The Great Primate Handshake – Volunteer in Africa, working to conserve monkeys and apes through film and educational content production

Today the Handshakers were given a rare gift – a lie in for those who wanted (or needed one). The cook team served some excellent porridge with hot chocolate powder in it to get us all up to working standard for the day, and against all odds almost everyone went back for seconds.

The morning was another work session. The video team were trapped in the backpackers for another day editing, whilst the web team went to UWEC for some ultimate satellite internet power to catch up on some seriously late blog posts. The Education team (plus our brilliant photographer Rehmat) had a great time visiting a local school in Entebbe to help out Silver (from Ngamba Island) give a talk on Chimpanzees.

But the afternoon was the highlight of the day by a long way. It involved a visit to another school – not to teach them however, but to be taught a lesson ourselves. We were about to witness the true might of Uganda – their High School Footballers!

By the time we rolled up the drive and into the school playing fields we were all shaking in our white, dusty Primate Handshake t-shirts. Team captain James was giving us all a prep talk which sounded great (albeit a little familiar) but did nothing to help; we were all too busy staring out the window at the opposition, a serious group of massive boys who were already practicing hard.

Ellie led us on a brief warm up which involved running round in circles for a bit before stretching out flailing limbs to the amusement of the endless students pouring out of the school to watch.

Luckily for us the team we were playing shrunk considerably by the time the whistle blew for the game to begin. Steph and Rehmat were on the sidelines filming and taking photos of our impending humiliation and despite some toe bouncing to get into the mood of things we knew we were at these guys mercy.

Steve Plays Nice

Actually they were very merciful, and sometimes even kicked the ball back down to our end of the pitch just to give us a chance at getting a shot at the goal. Nevertheless they allowed themselves the luxury of a goal before the whistle blew for half time.

Meanwhile the thrum of watching students were having a fantastic time laughing hysterically at our amazing football skills. I don’t think they could have had a better time if they visited a circus.

Football

The second half the school changed to their girl’s team, which were no lesser in their ability to play football. The ball spent a lot more time up our end of the pitch this time, but despite that James finally managed to slip the ball past their goalkeeper after many previous failed attempts to get through their impenetrable defence. In response our opponents promptly putted the ball through goalie Ben’s legs to make the score 2-1 to them. Yes they were being nice to us, but they weren’t going to go away with anything other than a win.

After the final whistle blew and we’d had a group photo we spent a bit of time with the watching crowd. They were absolutely fascinated with our photo cameras and fought to stare at themselves on the screen and take a few photos themselves. It was such great fun.

Excited Spectators

That evening most people went out to a nearby Italian restaurant for the cheeeeesy pizza they had been craving for so long. A handful stayed behind to cook the best spicy ratatouille we’d ever tasted. All in all it was such a satisfying day. Who needs to win at football anyway? We’re English after all (well most of us) we should be used to it by now.