Kibale National Forest

We survived week one of the bioinformatics and genomics workshop unscathed. It is a bit of a miracle, but so is the fact that this is my job. How lucky am I? Extremely, extremely lucky.

Let me back up. I left off at a roof top in Arusha. The five days spent in TZ were bliss for me as I love that country and its language very much. I also love my dear friend Abbas, who I had not seen in 5 years and with whom it was just as easy to pick up mid-sentence in KiSwahili as it would have been with an old friend from Florida in English. He is warm and generous and smart and open—like many Tanzanians I have met, and it was so fun to pick up where we left off and even take a day to go out in the bush looking for spiders (it was not unlike some of the other diverse expeditions we have been on together, like the day we went to go looking for a magic boy). We found spiders. Tons of them, actually. And it was really a hoot looking and inciting the curiosity and then assistance of mainly the Maasai in the areas we were looking. The Maasai are generally very thoughtful, and extremely observant; somewhat disappointed, as well, when the many spiders they offered up simply weren’t the right kind. It was kind of fun explaining to them that there are 43,000 species of spiders, and we were looking for one of them—Loxosceles rufescens. While looking, we saw probably 40 other species, plus scorpions, millipedes, beetles, horned grasshoppers, ants, worms, zebras, elephants, baboons, blue monkeys, and tons of birds. But alas… Still fun looking though, and hanging out with Abbasi.
From Tanzania, we flew to Entebbe—a town near Kampala (yellow star on the map), the capital of Uganda, on Lake Victoria and home to Makerere University—the host institution for the first workshop I am running in bioinformatics and genomics here in East Africa as part of my post-doctoral duties at L&C (I know, tough work if you can get it, huh?) Last weekend (before the workshop), I went to see the national football (=soccer) team (the Ugandan Cranes) play soccer in a stadium literally buzzing with the sound of 35,000 vevuzulas. This weekend, I am heading west to where I worked as a graduate student at the Univ of Florida (12 years ago!) when I spent an absolutely amazing summer in Kibale National Forest (see heart on the map) doing my field research. I lived with 3 friends from FL in a house at the station that summer, just down the road from the permanent project houses (my advisor and her husband, working on fish, chimps, and plants and Richard Wrangham’s chimp house; see this older post for more on that). There were so many great things about that summer, I don’t know where to start my description.

Lauren in the papyrus swamps.

First, there was my walk to work: 5 km each way through the most beautiful, dense, luscious forest descending gently deeper and deeper into the park until we arrived at a pair of swamp sites [Njuguta and Rwembaita] where I was collecting data. “We” was a team that included various people day-to-day involved with the fish projects, but which always included myself and my field assistant, James Apuli. James is a treasure of a human being, and our long days together that summer were something I cannot speak of highly enough. He was the best assistant, acrobat, problem solver, conversationalist, data collector, and friend I could have asked for... and I get to see him on Saturday! It has been way too long. What else was great about that summer? Well, there was the day Scot and I spent stalking elephants, there were the frequent dinners spent playing Celebrities and eating cabbage rolls, there was the week long retreat to Lake Nabugabo when the rebels came into the park, there was the party for Tammy when I put in the butt implants, there were homemade cookies from Amy’s private stash of chocolate chips, there was the trip to the village doctor for the mango fly infection, there was Fry Night every sunday, everyone getting and using a traditional Rotoro pet name, sampling at the Crater Lakes, black and white colobus monkeys dripping from the trees outside our house, expected and unexpected visits from friends and colleagues, trips to the market for food, faxes, and supplies, and a really, really fun dance party at the end of the summer, that came up right away in conversation when I met up with Jackson (my old friend from that summer, and now a lecturer in the Dept of Zoology here, my colleague co-hosting the workshop, and fellow Uganda Cranes fan). As you can imagine, although I spent almost no time in Kampala that summer (our one day in town, we headed to nearby Jinja to raft the Nile), it is great to be back in another region where I have such fond memories. Mostly, I am grateful to Lauren, my advisor, for giving me that opportunity, even though I am quite certain I was a huge pain in the butt to mentor or try and keep tame. After completing week one of two of the workshop, this weekend we are off duty and I am heading west to see her, … and the swamps, … and the field station, … and James Apuli. I can’t wait!
[By the time I got a chance to post this, I was already back from Kibale, and therefore able to add pictures from the trip to illustrate my excitement about going there in the first place! ]

Me (Abwoli) and James (Apuli) at the research station after 12 years apart.