Day 14: Murchison Falls

One of my objectives for taking time off from work this entire winter/spring was to make space in my head and heart. Today I began to feel myself expanding. Dad and I left the Speke Hotel in Kampala after a nice, quick breakfast and headed north with our tour guide Isaac Otim and driver Geoffrey to go stay at Murchison Falls, the largest National Park in Uganda. We passed through the northern Kampala suburbs, then through some familiar terrain similar to the roadside landscape we saw on the way to Bududa in the East. The road was far nicer and smoother though, and there were virtually no cars in sight. After two hours of driving, the vegetation began to shift and it was much less green and more coarse, dry, and empty. Isaac explained to us that this central area of Uganda relies heavily on cattle for their income (meat and milk), whereas the Kampala and eastern areas are economically more plant and crop-based. Instead of seeing bustling fruit and vegetable markets at every trading centre we drove through, there were ghost towns and a few butcher shops. Folks up here are herdsman, he explained. And indeed we passed lots of cattle, with extremely long horns, much more imposing than any we have in the States. The climate is seriously dry and much hotter, but the view reminded me of Texas or Florida. There were stretches of land that locals had carefully burned to clear the way for new grass. In fact, most everywhere you turned, the fields were scorched black to a crisp. While I'm sitting here staring out at nothing, I'll share some other little Ugandan Factoids I've discovered: - Uganda was under British Colonial rule from around 1897 to 1962. - The traditional greeting between peers is a handshake that alternates between a regular handshake, an upright thumb grasp, and a handshake again. It can go on and on like this. It's very Harlem. - Fist bumps here come with vocals: "Bonga," they say! - Ugandans build homes bit by bit, as they acquire the money, especially in areas where there are no banks. Your house is your investment. Here's how a traditional Ugandan house is built: When you can, you buy some bricks and begin laying out your home. Or if you don't have enough for bricks, you create a foundation and skeletal walls out of sticks and timber. That may sit there for a while until you have the time and resources to fill in red clay mud between the sticks. Then you add an iron sheet roof when you have the funds. Then you coat the walls of the home, inside and out, with cow dung because it holds strong in the rains and has a smooth finish. We turned off onto a dusty, dirt road as may made our way up towards the park. The air was thick with the kind of dust that reduces visibility significantly to almost impenetrable levels, as we saw on the road to Bumwalukani, and even with the windows closed I could taste it in my mouth and feel the film on my hands. In this area we saw far fewer trees and the hot sun openly beat down on the cracked clay. This land seems almost uninhabitable. Dead corn fields alternated with single little brick shacks, spaced far apart from one another. There were broken-down abandoned churches every now and then. We zoomed past a statuesque black hornbill standing guard over several desolate, crispy acres. After spotting a few cement/brick homes with mud huts right next to each of them, we asked why that seemed to be a pattern. Isaac and Geoffrey explained that the round mud huts with thatched grass roofs are much cooler now during the dry season, so families will sleep in them until the rainy season, when it's colder and the grass roofs are more porous. Isaac chatted with us about Ugandan politics and Dad and I have some really great conversations about philosophy, and Christianity, to name a few. After five hours of driving we finally reached the entrance to Murchison Falls National Park. We paid for our park permit and drove an hour through a canopy tunnel on another bumpy dirt road, squinting through the chalky air to catch sight of some wildlife. Right away we saw two olive baboons cross the road in front of us with their red butts peeking out behind them. Several Kingfishers (brightly colored birds with yellow beaks and bright blue tails) also zoomed across the path as we drove, as well as three more baboons and two warthogs in the brush off the rocky, sandy road. I noticed several gigantic termite mounds that looked like ornate drip-sand castles. We continued playing the lookout game for the next hour and finally saw a few antelope through the distant brush. Did you know antelope here are actually really, really small? Finally we reached the Upper Murchison Falls where the Nile River squeezes itself powerfully through a narrow 20 foot opening before plunging below. It was stunning. We were there alone and took several photos, enjoying the light spray of the waterfall hitting our faces and slightly sun-burnt arms. We drove down 45 minutes from the top of the falls to a ferry, which took us directly to Paraa Safari Lodge, where we are staying. It was a total of seven hours of traveling so we had a nice lunch, then relaxed all afternoon in our room before meeting Isaac for dinner. We're going to go to bed early so that we are ready to go see the "game" before the sun rises tomorrow on our SAFARI! It's a little bit of an out-of-body experience. I am aware that I will see lots of animals tomorrow and I know it will be exciting, but I never had this on my bucket list. I have never been especially drawn to savannah wildlife. I think elephants are incredible and giraffes are beautiful, but lions are completely removed from my reality, I have no idea what to expect. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens and just enjoying it all. Once in a lifetime experience! There is a general ennui I'm feeling right now. I think it's mostly my upset stomach, but also partly withdrawal from closing Rock of Ages, partly being away from home, and partly an unsettling feeling of seeming out of place here. It's very clear to me that this is not my land and I am very much a foreigner here. I compare what they eat to what New Yorkers eat, how they dress, how they talk, what they value... I find myself thinking often about my limited perspective of the world and how I want to stretch out of it. And also how grateful I am to have the perspective that I do. Starting to miss my friends and Schnipper's Greek Salads,