Blogs from Western Region, Uganda, Africa - page 15

What a great weekend! On Friday we headed up to Queen Elizabeth National Park to visit the wildlife vet, Dr. Siefert. He wants to get the goat project started in the park, to decrease the number of lion poisonings and poaching. Due to dwindling numbers of their main prey animal food source, the Cobb, lions and leopards have been going into communities within the park and killing livestock. Since their livestock are their livelihood, the farmers then poison or shoot the lions, which further decreases their drastically low numbers. Dr. Siefert would like to introduce a completely zero grazing goat project within these communities, so that the livestock will be protected from the hungry lions and there will inadvertently be less lion poisonings. Zero grazing goats involves building a solid pen, which is raised off of ... read more

From Kenya we crossed the border into Uganda and headed into Kampala, the capital city. We stayed in accommodation just outside the city but did get an experience of the manic traffic, and also the beautiful sunsets. Our night here was fairly chilled out as we had a very early morning to try and beat the traffic out in the morning. We were successful and made very good time to get out and stop on the equator for photos and some breakfast. Today was a bit of luxury as we had bacon and eggs! We also got plenty of photos with the equator sign as well as a ‘magic show’ showing us the water circling in opposite directions either side of the equator. Following this we headed out to our next destination - Queen Elizabeth National ... read more

Ok, I lied, not all days are insanely early, today was actually insanely early, as in 4am early. Today was the day where we prayed to see lions, and since our best chance of seeing them is first thing in the morning, we got our asses out of bed and were on the game drive by seven. Like the days prior, we saw many, many ungulates, particularly kobs. In fact, we saw hundreds of kobs! They were all over the park, to the left and right of the jeep, and crossing the road in front of us. We saw a couple square off and fight and even got to see a couple mating. We were, after all, in an area of the park called Kob's Mating Grounds, so we can officially say it lives up to ... read more

Today's adventure would begin early. . . oh who am I kidding, everyday on the safari is insanely early. Now we were off to the Queen Elizabeth National park for the next two days, which is home to prides of lions, and would likely be our only chance of seeing them on the whole safari. Any of the African cats are generally the most exciting to see, as they are very rare and many tourists don't get a chance at seeing them. We didn't get lucky seeing a leopard on the game drive at Lake Mburo, but we all had our fingers crossed for lions in Queen E. As we drove through the park to get to the Kazinga Channel we saw many more ungulates roaming the savannah, including kobs and waterbucks, as well as vast ... read more

The final days in Kabale were starting to count down, before all of us MUST students would have to pack up our things, say our goodbyes, and head back to Mbarara. Work at the Kihefo clinic continued to be slow, and Leandra still had only seen one child admitted to the nutrition clinic the entire month we were there, so we decided to take matters into our own hands. After hearing the insanely disorganized and chaotic stories from the other U of S girls at the Rugazi clinic – dirty equipment, lack of supplies, severe acute cases, even helping deliver babies – we decided we need to see another hospital. So Monday morning we put on our lab coats, paraded up to the Kabale general hospital and walked in, pretending we were supposed to be there. ... read more