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Spotlight 2|1514
TRAVEL | Uganda
Visiting family
in UgandaBekannt als Heimat der Berggorillas und
Schimpansen, erfährt Uganda eine
Renaissance als Reiseland und lockt
Besucher mit spektakulären Nationalparks.
Von CLAUDINE WEBER-HOF
Top: Queen Elizabeth National Park;
below: Silverback Lodge at
Bwindi Impenetrable Forest

2|15 Spotlight 15
Topi antelope;
a ﬁsh eagle;
a baby gorilla in
Bwindi

Spotlight 2|1516
TRAVEL | Uganda
The chimps of Kibale
It’s 8 a.m. in the self-proclaimed primate
capital of the world. Ranger Jeffrey Ta-
zenya counts the great apes before him:
five Canadians, two Germans, three Ital-
ians, one South African, a Brit and an
American. We completely fill the small
visitor centre in Kibale National Park in
western Uganda. Our goal is to track
other great apes — some of our closest
cousins, the chimpanzees.
People visit Kibale to see its large pop-
ulation of chimps: more than 1,400 of them
live here. Rangers of the Uganda Wildlife
Authority practically guarantee that we will
see the animals, but as we start to walk
through the tropical forest, I’m sceptical.
Uganda is where the savannah of East Africa
meets the jungle at Africa’s heart. Stepping
over ferns and fallen trees, it’s clear we’ve left
the open grassland; above us, tall palms block
the sky. With all this vegetation, how can anyone
see the chimps?
Ranger Tazenya leads us further into the jun-
gle, stopping to listen for chimp chatter. Of the
11 chimpanzee communities in Kibale, he says,
five are habituated — that is, five of the groups
are somewhat used to seeing people. Roughly
120 chimps get regular visits from tourists,
while another 200 of them are being studied
by Kampala’s Makerere University. It takes a
full five years to habituate a community,
which can split into smaller groups of five, ten
or twenty chimps at any time.
“Females can cross into any group, and
they will be welcomed,” Tazenya explains, sot-
to voce. “But a male cannot cross. If he makes
that mistake, he will be killed.” Even females
with male young must be careful; adult males
see the babies as a threat. “But within the
same community,” Tazenya says, “the chim-
panzees are peaceful.”
The ranger’s radio comes to life, and we
hurry deeper into the jungle. I trip over
plants and struggle through mud. Tazenya
gives me a hand, pulling me across a
stream. Just then, chimp chatter echoes
through the air. We rush towards the
sound. Minutes later, we meet the Cana-
dian group. Above them, high up in a
tree, is a large chimp eating leaves. Near-
by, small monkeys jump about, making
the forest canopy sway.
The big chimp’s name is Totti — after
Francesco Totti, the Italian footballer. Tazen-
ya explains that males typically live to be-
come up to 55 years of age, females to 45.
Males are fully mature at six, while females
mature at 13, which is when they can con-
ceive. Over her lifetime, a female chimp will
have between four and six offspring.
canopy [(kÄnEpi] Baumkronendach
chatter [(tSÄtE] Geplapper, Geschnatter
chimp [tSImp] ifml. Schimpanse
conceive [kEn(si:v] empfangen
fern [f§:n] Farn
great ape [)greIt (eIp] Menschenaffe
habituated [hE(bItSueItId] gewöhnt
mature [mE(tSUE] erwachsen, ausgewachsen
offspring [(QfsprIN] Junge, Nachwuchs
self-proclaimed
[)self prEU(kleImd]
selbst ernannt
sotto voce [)sQtEU (vEUtSi] mit gedämpftem Ton
sway [sweI] schwanken, hin- und
herbewegen
Ready for adventure: a ranger with
visitors to Kibale National Park
Follow me: park ranger
Jeffrey Tazenya
The chimp named Totti:
the next alpha male?
AlleFotos:DavidJohnWeber

2|15 Spotlight 17
The focus of any chimp group,
however, is the alpha male. He has to
be able to command his chimps and
attack outsiders to expand his terri-
tory. But his main function is to
keep the peace. Once he’s too old for
the job, he can remain with his orig-
inal clan, as long as he respects the
new boss. Tazenya says that Totti is
about 26 years old and may become
the next alpha male.
All the while, Totti has been lis-
tening to us and considering his next
move. He decides to climb down the
tree. “Che bello, bellissimo,” says one
of the Italians in our group. Totti’s
face is gentle, his expression open
and relaxed. He picks leaves from a
bush, then walks away on all fours.
We follow, watching him eat. Every
move he makes is photographed,
and discussed in multiple languages.
After 40 minutes, Totti disap-
pears up another tree. “We’ve had
quite a bit of time with him,” our
ranger says, looking pleased. “Let’s
call it a day.”
Lions under pressure
Kibale National Park is connected by
a wildlife corridor to Queen Eliza-
beth National Park, our next desti-
nation. As we drive there, I photo-
graph the corn and matoke bananas
growing near wood-shack villages.
“People here are poor, but they have
food,” guide Eric Ndorere explains.
It’s late afternoon when we reach
the well-known park. From the jeep,
I see the golden savannah and areas
of green that are island-like, each
with a single euphorbia tree. In the
distance, the wall of the Albertine
Rift, the great, biodiverse valley in
which we find ourselves, rises to
meet the sky. Ndorere identifies
some of the birds: red-billed fire
finch and African wattled lapwing.
Long before he became Britain’s prime minister, Winston Churchill visited Uganda in his role
as the under-secretary of state for the colonies. Of his travels there in 1907, he wrote:
“The kingdom of Uganda is a fairy-tale … a wonderful new world. The scenery is different,
the vegetation is different, the climate is different, and, most of all, the people are different
from anything elsewhere to be seen in the whole range of Africa ... I say: ‘Concentrate on
Uganda.’ For magnificence, for variety of form and colour, for profusion of brilliant life — bird,
insect, reptile, beast — for vast scale, Uganda is truly the pearl of Africa.”
This pearl, a British protectorate from 1894 to 1962, is now being rediscovered. Travellers
go there for the same reason that researchers Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey fell in love with
neighbouring Tanzania and Rwanda respectively: the primates. Along with its many chimpan-
zees and monkeys, Uganda’s jungle contains half the world’s remaining population of rare
mountain gorillas.
There’s more, though: the country is located in the African Great Lakes region of the East
African Rift. Lake Victoria, close to the capital of Kampala, is the world’s largest tropical lake
and one of the sources of the Nile. Uganda has an average altitude of 1,100 metres above sea
level, giving the country a comfortable climate, especially during the dry seasons (June to
August/September and December to February). English is taught in the schools and is one of
the official languages of Uganda.
WHY VISIT UGANDA?
King of the savannah: an endangered lion rests in the grass
Kob antelope in Queen
Elizabeth National Park
altitude [(ÄltItju:d] Höhe
fairy tale [(feEri teI&l] Märchen
jungle [(dZVNg&l] Dschungel, Urwald
let’s call it a day [lets )kO:l It E (deI] machen wir Schluss für heute
magnificence [mÄg(nIfIsEns] Pracht, Herrlichkeit
pearl [p§:l] Perle
profusion [prE(fju:Z&n] Überfluss, Überfülle
red-billed fire finch [)red bIld (faIE fIntS] Roter Amarant
respectively [ri(spektIvli] jeweils
source [sO:s] Quelle, Quellsee
wattled lapwing [)wQt&ld (lÄpwIN] Lappenkiebitz
wood-shack [(wUd SÄk] Bretterbuden-

Spotlight 2|1518
TRAVEL | Uganda
A kilometre on, Ugandan kob are doing battle. A lone
female antelope sits with what looks like a smile on her
face, watching the men lock horns. Ndorere explains that
female kob choose the males with which they have young
— not, as with many other antelope, the other way round.
Driving on, we see lions waiting for dark and the hunt.
Two of them roll in the grass as the sun makes a
rose-coloured exit behind the tall Rwenzori Mountains.
Morning brings out the beauty of Mweya Safari
Lodge, where we’ve stayed the night. High-ceilinged and
grand, its lobby evokes British colonials in starched khaki
and pith helmets. The hotel sits on a peninsula above the
Kazinga Channel, which connects Lake George to Lake
Edward. Lake Edward, the smallest of the African Great
Lakes, was named in 1888 after Britain’s Prince Albert
Edward by Henry Morton Stanley, the Welsh journalist
and explorer who had found fame in Tanzania several
years before: on 10 November 1871, Stanley is said to
have greeted a long-lost Scottish missionary with the well-
known words, “Doctor Livingstone, I presume?”
At the lodge, I shake hands with Dr Ludwig Siefert
and James Kalyewa of the Uganda Carnivore Program.
The researchers are working with California’s Oakland
Zoo to develop an education and community programme
in the park. Their goal is to decrease the pressure that the
locals are putting on the wildlife. Siefert explains that
there are 30,000 people living in Queen Elizabeth and
another 70,000 just outside it. Many of them keep live-
stock — easy meals for lions, leopards and hyenas. When
livestock are killed, people react by poisoning the preda-
tors. But to do so is to eliminate the top attraction in
Uganda’s most popular national park.
As we drive into the park, Siefert tells me more. With
so many sources of stress — including conflicts with lo-
cals and tourists driving too close to the animals — al-
most no female lions are being born. What’s more, some
of the animals leave, crossing from Queen Elizabeth into
Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of
Congo (DRC). Kalyewa extends an antenna out of the
jeep. He gets a signal, then takes us off the dirt track into
the bush. Within minutes, we’re witnessing a waterbuck
kill: a female lion, with two of her children, is feeding on
the large antelope. Siefert smiles. “This is one of our older
females,” he says. “She’s very protective of her cubs.” Next,
Kalyewa finds a coalition of three young males. “See that
one there,” Siefert says of a lion with a dark mane. “He
was once on the cover of National Geographic.”
When Queen Elizabeth National Park was created in
the 1950s, it had huge numbers of large mammals. Dur-
ing the Uganda-Tanzania War of 1978–79, Siefert says,
they were decimated by rebel groups and people desperate
to eat. Others say that the biggest losses occurred before
then, during the rule of dictator Idi Amin (1971–79). To-
day, Queen Elizabeth is home to 95 mammal species and
500 species of bird. Populations of hippopotamus and
elephant are making a strong comeback.
cub [kVb] Junges
evoke [i(vEUk] heraufbeschwören
high-ceilinged [)haI (si:lINd] mit hoher Zimmerdecke
hyena [haI(i:nE] Hyäne
kob [kQb] Grasantilope
leopard [(lepEd] Leopard
livestock [(laIvstQk] Vieh
lobby [(lQbi] Foyer, Eingangshalle
lock horns [lQk (hO:nz] seine Kräfte mit jmdm. messen
lodge [lQdZ] Hütte; hier: Hotel
mammal [(mÄm&l] Säugetier
mane [meIn] Mähne
peninsula [pE(nInsjUlE] Halbinsel
pith helmet [ (pIT helmIt] Tropenhelm
predator [(predEtE] Raubtier
presume [pri(zju:m] vermuten, annehmen
starched [stA:tSt] gestärkt
waterbuck [(wO:tEbVk] Wasserbock
witness [(wItnEs] Zeuge sein, erleben
James Kalyewa of the
Uganda Carnivore Program

2|15 Spotlight 19
To keep all of the animals from harm, Siefert says, lo-
cal people need to see the wildlife not as food, but as the
attraction bringing in visitors who will buy their artworks
and take “cultural tours” of the villages. Only then will
the illegal killing stop. “They feel left out of the tourism
market,” Siefert explains. “But once you have the com-
munity on your side, you have a win-win.”
Birds on the Kazinga Channel
Four o’clock may be when some people start to long for
afternoon tea, but for us, the hour means boating on the
Kazinga Channel. The waterway is a paradise for birds
— and birders. Our boat crosses the channel, and a colo-
ny of pied kingfishers comes into view. Fish eagles hunt,
and spoonbills fish, while nearby, several Nile crocodiles
sleep in the sun. Monitor lizards watch from trees as hip-
pos bathe in the mud. Elephants, a column of them,
march off into the distance, just having finished their af-
ternoon ablutions.
The day is still hot, and an “old boys’ club” of Cape
buffalo — senior males long since driven from the herd
— lounge on the shore so that oxpeckers can eat ticks
from their faces. Ibis, grey with a green shine on their
wings, surprise us with their loud cries. An egret lifts off,
its white feathers a brilliant contrast to the deep green of
the trees. Most of these birds live in the Maramagambo
Forest, a chimpanzee-rich area of Queen Elizabeth
ablution [E(blu:S&n] Waschung
bathe [beID] baden
birder [(b§:dE] N. Am. ifml. Vogelbeobachter(in)
egret [(i:grEt] Reiher
fish eagle [(fIS )i:g&l] Fischadler
herd [h§:d] Herde
kingfisher [(kIN)fISE] Eisvogel
monitor lizard [(mQnItE )lIzEd] Waran
oxpecker [(Qks)pekE] Madenhacker
pied [paId] bunt, gescheckt
shore [SO:] Ufer, Strand
spoonbill [(spu:nbIl] Löffler
tick [tIk] Zecke
An egret takes flight; a Kazinga Channel fisherman
Kazinga Channel:
a paradise for birds;
left, Cape buffalo

Spotlight 2|1520
TRAVEL | Uganda
National Park. But exotic visitors fly in, too: flamingos
arrive in the park’s salt lakes every October, an event that
draws international attention.
Several big Vs appear in the sky. Cormorants are flying
in. As they pass, our boat reaches the channel fishing
community. The village gets support from Mweya Lodge
— money that has helped to rebuild the school. The lo-
cals also sell 250 tilapia to the hotel kitchen each week.
We watch as men prepare their nets and paddle their ca-
noes to Lake Edward, where they will fish for most of the
night. Following them, we reach the channel’s end. Lake
Edward opens before us like the sea.
Friday with gorillas
In the Ishasha Sector of Queen Elizabeth National Park,
travellers use the word “Congo” to mean a wilderness they
might never see. Other than a few nature reserves that are
open to tourists, its political instability makes the DRC a
tough place to visit. On the Ugandan side of the border,
though, the greatest danger may be the tree-climbing
lions. Their legs hang down from the big fig trees where
they are asleep at midday. We stop the jeep to take a look.
Our guide explains that it’s cool up in the trees, and from
there, the lions can watch for Topi antelope.
Later in the day, we drive past guide Eric Ndorere’s
home town of Kihihi. Workers queue outside tea factories
right next to the bright green tea plantations that blanket
the land. The farming stops where Bwindi Impenetrable
Forest begins. Mountain gorillas are its main attraction;
more than 400 of them live here. I have a perfect view of
their habitat when we arrive at Silverback Lodge. Rising
above the hotel gardens, the jungle hills seem inviting.
With tall mahogany trees and a thick carpet of plants,
they exude a feeling of safety — of a home in the wild.
It’s a place utterly familiar to Medad Tumugabiiewe,
or Medi, as he asks us to call him. The ranger has been at
Bwindi since part of the forest opened as a national park
in 1991. The gorilla trek he’ll be leading can take up to
eight hours. The paths, made by the Batwa pygmies who
once lived in the jungle, are steep. We will be tracking the
17-member Rushegura family of gorillas. Its dominant
silverback — so called because of the grey fur seen on
senior males — has recently died. Now a new leader is in
charge.
Certain gorilla families have been habituated to hu-
mans: about half the gorillas in this park. American re-
searcher Dian Fossey, who worked with the mountain
gorillas of Rwanda, described them as gentle. “After more
than 2,000 hours of direct observation,” she wrote in Na-
tional Geographic in 1970, she’d seen “less than five min-
utes of what might be called ‘aggressive’ behaviour. And
even this really amounted to protective action or bluff.”
Medi’s advice to us is to keep a distance of seven metres
from the gorillas when we see them.
in charge: be ~
[In (tSA:dZ]
das Sagen haben
exude [Ig(zju:d] ausstrahlen, verströmen
fig tree [(fIg tri:] Feigenbaum
pygmy [(pIgmi] Pygmäe, Pygmäin
tilapia [tI(lÄpiE] Buntbarsch
utterly [(VtEli] absolut, gänzlich
The new silverback: boss of the Rushegura gorilla family
Taking a break: a lion in the Ishasha Sector

2|15 Spotlight 21
We hike uphill through a tunnel of banana trees. Each
of us has a walking stick, which helps immensely with
rocky areas, and many of us have hired local porters to
carry our packs. After an hour, we take a break. When the
trek continues, Medi shows us the trails used by gorillas to
go deeper into the bush. “Gorillas make nests on the
ground,” he says, “and an individual makes a nest every
night.”
After two hours, we’ve hiked up to 1,700 metres, the
top of the mountain. The trackers, who had gone out an
hour ahead of us to locate the gorillas, rest at the side of
the path. We pass by them, expressing our thanks, and
follow Medi to an area where we can hear the gorillas
moving in the trees. Soon they appear: young males and
adult females with babies, all looking for leaves to eat.
None of them seem at all concerned about our presence.
Being this close to gorillas creates the strong need to
anthropomorphize: they seem so very human. As I watch,
a mother gathers her baby to her chest, allowing her tiny
boy to nurse. Two teenagers sit together and groom each
other. It looks as though they are waiting for someone else
to appear. Just then, the big silverback walks out of the
bush. The junior members of the group watch him to see
what to do next. Are we humans really so different?
After nearly an hour, the gorillas have had enough of
us and disappear into the jungle. Fossey wrote that we
“human trespassers” were pushing too far into the limited
areas where mountain gorillas can still live in the wild.
Turning to leave, I wonder if careful tourism like this will
create the balance necessary to keep local communities
happy and the population of gorillas growing. Who
knows? It may just work.
IF YOU GO
Getting there
Fly with Ethiopian Airlines to Entebbe International
Airport (EBB) in Uganda via Ethiopia’s Bole International
Airport (ADD) in Addis Ababa. For more information, see
www.ethiopianairlines.com
Purchase your visa for US $50 upon arrival in Entebbe.
Be sure to have exactly the right cash on hand.
Getting around
Premier Safaris specializes in tours of East Africa and
has a top-class programme in Uganda. Services include
assistance with visas upon arrival, connecting flights,
bookings at lodges, gorilla-trekking permits, guides who
specialize in photography (such as well-known
photographer Albie Venter) and much more.
As part of the well-established Marasa Africa group, its
hotels include beautiful places in national parks, such as
Mweya Safari Lodge in Queen Elizabeth National Park and
Silverback Lodge at Bwindi Impenetrable Forest.
See www.premiersafaris.com
Money
At many hotels, you can pay in Ugandan shillings, US
dollars or sometimes in euros. Visa is often the only credit
card accepted, but do not rely on credit cards alone.
Trip preparation
See a doctor who specializes in travel medicine before
visiting this tropical country. A vaccination for yellow
fever is required to enter Uganda and is available only at
certain locations (Gelbfieberimpfstelle; Tropeninstitut).
Other vaccinations may be necessary, too, as well as
malaria tablets. Ask about strong insect repellents to
guard against mosquito bites, as well as protective
clothing for trekking. (The UK company
Craghoppers makes a special line of anti-
mosquito shirts, for example.)
More information
See www.visituganda.com
anthropomorphize
[)ÄnTrEpEU(mO:faIz]
menschliche Eigenschaften zus-
chreiben
groom [gru:m] sich pflegen, sich putzen
hike [haIk] wandern
porter [(pO:tE] Träger(in)
tracker [(trÄkE] Fährtenleser(in)
trespasser [(trespEsE] Unbefugte(r), Eindringling
vaccination [)vÄksI(neIS&n] Impfung
Views of Bwindi
Impenetrable Forest from
the Silverback Lodge

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