Fat and fast!

At the end of February a group of us headed north to Murchison Falls National Park. One of the highlights of the trip was startling a hippo out of a small pool of water causing it to run, to which Tanessa exclaimed, “It’s fat and fast!”

if you look closely you will see a leopard descending from the tree

The end is near....

Hello everyone!

Just a super quick update to let you know that our internship is up... hard to believe, but we leave Bushara Island tomorrow morning. We're not ready to go....it's been a tough last couple of days wrapping things up and saying our goodbyes.

All the other ACTS interns are on the island at the moment for a debrief. So, tomorrow we head with John and Ryan to Rwanda to go gorilla trekking in the mountains. From there, we'll maybe head to Burundi for a couple of days, then back to Uganda around March 28th. We're eventually headed to Angola to stay with the Fosters, family friends of Bryony's, before coming back to Canada May 31st. Not sure how we're getting to Angola yet.... but we'll keep you posted!!

Now that we're on the move, our phone number may be changing... we'll have to get a new one whenever we're out of East Africa. We'll keep you up to date on that too. But, keep trying our Uganda number - we'll likely be using this one on and off until mid April.

Hope this finds you all well.... we'll get in a proper update and some photos soon!

Accomplish. Goals.

Celtel, one of the cell phone companies here has a very...interesting ad campaign. They have slogans with punctuation that makes absolutely no sense. Like:

Take. A Second.

Go. Everywhere.

Say it. Your way.

Join. Our world.

Do. More.

Let's. Get started.

Stay. In touch.

Get. The Message.

More. For you.

You. Get the picture?

The week before the February off, we finally got around to checking out the other ACTS project sites. First stop - Kikagati. Because...it's a long road, to Kikagati. John K. Pattison is a self proclaimed "Adventure Scientist", working with BioSand water filters, and widows gardens. Joël is working to improve two water catchments in the area and conditions in a refugee camp. They're staying in a quaint apartment, in the trading centre about 10 minutes from the Tanzanian border. While there, we got the tour - we met the BioSand filter team and saw how the filters are constructed, we met Ezra - John and Joël's notorious landlord, we saw the recently leased widows gardens, saw Joël's catchments and attended the official opening of the widows gardens, which involved singing, dancing, speeches, drama and many photos. A trip to Kikagati wouldn't be complete without a trip to the river to see the hippos. If only we could describe the noise they make...we are perfecting our hippo call.

One of the water catchments

Opening of the widows gardens

hello hippo!

Tea time in the Kikagati apartment

From there we headed to Nyakigyera, the site of ACTS' most recent gravity flow water project. Ty and Ryan are the engineers working there, along side Jim and Joe, Canadian gravity flow system vets, and an experienced Ugandan construction team. We got the full tour, saw the water sources, pipe lines, sediment tanks, holding tanks and got a feel for some of the challenges they face designing and building the system. Katie and Laura were also there, initiating health and agriculture projects in the area. So, we attended a fuel efficient stove demonstration, and loaded a lot of bricks used for the stoves, on and off the truck.

Sediment tank - water passes through here before going to the holding tank allowing sendiment to settle.

Ty bleeding the pipe. (letting air out so the water will flow)

We were in the Congo...illegally!

One weekend, we met up with John and Joel for a hike in the Virungas. You can see the Virunga Mountains in the distance from the road towards Kisoro.

Sabinyo - the mountain we decided to climb because the Congo, Rwanda and Uganda all meet at its third peak.

The first part of the climb was through re-claimed farmland. Then we entered bamboo forest, followed by acacia covered in Old Man's beard.


After a steep climb, we reached the first peak, where we stopped for lunch, and had our first glimpse into Rwanda. This is the view from the peak.


From there we went over a ridge to the second peak. This is looking towards the third peak - a series of verticle ladders to reach the top.




Our team at the top. We had a guide and two armed rangers...and good thing we did. Although in retrospect, they wouldn't have been able to fire a warning shot fast enough if the buffalo we met hadn't veered off into the forest. We surprised it sleeping on the trail and it woke up and headed straight for John and the first ranger...


Cheesiest photo ever....



We made it to the top. PG!!

Looking down... It was interesting to see the difference between the 3 countries - Rwanda was covered in houses, the Congo was almost pure jungle, and Uganda was somewhere in between.

The other two peaks we could have climbed - both have craters at the top. Another time perhaps...