Today, on my way, as I was walking into town, I saw a chameleon crossing slowly and steadily, the road I was on. It was as green as the leaves on the bush on one side of the road. A real life chameleon. It had two thick toes at its feet on all four legs; it was bright green; and it was beautiful - just about the size of a medium sized lizard. I was amazed. But not as amazed as when I saw, still on the same route, but on a different day, a very large snail. Its shell was one that you would expect to find at the beach. I'm sure that from the ground it measured over five centimeters or more and its largest diameter was about half its height. the snail was also crossing the road, it was a big snail. I saw what might have been the same snail a second time and I picked it up, I wanted to feel how hard the shell was. It felt old and hard, and the whole snail actually sucked back into it fizzing as it sucked itself in.
The safari ants; some bright red and others deep red almost brown, are another fascination. On the very same route, while walking to town, I had come across them cutting across the road from one garden to the other marching in an organized line. What was so fascinating about this particular time was that they were coming out of a tunnel in the ground on one side of the road then entering into another tunnel in the ground on the other side of the road. They had made a straight line straight across the road. At the mouth of the holes at either end of their line, they had partially constructed with mud what will best be described as a tunnel entrance. Something similar to what the Japanese have done with their underground bullet-train railway tracks at the entrance of the tunnels.
Then out of these tunnels at either side of the road came maybe four or five ants at a time some walking on top of others and non walking outside the line. They formed a thickness of about two or three centimeters from one end to the other. From a distance it looked like a dark stick or a thin snake lay across the road. The most peculiar thing happened when I stopped to get a closer look; many of them along the line at the part in the middle where I had stopped, broke away from the line in what seemed like a defensive move, and they arranged themselves in a scattered pattern around the line stationary with their mandibles or mouth claws open and facing to the sky. This to me was really cool. The rest in the line continued with their business going from one end to the other in this dense line and disappearing into the ground.
One thing I have taken from these rather interesting walks and experiences is that My Uganda is full of life. You don't need to go to the national parks to see that, (I've driven through two or three parks in Uganda, one with Zebras and Antelope, and another with lots of Egrets with their clean white color in a flock). If you allow the mosquitoes to quiet down and you manage to ignore the lizards and the mice, and the large assortment of birds; the large noisy ones and the small tweeters, there is still a whole lot more. In my bed room in the small air vent above the window, in the net that keeps out the mosquitoes there is a wasp's nest. At this moment at 2:30 am, two hours after midnight, wasps are awake tending to their nest, I can count about three or four at this moment going about their business; its almost a poetic image.