Uganda's Kasubi Tombs

Linkhttp://www.creativenonfictioncollective.com/index2.php/
The widely reported story about the destruction by fire of one of Uganda’s UNESCO Heritage sites in Kampala lacked one thing. This was any photos of the remarkable structures at the Kasubi tombs before the fire. One such report came on the BBC web site here and showed the fire itself and a crowd scene. For those who know the place, the fiery skeleton of the main building seen in the BBC report is easy to discern. Here are a few pictures taken during one of many visits that my veterinary students and I made in the years that we went to Africa to study the wildlife x human x livestock interface and took time out for some cultural enlightenment.

During the visits we walked up a long path, which gave one a great view of the huge thatched building, about 40 metres wide.

Under the awning, with its intricate woven thatch, one sat in front of the pictures of the last four kings, with spears and other memorabilia on show, and listened to the guides tell us about the history of the people and the site.
The tombs, built in the 19th century, are where the last four kings of Buganda were buried. Buganda, founded in about 1500 AD is the largest of the four kingdoms of what is now Uganda and once controlled a big swatch of land from Lake Victoria to the Kagera River that begins its journey to the lake in Rwanda. Kampala lies right in the middle of the Buganda region. Indeed, the tomb site and the king’s palace are in the heart of the city.

The kingdoms were abolished in 1966 and it was only when President Museveni allowed their reinstatement as cultural institutions with no political power in 1993 that they came to the fore again. King Ronald Mutebi is the current king. His role is largely ceremonial but it would seem as if he, or his advisers, have been flexing their muscles and there have been some confrontations with Museveni’s government. Last year there were riots after the government blocked Ronald from visiting part of his kingdom.

The latest riots occurred after protesters prevented Museveni, who is an Ankole from Western Uganda, from visiting the tombs where the fire was destroying the above-ground structures, which were made entirely from vegetable materials and would have made a natural fuel for a rapid burn. Sad.

Veterinarians Without Borders/ Vétérinaires Sans Frontiéres

Linkwww.vwb-vsf.ca
If you are thinking of donating anything this Christmas season, why not go the web site of Veterinarians Without Borders/ Vétérinaires Sans Frontiéres and see what you can do. Of course tax receipts are issued as this is a registered charity. If you do not have money to spare you may have AirMiles points and they would be most welcome. The money will go straight to a project somewhere in the world. For instance there are projects needing help right here in Canada, and of course there are projects in many other regions. My efforts have mainly been focused in Africa, and for those who have not delved back very far on this page you can find a length report about our activities in Uganda in the blog of Monday, May 4, 2009 titled Uganda and WCVM primary schools report.. To save you time just click here and you will get straight to it.
It has a large number of pictures, many of them related to activities in two small primary schools.
But not all of them. As a teaser here is one that shows the sort of thing the children would have seen when we arranged for them to take a boat trip and see some wildlife.
My travel to Uganda was supported through the AirMiles program of Air Canada who support VWB/VSF. When Dr. David Waltner-Toews, the CEO of VWB-VSF read the report he wrote to me saying that it is interesting how many of our projects start out working with animals and end up with schoolchildren. Thats' where the need is, that's where the educational opportunties lie for the betterment of the lot of people and their animals.

I know some of you folks following this are veterinary students. Think about joining VWB/VSF. The rewards will far outstrip the costs (which are pretty low as there are special student rates).

Enjoy the holidays!

Marburg Virus and Fruit Bats

Linkhttp://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSL1166433320080711, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090801185900.htm, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6958015.stm

Just over a year ago, on July 11th 2008, there was a report on the important ListServ Promed Ahead and some other news outlets that told the terrifying story of a Dutch tourist who had died in Holland after being in contact with fruit bats in Uganda. She had visited the Maragambo Forest in Queen Elizabeth National Park, like thousands of others before her. These thousands included me, my wife and at least fifty of my students. We had gone there because there is a cave there that is home to thousands,
if not tens of thousands of Egyptian Fruit bats (Rousettus aegyptiacus) and it is mesmerizing to watch them flit in and out of the roost, never mind to see them clinging to the rock in their serried ranks.

There was an added bonus of attraction at the cave. A pair of African Fish Eagles had taken up residence just outside the entrance – grub to go as it were. Furthermore there was a resident python. In fact the last group of students had seen two pythons. So it is probable that a little biology 101 had been taking place. No exercise need for their packed lunches!



As you can imagine, the park authorities have closed the cave to tourists. The last thing they need is another catastrophe.

The Dutch doctors who cared for the dying patient and identified the cause of her death could not be absolutely certain where the virus came from, but the evidence has now mounted and seems conclusive.

The first suggestion of the link between fruit bats and Marburg, which is closely related to the better known Ebola virus, seems to have been made in 2007, as this BBC report shows.

Then came the recent (Aug 2nd 2009) report in ScienceDaily titled
'Ebola Cousin' Marburg Virus Isolated From African Fruit Bats. To quote:- “A paper published in the open-access science journal PLoS Pathogens provides new insight into the identity of the natural host of this deadly disease.”

As the authors of the PLoS article state, this brings the identification of the natural host of Ebola one step closer, as fruit bats are also strongly suspected in this disease. The first indication of this may have been in a 2005 paper in the prestigious journal Nature that can be found here.

There is one more important part of this chain. Fruit bats are a major source of bushmeat in the forests of central Africa. They are also pretty easy to catch when they return to their roosts during the day.

How many human forest dwellers have died of one of these deadly diseases and not even been noticed?

Moose Jaw Festival of Words

Linkhttp://www.festivalofwords.com/, http://www.skwriter.com/

You never know what will happen when the media get hold of you. In this case what happened was good. A reporter form the Moose Jaw Times Herald asked me one question after the second of my talks at the Festival of Words in Moose Jaw. All he wanted to know was my affiliation, so I told him it was the University of Saskatchewan. I didn’t tell him I had retired. He went on his way, and I thought no more about it until I got an email form Donna Lee Howes, the artistic director of the event.

It turned out that the reporter, Carter Haydu, had filed a story and picture about my presentation on the 20th of July, the day after the event. His fancy had obviously been caught by the folk tale about how hippos became aquatic animals. This link shows you what he wrote.

He did simplify the story somewhat, which is understandable given that I had used the KiSwahili name for the hippo, which is Kiboko, and the native name for the God who lived among the snow-capped peaks of the mountains, which is Ngai. My story centred around Uganda, so the mountains were the Ruwenzoris but of course if it has been in Kenya I could have chosen Mount Kenya or even Kilimanjaro

Solar TV show in Uganda

Linkhttp://www.uwa.or.ug/about.html

Back in February I described the official opening of the new solar unit that we had donated to the little primary school at Kasenyi in Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda. Like a daft idiot I got so tied up in the show & the reaction of the children that I failed to take pictures of the event, other that the ribbon cutting by Dr. Jo Haigh & Dr. Margaret Driciru, who is in charge of research and monitoring in the park,. and was acting chief warden that day.
Here are some shots that i missed that day (taken by Jo). First, the gifts that we gave the children, an exercise book, pencil and teddy bear or other toy for the older children, then the speeches by various officials, first Margaret and then Wilson, the Community Conservation warden, then drinks and lunch for everyone who could be fitted into the classroom, and finally, the actual TV working.
All the staff, including Kiiza George, the headmaster, were delighted with the show, and if you take a close look at the last picture you will see that Jo pressed the shutter at exactly the right moment to show the head of a hippo. I had chosen to show a DVD about fisheries conservation and the importance of not killing hippos as they are the keystone species in the lakes of Africa's heartland. Wilson and Margaret are keen to get copies of the video, as it is a great example of the sort of thing that gives a powerful message for all.

R & R in Murchison Falls NP

Students away safely on Friday evening and due for some R&R in Amsterdam. Hope we did not work them too hard. I don’t think so & I received a moving and kindly though-of book of paragraphs written by each one of them saying how the experience had affected them. Not for sharing here, but something for me & Jo to treasure.

As they were landing in Holland Jo, Geraldine (her sister) and I headed out on a week’s R&R of our own. Our vehicle was a Land Cruiser belonging to my colleague Dr. JB Nizeyi and driven by professional driver/guide Dauda, which took all the pressure off us, me especially, as I have no driving to do for a whole week.

Our first stop was Murchison Falls NP, and this where we spent 2 nights, saw many species that we had not seen on other parks, had a great ride on the Nile in the tour boat, and enjoyed the rest.

Highlights included close-encounters with pair of Abyssinian Ground Hornbills, shown here, with the male having both red & blue bare skin over cere and neck, the female only blue. These turkey-sized birds are almost never seen flying, but stalk purposefully through the grass looking for food over large home ranges.

We also saw lots of Uganda kob, Rothschild’s giraffe, buffalo, warthogs and hundred’s if not thousands of Abdim’s storks, which were scattered everywhere, also foraging when not circling on the thermals. I almost forgot to mention two other mammals, one common, one less so. Oribi, a dainty antelope with a distinctive black spot behind the eye, are the common ones. Leopard the others. Our most unusual sighting was of a very close association between these two when the cat crossed the track in front of us carrying a partly devoured example of the antelope.

As we circled on one of the many tracks we came across this old bull elephant having a good scratch against the trunk of a Bourassas palm. It must have felt good!

Uganda students in Kibale National Park

Finally back into the connected world of the Internet, after six days in the tropical rainforest environment of Kibale National Park, famous for its diversity of both plants and primates, not to mention a wonderful array of birds.

The ten final year veterinary students who have accompanied me have been subjected to an array of new sounds and sights from both the human and animal world, and are beginning to gel as a team. We have been fortunate to work with dedicated Ugandan faculty and much enjoyed the quite humour of Dr. JB Nizeyi, who is a faculty member at the veterinary school in Kampala and also the local head of the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Program. Our instructors in Kibale, where we worked out of the Makerere University Field Station at Kanyawara, were Dr. John Kasenene, director of the station, and Dr. Gil Basuta. John is a forest ecologist with a vast knowledge of the plants in the forest, and a special interest in medicinal plants. Gils’s strengths lie with mammals, and he has an uncanny ability to excite entertain and educate students all that the same time. . This portrait of Gil shows him at his entertaining best. His discussion of chimpanzee politics is worth the wait, and something I would not miss, although I have heard it every year that I have been bringing students.

Yesterday we moved from Kibale to Queen Elizabeth National Park and here I am in the Mweya Safari Lodge using the rather slow dial-up that is the bets we can get. Pictures to accompany this blog are going to be hard to add. The students have already had close(not dangerous) encounters of the elephant kind, watching tiny infants rush under the bellies of their mothers, and we visited Kasenyi Primary school where the solar system that we purchased in Kampala will be installed in the next couple of days so that educational videos can be run. The official opening of the set-up is scheduled for Saturday, so I do hope that at least one picture will make it.

Uganda trip & silent auction

Link

Gearing up now for our Uganda trip with ten vet students from the Western College of Veterinary Medicine.

They are holding a silent auction throughout the college in 2 weeks time, so here are three items that will be entered. One is a tray that I made from several different hard woods. Then there are two photos that generous business people in Saskatoon have agreed to mount in large format for the events.
The first one is of vulturine guinea fowl and was taken in Samburu Park in Kenya’s northeast. Brad Hoffman of Early Mailing and Printing is enlarging a high-resolution version of this one for us. Brad has supported the program for a long time, by producing calendars for us at cost. They have all been calendars depicting birds of Africa, photos that I have taken over the years. Some of these can be seen on my web site. I have shown Trudy Janssens of Photography one-2-one four photos, and I am not sure which one she will choose to run. These are a speckled mouse bird one of two alternatives of Klaas's cuckoo, and one taken at the oasis at Sussusvlei in Namibia where we saw two pied crows and I managed to catch them in what I have labeled yin and yang crows

All the proceeds go to two small schools in Uganda’s Queen Elizabeth National Park that we have been supporting in a variety of way for several years. The last six chapters of The Trouble With Lions cover many of our activities in that country, and you can also get some different perspectives by having a look at the student blogs from 2007 & 2008.

If you want to bid on any of the items you can do so by emailing me at jerry.haigh@usask.ca but you had better do so soon. If you want a particular photo either one of these, or one from the small gallery that you find on the web, let me know and we can get it printed up, but I will have to get cost estimates, including shipping, to you before we close a deal. All profits will go to the schools.

Uganda trip and Gorilla babies

Preparations for our trip to Uganda in February next year are going ahead. The student group have finished their big veterinary licensing exams and can now concentrate on the trip. They have to prepare their talks, and also start the fund-raising for the support of the two schools that we have linked with over the last few years. One concern has been the terrible news coming out of the eastern DRC, and whether that conflict would spill over into Uganda. I have been in touch with the consulate in Kampala, and they assure me that things are quiet (I almost wrote All Quiet on the Western Front but that phrase has already been used by Erich Maria Remarque in his important book.)

Meanwhile this interesting and encouraging report about the birth of gorilla twins in Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest appeared today on the Wildlife Disease News Digest
The picture on the blog is credited to Getty Images.

Lillian Nsubuga, a spokeswoman for the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) was plainly delighted with the news as you can see if you go to the blogShe obviously hopes that the news will further boost the tourism industry in Uganda, because gorillas are the poster children for that entire sector.

Uganda primary schools fund raising

Things are moving ahead with the preparations for our 2009 Uganda trip. Most of the students who were not on duty at the clinic were able to come to the house for a curry supper. This gave us all a chance to meet in a less formal setting than the vet college. One of our recipes comes from an old book that was given to us by house guest Dr. Elizabeth (Becky) Manning many years ago when she visited Saskatoon. The book, written by S.N.M. Khan in 1934 is called The Finest Indian Muslim Cooking and Becky found it in a used bookstore in her home town of Madsion, Wisconsin. The recipe, which is for mutton, can be seen here, but of course the paper is a bit faded, so you may need to enlarge the image. The other point is that we used venison, but that will come as no surprise to those who know us.

One of the main activities that is ongoing, and which we discussed, is a big fund-raising effort for support of the two primary schools we have supported in past years. One of them is located in the village of Kasenyi, on the shores of Lake George in Uganda’s Queen Elizabeth National Park. The other is an AIDS orphanage located at the edge of the park. It is called Equator Highway Primary School. Her are a couple of pictures that show some of the efforts we have made in past years. At Kasenyi the children surprised and delighted us with a concert using the musical instruments that they had purchased with the funds we donated the previous year. There were drums, a large xylophone and several hand harps. At Equator the children were delighted with the teddy bears that had been knitted for us to take to Africa by our local Saskatoon charity Teddies for Tragedies as this photo by Tessa Leena shows.

The big news on this fund-raising is that we are able to go through the Canadian branch of Veterinarians Without Borders/ Vétérinaires Sans Frontiéres. This means that donors who need them will be able to get charitable receipts.

Teddies for Uganda

We are setting up for our Uganda trip in several different ways.
On Monday I spent time with the ladies of Teddies For Tragedies, a group of women who have knitted little Teddy Bears for kids in many countries. Last year that gave us a bunch of Teddies for the schools we support, and of course we sent them a thank you note along with a photo. This year they have outdone themselves and asked me to come and collect what they had. Not unreasonably Edna Jennings, the group's coordinator, asked me if I could show them a few pictures & tell them a story or two. Of course that was a pleasure, and so I did.
Imagine my delight when I came home with 157 Teddies, with promise of 30 more to come. That evening I had a call from Edna's sister, who loves in southern Saskatchewan, in the town of Weyburn. Guess what! There are 50 more Teddies on the way by bus. The good news did not stop there. Edna had asked the Saskatoon Star Phoenix newspaper to send a photographer, and the next day this image appeared. That evening I had a call form an old friend, Lesley Avant of the Saskatoon Zoological Society. We now have a bunch of 't' shirts to take as well.

2009 Bird Calendars for Uganda Schools

There have been several different methods to raise funds for the two little schools that we support in Uganda. Every year we have been selling calendars showing birds of Africa. Here is the front picture for the 2009 issue. The proceeds are all used as funds to support the schools program at Kasenyi and Equator Highway primary schools in Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda. Equator Primary has a large number of registered AIDS orphans. You can see some of what we have done in the student blogs from the years 2007 and 2008, or from chapter 27 of The Trouble With Lions. You can find out more about the book here, where several pdf pages and part chapters can be read.

This year I have gathered enough photos to do one with the theme Black, Grey and White Birds of Africa. Here are some of the images from it.

To make the link to the schools more clearly I have added photos taken by Tessa Leena who accompanied us as videographer on the trip in February 2008. She took dozens of pictures at both schools and I have included a few that show the kids and their school surroundings.

One of our activities was to paint a mural in a classroom and artists Vivian Lau and Tyler Stitt spent a good hour with the landscape that depicts the park, the Lake George and some of the Giant Euphorbias. We also painted, or re-painted, the school blackboards, which looked more grey than black when we began to work on them. Here are Jo Haigh and Jill Meacher hard at work.

Calendar sales have been brisk so far, at $20.0 each, which gives us a profit of under $8.00 towards the school programs. If you would like one, or a whole lot, please contact me through the comments section below. They make great Christmas presents and Sandy Farber, of Jubilee Travel in Saskatoon (details here) has just purchased one as a birthday present for her bird-watching sister. Sandy has been our go-to travel agent for all the arrangements for the trip.

We cannot offer a discount on the price, as every cent goes to the schools, and we do not have a charitable tax number. We can only take payment by cheque or cash, and we would have to add postage, as we do not want to cut in to the money we raise. This has been a low-key operation over the years, but 100% of our proceeds go where they are needed.

Canadian Vet Students to Uganda -1

Met last evening with the new group of ten Canadian final year vet students who will be coming to Uganda next February. Of course there was a mass of things to discuss, not least of which was the whole issue of travel safety & insurance that the university requires them to cover. They have to take three on-line tests and keep a sharp eye on the Canada government's Foreign Affairs web pagethat has travel reports for every country especially of course for us about Uganda. If the worst came to the worst and something really bad cropped up in Uganda the trip would be canceled. Right now the biggest threat posed by a Ugandan occurs in the DRC where the leader of the self-styled Lord’s Resistance Army continues to terrorize villages and kidnap children. If the past is anything to go by these youngsters are turned into child soldiers and sex slaves. It seems as if Joseph Kony and his cronies have not operated in Uganda for quite a few years.

Enough of that stuff. Our Canadian group members are already making plans for fund raising to supper the two schools that we have helped in the last several years. School supplies, cash for new desks and textbooks and lots of gifts have been given out.
Generous donors in Saskatoon have supplied soccer uniforms and lots of other sports equipment. The boys have reveled in the uniforms and they first time they put them on it seemed as if they had grown about two inches in as many minutes – as this picture shows.
Of course we have to then play them at their own game, and we are usually thrashed, although we did manage a 1-1 tie one year.

Girls do not pay soccer, but they do have uniforms for volleyball and netball, and one year we played after a huge downpour when there was about an inch of water on the outdoor court. A messy experience, as you can see.

In February 2008 each child in grades 1-4 of the Equator Highway Primary School, which is an AIDS orphanage, received a teddy bear that had been lovingly knitted by members of the Saskatoon ladies group who call themselves Teddies for Tragedies.
Most of these kids had never had a gift or a doll before in their lives, so you can imagine the reception.

More to follow in this one as the fund raising continues.