Media Centre for Volunteer in Ghana

Emma Johnston

Well it's been two weeks and I think I am starting to get use to Uganda...it's very different from South Africa and I'd be tempted to say more beautiful but I haven't seen much a part from Entebbe. I've quickly adapted to being called mzungu, which is simply the term for white person. It's funny when I take the dogs for a walk and have all these kids sitting outside their home calling out mzungu just to get a wave from me. I've been told that it can be a useful term when planning anything in Uganda as mzungu time is very different from Ugandan time, which can be anything up to 6hrs after the actual arranged time. I have also been having a bit of fun getting use to the electricity situation here. Uganda is currently on a 24hr load shedding schedule so we have power one day on and one day off. Makes shopping for food interesting as you can only buy frozen or cold what you can eat in about a 30hr time frame and even then you have to time the purchasing carefully. All the excitement over the past week over the presidential elections here seem to have been all for nothing. We had evacuation plans, meeting points in Kenya and we even had an extra armed guard on the gate to the compound but so far we have survived and nothing much is happening. The original president won again but considering most of the locals were convinced he had rigged it even before they voted it hasn't surprised anyone. I went out to Ngamba Island Chimp Sanctuary the other day for a visit. JGI shares the office with Chimp Sanctuary staff so there's a close relationship between the two, which is a great benefit to volunteers who get to visit the island for free. It's quite an impressive set up out there with 90ha of fenced jungle just for the chimps and then 1ha fenced off that which contains the juvenile yards, night dens, staff residence, tourist centre, kiosk and accommodation. It was a lot of fun watching the evening feeding, you just have to be alert for flying rocks as some of the adults don't like the juveniles being fed before they are. I'm going to be heading up country in the next few weeks with Steph (Education program manager) and Jacquie (Steph's assistant). I am really looking forward to seeing more of the country. The focus of the trip is to visit the 30 schools we are going to be targeting for Roots & Shoots programs and to see how interested the teachers are. Having a great time and enjoying the weather, there is something to be said for living inland on the equator with summer all year round and only the occasional thunder storm. I'm happy.’