Copenhagen

I took two short trips to Copenhagen - one in mid-January and another in late February - to work with UNICEF's supply division which happens to be headquartered there.  We are working with them on my project on Point-of-Care diagnostics, and our goal while I was there was to read all the proposals suppliers had submitted relating to the project (which cannot be taken off-site) to inform the procurement process and to help understand the new lab diagnostics that are going to be coming to market soon.  

                            

The trips were both very busy with work, but I loved at least being able to see the city - it is really spectacular.  January is definitely not the ideal time to visit - the sun came up around 9am and set around 3:30pm when I was there - so I am hoping I'll get another chance to return in more favorable conditions (and when things like Tivoli Gardens are actually open!).  Pictures from a beautiful nighttime walk (well, it's almost always nighttime in January in Copenhagen, so that's not very descriptive!) around the city... 

 On my last day, we took the train over to Mallmo, Sweden for a couple hours!

Queen Elizabeth National Park

For the second half of Easter weekend, we drove South from Kibale Forest to Queen Elizabeth National Park.  The park is famous for its lakes and for its game drives, but I hadn't anticipated how stunning the backdrop to all the wildlife would be -- the misty, snow-topped Rwenzori mountain range (the highest mountain range in Africa) is right next to the park.
It may take some squinting to spot the lions in this photo, but you can see the beauty of their environment.

On our ride out to the game drive just after dawn, we passed this bushbuck and tree full of birds:

We had rented out a nifty safari van for the day

A Uganda Kob - the national mammal of Uganda (I didn't know countries had national mammals...)

On our way out of the park, we were feeling a bit sad that we hadn't seen many elephants, and then we saw a family of about 20 of them crossing the road in front of our car!

Then, from our hotel pool, we could see a couple elephants off in the distance and a gorgeous view out over the park.

With Amaan, Noorin, and Lindsay

After dusk

 We went swimming in the rain!

It is always fun to be reminded of what a spectacularly beautiful country I live in and to see new parts of it.  I have now been to five of the country's ten national parks, and I'm hoping to make it to at least a couple more in the next few months.

Tracking Chimpanzees in Western Uganda

Over the long Easter weekend, I went to Western Uganda with a few friends.  We spent the first couple days in Kibale Forest National Park, the park with the highest concentration of primates in East Africa.  The park has around 1500 chimps, of which there are 3 groups of about 100 chimps each that are habituated to humans.  We got to spend a whole day following around chimps in one of the families - it was amazing watching a little chimp drama unfold over the course of the day.  We hiked for over an hour to find the chimps in the forest, and as we got to them, one of the female chimps was screaming in a very alarming way.  Our guide told us the female was screaming because she was in her fertile period (oestrus) and was being harassed by some of the male chimps.  She came about 4 feet away from us because she knew that if she was near humans, the other chimps wouldn't bother her.

We followed the chimps around as they ate, mated (female chimps during their fertile period will mate with up to 10 males per day!), climbed in the trees, and rested.

We followed this guy around for about 45 minutes - it was pretty wild just being able to watch him as he went about his day.  Chimpanzees in the wild are afraid of humans, but the Uganda Wildlife Authority habituates groups of them over time to become used to humans so researchers can study them and bring tourists to see them.  Tourism is a major source of revenue for the communities around the forest, which helps the conservation effort as these communities are less likely to then harm the forest.

The forest was beautiful on its own as well - I have never seen more butterflies or such an incredible variety of butterflies.  The birds were also spectacular.