Uganda Soil Ecology and Sustainability: BUSY and full week!!

The final member of my field work team arrived last week, my collaborator Dr. Stuart Grandy, also from UNH. On Monday we all went to the Kibale National Park visitor center and took a nature walk. We learned a bunch about the forest trees and plants and what the monkeys and chimpanzees like to eat.

With his help we finished off the field work, visiting 51 farms in two days, in the most southern area I visit, the large village of Kajumiro. The farms here seemed to be a bit larger on average and there was definitely much more reliance on the production of maize, although many alternate between rice and maize each season. The hills were larger and in many cases steeper here as well.It is also noticeably dryer in the south and many of the maize fields had already been or were actively being harvested.

The people there were all of the Bakiga tribe and as usual were very helpful and generous. We were offered a variety of fresh fruits vegetables and drinks. Mike tasted the local millet porridge, which in case you were wondering is fermented and does contain quite a bit of alcohol. I was lucky enough to witness a family making banana juice, and then got to sample a large cup full. It was made by cutting up banana leaves and the matooke bananas then pouring water over the top, then crushing and mashing it all together by hand, with the resulting juice collecting in the bottom of the large tub. I tasted the fresh juice, but they also allow this to ferment into a very tasty alcoholic beverage that I hope to sample later this week.

Because we were able to finish the field work early this past week, I decided to take Mike and Stuart down to Quenn Elizabeth National Park for some wildlife viewing. We stayed the first night in the Mweya Safari Lodge, which was extremely nice. There was a very cute family of mongooses that lived around the hotel, and I saw this one eating a little green snake.