Homecoming

I arrived back in Colorado on the night of December 16th, about 40 hours after I left Jinja. I was suprised at how comfortable I felt being back in the U.S. That comfort made me realize I hadn't really been gone all that long. Taking a hot shower and filling my water bottle from an airport drinking fountain were luxuries I'd always taken for granted before.

It's been over a month since I've updated this blog now, and eventhough I am already back at home, I thought I'd complete the story of my last few weeks in Uganda with the posts below just in case anyone out there is still reading and is still interested.

In about two weeks I'll return to class at CU for my 11th and final semester. I'm also going to start building a recumbent tricycle which I've got grand plans to ride from Colorado to the Pacific, over to the Atlantic and then back next summer. Stay tuned...

Murchison Falls National Park

Murchison Falls

My internship with Busoga Trust formally ended at the the of the first week of December. After that I took a few days to travel up to Murchison Falls National Park, the largest national park in Uganda. During my stay in the park, I went on a game drive through African tropical grasslands and saw several large mammals as pictured below. At the end of the game drive we spotted a leopard regally resting high up in the shade of tree. I wasn't able to get any good photos of this big cat, however. In the afternoon I went on a boat trip up the Nile to the base of Murchison Falls. The falls are formed by a narrow cleft in the Rift Valley through which nearly the entire flow of the river is squeezed as it cascades 35 meters down. I hiked around the top of the falls the next day which was truly impressive.

Water Buffalo and Birds

Crocodiles

Murchison Falls from above

Ugandan Thanksgiving

My fellow FSD interns and I, with the help of our Ugandan and Western friends, managed to have a delicious Thanksgiving feast with all the fixings. It was a bit of a challenge to work out all of the logistics of preparing the meal, and the entire time we were cooking we were never sure the whole meal wouldn't be a disaster since not one of us had ever been in charge of preparing an entire turkey dinner before. We had a lot of fun guessing the answers to such questions as "which turkey organ is this, and should we use it to make the broth?", "which hole in this bird do we stuff?", and "how the hell do we carve this thing?"

At one point during the day the power went out which commonly occurs, and for hours at a time, in this corner of the world. Luckily, since our turkey was roasting in an electric oven, the power was gone for only about 15 minutes.

My plate

In the end everything came out spectacularly. Well, maybe all the food wasn't perfect, but we were certainly suprised at how well we did.

Everyone enjoying the meal

MTN Kampala International Marathon

What do red traffic lights mean in Uganda?
Answer: It's time for the marathon!

That was the conversation between my friends and our taxi driver on our way to the start of the MTN Kampala International Marathon the weekend before Thanksgiving as the driver wasted no time even hesitating at red lights.

There were approximately 10,000 people registered for the race, and nearly all of them were running the 10 km distance, including myself. At the start, about 50 people left for the full marathon, followed by about 100 for the half, and then the remaining 9,000 plus participants swarmed the starting line in anticipation for the start of the 10 km race.


Me in a sea of MTN yellow waiting for the race to start

It took some time for this crowd to funnel across the starting line, but after a little while the pack thinned out to a point where one could actually run and I ended up finishing the race in 53 minutes. Not a fast time by any means, but I was pretty happy with my just faster than 9 minutes per mile pace.