Saturday, 11th July. Semliki Time: 10:16pm

Sunday, thank goodness, is rest day. I think I slept for more than 12 hours last night, a nap that was really needed after the week of sleeplessness coupled with the 6 hour daily chimpanzee treks. The folks back home have asked me to write about the camp and, since they’re among the only people who read this blog, and since not a lot has really happened today, I will indulge them!

Food

The food here is, to all intents and purposes, delicious. Every morning at six forty we’re given a chapatti for breakfast, a food which I assume arrived here with the wave of Indian immigrants who returned to Uganda after Idi was ousted. This is served with honey and coffee from last-night boiled water and is absolutely delicious. At eleven am, after a good four hours of scrambling through the jungle, we’re treated to an egg, a banana and another chipatti with honey. After the rigors of the morning, this is all the more delicious and I usually gulp down the banana and the chipatti at the same time. Lunch appears between 2:30 and three about an hour after we get back to camp. We’re given bean stew with plantain, yam, a delicious bowl of fruit and an even more delicious glass of freshly squeezed passion fruit juice. Dinner, much like lunch, consists of bean stew, this time served with a large lump of very filling sorghum and millet flour dough which everyone tears at and uses to scoop the bean soup. Yesterday this was replaced by rice, though I think soon matoke will all be on the menu. The food is wonderful though the bean stew lacks variety somewhat and I think that, by the end, I may not be enjoying beans so much. Yesterday, though, Alex and I wondered if we could have an egg and the subsequent omelette was heavenly. Beans are lovely, but next time I get to fort-portal I’m going to murder a burger!

Accommodation and Facilities

Thatched roofed platforms on stilts jut out looking over the valley in which the forest lies. The tents contain beds with mattresses, mosquito nets and boxes to put our things in. It almost makes me wish I hadn’t lugged bills heavy duty suitcase out here. Still, it will be useful if our camp is ever charged by a rhinoceros! There’s also a central area, which has a kitchen, a solar generator, book cases, various pieces of equipment and a tank of boiled river water. This is the center of the camp and is very homely indeed. Down the way are various other tents, to our right, up a path, the latrine and to our left down a parth, the shower, complete with running water

People

The camp is pretty much run by a man called Edison who does the cooking, the driving, the chimp walks, the food trips and almost everything else. He’s a lovely man and mothers his western charges no end, making sure all our needs are seen too! When I talked of my latrine woes, he ever went and sprayed it for me to reduce the smell – I was quite embarrassed! It didn’t help too much, of course. My gag reflex is profoundly sensitive.

That aside we’re also living with several others who are in charge of keeping things ship shap. There’s ‘Justice’, a young, smiling man with the muscles of a bull elephant. There’s William, who is our current ranger and takes us through the forest. He’s the camps draughts master, but as I roundly whuped him twice today, I think the Semliki lodge needs more practice. There’s an old fellow who’s very kind and who washes the cloathes and hauls water from the river. He doesn’t speak too much English and I can’t yet remember his name. With luck, I soon will. There’s also another guy called moses, but he’s in hospital with his wife at the moment, who’s just had a baby.

Down the road there’s a safari lodge, but I’ll talk more about that another time. Chimps were heard making their nests close to the camp earlier today and we’re setting off early tomorrow to catch them before they wake up. Maybe tomorrow will be the day!