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

We’ve had a few comments asking what happened to days two and three and I’m afraid to inform you that I believe both blogs have been lost somewhere in Alasdair’s complicated computer matrix and now have to be rewritten by a lowly Handshaker instead of our great blogger Alex; so apologies in advance for any crudeness and lack of important or interesting detail.

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Day two was our first proper day on the Handshake so naturally we had to begin it with a team building game of dramatic proportion. The nameless game involved what was believed to be a hardboiled egg (which turned out later to be far from the truth) which in groups of three of four we had to pick a staff member and draw their face on it. The aim of the game was, by using anything on the ground around us, to design and make some sort of device that would protect the egg from cracking when Steve dropped it from the truck. Everyone came up with vastly different designs, my own group built ‘The Al Canister’, another group made a pig (which they claimed would prove that pigs could fly), there was also a little Greg Egg in a Moses basket and finally one that looked like an abused football.

Emily and Pig

The Pig and Greg Egg died instantly on the first impact; their eggy brains splattered everywhere. Lyndsey Egg in her football had some serious brain damage (and had to undergo some surgery in which sponge was implanted into her skull), but the amazing ‘Al Canister’ had proved the perfect container for truck flinging.

The second time around Steve dropped both Al and Lindsey Eggs higher up, from the roof of the truck. Lyndsey’s sponge brain served her well, but Al had taken one fall too many and the sight was really quite gruesome indeed.

Kick off!

After this grisly exercise we all split up into our various groups. The video team went off with Laurence and the web and education teams had a joint meeting to discuss their skills, what the expedition would involve for them and what they can hope to get out of it. I think they probably decided on first projects also, but being in the cook for that day I missed a lot of details.

So that, lunch and dinner took up most of the day. The Video team started making films on the Primate Handshake, the Web team started re-designing the Handshake website homepage and the Education team created the Handshake mascot Colin the Colobus and friends.

The evening was spent STREET DANCING which I’m sure somewhere Alex has written about, so I’ll let her fill you in on the details as she really had an amazing time that night.

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Day three began and ended very mundanely. The only major occurrence was changing campsites from Kampala to Entebbe and spending hours in typical Ugandan traffic watching people being sold various wares whilst sat in their cars sweltering to the point of exhaustion.

Our first packing up session went pretty smoothly. Tents, kitchen utensils and human peoples slotted neatly into their respective places and we all trundled off to Nakomatt for some vital supplies. It was important that we had some sugar to put on our daily helping of porridge if only to stop it from feeling if it was about to glue our insides together.

The backpackers that we arrived at in Entebbe was strikingly colourful and clean, the only problem being that we had only about 10 square metres in which to pitch nine tents on. Not going to happen. So after a quick sit down outside with a lovely little story read by Jade (*ahem* ask not) we got a call from Laurence and Lyndsey saying they’d found a place just down the road where we could stay.

Greenvalley Backpackers lives entirely up to its slogan ‘Home away from home’. It is actually somebody’s house and we’re all camping out in what is essentially their back garden. Laurence/Lyndsey couldn’t have chosen a nicer place. There are very few people here and all the staff are all so friendly and helpful, even if it does take them anything up to an hour to serve poor hungry volunteers a portion of chips. We have to keep reminding ourselves, this time thing is a virtually non-existent concept out here. But the food is so good it completely makes up for however long you had to wait for it, and besides as all familiar to the Dark Continent will know: ‘This is Africa.’

Talking of food actually I’m not sure anyone will forget the meal we were eventually served by our long suffering cook team of the day when we finally arrived at Greenvalley. If we thought that the porridge we’d been eating was like glue, this was grout! The stir fry was great! Probably because Steph had lovingly added her favourite vegetable peas to it and the spices were perfect. The rice however was a different story and probably one best left to the darkest nightmares induced by our anti-malarials instead.