So after leaving SNEC we were back in Kabale for the night. In the morning we got up bright and early to drive to lake bunyoni to begin our trek! Our first day was mainly canoeing (in dugout canoes!) from island to island in the beatiful and massive Lake Bunyoni. We also hiked across many of the islands and even had the opportunity to visit with a woman named Mamma Anna who taught us how to make some traditional african handy crafts. Once we made it to our campsite on Tom’s Island many of us took the opportunity to have a quick swim in the lake before dinner. After we ate we sat with our guides around the campfire and exchanged stories. it was an awesome first day. The second day of the trek was a lot more challenging, starting at dawn we hiked through until nightfall and then some! We went over a mountain and through a protected forest area lead by a pygmy guide who used to live there before the land was seized by the government. He was a wealth of information, telling us about the different medicinal plants he used to collect and showing us good places to hunt porcupines. After a 16 hour day, we finally arrived at our campsite, happy to have our bellies full and a warm place to sleep, we went to bed very quickly to be ready for the next day. The third and final day for our trek was fairly easy, we walked mostly on the road to Kisoro. The only hiccup in our plans was the massive raincloud that rolled in and poured on us for the last 10 kilometers or so. We laughed it off and soon enough we had reached the town of Kisoro and the restaurant where we were having lunch. After eating we visited a museum on the local tribe, despite the blackout due to the storm, we were still able to lean a lot about the tools that people used before colonization. After that our trek was over and we headed back to Kabale by car. We slept really well that night and in the morning, it was time to leave for Kampala!
We mostly spent our free days in Kampala wandering around learning the city. A highlight of our time spent here was on the second day when we first visited the massive local market in the old part of town which was as big as ten city blocks! It would have been easy for us to get lost in there if it was not for Oren’s good sense of direction. After eating in the market’s “food court”, we met up with a guide from Volunteers for Sustainable Development, a group which raises awareness and helps out in the Bwasie slums, the largest slum near Kampala. Our guide, Saleem, lead us through the slum where he himself grew up, showing us the local school, market and different water sources for the community. It was really an eye opening experience.
The next day, we woke up early because it was time to get on a bus to head to the Ziwa Rhino sanctuary! The week we spent there was extraordinary. We were split into two group each alternating activities from Rhino monitoring, where we joined the armed guards that monitor the rhinos 24/7 in watching there behavior from just 30 kilometers away, to bird and animal tracking. None of us had ever been that close a rhinos at a zoo, let alone in an environment like this one. It was breathtaking. We also helped with maintenance work such as digging drainage ditches along the road and repairing parts of the electric fence. Our last day we bonded with the staff, and they agreed to teach us how to cook our own traditional Ugandan meal. The staff was fantastic and our time was busy but very well spent. We left there this morning and are now in Kampala again before we leave for Jinja in the morning where we will meet up with Soft Power for our final volunteer project of the trip!
pictures to are here!
