Whole Lotta Shaking Going On

Went to Lake Mburo this weekend with Cameron Cover, the other physician here from Providence, and his father John. Combining Lake Mburo with Queen Elizabeth National Park means that you see more of a variety of animals, since there they have zebra and several varieties of antelope not found in QENP. They also have impala, for which the capital here, Kampala, is named. On the drive into the park we were fortunate enough to see an enormous herd of Eland, the largest variety of antelope. We had to stop for several minutes and allow the herd to pass in front of us, leaping across the road.

We also saw quite a few Topi, Bushbuck and Impala, several other varieties of antelope. We stayed in the Arcadia Cottages above the lake itself, and I got an entire cottage to myself. The cottage itself was framed on the outside in concrete, with painted burlap and wood trim on the inside. Add in a separate bathroom and it was a welcome luxury compared to some of the places I’ve been staying. Walked out my front door to sit on the veranda and startled a vervet monkey that had come to investigate the noise of my unpacking and rustling about the cottage. The mud surrounding the cottage was filled with tracks of every shape and size, from pronged antelope tracks to the three clubbed fingers of hippopotamus.

Took a boat tour that afternoon around the lake. I am still not used to being such an oddity here (sarcastic comments aside). John, Cameron and I headed down to the lake shore to take the boat launch around the lake, and there were a group of primary school students from a town nearby on a field trip to the lake. While we were settling ourselves on a lakeside bench to await the boat, all 60 of them lined up in rows next to us, giggling and pointing at the Mzungos. John was very friendly and went over to them and started having pictures taken of him and the students- they loved to have their picture taken and then see themselves on the small camera screen. He took down the address of the school in order to send the copies of the pictures to them after we get back.
Lake Mburo houses large varieties of bids, groups of hippos and several crocodiles. Unfortunately we only were able to see the adult crocodiles as their heads stuck out of the water, since they rarely went out on land. We did see several baby crocodiles on the bank, ranging from 6 inches to 2 feet in length. While we were out in the middle of the lake the rain started, cascading down in sheets of water. I felt bad for the people up front, since they took the brunt of it- sitting in the middle we were protected by people in front and back of us and the roof overhead. I wasn’t quite sure that the outboard motor would make it back to the dock- on the way back it sputtered in gasps and starts but luckily kept going until we made it to shore.

The rain continued overnight, drumming on the corrugated tin roof loudly enough to wake me up several times. The cottages themselves had no electricity or lighting; we were provided with lanterns to use if needed during the night. Combined with my headlamp and flashlight, it made for quite a cheery setting. When it gets dark out in the African savannah, it gets VERY dark…
I woke up one time at night at about 3:00 with the bed shaking and thumping; having been used to nightly visitations by hippos I assumed that one had decided to rub against the outside of the cottage vigorously. This wasn’t too concerning to me since the cottage was framed in concrete and it would have taken a bull elephant (I think) to do any damage. This happened one additional time, but in my sleep addled brain I didn’t think too much of it. The next morning John and Cameron asked me if I felt the earthquake, to which I sleepily replied “wha?” I guess in retrospect I shouldn’t expect a hippo to be able to shake the entire cottage, but there was apparently a small earthquake that night- not surprising since both the East and West Rift Valleys frame Uganda on either side. No harm, no foul. It was a very minor earthquake, and no damage was done. From talking with the staff at the lodge, they have one or two each year.