The Longest Ride...

Hello Everyone,

So, we just got back from four full days in Western Uganda where we stayed at Bwindi Impenetrable National forest. This is very close to the Congo, in fact, we were only a few minutes walk away at one point... and here they have silverback gorillas. Unfortunately, you have to pay a hefty price to take the trip to see the gorillas, so we didn't see any...

However, that was not really the reason that we went anyways. The real intent for the trip was to meat a doctor who worked in Bwindi doing medical missions while working closely with local healers. Unfortunately(this is a word you will see a lot in this post) he had to make a trip to Kampala to get some medicine or something while we were there, so he was unable to talk to us except for about 20 minutes informally right before we left. So, instead of spending some more time with him, we walked off into the hills to do the other thing that we came to do: build a mud house with a pygmie tribe. If you want to know more about the people we worked with and the doctor that we missed see: http://pygmies.net/ for more...

Building the house was quite an experience and hopefully some day I will be able to share a few pictures with you... When we arrived, which was about an hour walk up a mountain the frame had already been constructed and the tin roof was going on. We came and after some introductions, began helping tie bamboo sticks onto the frame polls with tree bark reads from a specific tree. This was quite a task and took a while to do. It was raining during this time, so it was good that the roof was on and most were kept from getting too wet. After completing this task, we stopped for a lunch break and then, thanks to the rain, we were able to help put a little mud on in the house. The bamboo we had tied on earlier provided the holding area for the mud. It would seem that the task of puttin mud into a house should be fairly easy, but it is surprisingly harder than what it seems it should be. There is quite a bit of specific process and skill that goes into building one of these houses that the Batwa people have much more of than I :) Anyways, it takes a ton of good mud to finish one of these houses, so we did not even come close to finishing, but it was nice to be able to at least help with the start. Interesting fact that I learned about finishing was that the outsided is often smeared with cow manure to provide a seal for the house... if this is done every year these homes can last over 40 years, which is impressive considering the materials used. As we concluded the day the people of the small village wanted to share a dance with us and invited us to join with them, but we were all pretty awful at it. I don't understand how they do some of the things they do when they dance, but they are just better at it than we are...

It was starting to get later, so we began the long trek back to Bus and then back to camp for a much needed rest and shower...

On Sunday we went to a village church that was some ways away. Due to the increased size in our group from a year ago we had to take a bus instead of a van and the bus cannot go some of the places that the van can. So, we again got out and trekked over 40 minutes up a mountain to where the church was located. The church service was long, which is typical, adn then we walked back to one of the members homes for lunch, which was also long, again... typical ;)

We finally got back to our camp at around 5 PM and rested until supper...

Now, some of you might be wondering why I have titled my blog as such, considering everything that I have writting thus far. Well, you're about to find out....

If any of you feel like looking up Bwindi on map you'll find that it is far Western Uganda, and on a good day it will take 12 hours to get there. In the morning when we were leaving Dr. Scott, the guy we were supposed to meet with showed up to say good-bye to us and some of our group started talking to him which delayed our start from 7AM to 7:30. I should note with this as well, that on this trip they had the guys stay in a tent, so we were up at 5:30 to pack up our tent in time to eat breakfast, so at this time, I had already been up for 2 hours. We finall hit the road... However, the road from Bwindi back to a paved road is very bumpy, rocky, and full of potholes. On a good day, it takes over 3 hours to traverse... Unfortunately this was not a good day... Average speed on this long section of road is about 20-30 mph at best... if it were only paved well, or at the least, smooth, we could make it in half the time. Part of the schedule for the trip was to stop at our driver, Vincent's, parents house for lunch, as he comes from the Western part of the Country, still on the bumpy road. We reached his house around 11AM, which in Africa is at least 3 hours from the typical lunch time, so we trekked down the hill to his house and were greeted with banana's and passion fruit juice until lunch was served. This was fine, but lunch was not served until about 12:30 and we were unable to leave until around 1PM. This is typical of Africa, but when you are trying to get home, not so good.... They were very hospitable people though and lunch was very good.

So, we're back on the road and getting jolted constantly.... FINALLY we reach a paved road, which they refer to as "tarmac" here, and the ride is better for a while. There are still potholes, but at least we can drive faster and for the most part the ride is smoother. For some reason, however, on this day EVERYONE had to go to the bathroom, but could never manage to have to go at the same time... so by the time we had reached tarmac, we had already stopped at least 4 times, it was so many I lost track... Then we had a few more bathroom "emergencies" on the tarmac which required more stopping.... Unfortanately that was fairly minor. When were about 20 miles from Mbarara, a fairly major town, we blew a left front tire on the bus, for the second time this trip... No big deal right? We just pull over and get out the spare and change it... However, this is Africa and it rains every day, and it decided that the time our tire blew was the time that it should start POURING... This was not a small mist, it was a torrential downpour for at least a half hour. There were four of us who got out to try to fix the tire and we were all completely soaked.

As is typical of vehicles we had a eency tweency little jack to try to change the tire of our large bus. As our driver said in his African accent "this jack is for a small car." To top it all off, because of the rain, a large puddle had formed under the bus, and the ground was incredibly muddy, so instead of the bus going up, the jack went down... Soooo... we had to trek off into a field to find large rocks to put under the jack so that it would actually lift the bus high enough to change the tire... Even with the rock, however, the jack didn't go high enough, so we had to find a bigger rock....

Finally after much messing around and playing in water and mud we were able to get the tire changed. Unfortunately this is not as good as it sounds as the rim was bent and we could not trust it to take us the 5+ hours yet back to Mukono. So, we drove slowly into Mbarara and stopped at a gas station to get the tube replaced on our good rim. This again took about an hour as had changing the tire in the rain, so 2 more hours down the tube(perhaps pun intended) I think it was about 5PM by this time, and we thought that if we did well we would be home by 10:30PM. Not so bad, right?

Well, doing well would be a gracious term... traffic was thick, the road was filled with potholes, we were all tired, and the headlights stopped working on a fairly random basis. Since you can't see at night without headlights we were forced to slow down considerably and pull over several times to fidgit with the lights so they would work. 10:30PM passed us by and we weren't even to Kampala yet, which is about 30-45 minutes from Mukono, at this point, I ate another banana and was happy that I had purchased muffin at the gas station ;)

Anyways, we finally got to Mukono at around Midnight, instead of 7PM, which was the original plan.... I was toward the end of being dropped off, so I didn't get home until 12:30.... My family had waited up and had just gone to bed, but they woke up for me, which was good..... Needless to say we were all completely exhausted, still are today and have tons of homework to do.... but that is the story, hope you made it through ;)

Justin


A little P.S. to fellow Cubs fans out there. I was just reading about their most recent demise again in playoffs, and I was completely bummed....again. The thing that frustrated me was that I feel like if I would have had the articles that were written about their poor playoff performance from last year almost the exact same words were used. I'm pretty sure their stats were almost the same exactly, which is sick... but I guess there's always next year....