We left for Masindi yesterday morning during the tail end of a thunderstorm. It’s about 250 kilometers to Masindi, the last hour on a dirt road under construction. We stopped at New Court View to check-in and have lunch then drove our to Ben’s camp at Kaniyo Pabidi which is actually inside Murchison Falls National Park. It doesn’t look much difference from Busingiro, but there have been reports of lions in the area. And bees. And Ben’s mate, Stu, had several mango fly cysts on his neck. Should be interesting.
We spent the afternoon running errands and tracking down “Toto John” the roof-thatcher and Moses, the mural painter, with a 50% success rate and had inner at New Court and a shower before bed. We are very much looking forward to being on our own again, our own bosses. Planning organization and communication skills need some work at old JGI.
We awoke early, showered for the last time and had breakfast with Ben, Emma, Stephanie and Robert from the NFA. I vowed to go along with whatever Stephanie said, not wanting to make waves or become aggravated on our last day with the gang. While they went to see the education officer and pick up Moses and Toto John we took the motorbikes to buy some groceries and open a bank account. We bought along 2,000,000 Ugandan shillings (/=)plus the JGI float and are not comfortable keeping it in the banda, especially after Robert cautioned us about thieves and cross-border robbers, a remote but serious threat. It’s harder than you might think to open a savings account – photos, passports, letters from JGI – so it will have to wait until next time. But the Masindi market was wonderful. It’s huge and functions every day, some great photo ops for next time. Muzungus are a rarity it seems.
It’s 42 kilometers (25 miles) from the Shell station in Masindi to the Busingiro site in Budongo Forest Reserve, an hour by motorbike on the dirt roads. I doubt if we will ride on pavement again! Steph and group arrived before we did and briefed the artist, Moses, and Toto John, the roofer, on the projects. With Ben’s sketch to work from (another of his talents) Moses seems ready to get going, probably by this week-end. The roofing is a problem as the thatch won’t be ready for harvest until November so a temporary tarp will have to do. Our jobs are to clean, help with the painting, bring the staff (Vincent and Amnon) up to speed on the program and order the shelving and cabinets. But first we had to sort our gear.
The banda is circular, about 20 feet in diameter, set in a clearing, in the forest about 100 meters from the education center. It has a conical roof of thatch and looks like a wheel of cheese with a chunk cut out for the door and despite the three screened windows it is pretty dark inside. We cleaned and swept the inside, removed excess beds and bedding, built shelves, hung “mossie” nets and generally made it home. The outside needs cleaning – hundreds of muddy baboon prints everywhere, hence our name for it – but it could just as easily been called the Butterfly Pavilion. They are beautiful and everywhere.
It’s hot and humid in the sun and we are hoping for some rain, both to cool things off and so we can catch some clean drinking water. The bore hole (well) water looks like tea but Passy, the camp cook, says they can get Jerry cans filled for 200/= a can, about a dime, so we’ll look into that. I think we will buy drinking water in Masindi and haul it back.
While we were waiting for Steph with Toto John who is also a boda-boda driver, Connie jokingly told the boda guys she wanted to become a boda driver. They thought it was great. Few women even ride the tiny motorbikes let alone hire them as taxis
So here we are enjoying the solitude.
