8.12.09
Today was one of the most amazing days, not only of this expedition, but of my life. Looking back on it, I still can't believe how fantastic it was. I wish I had the time to thoroughly describe my experiences today.. but work is calling and I must be brief!
5 members of our team crawled out of our tents before the sun rose this morning and hiked out through the tea plantations to the UWA headquarters to begin trekking through the rainforest in search of the chimpanzees. We had all prepared ourselves for the hours of hiking ahead and for the possibility of not encountering any of these elusive creatures. Yesterday, the ranger told us that they hiked for 8 hours straight and saw them around 150 yards away at the end of the day. But I didn't care.. I was happy to be heading back into the rainforest. Amazingly enough though, around 7:30am, we had been hiking for 10 minutes or so and all of sudden the quiet of the rainforest morning was shattered by the sound of chimpanzees screaming all around us. We all froze on the trail, absolutely shocked by the powerful chorus of the community (and at our amazing luck!). When the vocalizations died down, we quietly ventured a little ways down the trail and rounded the corner to see a large adult male walking about 15 feet ahead of us. His huge black and silver muscular body was a sight to see so close, and he seemed to not even notice our presence, despite our awkward muzungu feet stumbling across branches and vines. We tried to be as silent as possible as we followed him and he led us directly into the center of the group. As chimps are feeding, they are fairly quiet, so it came as a surprise to all of us when we looked up and saw chimps of every age and sex all around us, staggered throughout the trees. One subadult male was about 10 feet from me, casually feeding on the palm tree seeds that they adore so much. Little infants were scampering through the tree tops just above him, their mothers feeding and lounging nearby. WIthin this particular community, there are 120 members, 20 of which are large adult males. Quite a few of those males were within the vicinity, and several times they broke into their display behavior, crashing through the trees and beating on anything nearby as we ran to get out of the line of fire. It was remarkable how swiftly an entire community can move through the forest.. after a relatively quiet feeding session, one by one they began to disappear and before we knew it we were running through the dense rainforest, leaping over fallen trees and crawling through the undergrowth, tripping over vines and scraping through sharp foliage, in a desperate attempt to keep up. The government limits the amount of time that humans are allowed to be with the chimps in the wild. We definitely overstayed our welcome, and after a couple hours, turned to hike back to headquarters. On our way back, one young female was lounging in a patch of sunlight right in the middle of the trail. We all stopped and studied her beautiful face before she nonchalantly and fluidly stood up and disappeared back into the forest. I feel so fortunate to have been able to be inside their world today. Its something that I will never ever forget.
After chimp trekking we spent our afternoon doing something almost equally as amazing... we met back up with our team, loaded up on Nox and drove to a primatologist named Julia Lloyd's "compound", nestled deep in the forest. Julia is a British woman who has been living in Uganda since the early 90s, researching ecotourism, chimpanzee habituation and conservation. It was fascinating to be able to see a primatologist working in the field who has so successfully melded her lifestyle to meet that of the locals. Her living/work space consists of 3 huts, one is her office, one is her home, and one is a guest house. Keeping her company are 4 rescue dogs, all just as quirky as you can imagine an African rescue dog to be. Julia is such a breath of fresh air in her objective perspective of conservation issues in Uganda.. After traveling around for the last 4 weeks, meeting various conservation organizations, all possessing unique and somewhat political agendas, it was great to meet an individual who is such a "heavy hitter" in the conservation world who has managed to have her research work successfully impact conservation without forming alliances. She's the real deal. What an inspiration..
More to come! Once I finish my web work! Love you all bunches!
