Adventures at the Uganda Wildlife Education Centre (UWEC)

Just for a little preamble – UWEC is an animal orphanage for rescue animals (from accidents, capitivity, etc…) overlooking Lake Victoria – extremely well put together, great enclosures for the animals, and a lot of free ranging monkeys and birds and such.

So – our adventure began on the set of a Harry Potter film – Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. For those of you who are familiar with the books or film, you will definitely remember the acromantulas that hang out in the Hogwarts Forest and that capture Ron and Harry. Well – we were extras on that set today, but the spiders were real! They were huge, and we were surrounded! Massive spiders, webs creating a canopy over our heads, completely filled with spiders that are inches large – almost as large as our hands! And you look around, and you notice, that besides the path immediately in front and behind you, there are webs on every other side of you as well. Packed chock full of spiders. At one point Mom pointed out the spiders above us, we both screamed and started running. And neither of us are afraid of spiders! It was a little too creepy! (now, we’re a little afraid to go to sleep!)

Then – we ran into the ant equivalent of the Pan-African highway. Hundreds of thousands of ants marching on a specific path. And there were guard ants that were huge, about 3 times the size of the other ants, and their pinchers were massive! When we got a little too close, they came out in formation and almost started chasing us. We jumped (like we were doing the long jump in track!) over the highway and continued on into the spider infested woods.

Then there were the chimpanzees! We got to watch 11 chimps playing/fighting and more. They were lounging on hoses hung from the trees, swinging from tires hung from ropes, clapping their hands, picking through each others fur, fighting over jack fruit, and banging branches against the ground. All while making the most amazing sounds.

Last but not least, mom and I got to star in our own little zoo exhibition. We were walking to our dormitory just at dusk, and there was a Ugandan mom and her small daughter in front of us. The little girl stopped, in awe of a mama and baby vervet monkey hanging out on the roof. She was so excited. Then she turned and saw mom and I – two mzungus walking behind her. She wore the same expression of awe on her face, like she had just seen the most amazing animal at the zoo! While we walked away, mom said – ‘you know, she was just as excited to see us as she was to see those monkeys!’ We started to laugh, and soon we couldn’t stop. We both had to bend over as we almost peed our pants, it was so funny!

So – that was our little adventure at UWEC! Hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!