Been there done that...never again...one trip down the nile is enough for em

(This is something I wrote on Nov 13 but haven´t had a chance to post until now) This past weekend Laura and I once again loaded up our backpacks and set out well before the sun rise, this time we were heading to Uganda for a white water rafting adventure on the Nile. Uganda is an 8 hour bus ride away from Kigali, but the journey can take up to 12 hours when the border crossing and driver’s unauthorized stops for bananas, corn, plantains, and even a quick pit stop to re-weld the door of the bus are taken into account. We stayed in Kampala, the capital of Uganda Thursday night and then headed to Jinja, a small city which borders the head waters of the White Nile for Friday and Saturday.
I may now be sitting in a completely stationary chair in my bedroom as I write this, but the outline of a bus window frame is so seared into my vision that my body can’t relax, It’s still tensely waiting for the next pot hole lurch and mentally bracing for the next time an oncoming freight truck passes so closely to my bus that the two vehicles collectively make a whistling sound, each giant hurtling hunk of metal acting as one side of a pursed set of lips. Oblivious to the total fear of at least one of their passengers… the drivers would happily wave to each other and honk their horns in a friendly salute before going their separate ways. While I’m definitely tired of buses, id love to get back into one of the open air cattle trucks I got to ride in several times over the past few days. The rafting company used them to collectively transport gear and people and there is nothing quite like climbing up the bars on the sides of these trucks and facing into the wind as the country side flashes by. Its defiantly the best way to watch the sunlight appearing over the horizon or watch the darkness rolling in at night
Traveling through another African country was especially interesting after living in Kigali for as long as I have. People keep telling me that Rwanda’s infrastructure is quite advanced and that it is a very clean country when compared to some of its neighbors, and until this trip, I haven’t been able to appreciate how true this is. I was also struck by how quickly the landscape changed from Rwanda’s mountainous ridges to Uganda’s rolling grass lands filled with cattle, and then transformed once again into patches of rain forest as we approached Lake Victoria. I don’t think Winston Churchill was far off when he named Uganda the pearl of Africa. In terms of the people who live in these countries, the noticeable difference is that almost all Ugandans speak English. I often found myself biting my tongue as I’d once again start a sentence in French, or have to remind myself to watch the road instead of eagerly soaking in all of the English words floating past me on billboards and in shop windows as my moto sped by. Kampala’s motos are called bota bota’s and unlike Kigali’s motorcycles, they are not regulated. The advantage of this is that it is common to put three people on one moto, so Laura and I wouldn’t have to stress about loosing one another, but the down side was that helmets weren’t part of the package deal. Unfortunately, this country also has a dark past with the reign of their last dictator still present in dailz conversation. It was also hard to believe that I was in the country of the child solider, the victim of the tyrannical outfit called the lords resistance army which operates in the north of the country. One of its signature moves is to cut of the lips, nose or ears of local villagers to subdue them into compliance.
Kampala was very similar to Kigali except everything was bigger and dirtier. The traffic was rougher, the buildings were taller, and the extreme poverty was a bit more glaringly obvious against the glimmers of opulence visible through the red dust and black smoke that hung in the air. Kampala is also home to a larger Muslim population than Rwanda and its numerous mosques and women with their heads covered bore witness. Visiting the bugandan royal tombs was the first time I’ve been kindly told that women are supposed to wear skirts, and was handed a long sarong to wear over my jeans. All in all Uganda is a bit more what of what I imagined Africa to be like, than the small country I have come to know so well.
Rafting was completely wild. We went over class five rapids which are basically mini waterfalls. I bought a DVD of the trip so anyone who is interesting in watching photage of be flying out of a raft over and over again is welcome to come over when I´m back in Waterloo. I´m happy to be back in Kigali as work is becoming more and more demanding.

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It’s Saturday morning around 9.00 am and I’m sitting in bourbon, the Starbucks of Kigali. I walked about twenty minutes of the way and flagged a moto for the rest of the journey. With an absence of public parks, I come here to think, write and drink what has got to be some of the best coffee in the world. It’s been a hectic past few weeks and it feels good to stay put for a few days.

I tried to upload a few photos yesterday and the only one that survived the streaming process was the one you can see on this page. Considering I received a phone call from my parents a few hours after posting to make sure that my eye was okay…I should clarify that I was really hit in the eye with more of a pebble or a chunk of dirt than a rock and there are no lasting repercussions, aside from me once again riding through the streets of Rwanda with tears streaming down my cheeks.

It’s so hard to really give an accurate representation of my experiences here. I tend to write about the exciting, strange, hard or bizarre moments, but a lot of my time here is spent reading, going to work, hanging out with friends, journaling, going to the market, watching movies, exploring the city, and doing all the other things I do back home. Before I came here, I thought I’d use some of my free time coming up with some type of post graduation plan. But, while I’m now starting to think more about my life back at home, I had so much to adjust to when I first arrived here that my usual worries couldn’t have been farther from my mind. Now that I’m settled it’s been pretty cool to see the things I usually think about gradually find their way back into my thoughts and awesome to realize how such a different place has come to feel like home.

A few years ago, I read a book in which a character came close to death and had one of those flashbacks in which a person's mind involuntarily replays select moments from their lives. It made me wonder what moments my mind would replay if I was to die, what moments would I want to hold onto so strongly that I couldn’t help but think of them. I think I experienced one of these moments two days ago while walking through a banana grove in Musanze, a small town near the foot of a chain of 7 volcanic mountains stretching from Rwanda into the Congo. I was in the area to interview some women about their experiences of participating in a three day workshop called Femme en Dialogue. The purpose of the workshop is to build community between widows and women whose husbands are in jail. A few of you may have heard about this program, because of the MCC goat buying project linked to program that took place a few years ago around Christmas. In addition to conflict resolution, financial management and small business training these women are encouraged to establish their own cooperative in which they can support each other both financially and emotionally.

Although this is a very communal culture, emotions are often deeply suppressed and people are left to grieve and work through traumatic experiences on their own. After their training, the women who participated in this workshop received some goats whose offspring they eventually hope to use for meat. They currently use the goat dung to fertilize their fields, thereby increasing their crop yields. Although I’m a city girl born and bread, all the farming stories I’ve heard growing up and my childhood visits out west seem to have stuck with me. I’m fascinated by the farming techniques which have been developed here to maximize the production of small plots of land and am especially impressed by the step farming happening way up on the mountain sides surrounding the more fertile valleys. Anyways, in addition to monthly meetings in which each of the women contributes 200 francs and collectively try to work through any problems their members may be experiencing, they decided to start a mushroom growing project. Their church allowed them to use a room in one of its houses to grow their mushrooms and the women began to raise mushrooms which they sold to nearby hotels. According to the women, their venture was beginning to return a profit when the church told them they needed the building back.

The women are hoping to save up enough money to rent a new building, but suitable buildings are in very short supply and building seems to be the only viable option. The project is on hold until they are able to come up with the necessary funds, a task which may be impossible for them. I spoke with the pastor of the church where the women attend, and he said that the church will contribute bricks and labor, but a technician would have to be hired and the sheet metal for a roof and a plot of land would need to be purchased. He imagines the cost of this would be around 450 dollars. In addition to growing mushrooms, the women hope to set up a small store in the same building from which they could sell any of the surplus their fields may now produce.

After the interviews, I asked if I could see some of their fields, and also the goats they had received. One of the women said her house was within walking distance and that I could come to visit her. Five of us walked out into the country and we were joined by a group of young children. A little girl who I imagine would have been around 9 or 10 held my hand as we walked and happily chatted away with her friends. The only things we managed to communicate between us were our ages and our abilities to count to ten in each others respective languages. After walking up a rocky path for awhile, we passed through fields of climbing beans and potatoes before descending into a banana grove. We all had to walk single file to fit between the banana trees and the little girl holding my hand became my leader as she helped me navigate around roots and rocks... as my Birkenstocks kept finding all available material to trip over. As I looked around and saw the sunlight dappling the forest floor and rbeathed in the warm dewy air, I realized that this moment was one I would think back on. This is a moment I will hold onto until the end.