Busy Schedule

Tomorrow I'm catching a bus to Fort Portal, the gateway town in Western Uganda that leads to Semliki and many other chimpanzee field sites. To get to Fort Portal with time to get a taxi to the field site I should leave Kampala by around 11:30am at the latest. In the four hours between waking and getting on the bus I'll be playing a sort of 'treasure hunt' in Kampala in order to have everything sorted before I leave.
First on the list is getting to the UWA (Ugandan Wildlife Authority) in order to pay for a permit so that I can be a legitimate volunteer for two months.
Second is picking up some zip-lock bags from a super-market. I won't go into too much detail as to what these are for, just think chimp droppings, and analysis.
Third is packing up my room, i've managed to spread things out of my carefully packed ( obviously not by me) bag in what looks like a controlled explosion. It'll all have to implode back to how it was, with the addition of more supplies, through some kind of magic.

Ok, the tasks seem more manageable and less long now I've listed them. Not quite the labours of Hercules. The key factor will be what time I wake up. My achilles heel. Fortunately, the breakfasts here are amazing and start at 6:00am (not that I'll be up then). You get an entire pot of fresh Ugandan Coffee, it tastes exactly the same as the stuff you get in sainsbury's, but you get to feel smugger drinking it here.

Excitement about reaching the field site is increasing. Two days ago some of the chimps 'nested', meaning they built nests in the trees to sleep in by folding branches, a kind of functional tree origami, only 200 metres from camp. The number of hours it's possible to stay with the chimps during the day is also increasing, so soon it may be possible to do 'nest to nest' follows. That's the holy grail of chimp habituation (getting chimps comfortable with being watched by nerds like me), it's when you can follow the chimps from the moment they wake up in the morning until when they settle down at night. I can't wait to see some chimps in the wild, I'm expecting and hoping to be filled with a sense of awe that will justify my questionable decision to leave friends and family for 2 months in order to hang out with animals that will find my company an inconvenience at best. A sentiment perhaps shared by many who know me.

If I get lucky and manage to identify any new chimps (unlikely considering my inexperience and limited time here) it's possible I might get to name them. No doubt Steve would call this a blatant but subversive act of neo-colonial domination of the developing world and/or nature. He's probably right. I think Foucault has something interesting to say on the subject. Regardless, if anyone has any good ideas of chimp names I'd be happy to hear them and humour you with the idea I might actually use the name should I get lucky.

once again: text me on 25607826557900 or 2560784047060 (i have a spare phone now should one not like working in the field. Paranoid or prepared? It's a fine line. I'll be checking both intermittently.)


Cagan