Millionaire's Shortbread

Something wonderful has happened! I'm a millionaire! Look:

This is 1,000,000 UGX! it's worth just over £300 and it's all mine! Muhahahaha!

In other news I have started to walk home from work to save time (traffic is horrible) and because I find you get to see so much more this way. Although some things I could do without seeing:

These storks are everywhere! They really intimidate me! They're so tall and lanky!
Yesterday I saw Mickey and Minnie Mouse on rollerskates holding on to a pickup truck skating through town to promote a new children's show. Yes, really! I was gutted that I didn't have my camera!
Planning a nice quiet weekend, so hopefully the weather holds up. It's rainy season, but at the moment it seems to be raining for one day they brilliant sunshine the next.

Sadly this post has nothing to do with shortbread, except that I would like some!

Queen Elizabeth National Park

As part of the work that we're doing here we were required to visit a site in Kihihi last Friday and a site in Kyenjojo on Sunday. The bet road between these two places? Straight through the Queen Elizabeth National Park!

We just drove on through and pulled over whenever we saw anything exciting. Excellent knitting time too!

Below is a picture of a very bold Baboon, nothing seemed to phase him, however close we got.

When we got to the Kazinga Channel (between Lake George and Lake Edward) we took a river cruise for $15 where we saw EVERY SINGLE HIPPO in the whole of Uganda.

What an excellent day!

Journey to the Centre of the Earth...

... (well kinda).

Some work we are doing in South West Uganda meant that I got to cross the Equator on land for the first time on Wednesday, and what a kodak moment! Some nice chaps there offered to show us the trick where the water spins the other way, but my guidebook had warned me against this from 3 reasons:
1. They charge oo much... the scallies!
2. The equator has actually been mis-mapped in Uganda and GPS shows it around 30m away from this point.
3. Apparently the Earth's gravitational field is far too weak for this trick to even work (which I don't believe, because I'm sure I remember learning about this particular phenomenom in Physics class)

Anyway, I took a nice picture and here it is.

Arrival & Ngamba Island

Here is my first proper post. Deep breath. Here goes:

We flew in last Monday evening. I've never seen a flight like it. A great Boeing 747 and as the door shut the air hostess announced "we only have 35 passengers flying with us this evening, and so once the pilot has switched off the seatbelts sign, you may sit wherever you wish". Naturally, I intend for my first true experience in any class other than economy to be a genuine one, so I satisfied myself by lying across 3 seats in economy and sleeping the whole way.

The arrival was speedy, unlike anything I had seen in Africa before, and we had our visas and were out of there within 20 minutes. We were transferred (slowly) to our hotel, where we were to stay for just 1 night before moving into the new staff apartment. The roads in Kampala are VERY congested, but unlike my experiences in Accra, everyone is very polite and patiently waits their turn... which as a passenger, is infuriating! But cars do drive on the left here, so at least that's a good start.

We went to the office in the afternoon and for the remainder of the week (not intending to say much about my work here, but looks like we will be VERY busy!).

At the weekend I just rested and unpacked and sorted out...

But on Sunday we went to Ngamba Island. We drove down to Entebbe from Kampala and caught the boat across in the late morning. Before we caught the boat, there was a small zoo close to the dock that we visited while we waited. They had peacocks and crocodiles, but for me, the most exciting/terrifying/beautiful creatures that we saw there were the hundreds of spiders that were hanging round.

Then we got the boat to Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary. I was pretty nervous as my last boat trip in Africa (crossing from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania to Stone Town, Zanzibar) has haunted me for the past two years. I had overlooked the fact that this was Lake Victoria (very easy to forget that it's a lake, it's just so vast), and so would be nowhere near as rough as the Indian Ocean!

The Chimpanzee Sanctuary take care of confiscated and seized chimpanzees that have been traumatically taken from the forests of Uganda by poachers. These Chimps are usually destined to become exotic pets, dinner in the Congo or part of witch doctor's potion for fertility. The extraction of a young chimp from the wild is devastating for their family, who often fight to the death to retreave them from poachers. I had wanted to go here ever since I saw the Stephen Fry programme "Last Chance to See" where they re-intergrated a little chimpanzee called "Africa" back into the group.

The Chimpanzees have a free run of the Island here, apart from 5% which is taken up by the feeding platform and docks. We watched them during feeding time, and it was truely spectacular and humbling to see that animals that had been treated so badly by humanity, play and tease and trick one another with a higher level of sensitivity that I am able show to others myself (especially when I'm grumpy with sunburn).

Bit heavy. Guess I'll end on that!

TTFN xxxxx

It Starts!

Well here is my little Weblog, bursting with information and stories, just for you!

It's mainly designed for my friends and family, so that they can get lots of updates about my trip, but if it's of interest to anyone else, either travelling out to Uganda, or who enjoys the clickety click of a pair of knitting needles - all the better.

I've called this blog "Bitsa Tut" after the (sometimes) affectionate way my mum refers to the kind of rubbish that I aquire on my shopping trips (usually to Herne Bay Market). The piles of wool and ribbon and other oddments are usually or no value to anyone else, but they delight me!

Similarly, as I behave in much the same way when in Africa, buying any old "tut" that's for sale, I thought I could document it here, for your pleasure.