Conservation, chimps and rhinos

I have been a member of the East African Wildlife Society for over forty years. In the early days they published a magazine called Africana. Some time in the early 1970s there was a rift in the organization. For a while both Africana and a new magazine, called Swara  (which is Swahili for antelope) ran side-by-side, but then Africana, of which I still had a few copies until we recently moved house, disappeared.

The latest issue of Swara is a reflection of what is happening to wildlife across Africa. There are eight articles under the general heading of Conservation and four Spotlight pieces. Two of those four are also about conservation.

Two of the conservation articles report in-depth examinations of the trade in wildlife and wildlife products. One of these, by professional photographer, author and long-time conservationist and bushmeat activist Karl Amman covers the latest development in oft-studied SE Asia, particularly as regards rhino horn. The other deals with things that have gone on in Morocco for ages but have not been much reported upon.

All the authors bemoan the massive decline in wildlife numbers, and by wildlife I don't just mean animals. Forest have been under threat for may years, mostly due to the fact that the populations of these countries are expanding at unsustainable rates and people want land to cultivate their crops. The Mau forest, on the western side of the Great Rift Valley in Kenya is but a remnant, and now the Kijabe forest has taken a beating.

Karl Amman also has an opinion piece that follows right on the usual editorial and administration material and gives something of a taste of things to come. He does not mince words. Even the title tells the tale: Conservationists should carry condoms, ‑ not GPSs. I have written similar sentiments in the past, but the meat of Amman’s article was a shock. In it he tells of the illegal and growing trade of live baby chimps into China and to a lesser extent to the Middle East. He reports “some 130 chimps and 10 gorillas were smuggled out of Guinea [West Africa] during the last three years.” As he writes further “That’s a horrific number, considering how many adults were most likely killed to generate the orphans for trade.” It would be at least ten adults per orphan. As there are a reported 95 dollar billionaires in China, and over a million millionaires, money is no barrier.

It is obvious that Amman is not impressed with the CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) staff involved. He criticizes them for completely ignoring the China connection and even ignoring the written offer of a Kenya-based chimpanzee sanctuary to house them in new facilities.

In his book What I tell You Three Times is True Ian Parker, who knows more about ivory and elephants than almost anyone considers CITES to have become “a top-heavy bureaucracy that is held up by its own inertia;” he describes it as “an orgy of silliness.” Sad, but based on these and other reports, probably true.

Amman makes an interesting point. He compares the effective campaign to interest the media in the rhino horn trade and the increase in smuggling to SE Asia. I have written about this on a few occasions and the Swara editors have been a part of this effort. In the same July-Sept 2012 issue as Amman’s piece they provide a table showing the increase in poaching of rhino in South Africa. In the year 2000 only 7 rhino were poached, none in the Kruger NP. By 2011 the number had risen to 448, of which 252 went from the Kruger. The 2012 figures to June show a continued increase. As Amman points out, even in the face of these events rhino numbers are on the increase.

To quote him again, Amman states, “the ape conservation community could learn a lot from the rhino community in terms of lobbying, campaigning and activism.”

Try and find a Guinea Ape Traffick story on primate blog sites. Not easy. I found three.

This was the third item on the Google list during my search today. It is by Jeremy Hance but it is headlined Cute Animal Pictures of the Day. I see nothing cute at all. Just desperately sad. 

This picture of a young chimp, that I took in 1997 in Cameroon, is a more realistic reflection, but it won’t win any “cuddly” prizes. He was in the grim cage 24/7 in the forecourt of a hotel near the coastal town of Limbe.

You will find Amman’s story (in a slightly different version) here where you can read about his thesis on the need for condoms.

Amman’s final paragraph, both in the magazine and on-line begins “The fact is that when it comes to wildlife conservation the animals are not the problem. The humans are.”

How true.

Ebola Outbreak in Uganda

There has been another outbreak of the deadly and highly infectious Ebola virus in western Uganda, in the district of Kibale. A report of July 29 about it appeared in the online Guardian newspaper

Ebola was first reported in 1976 in Congo and is named for the river where it was recognized, according to the Atlanta-based US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 

As a CDC fact-sheet states states It “is a severe, often-fatal disease in humans and nonhuman primates (monkeys, gorillas, and chimpanzees”

It manifests itself as a haemorrhagic fever, is highly infectious and kills quickly. It is "characterized by fever, headache, joint and muscle aches, sore throat, and weakness, followed by diarrhoea, vomiting, and stomach pain. A rash, red eyes, hiccups and internal and external bleeding may be seen in some patients".

A chimp family in Kibale NP. Photo by one of 70 students, not sure who.

Those gorillas and chimpanzees, both of which have strong social groups, live closely together all year long. This undoubtedly helps the rapid dispersal of the virus, which is spread by close contact, not just with a victim, but also on communal food sources and other surfaces. So much so that Dr. Jane Goodall told me that one of her primate researching colleagues in the Congo basin had had her work utterly wiped out, not once, but twice, when entire families of habituated gorillas in her study died from the disease.

Of course grieving human family members also make close contact with their sick or deceased loved ones and hospital workers are very much at risk as there is no vaccine and no specific treatment.

Black and White Colobus monkeys

There are several things to think about, and perhaps the most important source of the outbreak has been skimmed over by either the newspaper or the investigators on site. In the July 29 report a brief mention is made of “contact” with monkeys. I’m sure there is more to it than that. About 8 years ago a case occurred in the most northwesterly part of Uganda when a man died of Ebola. He had been skinning out a black and white colobus monkey he had killed for consumption.

Red colobus in Kibale NP

However, it is by no means just great apes that can be involved.

There is a very strong and growing use of bushmeat in the area.  Traditionally Ugandans were averse to bushmeat, and in particular they did not eat primates. But over the last 15 or 20 years or so a large number of refugees have fled the events in the DRC and brought with them their hunting and bushmeat culture.  Of course relationships with locals have developed and so the consumption of bushmeat has risen steadily. 

For a really comprehensive review of the possible role of wildlife in Ebola epidemiology I would recommend an on-line article by a team from the Wildlife Conservation Society in the Emerging Health Threats Journal.

Canadian & Ugandan students on a forest trail

I made numerous trips to Kibale and other areas of Western Uganda between 2002 and 2009 when I took final year vet students there for one-month wildlife conservation externships. Our first field work took place in Kibale National Park

My students and I had what, in retrospect, were some very close calls. For one thing some of us handled monkeys. But primates may not be the only zoonotic source of the virus. 

There is a body of evidence that suggests that Egyptian fruit bats and even some other species may be carriers. They too are a major source of bushmeat and also certainly carry Marburg virus, which is very closely related to Ebola. So closely in fact that they are almost indistinguishable except by very detailed examination. The produce virtually the same symptoms and sufferers almost always die.

There is a fascinating cave in the Maramagambo forest in Queen Elizabeth NP that used to be part of the tourist circuit and we visited is several times. In this clip you can see some of us getting very close to the mouth of the cave in an attempt to see the resident python. He had surely found a perfect spot to hang out, practically a case of free lunches. The background noise is not a technical glitch. It is the sound of the chittering conversations of thousands of bats.

The cave is the roosting site for those thousand of bats.We all got quite close to them and lots of close-up photos were taken.

In the mid-2008 Dutch authorities confirmed that an unfortunate woman tourist who had had direct contact with a bat in the cave died of Marburg infection after she got back to Holland. 

In a report from the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy it was stated that three miners died of the same infection after bat contact in a different cave in another area of the country. 

Bats don't just roost in caves. Hundreds of them use the trees in the Makerere University grounds in Kampala and as the fast-falling dusk of the tropical evening approaches thousands of them can be seen swooping across the sky as they head out for their nightly feed.

I read about the Dutch woman through the wonderful ListServ of Promed and at once alerted my colleagues in Uganda. One of them, Dr. JB Nizeyi, was the chief in-country veterinarian for the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project and very much involved in our teaching. I understand that the cave in QEP has been closed to tourist ever since.

Bushmeat and the bushmeat trade is an emotional issue. I discussed it at some length in my book The Trouble With Lions. I feel that as Africa’s human population continues to increase the trade will expand. In some countries (Uganda, Kenya) the human population doubles about every 20 years. People get hungry. They kill wildlife for food and for revenge when their crops are destroyed or their cattle eaten by large predators. Of course that gets us into a whole other debate, about which I have posted before, but all of it is related.

Yann Martel book launch

Link
Saturday night was book night. I attended the “at home” (Saskatoon) launch of Yann Martel’s new novel Beatrice and Virgil. and of course purchased this copy that you see resting on my Mac. Beatrice and Virgil are the main characters in Dante’s Divine Comedy, and hell features throughout those famous works. No wonder Yann chose them in a story about the Holocaust. Even the “howl” in howler monkey fits the theme.

Martel studied philosophy at university and when one learns this one realizes why his work has so many layers and depths to it. Even the names of the animals in the story have significance. Not just the donkey and the howler monkey, that are the names in the title, but the dog and cat, which are respectively named Erasmus and Mendelssohn. Erasmus was the remarkable humanist and theologian who lived during the Reformation and was, as Yann put it, very practical. The Mendelssohn he used was neither of the great composers Felix or his sister Fanny, but their grandfather Moses who was a prominent German Jew during the 18th century’s “Age of Enlightenment” during which reason and common sense were held to be the primary source and legitimacy for authority.

As most know the book is a novel about the Holocaust, and when he was questioned as to why he wrote a novel about those horrible events he replied that non-fiction needs to become stories in order to survive. There are all kinds of stories in film plays and book about the Second World War and the Vietnam War, but few, beyond the TV series M.A.S.H., about the Korean War, which is maybe why it has faded in the collective memory.

Yann also told us that the novel he is now working on is features three chimpanzees in Portugal. With the two published books and one in the works, he has covered a gamut of the animal kingdom, especially the great apes. Apart from its famous tiger Life of Pi has an orangutan, the new one chimps. Someone else is writing about bonobos. What next? Will a silverback feature in number four?

Images from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desiderius_Erasmus and commons.wikimedia.org

Bushmeat in the USA

Linkhttp://wdin.blogspot.com/, http://news.discovery.com/animals/bushmeat-diseases-entering-new-york.html

Talk about serendipity!

Tonight I have a gig with the Saskatoon Nature Society and my topic is The Trouble WIth Lions: A symbol for Africa's wildlife. As I indicated I am using the lion only as a symbol and I have added an extra subtitle in my opening slide which is (and other continents).
I took this picture in Cameroon in 1997. In it you can see several species for sale as bushmeat. The three at bottom left are smoked monkeys of some kind, but the treatment has rendered them beyond identification, or at least field i.d.
This morning, when I opened up my email I found a letter from my main listServ source on wildlife issues which is theWildlife Disease News Digest, put together by Dr. Cris Marsh of the USDA. One of the links in that document reads Bushmeat Diseases Entering New York and so of course I opened it, as I have been following the bushmeat situation for many years now and my last post about it, of nine, was on Jan 11th. This concerned the trail of the Liberian woman who was convicted last year of trying to smuggle 720 pounds of baboon and warthog meat. She had used the innovative defense that the meat was for religious purposes and claimed the right to freedom of religious expression.

In the online Discovery News of yesterday it was reporter Jennifer Viegas who summarized the newer events and the finding by colleagues in the Wildlife Conservation Society of a virus called simian foamy virus in three primate species: two mangabey monkeys and a chimpanzee. This photo of a sooty mangabey was taken by Nick Gordon and was available n the Arkive image web site. For those familiar with the AIDS story, it was from these very same species that the disease has crossed into humans on at least seven occasions in the last hundred years.

Viegas goes on to report that Inspection and health officials have seized hundreds of samples of wildlife and wildlife products coming through luggage and mail parcels through main entry points for both people and goods into New York City and the United States. Samples have been taken from at least 14 species, including great apes, monkeys, rodents, and bats.

She also states that officials of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service say that more than one billion individual animals were imported into the United States from 2000 to 2004, along with over 11 million pounds of bushmeat and other animal products. That’s one billion animals – 1000,000,000!

Is this the forerunner of a coming plague?

Gorillas and AIDS

Linkhttp://wdin.blogspot.com, http://www.promedmail.org/, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8175379.stm, http://www.nature.com/nm/index.html

News that a newly discovered version of the virus that causes AIDS has cropped up in a woman from Cameroon has hit several new outlets. This is no surprise. They include Wildlife Disease News Digest, Promed Ahead and the BBC web site.

The original article was published in the prestigious journal Nature Medicine. Lead author Jean-Christophe Plantier and his eight colleagues describe the finding of SIV [simian immunodeficiency virus] in a gorilla. They state that the virus

"is closely related to gorilla simian immunodeficiency virus (SIVgor) and shows no evidence of recombination with other HIV-1 lineages. This new virus seems to be the prototype of a new HIV-1 lineage that is distinct from HIV-1 groups M, N and O. We propose to designate it HIV-1 group P."

It has already been established that the two most important versions of the virus (so far) are HIV1, which crossed into humans from chimpanzees some time in the last 100 years somewhere in the Congo basin and HIV2 which came from a small nondescript monkey called the sooty mangabey, a small, almost uniformly grey monkey whose range is restricted to Upper Guinea in West Africa. In humans these two viruses are genetically less closely related to one another than they are to their original primate sources. The SIV counterparts of these two forms of HIV have been introduced into humans on at least seven different occasions.

That gorilla SIV should have crossed into a human should not surprise anyone who has followed the history of the bushmeat trade. In his 1963 autobiography On Safari Armand Denis published several remarkable photographs of gorillas that had been hunted by large gangs of Ituri hunters deep in the forests of the Congo basin. He had accompanied pygmies on a well-orchestrated hunt in the forest.

However, the Cameronian woman was living in Paris and had never been in contact with bushmeat. The article’s authors suggest that she must have acquired the infection from someone else who was carrying it. While this is the first finding of its kind, it seems likely that others will now be made. The patient was not ill, but that does not mean she will not develop AIDS.

Food for sex among primates

Linkhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7988169.stm


This picture of a chimp feasting on wild figs is one of many from Uganda that I have in my collection. It was taken as students went "chimp tracking" with guides in Kibale National Park.
The report on the BBC website about chimpanzee behaviour and the exchange of meat for sex that you can see here reminds me of those teaching trips. In Kibale, which is a tropical rain forest that holds thirteen species of primate, and is our first destination after leaving Kampala, we are privileged to spend time with a remarkable professor from Makerere University. It is Dr. Gil Basuta (seen here) who tells us a great deal about the primates in the forest, and particularly about chimpanzees. When it comes to their behaviour he refers the students to Dutchman Frans de Waal ‘s book Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes.

Gil’s teaching talent make it possible for his audience to imagine themselves as alpha male chimps, and in his words “stand hunched like NFL linemen” as they wait for the spoils of a monkey hunt to be passed to them. He has often speculated about the food for sex business, and now there is solid evidence from researcher Cristina Gomes and her colleagues, from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany. It was Cristina Gomes who took the photos that go with the story, and here is one of them. One of the study’s most fascinating elements is not so much that meat is exchanged for immediate sex, but that the sharing will lead to opportunities for copulation at a later date. She is quoted as saying

"Males might share meat with a female one day, and only copulate with her a day or two later."

When I passed this BBC story URL along to groups of students who had been in Uganda with me one of them responded “and there are still people who do not believe that we are descended from apes.” A further thought: Why do dates among people often involve nice meals?

Visit to a Chimp Sanctuary

Linkhttp://www.ngambaisland.org/, http://www.vwb-vsf.ca/, http://www.pfizer.ca/english/our%20products/animal%20health/default.asp?s=1

After six days of Internet-free life we are back in circulation. I am writing this from the solar-powered office of Dr. Lawrence Mugisha, who is chief veterinarian and sanctuary manager at Ngamba Island, where forty-five chimpanzees rescued from poachers live out their artificial lives. Here are two of the group next to an artificial termite mound

It is a chilling thought that almost all of these chimps are by-products of the bushmeat trade, as are all the other in the several sanctuaries scattered across Africa from Senegal to Johannesburg in the Pan African Sanctuary Association.

This morning our students have been afforded the privilege of working on health-checks of chimps during the routine annual health-checks of the group.

Lawrence and his team do a thorough work-up and most important they make sure that each adult female has retained her birth-control implant. The island, about a two-hour boat ride from Entebbe, is only one square kilometre in area, which is about enough for one chimp, so the animals have to be intensively managed and their entire food supply comes from their four daily feedings supplied by the dedicated staff.

We were, through the generosity of Pfizer Animal Health and the Canadian branch of Vets Without Borders/ Vétérinarians Sans Frontieres some of the essential supplies and pharmaceuticals that are needed to help make this program a success. Pictured here is Dr. Mushiga with some of our Canadian students and a packet of the drugs used to reverse the effects of the immobilizing drugs that are needed to carry out this work.

Most exciting, I discovered from Dr. Mugisha that a serious look is being taken at the possibility of rehabilitating some chimps back into the wild. A small section of suitable forest has been found in the Labongo area of Western Uganda and teams of investigators are currently taking a hard look at the many components that will need to mesh to make this effort got forward. It will take some time, so maybe there will be something to report next year if things go well.

Just before the boat left for the return to Entebbe we watched as the chimps were given their 2.30 pm feed.

West African chimps and the bushmeat trade

The bushmeat issue continues to strike hard at wildlife populations in Africa. I was tempted to write “strikes again” but at would have been wrong, as it has never stopped. This story from the Wildlife Disease News Digest is about the virtual disappearance of chimps in West Africa, specifically Côte d'Ivoire, and details can be found here.

Here is one example of the consequences of the bushmeat trade. This juvenile chimp was locked in a tiny cage in a hotel forecourt near the town of Limbé on Cameroon's coast. It is likely that the entire family was taken out by hunters, and that they figured out that the value of this one alive was greater than as meat, so they sold it to the hotel.

The disappearance of the chimps is but one layer. The forest itself is vanishing as well, and with it precious resources that include medicinal plants.

In 2001 Ghanaian journalist Vivian Baah wrote a series of articles under the title "Guess What’s Cooking for Dinner?” and “Confessions of a bush meat journalist” in The Evening News of Accra in which she not only stated her love of bush meat, particularly grasscutter (cane rat), but also described in detail how she joined a group of hunters who were finding it increasingly difficult to obtain meat for market, and who were resorting to the burning of forests in order to improve their success rates.
Here is a picture that I took in Cameroon several years ago that shows a cane rat, and some unidentifiable smoked monkeys. As you can see the “storefront” is a broken-off tree branch on which hangs, in pride of place, a francolin.

Ms. Baah speculated that the long-term effects of all these activities and the likely effects on the plants used in traditional medicine and the environment in general could not be anything but decline and disappearance.

Noted wildlife photographer Karl Amman, whose website is a must visit for those concerned with bushmeat issues has documented the bushmeat trade with a series of images that are as striking as they are detailed. Take a look.

Wed 27th & Thursday 28th Feb.
Little did we know, when we set up the trip to the Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary last year, that the road north out of Kampala had become an utter nightmare. Last year we got to the sanctuary in less than three hours, visited a butterfly farm on the way home and had an interesting day. This year the road had more potholes and speed bumps per kilometer than a cheese grater has sharp edges and apertures all over. One stretch of 50 km took us one-and-a-half hours! The reason was not far to seek. Huge trucks have been heading back and forth, severely overloaded, on their way to the refugee camps in neighbouring Sudan. The tarmac surfaces and sub grade construction were simply not built to withstand the onslaught. The road has gone from passable to impossible in a few short months. Where reconstruction has taken place the contractors have built seriously large speed bumps every thirty metres, for long stretches of up to two kilometers. We did eventually arrive, but most of us felt that we had been through ten rounds with a heavyweight boxing champ, or at least a sadistic masseur.

The rhino at the sanctuary are the only free-ranging ones in Uganda, and we did spend time with them. Indeed for some of that time we were only about 10 metres from them. Up close and personal as it were. Sadly there are no specimens of the Northern White Rhino left in Uganda -Idi Amin's ghastly regime saw to that- and apart from a non-breeding pair at the zoo this is the only opportunity to see any rhino anywhere in Uganda.

After an overnight stay at the sanctuary, which included a wonderful supper, we headed back to Kampala by a longer but much more comfortable route. That evening Jo and I hosted everyone to a tasty South Indian meal at a restaurant appropriately named Masala Chat. Our favourite dish there is Masala Dosai, and we cannot get it anywhere in Saskatoon, so this is a great way to round out the trip, with only one day left for the students to stock up on curios, carvings, cloth and other memorabilia.

I will take them to the airport tomorrow evening (the 29th) and then Jo and I are off to Murchison Falls National Park, not worried about who may have missed the bus, or who may not have heard the information about some tropical disease and wildlife technique. We are looking forward to the break after almost four full weeks of teaching and supervision from dawn to dusk.

The computer will not be going to Murchison, but the camera will.

Tuesday 26th Feb.
At 8.30 am we boarded a long native fishing canoe and headed out for a two-hour boat ride into Lake Victoria, destination Ngamba Island. This is one of the twelve ape sanctuaries in Africa; all members of the Pan African Sanctuary Association- that cater to orphan chimps, all confiscated from poachers or their customers, that are the sad by-products of the bushmeat trade. It is a terrible fact that in order to capture one infant chimp the entire troop must be slaughtered. Bushmeat hunters will take what they can, and if there are infants they will sell them to unscrupulous buyers for additional profit. The sanctuary manager is veterinarian Dr. Lawrence Mushiga, and apart from his overall management duties he has established a strong preventive care program of health checks for the 48 chimps on the island. We are lucky enough to be at the sanctuary on a health check day, and Lawrence has arranged things in such a way that our group, divided into teams of four, get to work on one of three chimps destined for a full physical. It is very different from work on truly wild animals, but it does offer an amazing opportunity and experience as our trip heads towards its end. Apart from the health checks the students get the
chance to watch two feeding sessions and learn from the excellent staff about the fascinating social structure of the group; who is the alpha male at the moment, who can imitate a human whistle, who is playful, who is shy.

Monday 25th Feb.
We are on the road again, having had no computer access for several days. Something of a blessing. It's off to Entebbe, the site of Uganda's main airport, but we are not going there. We are instead lodging at the Uganda Wildlife Education Centre, which is the Sunday name for the zoo. There are student dormitories and attractive thatch-roofed circular cottages, known in East Africa as bandas. Jo and I have opted for the latter. However, after almost a month without much food that they are used to the students vote unanimously to splurge, and we are off to the Lake Victoria Hotel, where everyone can choose their favourite pizza, followed by ice cream. Hurrah for hedonism!

Thursday 21st. Feb.
Off to Lake Mburo National Park, home to the only population of impala in Uganda, as well as zebra and topi antelope, so distinctive with their blue-black legs that make them look as if they are wearing trousers.

The first stop is in the market town of Mbarara, where we must stock up on groceries, as we will be camping for four nights. It is now that the student in charge of the menu comes into her own. Ronalee works with the Ugandans and gets some input from the other Canadians, but it is she who makes all the purchases and ensures that we have enough grub for a party of twenty. Luckily Hannah, our group secretary is used to large-scale purchasing, as she comes from a family of nine, so she helps out with ideas, and together they simply double the quantities that she is used to. One big difference is the variety and taste of fresh fruit. We will have no refrigeration, but we will have a supply of delicious finger bananas, two other edible varieties, cheap avocados (ten for a dollar),passion fruit by the basket full and sweet, tasty pineapples that resemble our Canadian supermarket varieties just as fillet steak resembles cheap hot dogs.

Our accommodations have gone very down-market with the camping. The students will of course divide into his and her tents, there being two large ones, quite big enough to handle our small crew, while Jo and I get a single tent to ourselves. The shower is the most down-market of all, being just three sheets of corrugated iron around a badly poured concrete pad. The open side faces into the bush, and showering is nothing of the sort. The technique involves a plastic cup and bowl, and the art of sluicing oneself before and after the application of soap.

Our work revolves around the cattle, which almost certainly outnumber the other species in the park and the small commercial fishery that supports a community located just outside the boundary. The fishermen are not allowed to bring their families into the park, but live in small mud-and-wattle houses near the landing site. Every day buyers come from Mbarara and further afield and so the economy stutters along. Those fishermen who specialize in the netting of tiny cichlids may catch a few hundred, on a good day. The fish are sun-dried and smoked on racks, and a rack of 100 cichlids fetches 1000/-, about 65 Canadian cents.

Wednesday 20th Feb.
This was our last day in Queen Elizabeth National Park. We spent Tuesday completing our research-cum-teaching program with the students. This involves the capture, by darting, of Uganda kob, the beautiful russet-coloured antelope that live here and the examination of their blood to see if they are part of the story of the infectious disease called Brucellosis that is known to affect the cattle on the buffalo in the area, not to mention the people. In humans the condition is known as undulant fever, and as its name implies it causes nasty symptoms that can be very severe at times, and often ends up if untreated, as a debilitating arthritis. So far we have not found any evidence of Brucellosis in kob, but as they are heavily poached, and as the handling of carcasses is one way in which the bacteria that cause it can be transmitted, we want to know if they are part of the story.

Today we switched species, and tried a new drug combination on Cape Buffalo that not only get Brucellosis, but also are host to other nasty diseases, often harbouring them without any signs of disease. The drug cocktail worked to perfection, and we will forward our results to the Uganda Wildlife Authority so that they can decide if this single result is worth a further examination. Of course one trial is far too little to allow us to reach any solid conclusions, but it was an encouraging start.

Monday 18th Feb.
Monday was a special day. We had to return to Kasenyi to finish up the painting work that we had started, and Vivien found the time to paint a dramatic mural on the back wall of one of the classrooms. She depicted the Ruwenzori foothills at the left, with the savannah grasslands of the park, dotted with enormous Giant Euphorbias, and then at right, Lake George, at the fishing village of Kasenyi, with a pod of hippos right near the fish landing, and a dugout canoe on the water. She insisted that this is a work-in-progress and so we will have to see what next year's student group thinks of it all, and who can build on it or do another mural in a different classroom.

The school choir and band put on a concert for us, using the instruments that they had purchased with the money we donated two years ago. Then came a surprise. Our students had prepared a mini-drama about the importance of hippos to the fishery and while, two of the girls acted out the hippo under an old sheet, others pretended to be fish of various sizes, starting with little fish being eaten by bigger fish, and finally the biggest of all being caught in a mosquito net which was made to double as its fishing cousin. The kids lapped it up, the biggest laugh of course occurring when the "hippo" tossed some grass between her legs and Salvatory, our the student interpreter, explained that the product of night's grazing was essential as a food item for the herbivorous fish.

Kiiza George (the first name pronounced Cheesa to Caucasian ears, as are all words in Uganda that start "Ki.."), the smiling headmaster, then invited us for a lunch snack of hard-boiled eggs and chapattis in his house, which was most generous, considering that we were a party of 15 people. George then joined us for a trip to another school with which he is involved. This one had 46 registered AIDS orphans and there were many new faces, as the enrolment has risen from 127 last year to 220 this year. First event was a well–orchestrated little concert, with accompaniment of drums. The came our turn, with gifts of school supplies and toys to give to each child. Luckily we had enough gifts to give each child something of value. The tiny ones, in the first four forms, all received a Teddy Bear, the older ones a geometry set or something similar. Each of the girls, no matter what her age, was given a small piece of costume jewelry. The Teddy Bears had been lovingly knitted by a church group in Saskatoon that call themselves Teddies For Tragedies. How appropriate.