Advertisement
Published: October 15th 2010
Hi everyone
Well when I left you on my last blog little Shukuran from PCA was sick with malaria....unfortunately she didn't respond to the initial round of medication but we were able to get her back to the clinic where the doctor quickly set up a glucose drip with quinine which she responded really well to and after a few days was back at school and also back to be her usual entertaining self!
In the middle of all of all of this Kath and I went away to Murchison Falls on a 3 day trip. We travelled up to the camp on the first day and visited the falls at the top which was pretty amazing. The area around Murchison Falls is a national park and very beautiful. The second day started early as we were off for a game drive through the park and were lucky enough to get very close with a lioness who seemed quite happy with us clicking away on our cameras right in front of her. We also saw masses of giraffe and antelope, a few elephants and groups of hippo in the water. The Nile river runs through the park and Lake
Albert (which the Nile runs through) is also there so there are a lot of birds around as well. To get into the park we had to take a vehicle ferry over the river which ran fine on the way over but when we got back to the landing we found that the vehicle ferry was broken......TIA! So we caught a passenger ferry back and walked to the camp...which was little scary given that there were bufffalo, lion, elephant and hippo in the area!
In the afternoon we were taken on a boat trip down the river to the bottom of the falls which was a beautiful trip with lots of hippos, birds and crocs to see. While we were waiting for the boat to leave we spotted a few elephants hanging out behind a group of people and watched as they wandered through the boat landing area towards the shell petrol station......it's amazing to see these animals so close!
As I said the boat trip down to the falls was fabulous....the trip back wasn't so great with a huge downpour dumping itself on us. We quickly found that the roof of the boat leaked so by the
time we made it back to the boat landing we were all feeling wet, cold and miserable. But after a cold shower back at camp (no hot water unfortunately) we felt marginally better! We treated ourselves to a big pot of hot coffee and felt much better afterwards.
On the 3rd morning we started the trip back to Kampala with a side trip to the Ziwa Rhino Sanctury. The black and white rhino had disapeared from Uganda due to poaching so Ziwa imported white rhino from South Africa and the USA to try to build the population back up again. The park have 6 adult rhinos that have been brought in and 3 babies that are born and bred Ziwa rhino. We were able to go on a walking safari through the sanctury and got up close and personal with a mother rhino and her baby called Obama (called this because his mother is from the states and his dad is from Africa :-)) His dad was lying close by so we spent some time with him too. It was fantastic experience to be less than 30 metres from these awesome animals....and to be on foot!
We made
it back to Kampala late in the afternoon and treated ourselves to a meal at Cafe Javas which is a western style cafe at the local shopping centre....after a few days of pretty mediocre food on the trip we were craving a good meal :-)
Since then we've pretty much been hanging out in Kampala for the organisations. I was kept busy for the first few days back with taking Shukuran to the clinic for her medication and Kath and I both had visits to the dentist with some of the other children. One of the boys needed a root canal and I was so grateful to the lovely dentist who is happy to do the proceedure for a 3rd of the usual cost.
I've also had my second visit to the Kisenyi slums which are down the road from where we are staying. Each Wednesday and Friday PCA hold an outreach program down in the slums where they provide the children down there with counselling, advice, basic first aid and a hot meal. Any child can attend but is told to leave any drugs, petrol (for sniffing), alcohol etc at the door. My recent visit was just
after a major hailstorm had hit the city so the slum (as they are the lowest point in the city) was full of water and while we were there it was raining again (gotta love the rainy season!). I guess it would be fair to say that I've seen things on this trip that I've never seen before and it breaks my heart to see the lives that these people are resigned to leading and yet they still have a smile and a "hello, how are you" for you.
Below is the link to the PCA website if any of you are interested in finding out more about the organisation:
http://peaceforchildrenafrica-org.ning.com/
Advertisement
Tot: 0.134s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 10; qc: 43; dbt: 0.0543s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
sara
non-member comment
wow honey your photos are fantastic I cant wait to see the lot when you get back .... Sounds as though you are having an amazing experience good for you!! You will have so many incredible and humbling memories .... Sars x