So, I get all settled in for the evening, turn on the TV and find that I only have 1 channel, international CNN. If you watch CNN, you know that they repeat the same stories about every 20 minutes, so it wasn't long before TV lost its charm. At breakfast, I was discussing this fact with the waitress and she explained that there are more channels, I just need to call the front desk if I want to watch a different one. Turns out, they only had one receiver. When you want to change channels, you call down to the bar and they change the channel for you. So, Tuesday night, once we returned from out meetings, I settled in for the night. I turned on the TV, then called the bar to have the channel changed from CNN. Then, I learned that when the channel was changed, it was changed for everybody. They wouldn't change it because the guys in the bar wanted to watch CNN. It was like being in the twilight zone. So, Wednesday night, I was the only guest in the whole place. There were two locals in the bar and once they left, I called the bar. Come to find out, there were only 3 channels to choose from; CNN, Passport (24-7 soccer from all around the globe) and the Hallmark channel. Interesting.
The trip was awesome though. I hung out with folks from Heifer International. We were assessing the area around the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. We wanted to see the opportunity for rural development improvements among the agricultural community. This place was so unique, it's the Nkuringo region. Imagine a ridge that is about 10 miles long. When you drop off the ridge to the east, it's the national park. To the west, Congo. The ridge dead ends on the Congo border. And not just any part of Congo, it's the southern end of the Rift Vally ( http://www.albertinerift.org/ ). To stand there looking out across the Albertine Rift, the home of one of the greatest amounts of bio-diversity and exotic species, plus the home of some of the coolest diseases in the world. It was inspiring to say the least. Here's a picture looking across the valley.
The time spent there was very productive, and getting there was half the fun. Normally, the road there from Kisoro is about 20 miles long and takes around an hour. It's dirt and rocks and little more than one lane through the mountains. It's actually quite beautiful. However, it is the rainy season. A mud slide had closed the road. And, a creek crossing was under about 3 feet of water, so we took the long way around. A similar style road, but the mud slides hadn't completely closed it off. It was a bit longer, about 80 miles and took 3 hours. It was beautiful though. From one spot, you could see the backside of the entire volcanic chain that joins the three countries.
Here's a shot of the valley that we passed through along the way.
It was a very informative trip about the limitations of the region. There's no electric, no phone, and you are at the end of a dead end road that isn't always passable. The opportunities for producing a perishable crop are extremely limited. Everybody there wants to be in the dairy business because there is a milk plant in Kisoro and the dairy business near the plant is quite profitable, but these folks wouldn't be certain to have consistent market access. It's a challenge for sure.
Friday I met with a policy person for the Minister of Agriculture while in Kigali. We are going to be developing two research protocols. Both will be big "umbrella" projects that will consist of multiple smaller segments as individual projects. One of the big concepts is to understand the potential pathogen flow through the region. The concept will be to identify the parasite loads of various species of livestock, wildlife and primates. Then, funding permitted, we'll do the DNA work to see if the parasites are the same sub-species. If the interaction among the animals is such that they share parasites, not just types of parasites but genetically the same families of parasites, then you have a model for disease transmission.
The second concept is to investigate the prevalence of the various diseases that prevent international trade of livestock products like cheese. We want to add the spacial component to see if the prevalence varies across the geographical regions of the country.
The ideas are starting to take shape on the project side. I'll talk more about the other directions we head in at a later time. These bird and chameleon pictures were from out on the ridge. I wish that I could have gotten pictures of half of the cool birds that I saw. These will do for now.
