After a tasteless breakfast of museli and yogurt we sat outside watching the birds and waited for Stephanie to make her appearance. She told us a little more on what our roles will be in Kalinzu. It sounds like it will be a combination of assisting the Forest Service teachers and critiquing them to keep on track. No one seems quite sure whether or not they should work on this non-scheduled holiday although most put in an appearance until the power went out. It must be frustrating to have regular but unaccounted power outages as a part of life.
So much for defeating jet lag. We both dozed off.
I butchered the chicken with a very dull knife and fried the breasts and legs and left the rest for the animals – three dogs and two cats. Connie cooked potatoes and sliced tomatoes. I think we will start on a non-meat diet shortly.
This afternoon we walked through the Botanic Gardens, escorted much of the time by Patrick, a volunteer who is in his final year of University as a conservationist. In addition to knowing most of the plants he was an expert at spotting birds. Our count stands at 11. We stopped along the way outside the heavily fortified UN compound used by aid workers on weekends when they return from the Congo.
We entered the Gardens through a hole in the fence by following three young fishermen and were surprised upon exiting that there was a fee of 1000 shillings each plus a 2000 Ugandan shilling (USh) surcharge for my camera. With the 2000 shilling tip we gave Patrick and the drinks, the walk cost 10,000 Ush or about $5.00.
In addition to the new birds we saw two black and white colobus monkeys with their long tails and several families of our old friends, the vervet monkeys, but we missed the lone red colobus.
