Lake Bunyoni

Yesterday we went to PARADISE. We woke up and headed to the bus around 8:30 am. We traveled about 2 more hours south heading to Kambale, Uganda and saw beautiful landscaping. Rolling greens hills for MILES. It was the most extraordinary sight that I have seen- simply beautiful. The townspeople out in the rural areas are definitely a lot less laid back than the ones in Kampala (the capital city). In Mbarra, our bus driver hardly used his horn, while in Kampala everyone uses horns as their blinkers- pretty intense! Daddy, let’s just say your New York skilled driving has NOTHING on these Ugandan people. You have to watch for taxis, buses, cars boda bodas (motorbikes), and CRAZY pedestrians. You know the driving is intense when they have a “Children’s Skilled Walking Park” where kids go to learn sign usage and learn how to dart cars. ANYWHO- the point of this story is that the rural townspeople are less bold. They won’t walk right alongside the road on the shoulder (or lack there of) with a big blue bus headed directly their way. They will see the bus a few Kilometers ahead and will calmly remove themselves from the side of the road and a potential possible bad accident.
At this beautiful location, we took a hike up one of the mountain sides to discover a plethora of rolling hills- I took lots of great pictures! I hopefully will have time to post them tonight! Fingers crossed!
After this little pit stop, we traveled an hour further south to Kambale! We traveled by bus swirling up the mountain side. Now this spot was worthy of the 3 hour trip! It has to be one of Uganda’s biggest attractions- the place was amazing, and for it to be a lake-I was impressed! Lake Bunyoni is the worlds’ deepest lake measuring 6,500 ft deep! We go to take a boat tour around the lake to see the townspeople of Kambale. One unique story that was told about one of the islands was that women who became pregnant before marriage were exiled to this one particular island to malnourish the child and have the woman starve to death. In Uganda it’s common that bachelors give dowry to the families of the potential wives… well for the men who were poor and could not afford appropriate dowry snuck to this island in the middle of the night and saved one of the impregnated women and took them elsewhere to live to never return to the same town again. That’s a pretty intense story of Uganda’s past. The island was surprisingly very small- we all agreed that if we did this in the US the island would be HUGE.
The rest of the day was pretty relaxing. We all ate crumpets and African tea, which was delish! Then headed to our lunch reservations- after our meal we were given about 2 hours of free time just to chill. Matt and I got some needed QT (quality time). We have been just go go going that we haven’t really had the chance to reflect on our experiences together in Africa thus far. We also finally got the chance to reflect on our college experience- WE ARE SENIORS. And we are on the correct path and we are going places. What else is there to ask for? Today in general just receives an A.
My reflection each day is quite intense. I have a personal journal to take notes, write things that come to my mind, reflect to myself and to record the days’ events. I also have a class journal where we reflect on the event for that day and relate it back to how it affects Uganda’s Sustainable development. Finally, I write this blog to keep all of you updated and for a electronic momentum from this experience. And I also have pictures to reflect on as well--- I am pretty sure I cover all aspects and concepts of this trip.
For tomorrow and the rest of the week I want to focus more on talking to the students of Uganda who are traveling with us, as well as really getting to know some other students from the Drake crowd….
We are headed to Queen Elizabeth National Park. We will be going on a boat tour and game drive. Matt should be excited- he loves the whole animal thing. Me, I will sit back and watch him enjoy the animal kingdom while I will probably be freaking out with the roaming beasts.
Thinking of all of you! Love, Danielle