Back to the cold

We have arrived home safe and sound. I am very happy to see my family and sleep in my own bed - and to have a shower of north american standard! I am sad to have said goodbye to Africa and its beautiful people and weather. My 6 weeks away seemed so quick. I could have stayed a lot longer.

Parents of Grace Children's Village's headmaster.

I really had no idea that I was operating on 'African time' while I was in Africa. I was still punctual and felt like I was on mzungu time. Now that I am home, I am a little overwhelmed by everything around me. I suppose it doesn't help that I have arrived home one month before my debut at the One of a Kind Show in Toronto (a really big craft show) and have tons to organize for it on top of getting back to a big group of clients waiting for me, bills to pay, emails to answer and general stuff to do. I also feel a little cultural shock at the quantity of food in our grocery store, the number of people shopping for things they 'need' and general disposable nature of our society. I think one of the biggest lessons I learned from my trip is really how much I have and how fortunate I was to be born in such a safe and rich country. Nothing in Africa is reliable. Electricity goes out almost daily, road conditions can become unpassable at any time and governments can be expected to be terribly dishonest at all times. Even with all these things the people I met were not jaded. They were friendly, kind and hopeful

Stay tuned to my blog as I am going to go back and add photos and videos to all of my posts.

Goodbye Stone Town

We are finished with scuba diving for now. Its sad for me to write that, but the end of our trip is drawing near. We had one last night dive in Stone Town to the wreckage of the Northern navy vessel on Tuesday night and it was a great dive to end off the trip. We saw a ton of fish including a squid, lionfish, a flying fish, lots of different crabs and many other things.

Red Colobus Monkey of Jozani Forest

Yesterday was a busy day for us. We went out to see Jozani forest in the morning. It is the only remaining area of natural forest left on the island with beautiful mahogany, eucalyptus, mangrove and guava trees. It is also home to an indiginous population of red colobus monkeys. They are very habituated to human presence and let us get quite close while simply continuing with their daily routine. It was a fun sighting. In the afternoon we hired a boat to take us to Changu Island. Changu, also known as prison island because of the prison that was built on the grounds in the 1800s but never used, is home to a population of giant tortoises. They were a gift to the sultan almost 200 years ago and still reside on the island. I was quite surprised when our guide insisted we pet them. I did not want to harass them, but when I reached out and touched the neck of the giant, prehistoric animal in front of me, he stood up and leaned into it like a dog being scratched.

Feeding a giant tortoise on Changuu Island

Today is our last day on the island. We are spoiling ourselves as a treat. I'm having a traditional henna session and Jody is having a foot massage at one of the local spas in town. I am definitely looking forward to it. We also have plans to go to our favourite restaurant for our last meal. If ever in Stone Town, The Silk Route Indian restaurant is absoloutely amazing.

Next to begin the long journey home with a ferry ride back to the mainland

Under the Sea

Today marks the 4th day in a row that we've spent under the sea scuba diving and I can't figure out for the life of me how I have a sunburn when I've spent most of my time under water! We are officially now advanced scuba divers and have seen lots of great things under the water. Our first ever night dive was  very cool, made especially memorable because we went to see our first wreck. Extra eerie at night for sure.

There is apparently a cyclone hitting Madagascar right now. I have not seen a television in about 2 weeks now, so who knows what actually is going on though. The winds have been high here causing very low visibility under water. It is a bit disappointing when we were expecting 30 meter and get 10 meter, but the water is warm with lots of great corals and fish. Jody didn't even wear a wetsuit today. One especially neat fish we saw today was a pair of seagrass ghost face pipefish. The divemaster was very pumped about that since they are not common here. We got a complete lesson on them. It was also nice to see a leaf fish for the first time, especially when they are very commonly a north east African coast fish.

Zanzibar island is almost entirely coral rock

We have one more day of diving to go and we're back to Stone Town. I was not expecting to like the town as much as I do, but its great. We have big plans to take the local public transportation (as much of the adventure as the destination) dala dalas to the only national park on the island that is home to an indigenous colobus monkey on Tuesday. Cross you fingers it goes well. We met a couple yesterday that got covered in fish blood when a box on the roof of the dala dala leaked.

Can't believe that I'm into my final week away. I feel like I've only just finally adjusted to being on African time. It may cause me some grief when I get back home.

A traditional dhow fishing vessel at low tide

Island Life



National Museum



Jody and I have both arrived safely in Stone Town, Tanzania and are very happy. I am so much more relaxed now that I have a travel companion. It feels safer to be together. This city is pretty amazing. Most of the buildings were built by the rich Arabian traders in the 1800's. The streets are narrow and winding and it's easy to get lost, but that has proven to be fun too. There are more tourists ere than I've seen in my entire trip so far, but it is somehow reassuring after being the only mzungu (white person) for miles.

We had dinner at the Forodhani market last night. It is a hectic and lively set up of close to a hundred vendors with a variety of foods (mostly today's catch) displayed on tables lit by oil lamps and BBQ to cook over. The vendors are loudly calling to anyone who will listen about their wares and trying to out-do their neighbors in prices and sales. It was a fun experience and delicious.

One of many tables at the evening market

We have booked a tour tomorrow to see a spice farm, some ruins of palace grounds and the slave market. Stone town was the last glimpse of Africa that so many slaves saw as they were sold to rich foreigners until 1873 when it was finally abolished. It makes me ashamed of my skin colour to think of visiting such a monument, but I am glad that it exists so that we will never forget the horrors of our ancestors.

We begin our advanced open water scuba certification on Wednesday. We have 5 specific dives to do in 2 days. Some of the exciting parts are a shipwreck dive, a night dive and a dive to a deeper depth than we've done previously. Apparently there is very high underwater visibility and incredible corals on this side of the island. I'm very excited to get back under the water again. Especially to cool off for a few days. Please don't be angry with me, I'm not bragging, but it is incredibly hot here and humid. A break will be welcome.

The Post Bus makes it to town

I woke before the sun and packed my things to walk down to the post office to get the bus back to the capital city of Uganda, Kampala. From a general consensus, the bus that takes the mail to town is the way to go. It departs on time regardless of how full it is while other busses will wait until they are full before leaving. We left town at 7:30am and I knew right away it was going to be a long trip. The bus stopped at almost every cluster of houses along the way to pick up people, bunches of bananas or to let somebody off the bus to pee.

One town we arrived in and pulled to the side of the road and the entire bak double wheel of the bus sunk into a giant sewer hole. We were right up to the body of the bus! Everyone got off and stood around. I started to wonder what alternative arrangement I would need to make and out of nowhere came a tractor who negotiated a price with the driver ad lifted us out and on our way in less than 10 minutes. Amazing! I do wonder though if he made the pothole to have a business of rescuing people from it though. Made friends with my kind young seatmate Jamie. He is a recent graduae on his way to a job interview in micro finance in Kampala. Good jobs are scarce and moving across the country for one is common. Jamie helped me get a boda (motorcycle) ride to my hotel on arriving in town too. What a nice guy.

Tomorrow I am off white water rafting on the Nile river as my last hurrah here in Uganda before departing for Zanzibar island, Tanzania and meeting Jody. I am so excited to see him again

Goodbye Grace Children's Village

Today I got the chance to continue touring through the main street of Bubaare (where the school is) with Mayanje and he also took me to see some of the other schools in the area so that I would have a point to compare to. Grace Children's Village is definitely unique in its sustainable design and community support and offers a higher quality of education than the surrounding schools do.





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Primary class enjoying morning porridge



Grace Children's village is unique in the quality of food offered to all students. They are guaranteed to receive milk and greens every day. Other schools do not guarantee this. Grace Children's Village also gives each student an egg one time each week. Currently the hens are only 6 months old, so the eggs will begin shortly. The farm aspect of Grace Children's Village is also unique. No other school grows any of its own food. The garden also is soon to provide a seed bank to the community.



A student checking on the pig given to her to raise



Finally, Grace Children's Village is known for their high quality pigs. David bought a high quality male pig from another country and brought it to the school to breed to the local pig and improve the genetics. Several students were chosen (based on the ambitiousness of their family) to be given a piglet from the first breeding. In exchange for this pig, one piglet will be given back to the school. The system benefits everyone!





Primary class waving goodbye to me





At the end of the day today, the children all gathered around and sang me a goodbye song, a poem and did a local traditional dance for me complete with a drum and flute. It was fantastic. Then they all marched single file singing and clapping down the big hill to give me a send off at the main road. It was very sweet. I will remember these people always for their kindness to me. I hope I can continue some kind of fundraiser for their project to help to get it to a level where it can sustain itself





Primary class







A Day At African Pace

Look at the hill these ladies are carrying their water jugs up!

Today was a day of touring the community with Mayanje. I sat and had tea when I got to school - all the while feeling like I should be doing something - and tried to convince myself just to go with the flow. When Mayanje was ready to go, we started off up the hill into the  village surrounding the school where most of the students live. The only people reading this blog that can have any appreciation of the hills in this region of Uganda are my family members on Vancouver Island. These are some serious hills here that put Caledon to shame! On a side note, I feel as though I have not lost much of my fitness level because of it. Each of these people who live on this hill need to walk down to the community water tap and fill their jerry cans and carry them back home every single day. If there is one lesson I will remember always from Africa is how much we take our clean and plentiful water for granted.

We walked at a nice, slow pace. Probably more for my benefit as Maayanje does these  hills all the time. Each and every person we met along the way we greeted. Most with a handshake and a greeting of 'How are you?' and 'I am fine'. Some places we stopped and socialized a bit. Every time we stopped we were offered food. Several people here have told me that Ugandans love to eat and it is no joke. Here is a summary of the 'food tour'



One of the affluent families in Bubaare



Parents of a girl at Grace Children's Village


House 1: porridge, sweet potatoes and roasted maize
House 2: eggs to take home from their chickens
House 3: more roasted maize and a Mirinda pop
House 4: more eggs to take home
House 5: roasted potatoes and avocado

It was lunch time when we returned to the school and Mayanje actually took a plate of food. I couldn't possibly eat anything else. I was stuffed.

Every person we met along the way was very kind and truly happy to see us. I remarked how nice it would be if we knew our neighbours in my town and could just stop by anywhere and be greeted so kindly. The people here have no luxuries that we have, most of them don't even have the basics that we have and they are so happy and kind. We could all learn a lesson from that



A girl helps out by carrying her baby sister



2 Days Left in Kabale

So I'm almost done with my time here at Grace Children's Village. I will be sad to say goodbye to many people-even the ladies with whom I can only play charades to communicate. The hospitality of Ugandan people truly cannot be over-estimated. I have felt completely welcome here by so many people in the entire community. From the woman at the bakery who pulled me aside and led me to a different shop with better prices to the boys at the school who are trying to teach me some of the local language. My favourite word is 'motashake'. It means don't laugh at me and it makes the kids laugh hysterically

Today at work I was pretty tired (There is nothing that ruins a good night's sleep like hearing the buzzing of a mosquito around your head and being unable to find it.) I spent the day slowly taking wheelbarrow loads full of weeds and dumping them into a ditch. Because the school has grown so much, there are not enough classrooms and one of the nieghbours has kindly offered his property and house in exchange for some upkeep on the land and completing the roof on the building. He was currently in the process of building his house and has let the primary 1 level class move in instead.





This is what happens when you give your camera to a child





The one and only pool in town. Looks like paradise to me



After work, I took the advice of the site manager, Myanje and went up the street to dip my legs in the pool and have a drink. As soon as I sat down next to the pool and put my feet in, a young girl of about 5 years came right over and sat with me. She became my best buddy for the afternoon. She was very afriad of swimming but desperately wanted to try and there was no lifguard or swim instructor around, so I went in with my clothes on and held her hands as she played in the shallow end. I did convince her to hold her breath and put her head under a few times, so I'll consider that a successful lesson. Most Ugandans can't swim. There are drownings very frequently when a person filling a water jug falls in. A safe swimming program is definitely needed here. On the other hand, if I grew up in a country where most of the water was contaminated, had hippos or crocodiles in it, I probably wouldn't learn to swim either.

My swimming buddy

They're Called Mountain Gorillas For A Reason

So today I was priveledged enough to spend one hour with our closest relatives, the lowland mountain gorillas. It was truly amazing!

Our guide, Zipporah and 2 armed guard escorts

We started off our day with a briefing on the rules of gorilla tracking and separated into 3 groups. The area of Bwindi National Park I was at has 3 groups of gorillas who are habituated to human presence and 8 people can spend an hour with each group daily. Trackers go out very early in the morning to the GPS location where they left the gorillas last the day before and follow their tracks from there. Then the groups of tourists follow their direction on the way to travel to find them. It ensures an almost 100% success rate and greatly reduces the time it takes to find the gorillas.

At the top of a mountain. Still more to climb though

We had some challenges today reaching our group. The day started with a very steep climb for an hour that really drained an older gentleman who was part of our group. He was quite discouraged and required our entire group to continue supporting him and making sure he knew that we weren't in a hurry. The climbing was tough. Very steep hills going both up and down. Our guide, Zipporah was fantastic and made sure that we had a great experience. The last half hour of our hike was entirely off trails with the guards cutting a path with machete.

It was lots of work, but when the first gorilla came crashing through the underbrush to check us out, it was all worth it. My heart felt as though it grew instantly when I saw him. One of the other guys said that he felt very choked up. It was truly incredible to watch them move, eat and watch us. The family we tracked has 6 members including an 8 month old baby (who slept the entire time we were there but was still adorable).

After a 6 hour mountain forest hike and a 4 hour drive on windy, bumpy roads I am signing off a happy and tired traveller

Porridge and Posho



Helping Mukaka (Grandmother) cut the spinach for the kids lunch



I'm done work for the week now. I have taught some kids how to skip, play my version of Simon says called 'Jessy says', served breakfasts and lunches to the children, helped to prepare meals and done lots of manual labour around the project. I have some great blisters to remind me of my work this week. I have also been the object of facination and wonder to a lot of the kids. I am the first mzungu (white person) that most of them have ever seen. Reactions have ranged from fear to trying to rub away my freckles. My iPhone was one of the most outworldly gadgets that any of the project employees had ever seen and my knife drew equal amounts of admiration. Western ways have never been observed here and I feel honoured to be the first one here.

Preparing the posho

Sometimes the food they eat at school is the only food these children get



I have been eating breakfast and lunch with the children and staff at Grace Children's Village and I must say that I am greatly impressed with the school's ability to serve 2 hot meals to over 100 people every day using a mud hut kitchen and only 2 fires to cook on and 2 dedicated kitchen staff. The kids at this school are guaranteed to have porridge with milk supplied from the cows belonging to the project. The base of this is maize, so not what we are used to thinking of porridge. Lunch is posho with a sauce of beans and greens. What is posho you might ask? It begins with boiling water to ensure it is safe to consume then adding maize flour and stirring until it has a very thick playdough-like, sticky consistency. Sound appetizing? I assure you it is every bit as bad as it sounds. Children in all schools across Uganda are given posho every day at school and I've been told that by the time you finish school you never want to see the stuff again. The children at Grace Village are lucky that they also get something with their posho and it is a good thing that the beans and greens are good. The school is trying very hard to be self sufficient and the majority of the greens that they use come from their own garden. For a lot of these children, the food provided at school is the only substantial food they will receive all day. I simply chew and swallow as much as I can handle (which is never enough to satisfy the headmaster who thinks I need to eat more) and don't complain.

Part of the garden on the school grounds

I have decided to splurge and get a gorilla tracking permit for Monday, which means a long weekend for me. Tomorrow (Sunday) I will get up early and travel with my own hired car to Bwindi National Park. It is on the far west side of the country (don't worry Mommy, they won't take us into the Congo and we have an armed guard) and home to 40% of the world's remaining wild Lowland Mountain Gorillas. I know that the drive is pretty bad as it is the same road that I arrived here on and I wondered on several occasions if the car would make it. I stay there over night and start hiking early on Monday morning until we find gorillas. It can take anywhere from a couple of hours to a full day of rainforest hiking. I believe it will be worth every effort I have to put in. I can't wait to see them.

Thanks to your donations...





Well I am on day two of working at Grace Children's Village in Kabale, Uganda. It is great here. I have been very kindly hosted by the charity founder, David Bakeine at his home 4 km away from the site. He has even set me up with his bicycle to get to and from work. Its great! I have gotten quite accustomed to the calls of 'mzungu (white person) how are you?' at least 40 times on my ride to and from the project. Ugandans are very friendly and I'm sure it would take me forever to walk since they all want to shake my hand. It was an adjustment at first being the only white person for miles and being stared at everywhere, but now that I know it is in admiration and wonder and interest, I feel more comfortable. Today at the school I had a funny instance with the kids waiting in line to wash hands after lunch. One grabbed my hand and tried to rub my freckles off. It turned into more than 10 of them touching me to see if I am somehow different than them. Ronald, the head master told me that people in an area like their town can go their entire life without seeing a caucasian person and that it was a great for me to be there and let them experience it.




Soon these kids will have chairs to sit on



Special thanks to a few of my massage clients, Barb and Archie, my Grandmother, Chantelle and Donna Fieldhouse who donated to my trip here! I have agreed that we would like to put our money towards chairs for the entire senior class at the school! Currently they are sitting on the floor in their classroom and David tells me that within 2 weeks each student will have a chair from us!



These kids will have chairs to sit and eat at next week



Last year was the first year that the school had children attending class and they had over 40 students. The community was so happy with the project that this year 91 are registered so far! The limit is 100 students right now, until the current project of building a primary school building is complete. The staff and founders are delighted and surprised at the demand for class space in the program, but really its no wonder when the performance of students in this program far surpasses any other in the area





The shop making the chairs entirely by hand



So a big cheers to us! For furnishing an entire class of students!