Monday July 4: Day 6
We started out the day with some nutella and banana chapati (a tourist area special…) and headed out for some adventure. Laura and I joined her friend Kristen, who came to hang with us in Jinja, and went “tubing”. We put on our life jackets and helmets and grabbed our mini rafts and hopped on the back of boda-bodas (motorcycle taxis) who drove us to our starting spot. We floated down the river for a couple of hours with the help of our kayak guides. It was a bit too wild for me – I think kayaking would have been easier – but we still had a great time. Unfortunately we have no pictures as we couldn’t take a camera with us.
Mom and Devyn decided to hang out at the hotel instead and spent some time catching up on email, playing with the dogs, and reading. When we returned from the river I took what my last hot shower in Uganda – we won’t have hot water again until we get to London next week. On the way to lunch Mom and I did some major craft shopping. The vendors at the resort in Jinja were from a local crafting group and everything was beautiful. She had fun chatting with the woman who was selling the crafts. They were arguing about who was older and ended up figuring out they were about the same age.
We had one final lunch overlooking the Nile river and convinced the driver (with some bargaining) to drive the entire way back to Laura’s place. It was a pleasant drive through sugarcane and tea farms, and we stopped for roasted plantains on the way.
Everyone did some laundry (by hand in a bucket) and then Laura headed downtown for a meeting. Mom and I found some wine the other day and wanted to get into the bottle. Wine openers are really rare around here (I can’t believe we didn’t bring one!) and one of the men at our hotel told us he could do it by pounding the bottle on the wall. We gave him a couple of minutes and then decided to push the cork in instead – we knew we wouldn’t need that cork again anyway.
Dinner tonight was fresh mangoes and avocados that were gifts from the children we made books with a couple of days ago, chipati and “rolex" from a street vendor. A rolex is a a thin omelet (tonight was just egg and tomato) rolled inside a chipati.
We are enjoying another mellow night here in Kawempe and will be heading to the Forest school tomorrow. Several hours in a Land Rover visiting villages and local healers that work with Laura’s group – Prometra. We are making dinner tomorrow for everyone as a treat. I think we are even going to attempt corn tortillas from scratch. We are going to make tacos as most of the local ingredients seem to lean that direction. We have also brought everything with us to make S’mores. I think teaching all of the healers to roast a marshmallow will be a highlight.
We won’t be taking the computer with us so there will be a couple of days without posts – but the day after we return we are heading north on a safari! Time is flying by…