Blogs from Mbarara, Western Region, Uganda, Africa - page 4

Well, the three of us just got back from another weekend in Queen Elizabeth National Park (see next blog), and there is no power again. So I’ll blog till my computer dies, which may be sooner than later, as I’m also playing music on it in an attempt to drown out the Evangelical revival happening in the park across the street. And cue the rant… Ok first off, this is not an attack on religion (although I’m not a big fan of organized religion in general) but it really pisses me off to see this manipulative, right wing, Evangelical fanatic coming to Uganda to spread his twisted message. It’s a fairly well known fact that most of the people of Uganda are incredibly impoverished and many of these people are also very religious. For many, having ... read more

Well, good news....I haven't poked myself with any more contaminated needles and don't seem to be showing any clinical signs of brucella! We've been pretty busy this last week and a half. We have done brucella testing and clostridia vaccinations in many of the communities and have attended almost all of the group meetings. We also had the pioneer training for the goat farmers from QE (Queen Elizabeth National Park). The training went much better than we expected and we were all quite proud of ourselves. We were teaching them the basic principles behind the goat project, the requirements to receive goats and also some basic goat husbandry. The pioneers seem very enthusiastic and we think they have the potential to be very successful with the project. The field days are long and all three of ... read more

So a lot of people have been asking me about the food … hmm… how can I put this… it sucks!!! Haha… people don’t eat for pleasure or nutrients here, they eat to get full! Lots of rice, plantain, matoke (kindof like potato), chipattis (a pancake-like thing), pocho and sometimes when you’re lucky there’s also Gnuts (basically peanuts) grounded up into a sauce I guess you can say! And you just put that on everything. Not much flavor or content lol. The fruits are good though (banana, avocado and mangos are big here!) I’m basically living off of bananas, eggs, avocado and my shake mix, and we go for supper at Café Ark , a restaurant near our place that has westernized food that’s pretty okay so that's cool! A good meal is around 20000 Shillings ... read more

Sorry it’s taken me a while to write another blog, but I’ve been busy (and a little lazy). I’m going to fast forward a bit to last weekend, then backtrack to the start of the goat project for next blog. Since the last blog, Laura (a vet who is one of the co-directors of the goat project), Brittany, and Lena all joined me and we made our way from Entebbe to Mbarara where we would be based for summer. After a week on the project (again, stay tuned because I’ll go into that on the next blog) we traveled to Queen Elizabeth National Park for the weekend to work with Dr. Siefert, a vet who runs the Uganda Carnivore Program. Dr. Siefert is originally from Germany, but has been living in Uganda for almost 40 years ... read more

I have arrived safely in Africa! My flights went well (I made sure I had lots of gravol with me) and I was pleasantly surprised when my bags showed up with me in Entebbe, since Sarah hadn't been so lucky. I had layovers in London, Istanbul and Kigali and a total travel time of 19 hours. I was basically running from gate to gate. Laura McDonald, a small animal practitioner from Saskatchewan, met me at the airport. Laura will be spending three weeks with us student interns to help us get adjusted to life in Uganda and familiarize us with the project. She has been involved with the goat project for many years and is very passionate about it. I am glad that she is here to help us get started. It was three in the ... read more