Testing, testing...

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Greetings friends and family,
I am due to leave on my Ugandan adventure on Sunday evening so thought I would send a practice message to see if this works and to let you all know that I am off. I think you can choose to get the email alerts or not so that’s up to you!

For those of you that don’t know, I am going to Uganda for four months to work for a conservation sanctuary (‘The Chimpanzee Sanctuary and Wildlife Conservation Trust’- CSWCT) and to travel the country. CSWCT was established to care for orphaned chimpanzees - rescued by the Uganda Wildlife Authority from poachers and traders, with no chance of survival back in the wild. For the past 10 years CSWCT has owned Ngamba Island in Lake Victoria which has created a sanctuary for the chimpanzees. The island consists of almost 100 acres of forest land where the chimps live and a small separate camp area where people that care for the animals and run the sanctuary live, and where tourists can visit to view the chimps and to learn about the conservation work that is being done. For my first few days in Uganda I will be based on this island to become orientated to what they do and see how they work. From there I will then be moving up to a place called Hoima where the sanctuary owns an education centre and this is where I will be based for the majority of my time. In addition to the actual sanctuary the conservation trust does a lot of work with local communities trying to establish sustainable resources and running educational programmes. While working for CSWCT I will be involved in; education, community development, research and administration.

I’m also going to upload some pictures from my little summer adventure - working at Twycross Zoo. I was there for 10 weeks altogether and it was brilliant. I was an education officer which meant that I did some teaching, did public talks around the zoo, made educational signs to go up by the enclosures, went on ‘outreach’ where we ran activity days for kids at leisure centres, and I updated a document called ‘Zoos and Conservation’ which will hopefully be used by A’ Level students. In addition to this I got to feed and wash the elephants, feed the giraffes and made some great friends.

While I’m away I’m going to get a Ugandan sim card so will try and let you know my number but don’t try and contact me on my English number. Hopefully I will have quite regular internet contact so will be able to let you know that I’m still alive!

I hope you’re all well and enjoying whatever you’re doing and look forward to catching up when I’m back - keep in touch!!

Lots of love and hugs

Hannah / Chiz / Mini / Han Han

x x x x x

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