After a false start in the classroom teaching year 5s how to draw draw an equilateral triangle with only a compass and a ruler we had a chat with the volunteer coordinator about doing something that even vaguely matched the description we’d been given before the placement began.
The area is renown for it’s primates, and by Ugandan standards a massive amount of money is poured back into the community through primate tourism. In particular the Bigodi wetlands walk and accompanying women’s craft sales fully supports the local primary and high school as well as various other community initiatives. We went on the wetlands walk several times and noticed much of the board walk was in need of some repair and maintenance, so along with 2 Canadian volunteers we set ourselves the task of making this a less treacherous form of tourism.
We were allocated a couple of Ugandans to help us out, because, to be honest, all 4 of us are office workers and despite our best intentions we needed a bit of grunt from time to time. Over the next three days we hammered nails into planks under the hot African sun until our hands were blistered and our bodies were aching (I took a photo of my blistered hands but it actually looked pretty lame so don’t expect to see it on the blog any time soon!)
The upside (and downside, depending on exhaustion levels) of working in the wetlands was the 30 minute walk to our worksite. The morning walk there was always great, energy levels were high with monkey and blue turaco sightings plentiful. The walk back for lunch was another matter, the sun was at it’s fiercest and after a morning of manual labour this was an unwelcome bridge that stood between my stomach and some banana mash and chapati.
Here’s a few shots of what we achieved along with some cool monkey shots from our little corner of the planet.
SORRY ABOUT THE PIXELATED IMAGES – IF YOU CLICK ON ANY OF THE IMAGES THEY WILL LOOK MUCH BETTER. UNACCEPTABLE, BUT IT’S THE BEST I CAN DO ON THE iPAD. SORRY.
