We're Here

We've Arrived!

After 2 1/2 days of long, long travel, we've safely arrived. We've landed ourselves at the best bed and breakfast, The Gately Inn, a new place in Entebbe. Love it!

We were really glad to meet Carol and Tracy from JGI Uganda last night when they joined us for dinner. They gave us a great intro to the country and it's many intracacies. We begin going through our workshop stuff, stuffing workshop packages, etc. early Monday morning.

After a long and much needed sleep last night, we spent the afternoon today at The Ugandan Wildlife Education Centre. Fabulous! We've taken an extraordinary number of pictures already - gorgeous close-ups of vervet monkeys including a mom feeding her tiny baby. Some of our favourite things were the gorgeous crowned crane with its "sparkler" feathers on its head, the medicinal gardens with its plethora of healing plants, the crazy shoebills with the beak that looks like a mask and seemingly too heavy to hold up, and Meg is super pumped to have finally seen a duiker in the wild (Brent - I remembered what you worked on in Africa) We finished up with a nice cold Fanta on the shore of Lake Victoria!

We dropped in at the JGI and had a nice chat with Carol on their balcony with a prime view over the lake. We also met a really nice student from the US who's studying STD's in chimpanzees and the potential implications for fertility and its effect on population dynamics. We look forward to meeting Debby Cox, the executive director, who is currently "up country" visiting with folks from Disney! So cool! We were sad that we missed Jane Goodall, herself, by only a few hours. She was here for the 10th anniversary of the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary where we are going on Friday. The sanctuary hosted a chimpanzee conservation workshop under the theme "preserving our heritage and protecting our closest relatives" where Jane gave the keynote address. Wish we could have been there.

Now back to our Inn to try more of the delicacies on the fabulous menu and recline on the couches in the open-air porch. Life's rough! Thinking of all of you... Wish you were here.

More to come!

Meg, Emma, and Alie