Leah’s Travel Page

We’re leaving in about 10 minutes to head off for the Maasai Mara. I could be out of touch for as long as 16 days, so just thought I’d write one last farewell.!

\Yesterday it was so hot on Rusinga island that we passed a bakery that was baking bread on a metal table placed out it the sun! Puts a new meaning to “it’s like an oven out there”. It’ll be hotter in the Mara….yikes!

\See you all later!

The sun sets so fast here. You can notice that the sunset is imminent, and by the time you’ve rummaged around in your bag to get your camera, it has already sunk below the crest of the hill. That’s the equator for you.

An African town at night is completely different from during the day… it’s like another world entirely. That’s one thing I’ve missed out on by travelling with a relatively organised group as I have been. In the evenings, we go back to our research station and socialize only with ourselves.

Yesterday a small group of us visited an HIV/AIDS orphanage, on Rusinga Island, just outside of Mbita. We’re currently located in Suba District, one of the poorest in the country. In 2000, the infant mortality rate was 606 out of every 1000 children under the age of one, which is truly astronomical (in the past five years, it’s gone down to 147 per 1000 through aggressive malaria awareness campaigns). This is also the district with the highest AIDS prevalence: 42%. And Rusinga Island is the highest of any community, with a prevalence of over 50% (with a population of only about 200,000 to start with). So the orphanage was something to behold. There were I think over 250 children there, several of whom were HIV+ and all of whom had lost their parents to AIDS. It was sad to see. The women running the facility made small handicrafts to sell and support the facility. I bought a really beautiful tie-dyed fabric – it cost 500 shillings, which is less than 10 dollars, and you know that will go a long way in that community.

None of us wanted to leave, so it was dark as we were driving into Mbita. It was so different than it was during the day. Everyone was gathered into those storefronts that had electricity, watching the Africa Cup on tiny television sets, braiding each other’s hair, socializing with friends. People set up fires outside, which they’d sit around, cooking and talking. It was a very surreal experience. There was an air of calm and serenity, but with a bustle of life and activity below the surface. Like a summer night camping with friends, in a way. I guess that since the sun always goes down so early, you use the evenings as a time to be with family and friends. Hopefully I’ll get to experience more of that once I leave the big group.

Today’s the first day of our next class…it’s kind of weird that I already have three credits behind me. In a few days, I’ll be leaving for the Maasai Mara for 16 days, and I’ll probably be out of touch again for a while. That should be incredible…My prof is apparently something like the world’s leading expert on the Maasai, so he’s got lots of connections there. We even get the chance to do a homestay in a rural Maasai village for a few nights. It should be amazing.

I feel like there are insects everywhere today. EVERYWHERE. I can’t get away…they must have sent out an all-points-bulletin that I was in town or something.

I had my first major incident involving a very massive spider this evening. It cornered me in the bathroom, and I was forced to huddle in the bathtub wimpering (okay, screaming hysterically) for 10 minutes as it stood scowling at me from beside the door, blocking my escape route. Then some of my friends were making some sort of musical instrument out of a gourd-like thing, when a massive cockroach crawled out onto the table and made a run at me (not as big as the ones I showered with, but at least those ones didn’t behave like rabid beasts). Then, my dad called on my cell phone, and as I went outside to get better connection, I was bombarded by literally thousands of lake flies (more on those later). And of course in my haste to get away from the swarm, I walked into a bush full of spiders. Then, once the conversation was over, and I was walking back through the main ICIPE building, another giant cockroach made to attack me in the hall. And all the way to the library with the internet, I was chased by a hundred thousand more lake flies, and several mosquitos, which by now have no doubt given me malaria (hey, the malaria prophylaxis pills I take everyday are only 97% effective…dun dun dun). Seriously, I think it must be the insect new year celebration or something.

About these lake flies. They are everywhere. They come in off Lake Victoria promptly at sunset at 7pm, and absolutely cover anything even remotely illuminated (and don’t forget, we mzungus have lighter skin than most). Screen doors are layered with these little flying insects (which are smaller than mosquitos but thankfully not small enough to fit through the mesh). Last night, I saw a wall that I thought was mostly dark paint with a white pattern on it, until I realized that in fact it was a beige wall plastered with thousands upon thousands of lake flies. They’re basically harmless, though…that is, not if you enjoy the feeling of bugs crawling into your nose and sticking to your skin and hair…soooo disgusting.

While we’re on the subject of flies, there is one insect that is noticeably lacking from the landscape now that we’ve left the jungle, and which I do NOT miss at all. This is the mango fly. The entire time we were at Kibale, every time you did laundry it became a huge ordeal because of the evil mango fly. While your clothes are unceremoniously hanging to dry in the tropical sun, the mango fly swoops down and lays its eggs in your soggy clothing. Then, when you put on your clothes the next day, the body heat awakens the larvae, which burrow into your skin and germinate. These look just like mosquito bites, except with two black dots which are actually breathing holes for the larvae that is now growing under your flesh. The remedy is to put nail polish over any suspected mango fly larvae to suffocate it, at which point it will then emerge to the surface for air so you can pluck it out of your arm, leg, bum…wherever it has chosen to afflict you. So all of this means that on laundry day you not only have to dry all your clothes under mosquito nets, but then you must iron every single article of clothing carefully to kill any eggs (which are so minuscule that you wouldn’t even notice them). It was SUCH a hassle. I was fortunate to not become a mago fly victim, but two people in our group were not so lucky.

So I don’t miss the mango flies (they only live in the jungle, so I can wash my clothes in peace). But I honestly wish the rest of the insect kingdom would leave me alone. These lake flies keep pummelling the computer screen.

I made it through the border in record time, didn’t even have to pay any bribes. That’s got to be a good thing.

We’re staying at another ICIPE station in Mbita, Kenya. My bedroom looks out onto the beach and Lake Victoria, and at night I can leave just my screen door open and hear the waves rolling up against the shore at night… So amazing, I wish I could go swimming, but then I’d get schistosomiasis, which would really suck, to say the least, because it’s about the grossest parasite ever. A group of 10 of us got to go on a boat ride in Jinja where we went down the Nile and into Lake Victoria, and we got splashed by water a lot and we kept on joking that we were on the schisto ride. Seriously, the odds of us getting schisto (aka bilharzia) from that is virtually none, so don’t you all freak out now. Anyways, it was worth it, getting to boat down the Nile. We didn’t get to see too much of Jinja, except enough to see what we thought were giant swarms of birds that turned out to be giant bats (they were even there at 10 am!). Kind of cool. Kind of creepy.

Today we went to another hospital, here in Mbita. It was in much better shape than the one in Fort Portal. I mean, it wasn’t perfect, but it was much less chaotic, and at least here patients’ families didn’t have to supply all their own food, bedsheets and mattresses (yes, that was how it was in F.P.). We also got to talk to some traditional healers, which was kind of a neat experience.

Oh, and I also wanted to make a comment about elections in Africa. It’s the national elections in Uganda on February 23rd, so it was totally amazing to be there and see all kinds of campaign posters for President Museveni and others. Just to put it in context, Kenya had a referendum on their constitution last year, and since many people are illiterate, they had ‘banana’ for yes and ‘orange’ for no. In Uganda, it’s a similar thing, but with hand gestures. As we were driving through towns in our big mzungu truck, people passing by kept giving us the thumbs up or a peace sign. At first, we kept randomly returning the hand signals and people laughed, until we realized that thumbs up is the symbol for Museveni and the peace sign (two fingers) is his main opponent (FDC party). There’s also a flat palm, for Milton Obote’s wife who’s running in the north (aka bad), and a clenched fist, for the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Party, very VERY bad). I just think it’s such a fascinating way of practising democracy so that all people can be involved…even if it is at the expense of the dignity of a bus-load of travelling mzungu.

My program is starting a website with some photos and journal entries submitted by students (I’m one of two students doing most of the entries). You might be interested if you haven’t had the chance to see any pictures yet (I’m still trying, I promise!!).

Here’s the address: http://www.geog.mcgill.ca/courses/africa/safari2006/

There is one photo of me that’s currently up there, the one titled ‘Learning about stream inverts’. I’m partially obscured by the guy standing up in the black t-shirt, wearing blue pants and staring into my camera…Okay, so I’ll try to get better ones of me sent in. But just for the information, that photo was taken on our first day at Kibale on our first walk into the jungle. About twenty minutes before that image, me and 3 other people were attacked by army ants (yes, they crawl up your pants and stay there, and yes, they ARE carnivorous). About 10 minutes after that picture, my nose started randomly gushing blood (probably caused by the altitude…who knows). But other than the four dozen chunks taken out of my flesh by man-eating insects and the bloody nose, I made it out of the forest unscathed!

I’m in Jinja, Uganda right now. My hotel room overlooks the spot where Lake Victoria turns into the Nile River. It’s sunset and fishermen are canoeing out in their boats to drop their nets for the evening… It’s pretty spectacular!

I’ve just spent the last two and a bit weeks in Uganda, and we leave tomorrow for Mbita, Kenya (which is also on Lake Victoria). That’s good because a) I’ll have solid email for 5 days, b) my cell phone will start working again, and c) well, Kenya’s pretty darn cool. But I’m also kind of sad to be leaving because Uganda has been absolutely beautiful and amazing. I only have time to mention everything briefly now, but I’ll add more later.

We spent the first 10 days at Kibale National Park in the west of the country, near Fort Portal (for anyone interested in looking on a map). We stayed at a really remote field station in the North of the park, where you could look out your bedroom window and see troops of 50 red colubus monkeys soaring through the trees, and where the banana bread and avocado salad is made with fresh produce from down the road! (I’ve never eaten so many bananas in my life…potassium overdose is imminent). We also had several incidents involving baboons breaking into people’s rooms to steal food…they are major pests and crop-raiders, not nice at all! For my human geography class, we got to spend most days in the tiny village of Kanyawara, adjacent to the park, and got to know a bunch of the villagers quite well (I even speak a bunch of Batoro, the local language). The poverty is pretty extreme but it’s subtle and below the surface in a way I didn’t expect, so when you’re confronted with it it hits you pretty hard. There are kids everywhere because it’s during the two-month holiday, and they are so great! When we’d drive out to sites in the back of the pick-up truck, they’d be running after us for ages, shouting “Goodbye, friends!” I think the best part has definitely been all the people we’ve gotten to know.

My class also had the chance to visit many hospitals and health clinics, which was a pretty shocking experience. I’ll talk more about it later, but the most vivid memory is at a public, government-funded hospital in Fort Portal. They have 2000 in-patients, even more out-patients, and only 9 doctors in the entire facility. Walking into the labour ward, the rickety metal beds were packed so close you couldn’t walk between them, there were mothers and newborn infants sleeping on mattresses on the floor all over, hallways were so packed with foam mattresses there were only a few inches to walk by, and IVs were hanging from door handles. The entire ward had probably about 80 people in it with one nurse, whose resources were so limited she didn’t even have a blood pressure cuff! (We were able to buy her two later…it was extraordinary when we returned to give them to her and within 5 seconds she was using them on patients…they cost about 10 dollars each). The whole place had a huge impact on our group (there are 12 students in that class), the conditions were sooo much worse than I imagined, and I thought I’d imagined the worst!

I’ve hardly been sick since I’ve gotten here (one day of major throwing up but that’s about it…some people are sick with fevers, and frankly as long as I don’t have diarrhea, I’m okay).

After leaving Kibale, we drove down and spent a night at Queen Elizabeth NP, where we went on a boat ride on the Kazinga Channel and got REALLY close up to elephants, hippos, water buffalo…uh, warthogs. It was my first experience in a fully outdoor shower and with only three walls, and I got to share this special experience with two cockroaches the size of mice!! There was also a warthog (officially the ugliest animal on earth) and her baby in the sink area, so no one could go in…well, one girl tried and got charged and run over, so we all stayed far far away! There was also a brief moment when we thought three members of our group got eaten by lions after foolishly walking around at night, but it turned out they were just sitting around talking somewhere… You can never be too careful with massive predatorial mammals on the loose under cover of darkness! (that’s my new motto)

Then we went to Lake Nabugabo, a freshwater lake off western Lake Victoria, which is amazing because it has no schistosomiasis (a REALLY gross parasite), so you can go swimming!!!! It was amazing! The pest of choice there was the vervet monkey, which would swoop down from the rafters and steal the bread right from your hand as you’re bringing it to your mouth (all with their baby clinging to their back!). We also had some of the best fish and chips I’ve ever had (mmm…Nile perch), although I might just have thought that because I was sick of having rice, matoke (banana mash), beans and meat every day for the last two weeks!

After two days there, we drove a very long LONG drive to Jinja, through Kampala. Seriously, every single road in this country is under construction! When we arrived at the Sunset Hotel overlooking the Nile, we were all in paradise…although my standards have dropped substantially: 2 stars, there’s a whole in the ground somewhere that you can go to the bathroom in (my aim is now impeccable); 3 stars, there are walls around it; 4 stars, still a pit toilet, but has a seat (preferably don’t have to go outdoors)… 5 stars, flush toilet!!! Bonus points for having toilet paper, enough of this BYOTP already!

Well, it’s almost supper, our big Uganda send-off, plus we just had final exams (for one course) today, and it’s one guy in the groups birthday, so we’re having a big fiesta later! I’ll write more once we get to Mbita tomorrow (if we ever do…12 hours drive including my first African land border crossing and a ferry ride…gulp)

Hope Pittsburgh wins the Superbowl (that’s my one bit of foreign news!) and that the Canucks and Habs are lighting it up!