Hi again!
April has been great so far. The first week, I spent in placement. We held a voluntary counselling and testing event so that people could find out their HIV status. The event went really well - we coordinated with the health centre staff in Busaana and tested about 100 people. It is really important for people to know their status as it can affect their long term health and that of their loved ones, so throughout all of our regular sessions we encourage young people to get tested and stay healthy.
In the second week of April, I had the mid-placement holiday. Mike came to visit! It was really lucky that his break between terms coordinated with my holiday and I was really happy to see him. I picked him up at Entebbe International Airport, and we spent the first couple days at a hotel outside the centre of Kampala recuperating from work and school. The place we stayed had a great view of Lake Victoria and Kampala. After resting, we set off to explore Kampala for a day. I took Mike to Owino Market, which is the busiest and biggest market in Kampala centre. It is pretty chaotic and we unsucessfully attempted to find jackfruit for him to try.
We spent the night in Kampala, and then set out early to head west for gorilla tracking! This is apparently the #1 thing to do while visiting Uganda, so I couldn't miss the opportunity. Uganda is home to almost all of the world's population of mountain gorillas. There are only about 710 mountain gorillas in the world - half live in Uganda's Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, and the other half live in the Virunga volcano range which spans the borders of Uganda, Rwanda, and the DRC. The drive to Bwindi is very long, so made some stops along the way. We took the requisite touristy photos at the Equator, stopped in Mbarara (the biggest city in Western Uganda, and one of the fastest growing in the country) for lunch, and then at a fruit market to taste some pineapple on the way to Kabale. While the pineapples were pretty good, I think that I've tasted better ones in Busaana (grown by Alex, who is one of my team members). After driving for a day, Mike and I had an early night in Kisoro as we had to get up really early to get to the gorillas. We drove an hour from Kisoro on a winding dirt road (4x4 required) and got to Bwindi at about 8:30 AM. We were joined by a five other tourists, as only one small group is allowed to visit the gorillas a day, and set off into the forest. Bwindi is a really dense forest (hence being called 'the Impenetrable Forest') and is one of the oldest surviving forests in the world. After about an hour's walk, we found the gorillas! This was very lucky - all of the travel advice says it can take much longer. We got to spend an hour observing them before heading back. Gorillas are quite peaceful animals - they weren't doing much when we saw them except eating and sunbathing. We were able to get really close (about 2m away), which was pretty incredible. There are six gorilla families in Bwindi that are 'habituated' - meaning they have gotten used to human presence over time. The group we saw is called the Nshongi family, and I think we saw about 15 of them (although there are more), including the big male silverback and a tiny two month old baby.
After a half day of hiking, Mike and I returned to Kisoro. We spent the afternoon in a coffee shop drinking 'African tea' and catching up. We spent the night there before making the drive back to central Uganda the next day. For the rest of Mike's time in Uganda, we were in Jinja, which so far is my favorite city in Uganda. We stayed at a great little place with a few of my friends from training and their boyfriends, who were also visiting. We had a lot of fun meeting each other and just relaxing.
Since Mike left, I have been in Jinja for mid-placement training. Everybody is back together at the Jinja YMCA to share our experiences so far in placement. It has been good to see everybody again, but I am really looking forward to going back to Busaana. May is looking like it will be really busy - we have tons of events to run and lots of work to do on our demonstration garden.
Stay tuned for another update - my next weekend off is in mid-May.
Cheers,
Lauren
P.S. Apologies yet again for the lack of photos. I promise to put them up soon!
April has been great so far. The first week, I spent in placement. We held a voluntary counselling and testing event so that people could find out their HIV status. The event went really well - we coordinated with the health centre staff in Busaana and tested about 100 people. It is really important for people to know their status as it can affect their long term health and that of their loved ones, so throughout all of our regular sessions we encourage young people to get tested and stay healthy.
In the second week of April, I had the mid-placement holiday. Mike came to visit! It was really lucky that his break between terms coordinated with my holiday and I was really happy to see him. I picked him up at Entebbe International Airport, and we spent the first couple days at a hotel outside the centre of Kampala recuperating from work and school. The place we stayed had a great view of Lake Victoria and Kampala. After resting, we set off to explore Kampala for a day. I took Mike to Owino Market, which is the busiest and biggest market in Kampala centre. It is pretty chaotic and we unsucessfully attempted to find jackfruit for him to try.
We spent the night in Kampala, and then set out early to head west for gorilla tracking! This is apparently the #1 thing to do while visiting Uganda, so I couldn't miss the opportunity. Uganda is home to almost all of the world's population of mountain gorillas. There are only about 710 mountain gorillas in the world - half live in Uganda's Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, and the other half live in the Virunga volcano range which spans the borders of Uganda, Rwanda, and the DRC. The drive to Bwindi is very long, so made some stops along the way. We took the requisite touristy photos at the Equator, stopped in Mbarara (the biggest city in Western Uganda, and one of the fastest growing in the country) for lunch, and then at a fruit market to taste some pineapple on the way to Kabale. While the pineapples were pretty good, I think that I've tasted better ones in Busaana (grown by Alex, who is one of my team members). After driving for a day, Mike and I had an early night in Kisoro as we had to get up really early to get to the gorillas. We drove an hour from Kisoro on a winding dirt road (4x4 required) and got to Bwindi at about 8:30 AM. We were joined by a five other tourists, as only one small group is allowed to visit the gorillas a day, and set off into the forest. Bwindi is a really dense forest (hence being called 'the Impenetrable Forest') and is one of the oldest surviving forests in the world. After about an hour's walk, we found the gorillas! This was very lucky - all of the travel advice says it can take much longer. We got to spend an hour observing them before heading back. Gorillas are quite peaceful animals - they weren't doing much when we saw them except eating and sunbathing. We were able to get really close (about 2m away), which was pretty incredible. There are six gorilla families in Bwindi that are 'habituated' - meaning they have gotten used to human presence over time. The group we saw is called the Nshongi family, and I think we saw about 15 of them (although there are more), including the big male silverback and a tiny two month old baby.
After a half day of hiking, Mike and I returned to Kisoro. We spent the afternoon in a coffee shop drinking 'African tea' and catching up. We spent the night there before making the drive back to central Uganda the next day. For the rest of Mike's time in Uganda, we were in Jinja, which so far is my favorite city in Uganda. We stayed at a great little place with a few of my friends from training and their boyfriends, who were also visiting. We had a lot of fun meeting each other and just relaxing.
Since Mike left, I have been in Jinja for mid-placement training. Everybody is back together at the Jinja YMCA to share our experiences so far in placement. It has been good to see everybody again, but I am really looking forward to going back to Busaana. May is looking like it will be really busy - we have tons of events to run and lots of work to do on our demonstration garden.
Stay tuned for another update - my next weekend off is in mid-May.
Cheers,
Lauren
P.S. Apologies yet again for the lack of photos. I promise to put them up soon!
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