Feeling Better!

Hi Everyone,
Sorry for the delay in updates, I have been recovering from malaria. Last weekend I got retested, and there is no malaria parasite in my blood :) I feel SO much better now, and I am back to work every day.

Though this week I'm really taking a "vacation" to visit the other
sites where Zinta is collecting data. Zinta is the PhD student who selected me for this project. It is a comparative study of different forest sites, looking at the chimpanzee stress response to human impact on the forest. As you can imagine, Kasokwa, where I have been collecting data, is very disturbed. the other sites are Busingiro (heavily logged), Kaniyo-Pabidi (pristine forest used for ecotourism), and Sonso (logged in the 1960s, now used for scientific research only).

I visited Shannon at the
Kaniyo-Pabidi ecotourism site, which is so much nicer than where I am
in Kasokwa. There is a REAL forest there, with 87 chimps! there are so
many not all of them have names, so Shannon is having fun naming them
after herself, etc. To see a real pristine primary forest only makes
more clear just how degraded Kasokwa is; disappointing, really, that
people let the devastation go so far.

I am still trying to think of a good name for the new baby chimp in
Kasokwa- if I can ID the gender I get to pick a name. But the chimps
here are very dispersed lately, not traveling in a big group anymore,
and I havent seen Ruhara and baby in a while. It is the end of the dry
season, so food is scarce, and we often catch some of them raiding
sugar cane. I even saw one chimp cross the main road, where people
speed a lot, to raid the crops of the households on the other side!
(probably eating mangoes and cassava or peanuts, whatever he can
find).

It is raining a LOT- one day we got 9.6 cm (about 4 inches), and
yesterday we got rained out of the forest. We were sitting in the rain
for about an hour and it wasnt stopping, and the chimps had already
moved on, so field assistant Joseph and I just decided to go home for some hot
chocolate :) .

Tomorrow morning I will go to Sonso, the main research area where
Zinta herself has been collecting data. She is on vacation with her
parents in town, so I have to do habitat work for her. This is what
all volunteers consider "hardship duty"- cutting transects, measuring
tree diameters, determining species and phenology of all plants in 3
meter radius, etc. excessively slow and tedious work. (this must be
done at all the sites, except kasokwa, because there is not enough
forest to do a full 500-m transect; i guess i cant get off that easy
after all!)

But it should be fun to be in "camp" with the other researchers, as
many of them are from st andrews, or plan to attend in the fall, so i
can make some friends and get away from the village for a few days.
Also, sonso has a nice kitchen with a real oven, so ill go wild making
good food! Ive been joking that when i get home i will get so fat
eating all the foods i miss, haha.

Im still planning on my july 1 flight out (arriving at LAX on july 3).
Though Zinta has just alerted me of a big conservation conference in
Uganda on july 5, I think one conference will be enough this year- I
signed up for the one in Edinburgh (IPS) for Aug 3-8. I have a hostel,
and just need to research some flights. Shannon and I are still trying
to plan our travels together, and she intends to keep her may 31
flight, so we will have a month together, then i will have a month on
my own. I will probably spend most of that time with my friend Femke,
who lives in Botswana.

So far the VERY tentative plan is: April 30- goodbye party in Kasokwa.
Travel to Rwenzori mountains and/or queen elizabeth NP in Uganda. May
7 we are booked to see the gorillas in Bwindi. From there, will bus to
Kampala, then Nairobi. (Shannon departs from Nairobi). we will visit
masai mara, then charter a dhow trip through the Lamu islands off the
coast of Kenya (she loves to sail and snorkel). When she leaves, I
will continue south through Arusha/Dar es Salaam to see Arusha NP and
Zanzibar. I will take an overnight charter bus to Zambia to see
victoria falls, then cross the border into Botswana and do a mokoro
tour of the delta. Then I will stay with Femke in a wild dog camp in
Maun where she is working. This seems like a lot, but time flies when
you are having fun!

I miss you all very much! Love, Katie