photography – Page 5 – Where is Phil now?

Life is about using the whole box of crayons.

Friday June 21 2013 – London.

To save having to repeat myself I should just refer you, dear reader, back to the opening paragraph of my last week wrap-up post which discusses the complete lack of progress on the job front… Oh well, good things come with time.

On Monday I signed myself up to Twitter, not that I can ever see myself tweeting, there is no way I can say anything in just one hundred and sixty characters! I signed up because it seems to be the best way to find out about things I am interested in, in the most expedient way. Hopefully from now on I will not miss so many good gigs and interesting exhibitions, plus of course football results when the season starts.

On Monday night El and I went to see Siouxsie Sioux and band perform at the Royal Festival Hall as part of the Yoko Ono curated Meltdown Festival. I had only heard about the gig quite late so by the time I got tickets we were in the third row from the back. There were so many great acts playing as part of the festival, I would have really liked to have seen Patti Smith and the Stooges – especially supported by Savages, a young English band who I really like.

What can I say about the gig ? I guess “Wow” sums it up pretty well. The sound and lights were amazing, Siouxsie looked amazing in a skin tight white vinyl body suit and her voice had not changed in thirty years, she sounded fantastic. The band was not the Banshees, but still good.

The bulk of the set was the album Kalaidoscope played from start to finish, with the opener ‘Happy house’ sending shivers up my spine – it sounded that good. It was a surprise as I really expected a greatest hits show, but it is a great album, so no complaints. There were a couple of encores, with a bunch of classics ‘Israel’, ‘Spellbound’ and ‘Arabian nights’ being the highlights. They did of course do the big hit ‘Prudence’, but meh, a Beatles track is never going to be a favourite of mine, though the rest of the crowd loved it ! Siouxsie did a few songs off a solo album I have never heard and none of them really got me going – average rock songs I thought. It was great show – hour and half long, awesome venue and she still has the voice and the moves. Siouxsie was supported by another old punk hero, Viv Albertine from The Slits, who performed some songs from her first album in twenty five years. She was pretty good too.

As the gig was just up the Southbank from my place we walked home. its not bad walk..

On Tuesday I walked back up to the Southbank again as I noticed some of the graffiti had changed at the skate park and I really liked this new one and thought I should photograph it before it was painted over.

I walked back home via the streets rather than the river side and found this little Space Invader under one of the arches for the train tracks to Blackfriars station.

I also found a wonderful photography exhibition from members of the Arena group at the Menier Gallery in Southwark. I was there for a good hour, which is pretty remarkable for me in a gallery. There was a good range of styles on display from a number of very good photographers. I loved it and would have liked to have shared it with El but it finished later in the week sadly.

In the evening I went over to Dartford to visit my uncle and to pick up my tri-pod -I must do some night photography sometime soon, no excuses now!

On Wednesday I had arranged to meet a friend for lunch in Shephards Bush so took the train over to Westbourne Grove and had walked over to SheBu and looked for some of the small patches of street art in the area – it is the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea so I was not expecting too much. There is an old Banksy at the far end of Portobello Rd though.

I caught up with my cousin for a beer in Soho in the late afternoon which was great, I have been very slack with catching up with family and for that I do apologise !!

I have been thinking about getting a pushbike for a while now and on Friday I decided to start having a serious look around, I found a couple of bike shops on the internet that were reasonably local and went for a walk to see if I could find something. Sadly one place no longer existed and the second did not have anything I wanted – basically a single speed with raised mountain bike style bars. I am not in a particular rush but it would mean I could roam a bit further without having to use public transport – plus I want to be able to ride to work if I can, when I get the elusive job!

I found out on Twitter (only time it has been useful so far! ) that it was world skate day today so I waited to late in the afternoon and then grabbed my big camera and zoom lens for a change and went out to have a look see. There were a lot of skaters there and a couple of them were pretty good. I watched from the wings for a while, snapped a few photos and then started the walk back home.

It was great to be out with the big camera and long lens and I took quite few other photos around and from South bank. It was all good fun.

The skyline of London is slowly changing, especially over the ‘city’. The tall building in the middle is known as the cheese grater. It is designed like this so that it does not sit in the sightline of St Pauls – the council allows that no building should spoil some designated clear sights of St Pauls, which I think is pretty cool, especially when I get shots like the one below.

Outside the Tate Modern some buskers were bubble blowing massive bubbles to the delight of a lot of children – and one or two adults as well.

Further along the Thames at Bankside I found these young buskers playing cellos which sounded amazing in the tunnel of the arches.

It was a pretty good week, I didn’t achieve much on the work front but I saw some good stuff, heard some great music and spent some time with some great people!

Southbank Skate park

On Monday I finally did something I never thought I would do and signed up to Twitter. It seems a lot of activities that I am interested in like gigs and exhibitions are now promoted on Twitter first. Today I saw a tweet about go skateboarding day being held today and thought I should head back along to Southbank to see what was happening.

For a change I took the big camera with the big lens as I hardly ever use it and it seemed like the best option for shooting skaters. The skate park at Southbank is covered and a little dim for flash free photography, so a reasonably tough shoot. There were a couple of quite good skaters there, along with a couple of photographers and some guys shooting video so I kind of stayed out of the way.

As I mentioned on this post there is a proposal to move the skate park and re-use the location for retail outlets and frankly this sucks….

More here http://www.longlivesouthbank.com/

Here is what I got.

Shakespeare country

Sunday 24 February 2013 – Stratford-upon-Avon

I am blaming the bard for causing an almost complete mental block and now I am stuck on how to go about starting this post. If I only I had a small jot of his ability to string phrases together it would all be so much easier.

In true tragic-comedic fashion, now that I am committed to leaving London in less than two weeks time I have met a woman I like and naturally she is unable to travel in the immediate future. We have been hanging out a bit over the past few weeks and have had some good times. For reasons I will not go into I have agreed to not post a picture of El, but she has an impeccable taste in music, likes to read books, has a wicked sense of humour and I think she is very nice.

Anyway, we decided to do something different and went to Stratford upon Avon for the weekend, the birth and burial place of the bard himself – William Shakespeare. I am reading the fabulous Bill Bryson book on Shakespeare and it really highlights how few actual facts there are about old Bill, his name has been recorded as – Shakspeare, Shagsper, Shackspere and another twenty plus variations – a number of those variations were in his own signature.

We caught the train up from Marylebone Station in London on a bitterly cold Friday evening and arrived in our hotel in time for a late dinner in a bar packed with middle aged men in tuxedos – I felt a wee bit out of place in my jeans and boots – Stratford is not London!

On Saturday we took a walk around town, it was quite cold outside so numerous visits to historical houses were made. If you have lived in England over a winter you will know all about the bitter wind that howls down from the Siberian Steppes, it does not bring rain or snow but it cuts through as many layers of clothing as you can possibly wear and even my ‘windproof’ leather gloves were no match. Having said that, there was a constant very light fall of massive snow flakes all day. I was possibly the only person praying for a massive snow fall…

Stratford itself was sort of disappointing, due to my own ignorance I was expecting a cute wee village rather than a proper ‘town’ so the lovely old buildings were scattered and a bit incoherent. Not that there were not beautiful in their own right, just in between were the normal English high street chain store blights like Starbucks, Currys and the soon to be gone HMV. I imagine in not such a long time we will all be looking back at high street shopping as quaint and old fashioned.

First stop was a quick look at the Royal Shakespeare Company theatre on the far side of the River Avon. It was great to see a wee bit of Olympic legacy with the number of keen rowers out on a cold morning.

We were looking for breakfast and coffee and were momentarily tempted by three inches of pure dairy fat in the middle of this scone. Jam and cream scones as part of an “English cream tea” are very common, but I have never seen this much cream – ever. I was not tempted through the shop door (OK I was, but I did not dare!)

There are very few real facts about Shakespeare and his life, no paintings of him were made during his life time and no copies of any of his work exists in his own hand writing, most of what we know comes from other accounts of his life. Due to reasonably good record keeping in the UK from a very early time we do know where (not exactly when) he was born, got married, had children and died. Our first stop post breakfast was the house where he was born and lived when he was a child.

It is a museum now and frankly a wee bit odd. I guess the flow of the museum is really designed to cater for the masses of visitors that would come through on an English summer day. As you can see he was not born into poverty, though his family were hardly rich, just well off…

It was a wee walk through town to our next stop.

I really liked these old alms houses from the mid sixteenth century, partially renovated in the 1980’s and now lived in, the look lovely. What really impressed me with this street and outside our next stop at Halls Croft was the fact there was no parking out the front – finally an opportunity to see these wonderful buildings without cars and vans parked in front. Well done Stratford !

Halls Croft is the house where Shakespeare daughter lived once she was married, it is quite ramshackle and I loved in a partially renovated way and I loved it, especially how the floor boards squeaked so loudly as we walked around.

I loved this little croft house nearby, and really regret not getting some close ups of the wood of the door.

England’s most visited parish church, Holy Trinity is the burial place of Shakespeare and his family. It was an interesting visit, I am used to visiting the big old cathedrals but this is a lovely old building with some very nice stained glass windows as well as the Shakespeare burial site.

From the church we completed the loop walking back along the side of the Avon and past the Royal Shakespeare Co theatre.

The building did not impress me at all from the outside, however we went to see a play in the evening and the inside is totally different to the out. The theatre is lovely, a horse shoe shape with steep galleries around the stage. We saw “The winters tale” it was my first live Shakespeare, and the first theatre I have been to in decades. I was very unsure on whether I would enjoy it or not and at three hours long it could have been a long and uncomfortable evening ! However, I surprised myself by really enjoying it, not that I understood half of what was being said. The cast was excellent and really allowed the story to work without needing to understand all the dialogue.

It was a good night that followed a really nice day. Though I slightly criticised the town at the start of this post, it was a lovely place to wander through, with some great things to see. Winter is a great time of year to visit !

Street art in action

Wednesday 20 February 2013 – Shoreditch

The past few days had been really quite warm, on Sunday I almost worked up a sweat when I walked into town and at one stage even took my jacket off. This ended today and there was a freezing wind blowing down from the Siberian steppes to remind me that February is still winter in England. It was back to thick jackets, gloves and a scarf when I finally ventured out of the house late in the afternoon.

I had arranged to meet a friend for a curry in Shoreditch; which was extremely convenient as one of my favourite street artists, Stik, was painting a wall very close by…

I decided to walk to Shoreditch as it is only a few kilometres from home and meant I could walk through the old business heart of London around Fenchurch St and Aldgate, an area I had to walk through, unexciting as it was !

But it did allow me to walk through Brick Lane an area I had yet to fully explore for street art. There was plenty to see and a few other people photographing it as well.

I really like this Jana and JS piece, I am going to have to try and find some more of their work. I have seen two and both are fabulous.

I love these huge arrows sticking out of the side f the building.

The walls of the Village Underground are the site of regular organised art works and yesterday and today there was a joint painting project organised by Street Art London. Thierry Noir is a French artist who has been part of the street art scene for decades. He was made famous in the 1980s when he painted large sections of the Western side of the Berlin Wall – at the time a risky business as the East German government were very unhappy with people approaching the wall, from either side. Thierry was joined on this project by one of my favourite English Street artists – Stik. I really like his figures and this one from Brick Lane today is definitely my favourite.

I stood and watched them paint for a while, had a brief conversation with Stik before moving on to a nice warm curry house for dinner.

Art – new, old and older still

Monday 28 January 2013 – London

Today was really the first day in ages when I had absolutely nothing planned at all. The forecast was average at best and I really didn’t fancy getting soaked. However I was itching to do something so I made a quick plan with the help of Google maps, packed my camera, got dressed and walked out the door.

My first stop was to hunt down this piece of street art from Space Invader and I was surprised it was still there as it has been here a couple of years apparently. This is on a wall just off Holborn in the central city and there is almost no art or graffiti in the middle of downtown, so a rarity. Apparently there used to be a Banksy around here as well, but that is long gone.

I walked down Drury Lane (muttering Monty Python sketches as I went) down to The Strand. There is an incredible amount of churches in London city.

I was visiting Sommerset House and the Courtauld Gallery inside. In a stroke of good luck the gallery is free on Mondays. To balance my good fortune there was an exhibition by Cartier-Bresson that finished yesterday and I had no idea it was on ! I have yet to find a really good single spot to find good exhibitions in London and only stumbled upon the Courtauld by accident.

The Courtauld is an amazing gallery, quite small but it has an incredible collection of art works, including a really good collection of early 20th century pieces from the likes of Monet, Manet, Van Gogh, Degas, Renoir, Seurat etc. Basically the period I like the best, they had some lovely Seurats.

They also had a good collection of very old religious work and I really liked the altar pieces, especially this one from 1345.

The gallery is great and I highly recommend it to anyone who has not been, unlike the bigger galleries it was also quite empty!

To counter-balance the work of some of the old masters I crossed the Thames and looked around for some work from more modern, and less appreciated artists! It was cold and starting rain as I crossed Waterloo Bridge and it was looking like my plan would be thwarted before I was halfway.

Like the centre of London the South Bank has few designated areas for graffiti, and someone had obviously broken a rule here as this has mostly been scrubbed off the wall.

Though these were obviously in the right place.

I walked past the South Bank skate park and took a couple of pictures, the skaters were a bit off-putting, a bit of macho posturing so I didn’t go far into their lair and take pictures, though what was there was mainly graffiti which is not so much my style. I had lunch after and waited until the rain stopped.

I love the South Bank in the rain – very few tourists. On a sunny day this area is heaving.

My last planned visit was the Graffiti Tunnel near Waterloo station, I walked through and took a few pictures, but again, mainly graffiti and not what I call art. At the far end there was a group of the Met’s finest standing around talking to someone so I decided to not take pictures there just in case, you never know what the police think when it comes to cameras!

I then passed the interestingly shaped Plaza Hotel.

Before crossing Westminster Bridge

Past the Houses of Parliament and back to Tottenham Court Rd tube station for the journey home. It was a good few hours out, if a touch damp on occasion.

My camera had a few hissy fits today, and had to be shutdown a couple of times. Fingers crossed it is not the start of a complete failure – though I guess I could upgrade then 🙂

A walk in the park. In monochrome

Monday 21 January 2013 – Kensington, London.

After a fairly busy past week I had fully intended to spend today doing not much at all. I am well into a Rebus novel on my e-reader and have one chapter left in the real book that I bought myself for Christmas. It just seemed like a good day to do nothing more than read and listen to music. However, the weather forecast for the week has taken a turn for the worst – or better, depending on your point of view of course, and the snow that was due tomorrow is no longer arriving – at all. Bugger !

Today was obviously going to be the day I went to Kensington Gardens to see the snow in more park like surroundings. I was hoping to be there as it was falling so I could capture some images of fresh snow. unsullied by humans and their pets, but as that was not to be I wanted to at experience as much of a white world in London as I could.

Even with a planned activity for the day I still managed to laze in bed for a while before dragging myself out into what was actually quite a nice day. Sadly for the snow it was relatively warm and once I had reached the park gloves and woolly hat were no longer necessary. I walked around for a couple of hours, taken pictures here and there, but mainly just enjoying the relative lack of people in such beautiful surroundings.

As the scenes were quite monochrome, I have just nudged them all a bit further in that direction.

On the way home from the park I stopped by what seems to be my new favourite organic cafe for a coffee and a wee slice of chocolate chip flapjack. Heavenly.

A new year street art hunt

Tuesday 01 January 2013, London

Posting will be really sporadic for a while, I will only post when I have taken some photos or done anything that is even remotely interesting.

I guess the rolling over of another year, especially the successful rolling over of another year when the world was supposed to end, is worth recording.

New years eve was not exactly riveting, not that the last few have been either! I had been pondering walking down to one of the bridges over the Thames to watch the fireworks, but lost interest as it got closer to midnight and the thought of a forty five minute walk there and back in the cold just was not tempting enough. So I spent the night in as usual, though I did make it to midnight and watched the spectacular ten minute fireworks display on TV.

So, it is another new year, what does it hold for me ? at this stage who knows !

The first day of 2013 was by English winter standards, lovely, clear skies and not too cold – to start with anyway. I decided I had to go out and do something so caught the tube up to central London to watch the London New Year parade. I managed to get an OK spot, though the guy next to me kept up a non-stop inane monologue to his family that finally drove me to leave – and I had headphones on, he was loud too ! As it turned out virtually all my photos were crap, I was shooting at far too low a speed to get anything good and I deleted most of them as soon as I got home. A beginners mistake and I should have known better.

I loved this wee steam truck.

On my way out of the parades route and away from the supposed 500,000 people who came to see it, I came across this marching band getting ready to merge in, they played a more funky style of music to the traditional English style and were quite good.

I had decided to walk home via Portobello Rd.

I had visited there on a rainy Boxing Day to try and find the Rough Trade record store that is a feature in a book I bought myself with some money from my mum (thanks mum 🙂 ), however it had moved. So I did the smart thing and looked up the address this time and found it easily. Unfortunately it was closed !

The second reason I visited the area was to try and find some street art, as the west of London is slowly being gentrified the street art is slowly disappearing and is quite rare. I knew there were a couple of pieces around so was keen to find them, and I found more than I expected, including this lovely wall at Notting Hill, I do not know who the artist is but I loved it.

IMG 6233 PS

Up Portobello Rd I found

A Banksy, yay 🙂

A CODE FC

An Alec Monopoly

A couple of Paul Don Smiths

This one commemorating the slaying of two police women last year.

And some others.

P1150403

I enjoyed the hunt, and seeing some of these pieces as I am sure they will not be there for long !

One of life’s magic hours.

Day 330 – Gorilla Day, Volcanoes National Park, Ruhengeri, Rwanda

Once the singing and dancing group had finished the nine of us from the truck were split into two groups. Only five groups are allowed in to the forest each day and each group has a maximum allowable size of eight people plus guides. The five of us in our group were joined by an American couple, who were doing three trips into the forest, lucky buggers!

Each group goes to visit a different gorilla family and are only allowed one hour with the family. There is only one trip per day to the gorillas so their exposure to humans is minimised. At $750 USD per visit it is a very expensive hour !!! Fortunately the hour only starts when the gorilla group is found, some of the groups can be a three or four hour walk away from where the vehicles can access.

We were joined by two guides who introduced us to the forest and the family group we were going to visit.

Our trip is in the Volcanoes National Park which is located in the Virunga mountains and part of a massive national park with areas in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. This is the only place on the planet where mountain gorillas live. The park has an altitude range of 2400 – 4500 metres, so all walking is tough going !

There are eighteen family groups commonly found in the Rwanda part of the park and eleven are visited on a regular basis, the others are just monitored by researchers. We were going to visit the Agashya (The news) group, which is twenty three strong and like all the groups, is named after the dominant silver back.

The gorillas in the park face numerous threats, however their numbers are growing steadily since Dian Fossey first took a stand on protecting them back in the late 1960’s. All the families are tracked 24/7 by armed guards. The gorillas have no natural predator and are rarely directly hunted, however they do get caught in traps and snares set by the local villagers who trap antelope and other mammals for food. Like their human cousins the gorillas are also susceptible to disease and colds. In fact if you are sick you are not allowed to go and see the gorillas.

Once we given the run down on the day we jumped back into our vehicle and drove for about twenty minutes to a small village near where our family was currently located. We were all given walking sticks to use as the way is slippery, steep and FULL of stinging nettles, and the nettles are head high in places. We were all told to wear long pants, long sleeved jackets and everyone except me were told to bring gloves ! oh well !

We met our armed guard here, there are still illegal poachers working in the forest who do not take kindly to meeting strangers and there is always the potential for danger from some of the other wildlife living in the forest,such as buffalo and elephant – however rare they are. We are also very close to the border with the Congo and much as no one likes to talk about it there is armed conflict between the Congo’n government and Rwandan backed insurgents.

The first fifteen minutes walking was through farm land. No longer a danger to the forest fortunately, the forest area is marked by a stone wall now, partly to clearly define the boundary but mainly to prevent grazing forest wildlife from raiding crops. The farms look to be very productive and the soil looks amazingly fertile.

We soon crossed the stone boundary wall and were immediately into thick forest.

As the gorillas roam around we were not entering via a defined path into the forest, so there was a bit of hacking of undergrowth for a while until we hit a buffalo path that we followed before heading up a hill through some heavy nettle infested foliage. Our guides were on the radio to the gorilla trackers and after about forty minutes of clambering around we caught up with them near the gorillas, I was soooooooooo excited !! We were told to drop our bags, water bottles, walking sticks, any food from pockets and just take cameras as we were going to move up towards the family.

I hummed and hahhed about camera lenses and decided I would take a punt and just take the 50mm lens for the Canon 5d Mk1 as well as my little Panasonic point and shoot as I wanted to do some video – though I had never done it before ! I didn’t want to have to change lenses in the forest and the wide angle zoom may have been too wide.

We were given clear guidelines by the guide.
– Not to go within seven metres of the gorillas, unless they come to you.
– If you are in the way, move slowly out of the way, they may want to eat the tree you are under.
– Keep low down so you appear subservient – especially to the dominant male !
– Don’t look them in the eye as it may be seen as a challenge.
-If they are walking down a path, get off it

And then we were off up the hill for our first glimpse of the real thing in the real wild… and this was the first photo, crap I know but it was the first one, and with a 50mm lens – we were close…

We seemed to have arrived in the middle of a family walk as we only found three smaller gorillas. We watched them for a couple of minutes while they munched on things before they headed off to join the rest of the group – in our direction ! We moved out of the way to make a gap and two of them passed through the gap , the last one however decided on a different route and went between the legs of the American woman, it was a massive wow moment for all… They really don’t pay us any mind at all, completely unconcerned by our presence, amazing.

Over the course of the hour we probably only saw ten or so of the group, we assumed the others were about but we didn’t see them. It was good and bad that the group moved around a lot, it was very hard to take photos as the jungle was dense in places and they and we were constantly on the move. It was also quite dim, so high ISO’s and wide open apertures were essential to get any chance of capturing a motionless face. However, I would rather this than watch them sitting in a sunny clearing doing very little like the group our American friends saw the previous day. Plus, those who know me, know there is nothing I like more than scrambling around in the mud in the bush. The thought of snakes and spiders and sharp thorns just never came into my head – for a change !

We followed this small group up through the nettles for a while until we came across a dense patch of bamboo near a path and low and behold there he was – Agashya himself. Wow, he is just so magnificent, you could feel his strength – not just the physical, you could feel his strength of character, that he was the dominant character in this group, incredibly powerful. Yet, watching him later interacting with the young members of the family, you can see how gentle he is as well.

I spent most of the hour observing rather than taking pictures, as I said it was tough photographic conditions so rather than take hundreds of rubbish pictures I elected to watch and wonder instead, I think that was the right option.

We followed the group down the trail for a bit and then ohhhhhh, the baby, Iwacu !! I really didn’t expect to see Iwacu, and though we saw it a few times, I only managed to get one shot worth keeping.

We then stopped to watch the next oldest male stop and eat for a bit.

The group spent a bit of time on the move after this, at times they crashed through the dense (for us humans) bamboo forest and other times they were on the more open buffalo trails. Our guide managed to short cut a section of forest and we were on a piece of path as they were coming down, we crouched down low to the side and for once, I decided to shoot some video.

[edit] Just learnt a lesson. I cannot upload video using the free version of WordPress 😦 I have just created my first YouTube video. lets see if it works 🙂 [/edit]

Wow, they came so close, one of the others said in the group said he saw the silver back brush me as he walked, so regally, past me. I did not notice a thing. It was very very cool and I was so glad I chose to video, not the best video ever, but they were so close I would not have got photos anyway. I love the two young ones at the back having a bit of a play, though I was bummed to have not quite got the baby on mothers back very clearly.

We followed them through a thick section of vegetation, where again they stopped for a feed.

And then they were off again, we managed to get ahead of the last couple.

We were following the guide down this section of path when he stopped dead in his tracks and started backing up. “Elephant” he whispered. I was third in line behind Martina and Chantil and just around a bend in the track. As they came slowly back I got a glimpse of an ear and what appeared to be a large tusk through the bush. Even though our guide was saying they are perfectly safe, we beat a rather rapid retreat straight up hill !

Once we were safely a few metres away, our guide said that though we had five more minutes of our hour left we would have to leave, the gorillas had taken off once they had gotten wind of the elephant and the elephant would be agitated after smelling the gorillas. We all concurred – it had been a magic fifty five minutes anyway.

We spent a further twenty or so minutes crashing around in the jungle, with the guide on the radio to the others and then we came across them by the wall, with all our belongings.

We bade farewell to the trackers and followed our guide back down over the farmland to the vehicles.

For a rough rock and roll ride down the worst road I have ever been on !!!

It was a magic morning, a wonderful experience and one I will never forget. The mountain gorillas are the most wonderful animals, lets make sure we protect them. There are only a few hundred left.

All the gorilla photos were shot on a 50mm lens and are, in the main, uncropped. that is how close they came to us.

Meeting some of the cousins.

Day 326, Sunday 25 November 2012 – Kampala, Uganda

Today was supposed to begin at 6:00 am, but thankfully last night this was delayed until 9:00, and thankfully again I was told before I had gone to sleep; I removed the alarm I had set on my phone. I was up before breakfast at 8:00 and managed to get a hot shower in before the power went off. I was feeling pretty good considering a lack of sleep – and the vodka tonics we were drinking were not exactly made with top class vodka.

I went for a quick walk out of the camp and got a photo of the guys making the rolleggs that some had for breakfast and I had for a late snack last night. They are pretty damn good.

P1020436

I also loved this tree right outside the campground gate.

P1020439

As we left the village we all spotted this sign on one of the buildings, I hadn’t seen it before. Apparently it is to remind people to get to work on time !

P1020440

We were on the road on time and made good progress into Kampala – the capital city of Uganda. We were expecting congestion but had not counted on the Kampala Marathon being run that day and the main streets were clogged solid. It was a long wait in fairly humid conditions – luckily there was just enough breeze to make it not too uncomfortable.

P1020441

We only just made it through the city to the shore of Lake Victoria at Entebbe. The last boat to Ngamba Chimpanzee Sanctuary, an island in the lake, left at 1:30 and we arrived at 1:25. It was a fairly rough ride on the way out, there was a bit of a swell and we were heading into it and the wind. Everyone got pretty soaked. Luckily this is Africa and not England so we were all fairly dry not long after we arrived.

The sanctuary has been set up to look after rescued chimpanzees, most of them are young when they arrive and they do not get released back into the wild as they would not survive. They live in a fairly large section of bush and are protected from the human predators that caused them to be there in the first. Though they are not aggressive, they are immensely strong so we were given a safety briefing on arrival and pointed to the emergency point near the lake, chimpanzees do not like water.

We were there to watch the afternoon feeding session, the chimp’s are all behind electric fences so photography was not simple. I wanted to get some ground level shots as I like them more than shooting from above, but we were not allowed down there.

This was my favourite.

The keepers throw fruit over the fence for the chimps to collect, there was a little squabbling but they all know they will get fed so it was pretty tame. I love how they put their hands up – so human.

And this one sits just like I do when I am sitting on the ground eating fruit!

Once the feeding was over some of the smarter chimps got sticks to get the food that was caught under the electric fence, amazing to watch !

It was one of those experiences that I really enjoyed but was a bit like a zoo. Unlike at the cheetah rehabilitation place in Namibia the people here talked about the chimpanzees, their plight in the wild and what the sanctuary was doing. I guess for these chimps the only other option was death.

We had an enjoyable, late, lunch on the island before heading back to the boat for a fast and smooth ride back to the mainland and on to the truck. There were quite a few water monitors here as well.

We stayed at the Backpackers Camp on the outskirts of Kampala. It is the guys least favourite campsite in all of Africa ! It was not the worst place in its self, but the music from nearby was seriously loud, it was like being at a gig and it went on to 2:30 am… I was not amused. It also had the most amazingly tight driveway, I was really surprised we got the truck through the gate and down the hill. Great driving!

A trip into the Kenyan countryside.

Day 313, Monday 12 November 2012 – Nairobi, Kenya

It was another early start to the day, considering it was the first day off between trips – my gorilla tour does not start for a week, so there is plenty of time to kill. Breakfast in the hotel was pretty good, though I did not eat much. I am not entirely sure how long the day will be and what facilities will be available – my stomach is only feeling about fifty percent normal, so caution it is. Plus I can do without eating like a pig three times a day!

Leonie has been sponsoring Mutoni a twelve year old Kenyan girl for a number of years through World Vision. As the village is only a hundred or so kilometres from Nairobi – and in an area not subject to tribal violence or the kidnapping of westerners by Somali gangs we are going to pay a visit.

We were collected in a World Vision (WV) Toyota Landcruiser by our host for the day Solomon.

Solomon lives in the town of Yatta, where we are heading but had to come down and stay the night in Nairobi to be able to pick us up as the traffic here is notoriously bad. However, we were fairly lucky, the ride through down town to the “super highway” was slow but not too terrible. For safety, we were seat belted, bags on the floor with doors locked and windows up. It is not called “Nairobbery” for nothing and carjacking is not unheard of – though we did not see anything that raised any suspicion.

The super highway is a fifty kilometre section of new motorway from the centre of Nairobi and is a surprisingly good piece of road, they are still building pedestrian bridges across the highway so every few kilometres there is a section of speed bumps preceding a crossing. The only highway I have ever been on with speed bumps – amusing ! Nairobi is a big city, with the exception of Cape Town way back at the start of this journey it is the most western city I have experienced, there is a lot more apparent infrastructure here, a lot more permanent looking housing (well as permanent as Africa gets) and a lot more schools and universities surrounding the highway. Parts of it could easily be in New Zealand.

P1020341

It is still Africa though and unlike New Zealand they just LOVE football – and by this I mean the game you play with your foot, not the one you play with your hands ! Manchester United is the most popular team in the world and it is easy to see why, there are posters, banners and stickers everywhere.

P1020343

The highway ended at the town of Thika and we stopped at the local mall to do some shopping, part of the deal with WV is Leonie provides some supermarket basics for the family as a gift. I also needed to get some Kenyan cash and do some shopping for myself. The rain yesterday morning turned the Snake Park campsite into a bog and as we had heard that there had been heavy rain up in Uganda I wanted to get some cheap gumboots just in case, I had not replaced the jandals (flip flops) that disappeared in Malawi. I also wanted to get a Kenyan sim card for my phone, apparently the cell network in Kenya is very good. The sim card, 50 minutes of talking, 500 texts and 500mb of data cost me just over $9NZ, WOW – how can it be so expensive in New Zealand. They also had a very good range of Kiwi shoe products : )

P1020345

From Thika we made our way to the town of Yatta where the WV office for the area is located. The road has a vast number of police checkpoints that we pass through without being stopped. They are mainly stopping the local buses coming from the opposite direction. According to Solomon they are looking for members of Al Shabaab a Somali terror group. I asked him how far away the border was and he said very close – about 800kms. I guess the perception of close in Africa is different to the one in NZ.

I think this mini-bus was a bit off course – Manurewa is an Auckland suburb!

P1020350

At the WV office in Yatta we were introduced to all the staff and were given a morning tea. It is clear (and good) to see that the offices are not flash, there are no fancy trimmings or luxury here. The staff have different areas of expertise with the main being in food management and water and sanitation. WV provide some resource, such as wells, but focus on education and training, the old “teach a man to fish” scenario. I am not sure how hard they actually work though.

After morning tea we took a ride out to Nialani school to meet Mutoni. The school was about ten minutes from Yatta, and once off the main road we were on a rough dirt track, I now know why WV drive Toyota land cruisers!

P1020352

The school had obviously been prepared for our arrival, and it was fairly obvious that WV have spent a lot of time working with the school. There were a few WV signs around the place. There was also a fair amount of Christian messages, though the state schools are agnostic.

When we got out of the vehicle the children in the nearby classrooms came charging to the windows, laughing and calling “muzungu, muzungu”. Muzungu is Swahili and basically means a white person who wanders around aimlessly – which pretty much sums me up ! In most cases, like here, it is meant in good spirits. They very rarely get muzungus in Nialani and we were the highlight of many children’s day. I just loved the look of joy on their faces and the huge huge smiles. I don’t think all the teachers were amused by the distraction as we walked past the open windows of the classrooms.

After visiting the deputy head teacher we were introduced to Mutoni and her class, she is twelve and was incredibly shy and embarrassed about the whole thing, I really felt for her ! We had to introduce ourselves to the class and the Mutoni had to introduce her best friend. I was kind of glad when we left and took the poor girl with us.

On the way out we walked past the new entrant class and they were very keen to see us and say hello, I am not sure if the youngsters in the last photo had seen a muzungu before, they look a bit wary.

We drove out through the village to where Mutoni lives with her mother and grandmother, there are no adult males alive. Mutoni’s mother showed us around their small holding, the two houses and the separate kitchen. There is no electricity here so everything is done on a wood fire. This is the kitchen.

We presented the family with the food that was purchased in the supermarket, it was all fully documented by the people from WV, not entirely sure why and I didn’t ask.

We then all piled into the car and drove back to the WV office for a very large lunch – that was paid for by Leonie. Mutoni and her mother and grandmother obviously do not eat like this very often – they had a lot. We all posed for photos afterwards, Mutoni and her family had obviously dressed up in their finest while embarrassingly we were in our normal scruffy travelling clothes.

It was mid-afternoon now and time to head back into Nairobi, the drive was not too bad, a lot of traffic once we hit the centre of town. There are a lot of half finished buildings on the way, a lot just have a single storey completed with room for a second to be added. In many cases families will start to build a house as soon as they have money, if they have enough for one wall, they will build one wall. If they don’t use it then there is a chance the money will just get wasted on booze by the men, saving for a future is not common here, for many there is not much of a future to save for.

P1020351

P1020365

Once back in the hotel we had a quick dinner and then I sat in my bed and blogged for a while.

It was an interesting day, it was good to travel into a part of Kenya where not many westerners go.

I am using a new version of Blogdesk to put together the posts before I upload them. They have changed the way adding photos works, the sizing is different to how it used to be, I liked the old version better – grrrr, sometimes change is not good!