Work Update, Trips to Sipi Falls and Jinja

Blog Entry: October 28, 2009/ Nov. 2nd

It’s been ages since I last wrote! Things have really picked up here at work. Lindsey and I have had the opportunity to go out into the field more and we’ve expanded our health communication project. I think one of my favorite trips was visiting the beneficiaries of TASO’s “Trickle Up” program, which funds agri-business start-ups for HIV positive patients. We met one woman who had been given money to begin selling fruit at a roadside stand. She showed us how she invested her monthly profits back into her business because of what she learned in TASO’s training courses. She was so grateful for TASO’s support and you could tell what a difference it made in her life. Next, we visited a man and his wife who were raising goats. Since some of the business projects require the clients to work in teams, he encouraged us to drop by the home of one of his partners. The man we met was clearly very sick and malnourished. His wife was in the hospital and he was caring for his three children. He had received a cow through TASO’s program and was growing food for his family near his home. In spite of his poor health, he was trying to think of ways to expand his business efforts. Our friend Peter from TASO tried to gently convince him that it might be best to wait until his health improved before expanding. Though I don’t understand the local language, his eyes conveyed his concern for the security of his family should his health not improve soon.

The next client we visited was supporting herself by selling “home brew” in her village. “Home brew” is the local beer. It smells like pure rubbing alcohol and was strong enough to make our guy friends tipsy after a few small sips. Nasty stuff. Alcoholism is a horrible problem in Uganda. “Home brew” is cheap and accessible and there are simply not enough jobs to go around in some places. It is common for men to pass the time together over a bowl of home brew. Those men that do have jobs feel that it is the responsibility of women to care for the home and children. Men often spend their nights out at local drinking establishments, leaving the wife to shoulder the burden of feeding, clothing and caring for seven or eight children. Addiction programs are nearly non-existent (and those that do exist are not run by professionals). One of the TASO doctors is a trained psychiatrist - one of only 30 in the entire country. He is particularly interested in addiction, but is having great difficulty finding funding for research. I hope something comes through for him soon because Uganda reportedly has one of the highest consumption rates of alcohol in the world, but with no scientific evidence to support this, the problem will continue to be swept under the rug.

On our way out of the village, Peter stopped to buy some meat from the local butcher for dinner. As we waited for him, a bike pulled up carrying a large black and white blanket on the back. Or so I thought. When the man untied his package, I realized that it was not a blanket, but the skin of a cow. (Stop reading now, if you’re squeamish. I’m not kidding. This next part is unspeakably gross. Ok, I warned you.) The skin slipped to the ground to reveal the severed head of the cow, which was sitting upside down on the bike rack. I couldn’t look away from the spinal cord protruding from the head. As the man finished untying the head, the skin started to slip off its head. Hi, my name is Julie and I’m a vegetarian. Consider this your warning that I have a picture of this in one of my albums…

Trips to Sipi Falls and Jinja

Two weekends ago, Lindsey and our friends James and Dave from London decided to explore the area around Mbale. We arranged through a government-run tourist service to hire a car to take us to Sipi Falls and Mt. Elgon, which is about a 45-minute drive away. Gideon, our driver, picked us up on Saturday morning in a small, 2-wheel drive car. He drove us first to Sipi Falls, stopping along to the way to point out various breathtaking views as we climbed into the mountains. At Sipi Falls, we met up with a guide associated with the government’s tourist agency who was to take us down into the valley to see the falls. He made up some story about having to pay fees as we pass through gates set up by the local people who maintain the trails along the way. We never saw any gates and we certainly didn’t see the money we paid him (in addition to the rather substantial park fees) go anywhere besides his pockets. We found out later he only could be bothered to take us to one of the three falls. Yet another example of the widespread corruption and “mzungu prices.” This is truly sad because the locals living in this area are particularly destitute.

The mud path to the falls was narrow, steep and generally treacherous… before it started raining. And by raining, I mean pouring. It is rainy season here and we’ve become accustomed to the midday torrential rains. We had to stop twice, hovering together under small structures to shield us from the downpour. We were soaked to the bone, covered in mud and Lindsey had fallen a few times, but eventually we made it to the falls. Absolutely breathtaking. The rest of the journey was made especially difficult by the mud and rain. As precarious as it was making our way down, it was worse climbing up out of the valley. At one point we had we had to climb up a wet wooden ladder fastened to the hillside. All I could think about was that this would never have been legal in the States. It made it so much more fun! ☺ Our guide led us to his home after that and served us coffee made locally on the mountain. I thought it was the best coffee I’ve ever had, but in hindsight this is probably because I was deliriously hungry, tired and mud-covered. I was relieved when Gideon returned to pick us up in the car.

From Sipi Falls, we were supposed to check into our hotel on the nature preserve on Mt. Elgon. Easier said than done. Gideon had never been to this part of the mountain and it took awhile to determine how to get there. Mostly because the road to get there was not well marked. We were unconvinced that a random dirt (mud) road leading up into the hills was the correct path to the hotel. The locals assured us both that it was the correct way to go and that we would never make it in our little 2-wheel car. Nonsense! We were going to make it. Unfortunately, the rains had made the uneven steep road into a mudpit in the valleys. We were met by locals at each section of the road that told us we would never make it past the section of the road ahead. Somehow we made it through each time. Gideon was an incredibly skilled driver, but the road just kept getting worse and worse. At several points the boys had to get out and push. I think we could have made it, but the road was bordered on one side by a cliff and were sliding around on the mud like ice. We decided not to press our luck and made our way back to the main road to Mbale. Hopefully I’ll still get to hike on Elgon later in the trip after this initial not-so-successful trip.

The following weekend, we decided to meet up with friends of James and Dave in Jinja. Anna and Leo also work for TASO and are classmates of James and Dave at Kingston University in London. We had originally met them on the crazy safari trip. James was on his way to meet his girlfriend in Kampala, but Leo arranged for him, Dave, Lindsey and I to go white water rafting on the Nile on Saturday through a company called Adrift. Rumor has it that Princes William and Harry have used to this company to go rafting in years past. I didn’t see them, but Leo kind of looks/sounds like Prince William so I guess that was close enough. When we arrived at the site that morning, we found out that we could elect to go bungee jumping over the river as well.

Now, I have to tell you something about being here. I’ve been doing a lot of things I wouldn’t normally do. For example, I wouldn’t normally stick a pen cap into an electrical socket at home. However, here I do it on a daily basis - you have to do this to make the three-pronged sockets accept two-pronged plugs. I’ve also been on several trips (see: Safari Trip/Nearly Stepping on a Python, Sipi Falls Trip/Nearly Driving off of a Cliff) where I’ve cheated death recently. So you see, I had to sign up for bungee jumping. Before I could think about it, Lindsey and I were climbing up the 150-foot platform with nothing but the Nile River below us. Lindsey and a girl named Noel that we met that morning went first. Noel seemed to do ok and Lindsey too, despite being dunked at least up to her waist in the water on the way down. I made it clear to the guys manning the bungee platform that I did not particularly like the idea of getting wet. It was terrifying enough being the last one standing up there. After they secure your feet to the bungee cord, they have you shuffle up to the edge like a penguin. You are not supposed to look down, as apparently it’s not very motivating. No kidding. Next, you reach up for a bar above your head to steady yourself before lowering your arms and waving to the cameraman stationed at the bar across the ravine. Of course, I was too short to fully grasp the bar so I kind of touched it, half waved and begged them to start counting. They told me that if I jumped up and out instead of falling, I wouldn’t hit the water. I don’t remember the initial fall at all, but according to Dave and Leo watching from below, the other workers from Adrift said my swan dive had pretty nice form. Not bad for my first jump!

After returning from the jump, we got suited up for the rafting. We were on Team Tutu, (Tutu was our crazy river guide’s name), and joined a group of South Africans to make nine of us in all. In continuing with the near-death experience theme of this trip, we were to take on class 3, 4 and 5 rapids. Before this trip, I’d only ever been on class 3 rapids. Tutu took us through a series of training exercises, namely to make sure we wouldn’t panic if we got tossed from the raft. We learned how to pull ourselves up into the raft on our own (easier said than done) and what to do if the raft flipped. While I appreciated these hypotheticals, I fully intended to stay put in the raft. On the very first set of rapids, a class 3, Tutu asked us if we would like to flip or not. No one said anything at first so I said, “I’m sorry, why would we want to do that?” Everyone laughed. I was asking a serious question… Moments later, I was flying through the air, paddle who-knows-where and the raft somewhere farther down river. Luckily Adrift has kayakers following the rafts down river for just such an occasion. I was pulled out of the Nile River in Jinja, Uganda by a guy wearing a Penn State visor! Now, he has no idea where Penn State is or what a Nittany Lion is, but we were instant friends. I couldn’t help but to take this as an excellent sign - and PSU went on to beat Michigan (the cesspool of the west) 35 to 10!! Since I couldn’t actually be there, I have to admit this was a pretty damn good way to spend the weekend instead.

We rafted nearly the entire day, only stopping for a quick lunch on an island in the middle of the Nile. Over the course of the day, we saw a lizard the size of a small child, another huge snake, lots of really interesting birds, and one crocodile. Not bad! We also passed by class 6 rapids, which looked pretty insane. Tutu said the most experienced kayakers were the only ones that attempted those. I assume he meant experienced and crazy. Between rapids, we swam in the Nile and religiously reapplied sunscreen. Well, mostly Dave. You see, Dave had spent a day the week before ‘on the rat,’ by the pool, which apparently means chatting up a girl. Dave was so consumed with his new ladyfriend that he forgot to reapply his sunscreen by the pool for the entire day. In return, he received a phone number and a sunburn over his entire body so bad that it blistered for days afterward. As a result, Dave had to reapply sunscreen so often in the raft that every time he dove into the water, he was surrounded by a pool of white. Too funny.

On Saturday night when we returned from rafting, I was paying pretty dearly for ignoring a nasty sinus infection by dunking myself in and out of the Nile all day. I stayed in that evening, but managed to make a full recovery on Sunday morning after Leo and Anna took us to Flavours, the local mzungu hangout. I had a delicious brunch of pancakes, bacon, and a double latte just as good as they make it at home. I also did a lot of shopping around the town before leaving Jinja - they have a ton of great little places there run by local artists.

We had dinner in the hotel in Mbale that Sunday night, meeting back up with James his girlfriend Hannah. While waiting for our food to arrive, Lindsey was playing with the baby belonging to a family who was also having dinner at the hotel. Lindsey pretty much picks up every child that will stand still long enough for her to scoop them up, earning her the nickname Princess Diana from the Brits. On this particular evening, Dave and James thought it would be funny to teach the baby how to say “septic,” which is for some reason what the English call Americans - I still don’t know why. The little one luckily didn’t repeat their words, but this will probably always be one of my favorite memories of these guys. Dave and James returned to London this weekend. I’ll miss you guys! Have a safe trip back! Lindsey went with the guys to see them off in Kampala this weekend. She’s picking up some pictures made by the rafting company there so hopefully I’ll be able to post them soon.

This week marks about the halfway point of my trip. So far, I’m having an amazing time and I’m looking forward to more adventures ahead! A HUGE thank you to my wonderful friends… they each wrote me letters that they sealed and dated so that I have something to open every Friday that I’m here. You guys mean the world to me and I don’t know what I would do without you.

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