I think it’s going to be a day for primates. We were awakened by the morning hoots of a group of chimpanzees. We haven’t seen them yet but we know they are around. After breakfast I took the egg shell and tea bags to the compost and there were seven baboons scavenging for food. All we need now are the black and white colobus monkeys.
I spent some time going over the program with Robert and Lawrence so I would have a better understanding of it for when we go to Budongo. Together we made some suggestions to improve the assessment forms and some of the activities. I will write the entire thing up after I have seen a few more groups come through.
Before and after our meeting Connie and I cleaned up our room, got the cobwebs from the ceiling and burned the rubbish, all the while feeling like inmates at a zoo. It’s Sunday and the 50 or so kids that were here last Sunday to greet us returned for Lawrence’s Sunday reading program. And we had a visitor, rather two visitors, ourselves. A woman we photographed yesterday at the baptism and saw again on the road said she wanted to be our friend so she and her baby paid us a call. Olva is quite pretty, 18, unmarried. Her daughter, Shaminu, is 14 months old and has giant brown eyes. She cries when she sees muzungus and not even sweets or her mother’s breasts could quiet her. Olva’s English isn’t very good and she wouldn’t understand our accent anyhow so Robert had to translate. She doesn’t have a husband or a job but gets along because Ugandans grow their own food. She had on her good clothes and carried the baby slung on her back in a freshly laundered cotton cement sack specially tailored for the task. It was awkward but Robert said she didn’t expect anything from us and when I told him it was time to go, they left with smiles.
We spent the afternoon reading and writing letters then walked through the sub-parish (village) where Robert took me this morning. The birding wasn’t great, but we certainly drew a crowd, mostly of kids but with some young adults. A few gave us the cold shoulder, maybe because Connie was in shorts, but most were friendly and flashed toothy smiles.
Just before dinner a storm descended. A little thunder and lightning and heavy rain and wind. We were forced to close our shutters against the driving rain which lasted about 45 minutes and filled our cisterns. I feel sorry for the poor folks that were walking or worse, riding, packed into the back of a truck. I wonder what the chimps do in a storm. 