The Northwood LEAP trip smiles in front of Conservation Through Public Health’s main laboratory building on May 25 along with the Zikusoka family, who hosted the trip. At right is Lawrence Zikusoka, who graduated from Northwood in 1993 and is one of the founders of CTPH. Third from right is Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, Uganda’s first wildlife veterinarian who founded CTPH. Between them is their son Tendo Zikusoka, who is a member of Northwood’s Class of 2028. (Photo provided — Northwood School)

LAKE PLACID — In 1992, John Spear was fresh out of college and had just begun his first job teaching English and psychology at Northwood School. Spear has been involved in education ever since then, either as a teacher, administrator, counselor or organizer.

Despite new classes and changing rosters each year, when one student who Spear had in his first years of teaching reached out to him decades later, Spear remembered him instantly.

“He was probably the most charismatic student I had when I started teaching,” Spear said. “He just left a big impression on me and probably any other teacher that he had.”

That student happened to be Lawrence Zikusoka, who graduated from Northwood in 1993. Now well into adulthood, Zikusoka — who grew up in and lives in Uganda — was interested in enrolling his children at Northwood. He and Spear reconnected and caught up with each other.

That’s when Spear learned about Conservation Through Public Health, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the health of gorillas in Uganda and the communities of people that surround them that was founded by Lawrence, his wife Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka — affectionately known as Dr. Gladys — and Stephen Rubanga.

A silverback gorilla is seen in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda, on May 24. (Photo provided — Northwood School)

Dr. Gladys is a trailblazer. She was Uganda’s first wildlife veterinarian, and has been at the forefront of efforts to protect gorillas and other sensitive wildlife populations there, both through dedicated veterinary medicine and community outreach work in Uganda, as well as efforts to spread the word about the importance of the work and draw attention to it internationally.

When Spear learned about all of this, he immediately then reached out to Marcy Fagan, who oversees Northwood’s Learn, Engage, Apply, Perform (LEAP) program about setting up a trip there. The program is based on experiential learning and offers a variety of classes that culminate with various immersion trips, ranging from a local focus in the Adirondacks to international destinations.

The idea is to enable students to learn in a way that goes beyond the confines of a classroom, and its trips aim to take students to places they wouldn’t go on any ordinary vacation, and engage with locals there as learners, not tourists.

“The whole LEAP program is designed to give students hands-on experiences,” Spear said. “Every single time we travel to another country, the students’ perspectives change. They see things that they had never seen before, and we know they come back different kids, and that’s really important to us.”

Spear said the idea was a no-brainer from the start, and Zikusoka had volunteered to do a lot of the heavy lifting that comes with crafting the itinerary. Spear and Fagan both read Dr. Glady’s book “Walking With Gorillas: The Journey of a Wildlife Vet,” which is available at the Bookstore Plus and further stoked their interests in going there.

Northwood teacher Marcy Fagan talks with Tushabomwe Amon, the head of school at Buhoma Community High School in Buhoma, Uganda. Behind them are Twebaze Gracious, left, who is the Conservation Field Officer for Conservation Through Public Health, and Northwood teacher John Spear. The educators discussed similarities and differences between Ugandan and American educations and curricula. (Photo provided — Northwood School)

Following a year-and-a-half of planning, Spear, Fagan and the LEAP class found themselves on an airplane bound for Uganda on May 18, the day after Northwood’s graduation ceremony. They spent the better part of two weeks there, immersing themselves in what Fagan said was the most impactful LEAP trip she oversaw.

“From my perspective, it was the most meaningful LEAP experience that we’ve had,” she said. “And we’ve done some really awesome things — but this was off the charts.”

The trip started off with a safari through Queen Elizabeth National Park, led by guides from CTPH.

“I didn’t expect I would ever see animals like that in my life,” said Drew Tulloch, one of the Northwood students on the trip. “When I did, it was very eye-opening, very important to see it firsthand.”

It was a long van ride to the park, nearly 10 hours. On the ride, signs of poverty, in many extreme and hard to comprehend coming from the United States the day before, were omnipresent.

Northwood teacher John Spear smiles with Witness in Bwindi, Uganda on May 27. (Photo provided — Northwood School)

Students described houses not even the size of half of an American classroom, many with upwards of 10 people sharing the spaces. Some had nothing more than a sheet of cloth covering the entrance. Looking out the van’s windows, however, a paradox soon emerged: everyone, despite this, seemed to have a smile on their face. It was something that endured throughout the entire trip.

“I mean they were the nicest people I’ve ever met,” said Henry Kress, one of the Northwood students on the trip. “They always had smiles on their faces, and that was just really cool for me to see.”

It was perhaps impossible to fully explain the reasoning for this — and there are entire fields of academia dedicated to discovering what drives human emotion — Spear posited an anecdotal observation that may be behind this: community bonds.

He said that in Uganda, children tend to be raised by the community. This means everyone knows each other, there is less fear — and less needed supervision, as a result — of kids walking around and approaching what in America could be considered a stranger. For instance, at one stop a child, Witness, came directly up to Spear and wanted to start playing with his beard. He obliged.

“I think I saw two children crying the whole time we were there, and we probably saw thousands of children,” Fagan said.

Northwood student Ollie Boutelle holds a gorilla fecal sample that the Northwood group collected at the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. The sample was analyzed to assess the gorilla’s health by identifying if there are any parasites. (Photo provided — Northwood School)

After Queen Elizabeth Park, the trip headed to Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, which served as their base camp for most of the rest of the trip. That’s where they went gorilla trekking with Dr. Gladys, and learned more about CTPH’s work.

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Uganda’s first wildlife vet

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Dr. Gladys wanted to be a veterinarian since she was a young child. Growing up, she loved animals and recalled one particularly formative experience when she was either 8 or 9 years old. A neighbor’s pet monkey came over when she was learning how to play piano. It sat next to her, watched her strike the keys, and then it took its own finger and started to do the same.

That demonstrated to Dr. Gladys how intelligent the animals were. Subsequent trips to national parks in Uganda pushed her to want to become a wildlife vet at a time when it was desperately needed there.

After graduating from vet school, her first job was with the Uganda Wildlife Authority. She soon realized that veterinary medicine alone would not solve the various problems wildlife there was facing. That’s because many of the sicknesses harming gorilla and other wildlife populations were coming from humans, often as a result of poor sanitary or hygienic practices.

Dr. Gladys noted that gorillas were especially susceptible to these because they share a 98.4% genetic overlap with humans, making it easier for diseases to spread between the species than those that are less genetically related.

Dr. Gladys said a “One Health” approach was needed: in order for the gorillas and other wildlife to be healthy, the humans around them would need to be as well. Poverty and a lack of education were the two biggest factors working against that. To combat those, CTPH was founded 22 years ago.

“You have to help communities, as a whole, to help the gorillas and other wildlife,” Dr. Gladys said. “You can’t just help the wildlife alone.”

The organization channels resources into public health campaigns and veterinary medicine, and making sure the two avenues are used in conjunction with each other to maximize the impact. For instance, the group works with liaisons who are well-known and respected in their communities to pass along public health initiatives.

They also pass this information along to tourists and make sure that everyone who treks with gorillas isn’t sick while doing so, and regardless, wears a mask to minimize the risk of any disease spreading to the gorillas.

On the veterinary front, CTPH’s labs analyze gorilla fecal samples to see if there are any parasitic threats to the populations, and if so, what is needed to treat those. The group is also conducting a gorilla census to see what the latest population numbers are. When Dr. Glady began her work in 1997, there were 300 mountain gorillas in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park.

The trend is heading in the right direction. When the last census was undertaken in 2018, that number had risen to 459. Dr. Gladys said she expects the current census to be more than 500, and that the numbers are similarly growing in the rest of Uganda outside of the park.

Crucial to this has been revenue from tourism, which Uganda has redirected to improve its law enforcement operations and cut down on poaching attempts. Another effort to reduce poaching has been working with communities to develop sustainable and more prosperous ways to make a living. One of those is sustainable coffee cultivation.

CTPH helped to create Gorilla Conservation Coffee, which pays an above-market premium to farmers living around the gorilla habitats, while still retailing coffee at a reasonably affordable price, in order to ensure sustainable cultivation methods are upheld. More information about that program’s impact and products are available at gccoffeeusa.com.

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Education

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The Northwood trip spent a lot of time with students at the Buhoma primary and secondary community schools. Fagan and Spear met with the heads of school there and discussed similarities and differences between American and Ugandan curriculum. The Northwood group also helped to plant a large vegetable garden at the schools, with plans to support it in future years to ensure access to nutritious food options for students there.

The students had the chance to play soccer and other games with students there, largely thanks to Tendo Zikusoka. He’s the son of Dr. Gladys and Lawrence, and a member of the Northwood Class of 2028. Coming from Uganda, he was the student’s tour guide a lot of the time, drawing on his friendships from both Northwood and Uganda when leading the group around.

One soccer game took place on the equator itself.

“I don’t think many people have played soccer on two hemispheres at the same time,” Lawrence Zikusoka said.

Dr. Gladys noted that CTPH is scaling up its outreach to schools, as getting people to be conservation-minded is often most effective when starting at a young age.

“We’re seeing more children engaged in conservation, through school curriculum and teaching,” she said. “We’re very excited about that.”

Fagan noted that it was impactful to both her and the rest of the group to realize that education, and the power it brings, is far from a given in Uganda. The majority of students don’t continue on after primary school there.

That made the group realize how lucky they were to have the educational opportunities available to them in America and made one student in the group go a step further. Max Notely relayed this and his experience on the trip to his family, who operate a golf and tennis club on Long Island. The family in turn donated and sent thousands of dollars worth of clothing from the club to the students at the Buhoma schools.

“This was the greatest, most eye opening, influential, knowledge gaining experience of my life,” he said.

For more information on CTPH and its ongoing work, visit ctph.org.