Birds of a Feather

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0VI6oCkOs0

I can’t believe I’m going to say this, it’s like I’ll never learn. It feels like spring is here and it’s only early March. I know better than to start planting certain things before Easter but it’s really hard to stop myself this year especially. We are doing some big projects in our yard getting ready for the garden tour in May. That part I’m not worried about that’s a lot of Dirt Work and Woody ornamentals going in. But what’s making me itch are the bedding plants that are smiling at me in our greenhouses. They are already out on the tables for sale, mostly those that wouldn’t be affected by a slight dip in the temperatures. Most of my plants that will bloom the spring that have been growing since last October, like Foxgloves, poppies, Delphinium, snapdragons and campanula‘s are starting to bud. I don’t know if they’ll hang on until May 1, but that is my hope. Believe me I have a back up plan to the back up plan so we’ll be all right.

Last week I ended the article in a part where mom and I were about to wake up early, drink some coffee have some breakfast and get in the jeep by 6:30 in the morning to go track chimpanzees. It was about an hours Jeep ride to a congregating place where a pretty big group of people were to meet and be split up into groups of eight to go into the deep forest listening and watching for chimpanzee’s high up in the trees. When we got out of the Jeep with the group that we were to be with which coincidentally was the Canadian family again that we tracked the Gorillas with one of the trackers heard chimpanzees off in the distance. That was kind of a relief because that meant we wouldn’t have to go for hours before we would find them. We walked through the deep jungle for about 30 minutes when one of the trackers pointed up to the sky and had us all stop. As our eyes adjusted, we realized that there were chimpanzees all around us way up in the trees.

At first, they were hard to make out because the foliage was so dense that not much light was coming through. Once the chimpanzees spotted us, they began to make a lot of noise. You can imagine what it sounds like when about 20 chimpanzees are excited and warning each other that we were there. They mostly hung around the branches chewing on some kind of fruits. Some of them were more curious than others and would climb halfway down

a tree make a threatening noise and then go back up really fast. I was clicking away with my camera, sometimes not sure what I was getting but I figured I could deal with that when I got back to the lodge that night. Some of the chimpanzees threw stuff at us from way up high and some climbed all the way down to the ground to pound their fist really hard on a certain kind of tree that sounded hollow.

The wings of the roots of these trees were the drums that the chimpanzee used to send reverberations up into the air where the group was to let them know that there was a threat down here. The foliage down on the ground where we were was still mostly wet with the morning dew. The female tracker, whose name was Allen told me that the chimpanzees wouldn’t come down much as long as the foliage was wet, they don’t like that. She was kind enough to lead mom and I in the direction that the chimpanzees were headed to keep us in view of some great photos. I noticed throughout our whole trip that most of the trackers were females. There aren’t many jobs for women in Uganda so they created a cooperative that trains women to track animals with tourists.

Watching the chimps way up in the trees was giving me a neck ache, like walking around the Sistine Chapel, went on for about 45 minutes until suddenly, like an alarm went off, all of the chimpanzees climbed down the trees and got on the Forest floor with us. It was then that I realized the chimpanzees are bigger than I thought they were. They were not shy to get pretty close to us and some of them even seemed like they were posing as we took pictures and stood very still while we watched them get more and more comfortable with us. As it began to warm up, they began to pick insects off of each other, which is a sign of

love and family, companionship. My pictures of the chimpanzees up in the trees are great, but when they came down to the ground and got face level with me I have some pictures that are just amazing. From a distance, they all look very much the same but up close I began to notice that some are lighter skinned with freckles and some are completely black in the face.

Some of the older ones had gray hairs around their face lines and the younger ones seem to have no fear at all. Just as suddenly as the chimpanzees came down from the trees, the leader of the group started making a noise and waving his arms as if to say it’s time for them to go, and they all got up and ran towards him and beyond him until they disappeared into the jungle. It was so exciting to be so close to these animals and to look them right in the eye before they scooted off. That’s a moment that I will never forget and

mom was having a blast taking pictures with her own camera.

When we got back through the jungle and back to the Jeep we went to the congregating place again, and we each received a certificate that shows that we successfully tracked chimpanzees and learned a little bit. We stopped at a place that Emmanuel knew about and had a couple of cups of coffee and talked about what we would like to do next. Mom and I both were in the mood to go into a village and walk around and talk to some people just for the experience. Emmanuel knew just where to go and before we knew it we were in a village on a steep mountain side, that was just beautiful. People went about their business and smiled as we went by. It was definitely weird to be in the village walking around, but no one seemed to mind.

One family invited us into their place where they were working on roasting some coffee beans. They let us watch as they ground the roasted beans then they boiled some of the grinds and we had coffee together. It was a cool experience, but not the best coffee that I had on the whole trip. I’m a little particular about my coffee if you can’t tell. We walked farther until another guy invited us into his backyard where he was making banana water, banana, beer, and banana gin. With his hands, he would press bananas with banana leaves wrapped around them until he got a clear liquid. That was the banana water which he let us try. s I was thinking this would be pure magnesium and pure potassium and maybe that night I wouldn’t get leg cramps (It didn’t work). He had bottles and labels for his banana beer and banana gin and we got to see his still where he made it, it looked just like an old still that you would see up in the Appalachia.

Mom tasted the banana beer and said it tasted pretty good, but she didn’t want any more

after that. We sat around with a bunch of ladies that were making baskets and weaving things while they smiled and laughed at us. Mom watched one of them make an angel out of reeds and some kind of indigo die that was really beautiful. She bought that angel for Mimi and gave it to her upon our return. We were pretty bushed by that time and we’re happy to take a ride back to our lodge to kick our feet up for a little while. At least we thought that’s what we were going to do.

I began receiving texts from some friends back home, asking if I had been watching the weather. I had not been watching anything to do with back home or really anything on the Internet for quite a while. I could see that the pink was moving fast towards Atlanta and Mississippi. We were scheduled to have two more days a little farther north where the Merchant waterfalls are. One day we would spend at the top of the waterfalls and the second day we were going to spend at the bottom of the falls. The more I looked at that radar the more I realized we needed to get home quick to get in front of that storm. Mom was outside talking to my sister on the phone when I interrupted to say that I was going to need her help and she needed to get off the phone. I called Delta Airlines and they put me on hold for about 15 minutes which I needed because in the other phone held up to my other ear I was calling the Safari company that we were with to see if there’s any way they could get us two Entebbe where the airport is in seven hours.

More on Allen and his Mom's Uganda trip in next weeks addition!