Kanyawara Obama HQ

Greetings from the official Obama head quarters in Kanyawara, Uganda:

 The handful of Americans at the research station woke up at 3 am to watch the results roll in.  One of the guys at the field station opened up the room with the tv for us.  We all brought food and drinks.  We wrote each state up on the white board and kept track of how many seats each state had and whether they went to McCain or Obama.  It was pretty exciting!  As the hours went by, a lot of Ugandans came in to see how it was going.  And when people heard that Obama had won, they were ecstatic.  Even still, walking down the street, people have yelled out "Are you American?" –we say "Yes" – and they say "CONGRATULATIONS!!"

 We are hearing rumors that he is appointing some really great people, like Robert Kennedy, Jr. to head the EPA.  Can anyone confirm this?

 In other news, Jeff is continuing to get to see some pretty cool wildlife.  We saw a Potto farely close up the other night and could see its whole body, not just its eyes.  A potto is a nocturnal primate.  It has eyes that reflect the light, so usually, you can see its eyes, but it can be hard to see the actual animal in the dark.  We also saw some bushbabies.  Bushbabies are also noctural primates and you can also see their eyes bouncing around in the trees.  They are ½ or 1/3 of the size of pottos and move much faster.  They can bounce from branch to branch and tree to tree very quickly.  We had seen their eyes in the trees several times, but we finally got a good look at one the other night.  It was on a tree about eye level with us and was only about 5 feet away.  It looked at us for a bit and then we saw it bounce away. 

 Jeff started the wildlife drawing competitions at the schools.  He has done 2 of the 9 schools so far.  The drawing competitions are to see what students know about the wildlife in their country.  So they are each supposed to draw a picture of Kibale National Park (a forest) and Queen Elizabeth National Park (a savanna).  Later in the year, the teachers from these 9 schools will be going on field trips to each of these parks and will teach their students about what they saw.  Then there will be another drawing contest to see what the students have learned. 

 So far, Jeff has been a little frustrated with the process.  Culture shock has definitely been an issue and he is still trying to get used to how things work here.  Additionally, he doesn't understand the local language and even though the students doing the competition should be getting taught in English, a lot of the instructions are given in the local language.  So he has no idea what the teachers are saying to each class (if they are each getting the same instructions, if some are being coached, etc).  And the classes are HUGE, so it takes a long time to pass out paper and pencils to everyone.  Not to mention that there are no mechanical pencils or electric pencil sharpeners to speak of here, so we have been sitting out on the front porch with little tiny pencil sharpeners and sharpening hundreds of pencils at a time. 

 The plus side is that the kids are cute, he is learning a lot, he loves riding his bike around, and the drawings are interesting. 

 Krista has slowly been starting field work, including hiring field assistants.  She took out a group of 11 possible field assistants to the forest and quizzed them on various things in the forest (tree species, identifying individuals, describing their activity, etc) and had them attempt to collect urine and fecal samples.  Overall, it was a pretty successful day, but it was hard to pick between everyone. 

 We also saw a local play over the weekend.  It was performed outside of the new clinic that was built just outside the park.  The play covered many topics including: the forest is good for us and here is what we get from the forest; women – don't wear mini-skirts or you are asking to get raped; stay in school and don't become a poacher because your life will be miserable if you are a poacher; AIDS is a big problem here, but here are some ways to prevent it.  The play was in the local language, so we don't know everything that happened, but got the jist of it from people sitting next to us who were translating.  The miniskirt message was a real problem for Krista and, of course, she started arguing about it.  The Ugandan guys she is friends with tried to reassure her that it is not a mans fault if he rapes a woman who is dressed like that because he cannot help but rape her if she is dressed like that…. hmm, talk about cultural differences?  Anyway, the rest of the play was good and informative.  Krista won a sampling for answering a question right ("Why is the forest important?").  The play was about 3 hours, but a brief rainstorm resulted in a short intermission in which everyone ran and crowded onto the porch of the clinic to get out of the rain. 

 In other news, we have found a Ugandan newspaper that has the most insightful horoscopes we've ever seen.  It is the government run newspaper.  Keep in mind, the cover story to this newspaper a few weeks ago was about a construction accident that killed 8 people and could have easily been prevented if they had only sacrificed 3 bulls prior to breaking ground.

 That is about all for now.  This place is still unbelievably gorgeous and we are having a really good time!