The Animal Kingdom

Mighty Murchison Falls (don't let the rainbow fool you, they're not nice)

Much to write about this week...

Last Saturday, I payed a visit to Tex, a guy who makes and distributes molds for household style biosand filters. It was good to be able to pick his brain about water treatment and community development. Very simple and effective technologies such as this sand filter, I can get really enthused about.

In the afternoon, I met up with Amin (that one guy I met way back in January on the plane). He was extremely generous and hospitable - he showed me around his business, took me out to eat, and took me to his house. We had a decent chance to talk over dinner, at which point I gave him a copy of "Jesus, Among Other Gods" which I thought might be appropriate for him. Anyway, just want to encourage you to keep praying for him all those who need Jesus as their savior.

When I returned home around 11pm (after a stop at the office), I was greeted by our guard and his baton as he tried to kill me. Whew, that'll get your adrenaline pumping. So, I casually pushed the walk gate open, like I've been doing almost every other night for the last three months. This particular time, the walk gate was locked, but the main gate was not. So, rather than the little gate opening, as I pushed, the whole gate swung open. The guard, who seems to work part time (I haven't been able to figure out his schedule), was probably resting behind the gate when he heard (or saw) it swinging open. Immediately, he sprung to action, assuming I was an intruder. With his baton, he smote the side of the steel gate as hard as possible, which fortunately protected my fingers from being crushed. "Thanks for watching out for me," I was tempted to say but didn't...

Sunday afternoon, Zach and I had our neighbors Anthony and Christine over for lunch. We made burritos which they seemed to enjoy. Our conversation was a bit sparse, but everything seemed to go fine. I went to play ultimate again, but as the game wore on, I started feeling sick. By the time I made it home, I felt terrible. I went straight to bed and slept for like 10 hours. The next morning, I thought I thought I felt better, but as the day progressed, so did my illness. By the time I quit work, I was nauseous, had a fever, chills, headache, and every joint and muscle in my body ached. So, I decided to go to the clinic to get tested for malaria. It seems like they could have chosen a more welcoming flier to hang on the wall of the check up room than one that read, "This could be the last five minutes you're alive." (I think it was a gospel tract.) If that wasn't enough to scare me off, perhaps then the impression I got that the cotton used to sterilize my finger looked like it came from the nurse's pant leg was enough to push me over the top. Whatever the case, after a blood sample and short wait, I was told that I didn't have malaria. That was good news, but it didn't improve the way my body felt. I paid my bill, which was a whopping 2000 Shillings (less than $1.20) and went strait home and straight to bed. I had a few nighttime interruptions, but in the morning I woke up feeling a quite a bit better. I was really thankful to recover so quickly from whatever I got, because on Wednesday I had a safari scheduled for Murchison Falls.


Wednesday morning, Zach, his buddy Jim who's visiting from the States, and I headed to Murchison Falls, a national game park. The place was so beautiful. And the animals were totally awesome. We saw giraffes, elephants, water buffalo, cobs, antelope, hippos, crocodiles, wart hogs, and best of all, lions. So at this particular park, lion sightings can be a little rare. Sometimes you see em, sometimes you don't. This time, there happened to be a whole pride just hanging out in the road. Needless to say, we just parked for a while and watched them as they did what lions do (which isn't much when they're not killing anything). I was hoping to see something violent, but the most action I got to see was the cubs wrestling. Either way, it was totally cool.Just another day... A lioness and her cubs.

Male elephant (as if I had to tell you)

Doesn't every giraffe look exactly like this?

Crocodile awaiting any unsuspecting prey to wander into its jaw.

After our land trek, in the afternoon we took a boat ride up the Nile River about 17k to Murchison Falls. Along the way, we saw an abundance of hippos. Not far from our campsite, we saw this hippo emerge from the water and begin pressing the audience back. Several folks seemed to be a little too casual about the situation and were getting awfully close. (I wasn't aware of this until our safari, but hippos are one of the most deadly animals, accounting for more human deaths than any other animal). I was hoping for a little action, but fortunately (for those involved) the situation did not escalate into anything more exciting than watching a hippo wander around. Crocodiles were also plentiful in and around the waters of the Nile.

He's not as friendly as he looks

The next morning, our group drove up to the falls in our safari vehicle. We spent about 2 hours walking around, soaking up the splendor (and some of the water too). What makes this place so spectacular is not that it's a giant cascading waterfall. Actually the vertical drop is only 45 meters. This fall is amazing because it funnels almost the entire Nile River (with its flow rate of over 1000 cubic meters per second!) through a narrow cleft of a rock. You wouldn't want to fall in upstream, or downstream for that matter because it takes a while for the turbulence to settle down. It's truly marvelous.


Our safari buddies. As it turns out, all eight of us were from the States. Go Team America!

Incidentally, while at the game park, I met two girls (pictured above in the bottom row) who are working at an orphanage in Jinja (which is where Zach and I are headed on Monday). Even crazier, I met a couple who are volunteering at New Hope Uganda, that place Brad and I visited a few weeks ago to investigate some of the new construction. As it turns out, this guy John has been the one responsible for making the trusses that Brad designed (no, not the really sketchy ones but some new trusses which will be used to reinforce a sub ceiling). You never know who you're going to run into here...

Coming back into Kampala Friday evening, we noticed that the roads seemed mysteriously empty. Something was wrong. Soon, we found out that the matatus (Uganda's primary source of public transportation = 14-passenger minivans) had called a strike (I think our drive heard from the radio, but I don't know because I was sitting in the back seat). I guess the drivers were upset because the police actually started enforcing some legislation which they hadn't been previously. Seriously, if you want to bring an entire city to a screeching halt, this is probably the easiest way to do it. Basically your average Ugandan has three options for transportation: Matatu, Boda-boda, or foot. Boda-bodas are those little mopeds that every country (with a few exceptions like the U.S.) has embraced whole heartedly for getting around quickly. Obviously, there aren't enough of these to go around, so when the Matatu drivers strike, we've got a problem. Fortunately, it was just a one day deal - any longer and the entire Ugandan economy may have collapsed.