I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I know it’s been over a month since I posted on my blog, but now I’m back and here to fill you in on what I’ve been up to. A thousand apologies…
Well, obviously we left Kenya because our 3-month visa expired and it was time to move on and continue our travels. I had mixed feelings about leaving Eldoret, I was really sad to leave the kids at the Sally Test Center and the Kenyan friends I’d made, but I was ready to get back on the road and have some new experiences, etc., etc. I’d gotten into a very lazy routine in Eldoret (which partly explains why I never blogged) that consisted of sleeping in, going to Sally Test for a few hours, and eating lots of African food. I think I gained about 10 pounds in Kenya, I haven’t actually stepped on a scale but boy are my pants tight. Who’d have thunk I’d actually gain weight in Africa? So we left Eldoret on a bus heading for Uganda, crossed the border, and arrived in Mukono, the town outside Kampala where Lucy is in law school. Lucy’s school has a gorgeous campus (palm trees, banana trees, manicured grass), and it felt very familiar to be back in a university setting.
We spent a few nights with Lucy before heading to Bwindi Impenetrable National Forest, one of the only places in the world where you can see mountain gorillas. And that’s what we did, we paid a pretty penny to trek in a group with 6 other tourists and almost as many guides through the impenetrable forest to hang out with a habituated group of gorillas for an hour. It’s advertised as one of the most extreme wildlife encounters in the world, and it was pretty incredible. I mean, the silverback was less than 4 feet away from me, just eating leaves and doing his thing. Besides the gorillas, the scenery was amazing, and the next day Michelle and I organized a walking/canoeing trek with a guide, Benson, who also served as the cook at the campsite we were staying at. The trek was gorgeous and we were greeted with shouts of “MzUUUUUUngu!” from kids across whole valleys. Honestly, it’s unique and amusing to be treated like a celebrity, but as I prepare to leave East Africa I’m hoping that I’ll be able to be a little more anonymous during the rest of my travels. I think I just got tired of being the mzungu, a big shot just because of my skin color, constantly stared at and hollered at…although the excited kids are still adorable, and it’s still pretty sweet to bring a big smile to a kid’s face just by waving at them.
But I digress. We left Bwindi and went back to Mukono for a day before heading down to Mbale, a town right near the Ugandan border with Kenya. We originally planned to go to Mbale to work on a coffee farm with some coffee farmers that Michelle had met in DC while they were touring the US promoting their fair-trade multi-faith coffee co-op. Unfortunately, we had some miscommunication issues with the woman Michelle had been in touch with and we were planning on staying with. Also (and we only learned this once we arrived in Mbale), it wasn’t coffee harvesting season. But fortune shined down on us in the form of Lucy’s friend from school, Emanuel. Emanuel, or Emma, is a wonderfully flamboyant student (think the Ugandan equivalent of Dan Beck, for those of you who know Dan Beck. Hi Dan Beck, I miss you!) who had earlier taken us around Kampala and got us invited to a Ugandan wedding. Emma’s family has a house in Mbale, so since we were stranded without any coffee farmers he arranged for us to stay at his family home along with a few cousins who were already there. Emma traveled to Mbale to meet us the next day, and we spent the weekend meeting his family, visiting ancestral villages, drinking the local brew, and being called mzungu by village kids. We also finally were able to meet up with Michelle’s coffee farmer friends, who showed us their coffee farms while lamenting the fact that we hadn’t arranged to stay with them. Oh well, you can’t please everyone, especially those who you can’t communicate well with.
We traveled back to Mukono, spent a day in Kampala visiting a school for special needs children where Emma had done an internship (what a great experience, the school was extremely well run and the kids seemed so happy, it was very rewarding for me to spend time with them in such an encouraging setting), and now we are preparing to leave for Ethiopia tomorrow, our last stop in Africa before heading to a whole other continent.
That’s it for now, I promise I’ll try to update this blog more frequently, and hopefully you lovely people (whoever you are) will keep on reading it…
