old Ugandan farmer, whose young teenage grandson was our guide. The caves and waterfall was part of his farm, and the “schpeel” from our guide included the geographical features, as well as the so-called historical (actually mythical) details. The cave was actually a small overhang with a sheet of icy water cascading into a clear pool surrounded by lush, green indigenous foliage. After a short damp slippery walk through the forest, the limestone caves were presented to us. Actually, a small overhang with tiny stalactites dripping onto little stalagmites and thereafter into a beautiful clear pond. Mmmmmmmmmm seen better, but this was charming.
We were then taken on a welcomely breathless (after two months without formal exercise) short, steep hike up an extinct crater to view the lakes in the craters and Fort Portal in the distance.
On our way down I quizzed the guide as to the diet of the local Ugandans. Their staple is the matoke. A green banana, peeled, boiled and served in a “soup” (Gravy or sauce I suppose) which tastes similar to a madumbe. Also cassava, sweet potatoes, maize meal, ‘Irish’ potatoes served with various sauces, local fruit in season, and wild spinach. They do not make maas with milk, but boil all the milk and have it with their porridge and tea. Poso is like Zim sudsa which they use like bread, hot or cold with a gravy.
I worked out why they would possibly want to eat horrible green bananas when they could be eating lovely sweet yellow ones. The only scientific reason could be that matoke is very low GI, so it sticks to your ribs and your insulin levels don’t jump around.