Our driver had us wake up early for another day of game drives on Wednesday morning. We drove through the park and it seemed like everything except the antelopes were hiding from us. We think Moses could tell that we had seen what we wanted to see and were mentally done with the long, bumpy drives in the van! He planned an AMAZING afternoon for us and surprised us after lunch. As we had mentioned before, all he told us was that we were going to go to an area without hippos/crocs and we thought he would have us swim. Instead, he introduced us to a few Pakwatch (the town/village we were in) locals and they took us for an afternoon in the villages.
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| Dan finally fishing! |
Fred and Patrick, the locals/our afternoon tour guides, took us down to the "port" where the local fisherman fish from. Dan got to go out in one of the canoes with Moses and Fred while Marc and Katie took pictures and hung out with some of the kids. Then we took a walking tour of the village - we got to see where/how they cook, how cassava flour is made, how fish are preserved, and how local crafts are made (which is AMAZING - the hand crafted stuff they can make is wild). It was a really awesome experience because during most of our outreach work we were focused on treating/teaching as many patients as possible and were in local schools, which are slightly outside the homesteads of the villages.
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| Marc heating up the fire for the blacksmith. |
Fred and Patrick then took us to there home village to meet their families and neighbors. We hung out inside one of the grass huts - which is actually really cool (both temperature wise and visually)! All of the children were either really excited to meet us, or terrified - we made more babies cry that day than any of us ever have before in life. Fred let them all come in one by one and greet us, followed by their mothers and some of the men in the village. Katie got adopted by a little girl named Aiyo (which means "to understand") who did not leave her side for the rest of the day.
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| Katie & her new best friend. |
We went to the center of the homestead where they held a courtship dance for us. Fred was telling us that this is the way that most of the villagers meet their husbands/wives. One of the villages plays loud music and invites neighboring villages to come for the dance, which usually lasts about 5 or 6 hours. The single males play instruments and sing while the women dance, once they express interest in one another they meet a few more times and then arrange a dowry if the male is acceptable to the woman's family.
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| Dan getting in on the action. |
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| Marc playing the drums before the ladies pulled him in to dance! |
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| Saying bye to Fred and Patrick. |
We could not have asked for a better last night in Uganda - the villagers invited us back in the coming years and told us we were welcome to stay in the village if we wanted to really experience Ugandan village life. After saying goodbye to our new friends, we headed back to Fort Murchison where they had moved us inside to the fancy self contained rooms. We had yet another DELICIOUS dinner and headed to bed early so we could wake up at 5AM to do some chimp tracking the Buganda Rainforest.
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| DELICIOUS! |
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| Marc thoroughly enjoying dessert! |
Chimp tracking was really cool - the guides lead you to where the chimps are by sound. The chimps make some really interesting noises and are amazing to watch move around the trees. We were hoping to get really close, but since they are sort of aggressive we were forced to keep our distance. After about 2 hours, 3 African KILLER bee scares (meaning they were just regular bees flying around us), the biggest ants we have ever seen, and getting all mudded up we decided to call it a day. Our driver took us to lunch and we headed to the airport - which is where we will be now, for the next....7 hours - hopefully we will check in and get our tickets without any troubles, but judging from the rest of our travels, thats not likely - fingers crossed!! We are very excited to land in RDU/JFK and see all of our friends and family - we will update one more time when we are back
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| We couldn't find any good chimp pictures, but here's Marc grooming Katie. |
Fred and Patrick then took us to there home village to meet their families and neighbors. We hung out inside one of the grass huts - which is actually really cool (both temperature wise and visually)! All of the children were either really excited to meet us, or terrified - we made more babies cry that day than any of us ever have before in life. Fred let them all come in one by one and greet us, followed by their mothers and some of the men in the village. Katie got adopted by a little girl named Aiyo (which means "to understand") who did not leave her side for the rest of the day.
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