Chapnet

I’m writing this post from my comfortable window seat in our somewhat-obnoxious-but-effective “moonvehicle” that’s been the center of our lives for the last seven days. This leg of our journey has been in parts hectic, fun, dull, and exhilarating as we travel for long hours between campsites where we set up camp on arrival and take it apart (often very early) in the morning before departing for our next stop.

We left Zambia on the morning of the 24th after a last day wandering around the charming town of Livingstone. Livingstone is a curiosity because it is very Westernized, probably due to the flood of tourists that visit every year to see Victoria Falls. The people are extremely friendly and endlessly curious about Canada. They also seem to be walking encyclopedias about Canadian politics. “Aha, Canada! How is Steven Harper? Jean Chretien! Kim Campbell! Brian Mulroney!”

From Livingstone, through Botswana and into South Africa, the Western influence asserts itself more and more as we’ve watched the Africa we’ve known for the last two-and-a-half months melt away to be replaced by gleaming shopping malls, well-maintained highways, and maybe most importantly, the first soft-serve ice-cream we’ve had since we got here. It’s nice to be back in surroundings that are more familiar, but there’s more than a little sense of yearning for the grittier lifestyle we’d adapted to in East Africa. It’s most likely exacerbated by the fact that our tour is on a tight schedule and the only stops we make are at malls for stocking up on supplies and at our campsites, which have been unfailingly well-equipped with running water, hot showers, and often a bar and a swimming pool. It affords us little time to get a sense for the real Africa of these places.

Botswana in particular flew past in a 3-day blur of asphalt and concrete, although we did spend one fantastic night bush camping next to a watering hole in the heart of a jungle home to all sorts of wild things, including lions, leopards, hyenas, elephants, etc. Although I was kind of hoping to be woken by a lion’s roar, we had to settle for the trumpeting and crashing of a herd of elephants dropping by for a nighttime drink.

We were woken in the morning by a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder followed shortly by a downpour. Solo thunderclouds meander the landscape here and deliver the rain as though from a huge, heavenly hose.

Despite the more modern infrastructure and homey amenities, much of the area is still wild and untouched. Elephants roam the forests and fields of Botswana; it’s not uncommon to see a herd of elephants grazing in a grove of trees beside a busy highway. Every campsite includes warnings to look out for snakes. In one campsite a seven-fingered helper showed us the baby spitting cobra he’d caught earlier that day, the foot-long snake writhing and rearing, its hood open as it tried to spit its venom into the helper’s eyes. The helper’s other three fingers were lost in an unfortunate incident with a puff adder.

From Botswana we passed into South Africa. The border crossing was quick and easy—they’ve all been for that matter, usually with little to no wait, a few friendly questions, a stamp and a visa and we’re on our way. We visited the world-famous and breathtaking Kruger National Park yesterday, another gem in Africa’s fabulous collection of wildlife reserves. Lots of animals, beautiful landscape, and without question the most petrifying and exhilarating encounter we’ve had with an animal to date.

To make a long story short, this is what a family of white rhinos looks like standing on a road in the park.

And this is what the largest of those rhinos looks like a split second before it charges your vehicle, digging its horn into the undercarriage and lifting you a few inches off the ground before your driver speeds away.

Thankfully nobody was hurt, including the rhino. And it makes for a terrific story—nobody we’ve talked to, including guides, drivers, and rangers, have ever heard of or seen something like this happen.

Mother nature celebrated our adventurous day by delivering us the most astounding thunderstorm I’ve ever seen. Lightning lit the sky almost constantly—at times it was more often light than dark, and sometimes the light was so bright it gave a momentary illusion of daylight. We stayed up to watch for as long as we could, but after a while the sprinkles gave way to a deluge and we were forced into our tents. We fell asleep last night to the sound of pouring rain and hyenas howling just outside the fence of the campsite.

And now the bus carries us onward to Johannesburg, where we’ll stay in a hotel tonight and wake bright and early to catch a 7am flight to Cape Town tomorrow morning. We’ve made friends on this tour and it will be sad to leave them, but after the grind of daily travel it will be very nice to settle into a comfortable apartment for five days.

And I’m kind of looking forward to a Starbucks latte.

Early morning Friday marked the beginning of a 2000+ km (can we call this 2+ megameter?) journey over water and land to our current location in Livingstone, Zambia. Our ferry left Zanzibar promptly at 7am and arrived in Dar es Salaam promptly at 9. The efficiency and timeliness was almost disorienting. Thankfully the train trip more than compensated.

Arriving in Dar es Salaam early meant that we got to spend four hours in the hot, sweaty first class lounge of the Tazara train station. We were treated to a library of Michael Bolton music, including an entire Christmas album. Nobody’s “Oh Night Devine!” is quite so powerful, especially in the dead heat and humidity of a March morning in Dar es Salaam. But the train showed up, more or less on time, and we hauled our bags (now at an embarrassing number and total weight due to our collector natures) into our first-class sleeper compartment, ready for our two-day ride to Kapiri Mposhi in Zambia.

The ride started fantastically, and was really all-in-all a great experience and a terrific way to cover a lot of ground and see a lot of land we wouldn’t otherwise see. The Tanzanian landscape was particularly beautiful, and we were treated to sights of impalas, zebras, and giraffes from our window as the sun set. We were met at many of the stations by locals. Tanzania is entering its rainy season and the smell was rich and green and children were selling homemade treats from trays illuminated by a candle while fireflies blinked in the wet grass.

Our spirits were high entering day two. We were climbing into the mountains and the stifling heat had given way to cooler temperatures. We seemed to be making good progress…until we reached the town of Mbeya.

In Mbeya we stopped. Now, Mbeya has a fairly large station and we’d been traveling steadily for a full day, so a more extended stop seemed reasonable at first. Maybe we were just resupplying? But suspicious things were happening. People were abandoning the train. A group of Korean travelers started to make their own dinner on the platform. Workers were looking at our train with the bored look of somebody looking at something that they would be looking at for quite some time.

We asked.

“You must change trains here. The other train, it is coming, but it is late. Maybe four hours.”

That was about 4. At midnight the other train finally arrived. A knock on the door told us it was time to pack our bags and make the switch. All of the passengers who were leaving Coach 2 flooded into the narrow walkway precisely as all of the new passengers destined for Coach 2 flooded onto the train. Stalemate. People and bags headed in opposite directions in a meter-wide walkway with no exits causes an immediate and intractable human traffic jam. Confusion reined. People were shouting at people to move, but nobody could. We finally forced our way to the exit at the end of the car, passing our bags over and around the passengers stuck in the walkway.

There were no stairs. There was no platform between the trains. We had to jump down from the car to the gravel ground between the trains with our heavy packs on our backs. In my delirium I was working to protect a half-eaten canister of Pringles whose lid kept falling off. There were no stairs on the next train either, so we had to scale the side of the car to get in. We were directed to the wrong cabin where we were yelled at for being there.

We finally settled into the right cabin, where we flopped exhausted into our bunks. Then the real fun began. For the next hour (or two? or three?) as we were trying to fall asleep, the train was being rearranged to put the cars in the right order. This is not a delicate procedure. Every coupling involves a bone-jarring collision that will wake you out of any slumber and have you grabbing at anything you can hold on to to keep you from being flung from your bed.

We woke up the next day with dampened spirits that were matched by the dingy, rainy weather we rode through for most of the day. But things steadily improved. We crossed into Zambia at about midday—which was roughly our scheduled arrival time, but instead marked the midpoint of our journey. We didn’t encounter any more delays and spent only one extra night on the train, arriving at Kapiri Mposhi station the next morning a tidy 21 hours behind schedule.

From Kapiri Mposhi, we took a 2-hour taxi to the capital city Lukasa, then a 6-hour bus ride to Livingstone. We’re staying at Fawlty Towers, which is actually very nice despite its too-clever-by-half name. A hot shower and excellent food sent us to bed happy.

Our next step is the penultimate leg of our journey: an 8-day overland tour from here through Botswana to Johannesburg. We leave on Thursday which gives us a little time to explore Livingstone and its main attraction, Victoria Falls.

We visited the falls today in all their thundering, drenching glory. We’re near the peak of the rainy season here when the falls have 10x more volume than they do when it’s dry and they’re reduced to almost a trickle. Apparently you can walk along the lip of the falls during the dry season, something that’s completely inconceivable now with the torrents of water cascading over.

It’s hard to really get a feel for the full grandeur of the falls, partly because they’re broken into multiple sections and you can’t see the full stretch of them from the Zambian side (they’re shared with Zimbabwe) and partly because there is so much mist from the water crashing down that you often can’t see them at all.

But you can get alarmingly close to the precipice.

More Livingstone tomorrow before we meet our tour group in the evening. Zambia has been an intriguing stop for us. The country is sparsely populated—around 10-12M in a country that covers more area than either Tanzania or Kenya (both of which have populations over 40M). Much of the land we saw from the train is lush and green and untouched. The infrastructure and amenities feel more like home, but the people are very poor. 1 in 7 adults is infected with HIV, dragging the life expectancy down to a little over 40 years. The people we’ve met are very friendly, but the sellers in the market are quick to use heart wrenching stories of hardship and poverty to try to separate you from your money. It feels at least half truthful. Sometimes you can’t say no. Our stopover feels too brief; we would love to stay a while longer and get to know this place a lot better.

We wrapped up our diving lessons in Stone Town last week and after a day of shopping and exploring the winding streets we headed to the northwest corner of the island to spend time on the beach. The beach was beautiful, but unfortunately the neap tide left us without much water for swimming.

Undaunted, and because we are now certified PADI Open-Water Diversâ„¢, we took the opportunity to explore the amazing underwater scene at Mnemba Atoll. The whole diving experience has been fantastic. The dives at Mnemba were the best so far, with amazing colours in every direction. The second dive site was essentially a huge wall of coral, and the current let you cruise slowly by and gawk with barely any effort.

We’re really good divers…although at times our buoyancy control could use some work.

We leave Zanzibar early tomorrow morning by ferry to Dar es Salaam. In Dar es Salaam we’re boarding a train that will carry us to Zambia. For two days. We’ve reserved an entire 4-person sleeping compartment for ourselves and loaded up on snacks and cheap DVDs (12 movies per disc!) for the laptop. It’s not uncommon for the train to be 24 hours late. On the plus side, we’re covering a lot of ground for not much money and we skirt the edge of the Selous game park and meander our way through a mountain range…all of which we can watch from the comfort of our own bed. To Zambia!

The best stories need to have some kind of ordeal or conflict to grab the reader’s attention and hold on to it, which is why there probably aren’t very many good ones about tourists who spend 10 idyllic days on a sun-drenched tropical island in the Indian Ocean.

Zanzibar is such a place and we are, for now, such tourists.

Born from the same coastal Swahili culture as Lamu, Zanzibar is like the version of Lamu that Disney would concoct for an “Experience Africa!” park. Similar stone buildings and early morning calls to prayer, but lots of cars and muzungu tourists on every walkway. It’s nice to be more anonymous again.

We’re staying in Stone Town, the heart of Zanzibar Town and near the ports that ferry passengers and vehicles from Dar es Salaam to the island and back.

Back around my birthday, Michelle had a fantastic idea for gifts that we could give each other that would be memorable and would perfectly complement our trip: scuba diving lessons! We’ve both always wanted to learn, and an extended stay on a tropical island was the perfect opportunity. We wrapped up our pool lessons yesterday and hit the water this morning.

It was amazing.

I think I was too mesmerized by the feeling of being perfectly weightless underwater to even notice the fish or coral, but our instructor did draw my attention often enough for me to notice spotted rays and a huge school of cuttlefish. I think I’m hooked. We have our final two open-water training dives tomorrow, then we’re official. We may try to head to the depths again when we visit the northeast part of the island next week.

In the meantime, take a minute to absorb the cuteness of the following video. It’s a month old, but I haven’t had the bandwidth to post it until now. (Warning: you many need to watch in installments to avoid a cute overload.)

We spent a last, full day at the community centre last Monday, after which we took a car ride to Kakamega to start the next phase of the great African Adventure. We were sad to leave our new friends behind and departed the family compound with a sense of melancholy. We’ll miss the ambition and optimism of the centre and the hot, dusty days of village life.

There was one more stop in Kenya before we crossed into Tanzania. Michelle taught not far outside of Kakamega when she lived in Kenya 15 years ago, and she wanted to return to the school to say hi to the current staff and students and to see how the school looked all this time later.

The response was pretty overwhelming.

The next day we left Kakamega early for the Tanzanian border. Sometimes the story of a journey is best told with a picture.

The trip took most of the day involved a car, a matatu (oversold as an “express shuttle”), and a final jaunt in a station wagon. We thought we’d reached the ultimate level of absurdity when 13 people were (at times literally) crammed into the station wagon, including children stacked on top of our luggage in the back. Michelle was sitting on my lap in the back seat. The driver pulled away, but was flagged down by another potential passenger. Unable to turn down a fare, he drew the car up to the man and got out, motioning for him to sit down in the driver’s seat. The man got in and the driver got in after him, driving the rest of the 20km run to the border sitting on the man’s lap.

But we made it to the border safely and in reasonably good spirits where we said goodbye to Kenya for now; goodbye to its stunning scenery and mesmerizing wildlife, and goodbye to the lovely people of Kenya, with their ready smiles, warm welcomes, and their lilting, almost-musical accents. It’s a place that is not easy to let go, and when we left it seemed most likely that we weren’t seeing it for the last time.

We’re now in Zanzibar. We flew in this afternoon, on a plane that was typically 3 hours late. We had a sort of epiphany on the shuttle ride to the airport about how far we’d come on this trip psychologically.

It goes like this.

I was checking my e-mail this morning for the first time in a week (we were out of Internet range for the last week, hence the break in posting) and it turned out our flight had been changed to leave from Arusha airport (the one we’d deliberately stayed near) to Kilimanjaro airport about 50km away. Thankfully, the airline had arranged for a shuttle to pick us up at a nearby hotel. (Not actually at the hotel, as we later found out, but kind of near the hotel. That took a while to sort out on its own.) The flight was supposed to leave at 1:50pm, but the shuttle didn’t start moving until after 1. There were only two other people in the shuttle with us, a Spanish couple who had just wrapped up a safari. They looked wide-eyed and panicky.

“Are you flying to Zanzibar??”

“Yes”

“But the plane is supposed to leave soon!! Aren’t you worried??”

Michelle and I looked at each other. Not only were we not worried, it hadn’t even occurred to us to be worried. Something that would have agitated me to the point of fury two months ago barely registered.

“Hm, no, I guess not! I think we’ve been in Africa too long to be worried…”

Our trip from the border to Zanzibar included four days on safari in the Serengeti and Ngorongoro crater. Both were incredible. The huge herds of wildebeest and zebras haven’t yet left the Serengeti for the Masai Mara, so the southern expanse of the park was filled with animals. The Ngorongoro crater is the leftovers of a huge volcano that collapsed millions of years ago and is now filled with vegetation and animals of all descriptions. Because the park is so small (covering only 265 square km), the animals have all seen and become accustomed to the tour vans, allowing for close-up viewing that’s not possible in the bigger parks.

We camped in both parks. The campsites are inside the parks themselves and there are no fences to separate campers from the animals. We heard things. The last night as we were camping on the crater rim, I heard something big, a buffalo I think, snorting and grazing a few feet from our tent.

At least it wasn’t a lion.

Now for some pictures! First up: Serengeti. Look for the fascinating sequence where an elephant clears a pride of lions hiding in the grass…

And then, Ngorongoro crater, in which we saw a pair of cheetahs kill a baby gazelle (but too far away for pictures) and the extremely rare black rhino:

I had this idea a couple of weeks ago that we could talk to some of the farmers taking the classes at the resource centre and post a few short biographies about what they had on their farm, how the centre has helped them, etc. I kind of figured it would be a fun way to share a little bit of information about what’s going on at the centre from the perspective of the people who are directly benefitting. So I geared up to take some notes, a few pictures, and put together a short blog about it.

I was totally unprepared for what happened.

The response was overwhelming. The students were ecstatic to have a forum to tell their stories and tell the world about the great work that the Luari Community Resource Centre is doing form themselves and for the community. My idea for a short blog with a few notes about local farms grew into a full afternoon of interviews and discussions. These people have stories and they want you to hear them.

Peter Wafula Sitati

CMC Chairman

“In my 5 year vision, if I will be in good health, I am trusting that I shall be more active and richer and be able to assist other people in the community. I hope our friends from Canada will continue assisting me, the community, and the LCRC to eradicate poverty, etc., as they have already done for our youth.”

Jafetha Khayka

CMC Secretary

“There is a water problem in the community, but this center will bring water to the community that will help the community tremendously. The next dry season, the whole field will be green. Bringing the water should help the center become self-sustaining because we can grow crops year round.

Hudson Lomosi

CMC member in charge of bursaries and scholarships

“Another thing that’s a problem is women who are HIV and AIDS victims. When their husbands die, they are kicked out of their homes by their husband’s families who blame them. These are the people who rent small rooms in markets. If we could make a home for them, we could be training them with skills and guidance and counseling and make them self-reliant.”

Dominic Chitayi

LCRC Farm Attendant

“In my role as farm attendant, I’ve been able to act as a role model to my friends. It’s out of my commitment to my small farm that I have gotten this chance. Now my friends that I have been working with have also been motivated that anything you do, do like it’s as if you’re the only person in the field and you will get success in what you do. They are struggling because they don’t think you can make something out of nothing, but I’ve shown them that self-commitment can get you what you want.”

Naomi Njuhi Ndegwa

LCRC Secretrary

”As a woman, I believe the centre is going to help us so much. Most of the times we have been undermined by men, we have no say. At the center we are told that as a woman we are somebody. I can apply what we learned to improve the standard of living for my family and children. I can have money to send my children to school. It will be a very good way for raising my children because I’ll have no stress about having money and making sure they can get an education.”

Maurice Ochango

LCRC Caretaker

“I have enjoyed very much working at the centre. I have learned so many things, like farming, keeping poultry, and soil formation. I have learned conservation agriculture – new methods of farming that you can use so that they don’t spoil the land.”

Gichuru Hudson

Teacher

“The center has helped the community. Such a center is rare and is usually very expensive. This one here is almost free! It can help so many people. In future most of the school dropouts can come here to learn new skills. It’s going to help a wide range of people of all ages who can’t get education through other means.”

Alfred Makocha Abuko

Class Leader

“At the centre, I’ve learned about farming as a business and to be a serious business farmer. The centre has given me competition that causes me to work harder to make a better farm. It has also made me busy because I know I have to work hard to keep ahead of the competition. It has also let me socialize with different people of different walks of life. And it’s made me eager to come to Canada!”

Flora Koko Wasike

Mama Flora

“First impression for the women is when the girls came in August for the leadership training and what they learned has really changed the thinking of the women in the community. Most women thought that there was some specific work for women and specific work for men. Now, for example, you find there are more women than men learning at the centre. It’s really changing the attitude of the community towards women. Computer lessons and other such lessons, if the women can be given first priority to learn, it can change the community at large.”

Carolyn Andia

“After 5 years, I will complete my courses here I will be so different from what I am now. I will be exposed to much more, like computers. I would like to have a poultry project on our farm that will be a role model to the community and that will teach the community on how to benefit from poultry keeping. I will improve our farm by planting different types of crops and by having a water pump to get irrigation from the stream. Then I will have a very nice portion of land. I will get income to make machines to help irrigation.

Congratulations to LCRC and I encourage it to get a lot of computers so that everybody can learn skills and everybody can benefit from them. If in 3 days we’ve learned what we did with only a couple of computers, imagine what we could do if we had more!”

Festus Wasike Chepkisier

“There are so many other things to talk about. Not just myself but also for the whole community. I personally am so glad to have this centre that has connected me to so many people of the world and for getting friends from Canada. I’m also eager to visit Canada and to learn more from my friends in Canada. It has also changed my lifestyle and understanding towards different races and towards different people from different countries.

Your friends who read about the resource center are so welcome with their support and advice and to learn more through the Internet or by visiting the center personally. You are very highly welcomed.”

Jane Kauka

“At the centre, I have learned more about farming, cattle keeping, poultry keeping, and compost manure. I have changed because I used to not plant at the right time time, I was plowing very late, so I could not get enough food. Now I will plow early and plant in good time to get a good harvest. Because of what I have learned, I have to change.”

Margaret Wanjiro

“I have learned about computers and I would like to be a computer engineer like Ryan. (Ed. note: good choice!) I would like to visit Canada and learn how they practice agriculture.”

Mary Welomba Sakaya

“I have also learned how to harvest water and how to open a Facebook account, how to use the Internet to learn about other countries; you ask questions and the answers just come!

I pray God to help those who organized this centre and I wish the centre to expand, teach more people, start computer lessons, and so much more. God bless you.”

Monicah Kisia

“Five years ahead, I want to learn more and advance even more in these areas. Even my own children should know that their mother can know this information better than them!”

Owen Witende Murunga

“I hope that the centre expands to help many of our community members gain knowledge on agriculture production and how to produce food and be self-sufficient. I hope it can provide basic education and expand basic amenities like access to clean water and a health center. I also hope that this centre will help the community strengthen its relationship between us and the Canadian people. We shall have a strong friendship – maybe some of us will come from this place and visit there!”

Wilson Mulongo Wambasi

“My five year vision is to continue as a farmer. To have more students in this centre through my organization, to campaign to bring more students to the centre. For the centre to continue with its assistance to students.”

Our time in Lugari is flying by. No two days are the same, but we have settled into a pattern of sorts. Morning brings a hearty breakfast with some combination of hard boiled eggs, sweet potatoes, Kenyan pancakes, fruit, etc., and a pot of hot water for coffee. When breakfast is finished, we head to the community center by foot or by pikipiki (motorcycle) where we help out in the field or office or maybe head out to visit a local farm.

Sometimes we have guests visit us for breakfast.

We’re learning a stunning amount about rural life in Kenya from our farm visits and from sitting in during the afternoon classes at the center. Everybody has a farm, even if you have another job (which are sadly few and far between). Most, if not all, of your daily meals are prepared with food grown within 50m of your home. The farms all have a dizzying array of produce and livestock: from kale to fish ponds, geese to bananas, everything in between and a whole lot more. The crops are grown in a patchwork of small plots since many farms measure no more than 3-4 acres.

The community center’s current focus is to help farmers make the best use of limited land and to try to move away from pure sustenance farming into crops that can provide both food an income. It’s a special place because the vision, ambition, and effort is entirely homegrown. We, of course, have little to offer in terms of educating farmers about farming, but we have been able to talk to the class about a few things that we do know about: Canada and computers.

We took one class last week to talk about the homeland. People were astonished that so few Canadians lived on farms and that we had no real staple food. They thought beavers and moose looked pretty funny.

This week we took another two afternoons and taught computer basics: from opening and closing a Word document (yesterday) to browsing the Internet and setting up e-mail and Facebook accounts (Ed. note: I fully recognize that the latter may not actually count as any kind of step forward).

Many of the students have never used a computer before, so we were absolutely astonished by how eagerly and competently they took to trying everything and anything we threw at them. Both classes ran well past their scheduled end time because nobody wanted to walk away from the two computers we’d set up for them to play with. The excitement they felt was contagious. New ways of working and communicating and learning were unfolding in front of all of us. Unfortunately the center will be left with only one computer when we leave, and that one is primarily for the use of the center’s staff. It will be very, very sad if the enthusiasm that filled the classroom today were to erode because access to computers is so scarce, but the reality is that the center is on a very stringent budget that simply has no room for another computer (let alone the full lab of systems they dream of building one day). Michelle and I are already envisioning a used-computer drive that could go a long way to fulfilling the center’s ambitions.

This weekend we spent most of our time exploring the family compound and the beautiful landscape that surrounds it. The land has a timeless quality that makes you believe it’s been like this forever.

We feel fortunate to have landed in this place and at this time. The community center has the potential to do great things for this community and we’re lucky to have played a small part in these early steps it’s taking. But no matter what we’ve done, it’s the people here who are making the difference. We want you to meet them. Our next post will give you that chance.

See if you can spot it.

Maybe it was when the chicken laid an egg on Michelle’s foot, or maybe it was the six squawking geese roped together under the back seat, but either way our taxi ride from the Kenya/Uganda border wasn’t one we’ll soon forget.

A trip to Uganda wasn’t originally in the plans, but Khayanga’s brother Juma was headed that way, so we decided to tag along, if for no other reason than to collect one more stamp for the passport.

A Ugandan “taxi” is the same as a Kenyan matatu; a mini-van with rows of seats for passengers. They fill an important niche for efficient, low-cost transportation. Our four-hour ride from the border to Kampala was 13,000 shillings each (about $4). Of course, they tend to carry more than just passengers, and often that day’s market prizes join you for a ride; hence the egg-laying hen and goose brigade.
We spent one very full and enjoyable day wandering the busy streets of Kampala. There are people and cars piled in every direction, but the city nonetheless feels safe and welcoming. We stopped at a fantastic little coffee shop that specializes in local coffee and even offers an all-day “Coffee Safari” to a nearby coffee grower.

Getting around Kampala is fun! (And mostly pretty safe…;)

We also had a chance to visit the beautiful Baha’i House of Worship that’s built on one of the seven hills that make up Kampala—the only one of its kind in Africa, and one of only seven currently standing in the world.

We visited the temple on Juma’s recommendation. The family is Baha’i, and on Sunday before we left we had a chance to join the children of the compound for their own prayer service. The service takes place in a humble mud shed on the property. The children first decorate a makeshift alter with freshly-picked flowers, then guide themselves through a series of songs and stories. When the service was complete, they gathered outside and played in a dusty field, allowing us to join them. It’s hard to pick just one thing that we’ve loved most about our time in the village, but spending time with the children is certainly a strong candidate.
We left Kampala early today (although it still took an hour and a half to navigate the traffic out of the city) and headed for the town of Jinja, famous for sitting on Lake Victoria at the source of the Nile. We took a boat ride out to the marker denoting the official source: it was with a touch of reflection and a maybe even some feeling of accomplishment that we looked back northward to where our journey started a month and a half ago.

Our boat captain was educated and intelligent, but when he graduated from university there were no jobs of any kind waiting for him. After working odd jobs in and around Kampala, he returned home to Jinja to work for himself. He has his own boat and another he’s fixing up to attract more customers, but the tourism business is fickle and even at the best of times only offers a meager living. Sadly this theme is all too common and although we’ve heard it many times, it never ceases to break our hearts.

Our hotel here is lovely—if a visit to this part of the world is ever on your list, we can heartily recommend Gately on Nile. I’m writing this post from a balcony where the serene view of Lake Victoria has been swallowed by night and replaced with a chorus of animal sounds, some of which I can identify, but most of which I absolutely cannot. Geckos and other scurry-ers are darting along the stucco walls. Tomorrow will be an early-ish morning as we try to make our way back to the community center in time for the afternoon classes. We’re excited to get back to our friends in Musembe, but our brief taste of Uganda has left us wishing we could have spent much more time here.

I’ve got blisters on my fingers.

Yes, despite being awarded the “Golden Hoe” today at the Lugari Community Resource Center (thank you, thank you, hold your applause), my city-boy hands still aren’t quite up to a full morning of turning the soil at the center’s demonstration field.

The LCRC is the brainchild of Khayanga Wasike, a friend of Michelle’s who she met at a BCCIC development drinks in Vancouver. Khayanga is from the town of Musembe, where the center is located, and where we’re staying with Khayanga’s family. The center has many ambitious goals, but currently focuses mainly on training farmers to make better use of their land by planting new and different crops, rotating their fields more often, composting, etc. Most Kenyans farm entirely for sustenance, so trying something different can be very daunting. The demonstration fields allow these farmers to see different crops being grown and harvested which will hopefully compel them to try growing the crops themselves. Better crops not only mean more food for the farmers and their families, but will also hopefully turn into money-making ventures that can provide much-needed income.

Khayanga’s family has been extremely friendly and accommodating. We’re staying in her hut at the family’s main compound. Dung hut. Despite what you think (and what I thought when I first heard it), it’s nicely-appointed and very comfortable. (No, there’s no smell.) All of our meals are being provided and are hearty local fare, usually built around ugali and a stewed vegetable with meat and maybe some potatoes or bananas on the side. We watched the ugali being made last night in the smoky kitchen of the main house. Corn meal is slowly mixed into a pot of water boiling over an open flame until it becomes stiff enough to hold its own shape—a similar consistency to Play-Dough. When it’s ready, you break off chunks of ugali with your hands and use it to scoop up the veggies and meat on your plate. Tasty and very filling.

Our last day in Lake Nakuru national park was lovely and relaxing—lots more water buffalo and impalas, and a visit from a pair of rhinos as the day drew to a close.
Our departure from Nakuru was much less relaxing. We boarded the “Eldoret Express” which was scheduled to leave at 8:30. “Or maybe 9.” But actually 10:30, after we inexplicably switched buses at the station and watched while our bags didn’t. As the time wore on, we realized that nobody seemed concerned that our bags were stranded in the first bus, so I got out to do it myself. But there was no room in the storage compartments of the new bus. So I hoisted them up the side of the bus to Michelle, who was hanging out of an open window and hauled them into our seats. It was a cozy two-hour ride.

When we finally made it to Eldoret (the biggest town near Musembe), we were switched to yet another bus which actually had room for our bags. Which was mostly good, except for the mayhem that ensued when we finally made it to Musembe. White people getting off a bus causes a lot of excitement and many people quickly converge to help you carry your bags. As we were crossing the road with a team of helpers and the bus pulling away, I heard Michelle behind me: “Where’s my bag?” Our eyes shot to the bus now disappearing in the distance.

“Oh.”

Thankfully, we happened to be at a corner used by motorcycle taxis. Once we explained the problem, one of the drivers took off after the bus. He returned about 10 minutes later with the bag slung over his shoulder. As helpful and industrious as we are learning to expect from people here.

By the time our bag arrived, we’d been met by Festus, Khayanga’s younger brother who has been our friend and guide during our stay so far. Our conversations over meals and during walks have been mutually enjoyable and enlightening. And he has a motorcycle, which is a welcome sight at the end of a long, hot day. (Mother’s note: the ride was very slow and safe.)

There is so much more to write about this town and the resource center, but I’m still trying to absorb it all. The generator has shut down for the night and bedtime beckons. Until next time.

For information about the center: http://www.whisca.org/