The good night’s sleep we were so looking forward to didn’t quite materialize. Jonathan and Pauly didn’t return but Evan and a lady friend arrived after 11:00pm and talked loudly for several hours. Then there was the mouse invasion. At least two and possibly four squeezed under the door and searched through all our possessions. I killed one with a well-timed swat and chased two (or one twice) outside.
So 6:30am seemed to come too soon. We were to go to the site of the Japanese chimpanzee researchers and with luck see chimps in the wild. It was 3km of dirt road with some seriously muddy sections. Connie rode Lawrence (seated on cushions from the center) no easy task in the mud.
No sooner had we arrived than we heard the hoots of the chimps. Thinking that this would be a piece of cake we entered Kalinzu on a steep, muddy trail. Right away we saw a blue monkey, then a red-tailed monkey and a black and white colobus. But no chimp. Lawrence finally spotted one high in the trees but he disappeared before Connie could focus her binoculars. A while later we saw a second solitary chimp. But where was the large group we had heard?
Some more hooting and we were off with Lawrence slashing a trail through the ferns and vines. Then we saw one, then a couple more, then a mother and baby. Soon we had seen perhaps 20, mostly 100 feet up in the trees. We watched for a while then moved on and were rewarded when four slowly climbed down a nearby tree giving us photographic proof. We watched a young one establishing its independence yet never venturing too far from mom. I got a good shot as he climbed lower in the tree before scampering back to be near his mother.
It was a great time, the best three hours of the trip and cost us nothing although we will treat Lawrence and Robert to dinner and beer at the Tea Estate next week. We returned muddy and sweaty but smiling and soaked the filth our of our trousers and boots. And It’s only noon! We ate lunch, bathed and read for a while. I improvised some weather stripping a.k.a. mouse-stripping, on our door. Hope it works.
Lawrence helped me to contract two local kids to wash the bikes. One, Richard, we have met before. They spent about an hour meticulously scrubbing and the bikes are showroom new. All this for 500/= each ($.27.5) and a packet of cookies (courtesy of JGI). Lawrence says they refuse to go to school, a regular pattern around forests and tea estates. They start working in the forest at age 10 and the Tea Estate at age 15. A picker makes about 30.000/= a month ($16.50) and they consider that pretty good. Talk about culture shock!