Bungee Jumping with Bananans (for real this time) and A taste of Home

First of all I want to appologize! I know..it has been forever since my last blog but I promise that this one will make up for it. Lately it feels as though I have been stuck in a time machine. Time is going by unbelievably fast (A.k.a there are only something like 15 days left), and to add on to this I have for the first time felt that time machine feeling where everything is moving past you in a blur (I don't know why but this is randomly reminding me of a willy wonka movie) as I have been to 3 countries in what seems like the last week. I also was out of internet range for a good 4 or 5 days in Uganda, which add's to my case of bloglessness! Anywho hopefully this blog makes up for lost time and I'll do my best to explain these blurry time machined memories.

So I forgot where I left off last time but I'm pretty sure it was from a somewhat sketchy internet cafe in Kisumu, rather late at night before bording a 6 hour easycoach bus to Jinja, Uganda. I must also mention to you that for the first time in my life I felt as though I was in first class as this bus was epic in many a ways. So I decided to make freinds with some gravol and pass out for the bumpiest bus ride of my life to the Kenyan/Ugandan border where I got my second Africa stamp in my passport, unfortunately it wasn't as cool as the colourful, giraffe laden visa I got in Kenya, but it said Uganda none the less and so I was content. This also marked the splitting of the group from Ryan who lost his passport during the first week (bummer). He had to stay at the border until morning when his passport arrived from Nairobi, but it was a relief to see him arrive with his guitar the next afternoon. This bus ride also represented a new frontier for me in that I got my first migrane of life (which lasted an almost unbearable 36 hours, but I did find a sweet cure). So anyways we arrive at Jinja at like 6am, which is becoming a pretty average wake up call for me (and I hope that it decides to stay that way through the school year). I feel as though I have been missing the best part of the day for my entire life, and so I am going to try my very hardest to not sleep in until 11 every day this year (tough chance) but having hope never hurt anyone. SO...back from my sidetrack...we arrive in Jinja and come to this amazing campsite called Adrift. So I feel as though this is time for another poem because this place was a beauty.

Oh Adrift you make me want to crack a brew unbelievably bad (a.k.a. Nile Special Beer advertisements deck every wall), and your monkeys (a.k.a wake up call) make me feel as though falling asleep on the couch overnight with a bag of chaveda in my hands is a terribly bad idea. Your trees are lush, your banannas sweet and your view is like no other. The sound of nile rapids crashing below me and (1....2.....3.... bungee are terribly addictive),the weird mashup accents of your staff (new zealand-zimbabwe) and american food calm me (after a month of ugali). You are a magical place, cheers to the nile.

So crappy poetic attempts once again, but Jinja was seriously sweet. It is an adventure resort on the nile river with monkees (HOT SHOWERS which I took serious advantage of), a sweet camp house and just a reall lax atmosphere. Anyways back to what I was doing there.....BUNJEE JUMPING INTO THE NILE RIVER BABY! Yea no big deal. So this is how it had happened,...I was essentially paralized by this migrane for an entire day (thanks to Neyon's secret T3 stash I was able to at least open my eyes) and I though hey, I'll sleep outside tonight, get some fresh air (and a rather scarry monkey wake up call) and then bungee jump in the morning. Well, the whole feeling better in the morning thing didn't happen and I was 100% sure that the jump was not going to happen. One by one the team went down, and then I decided, "When will I ever have the chance to jump head first, from a huge platform, into the NILE RIVER?" After a inner debate liek no other I talked to ronan who assured me that after I jumped and all of the blood rushed to my head he would rush me off to hospital.

So I'm on the top of this tiny platform, waves crashing below me, my feet tied together with a cloth, some guy with a weird accent asking me why I didn't play hockey, a bar above me that I was holding onto for dear life, a man suddenly screaming 1...2...3...Bungee (which this time was not so conforting), and then me plumeting into the nile river head first. It WAS AMAZING and it cured my migrane which was amazing and something I will look to in future head pumping situations. So after this we jumped back onto a matatu in the scorching heat (UGANDA IS CRAZILY HOT) and moved onto Kampala. mY ADRENALINE WAS RUSHING LIKE A BULLET TRAIN!

So apparently in Uganda police do their jobs unliek in Kenya, and so while crammed into this tiny matatu Rachel decides to stick her feet out of the window to make some space. MISTAKE, some really mean looking police woman in a very white dress (a.k.a she looked like Mr. Clean, which I don't know how that is possible considering the unbelievable amount of dust in these countries) stops us and pulls us over. It results in 3 of us having to get into another Matatu and some of us taking a picture of her mean face. (p.s. for future, taking a picture of a police officer = a very bad idea), so avoiding a ugandan jail sentence we moved on to Kampala which was a very modern city which was really cool to see. It was so much cleaner than Nairobi and the people are mad attractive.........it's kind of like god decided to put every good looking person in Uganda. So anyways we did some grocery shopping (bought some ingredients for humus which went over really well with the team) and headed off to this really sketchy restaurant with very sketchy restaurants. Luckily I had one of the best veggie burgers of my life and then that night we headed off to Rural Uganda in another crowded matatu to go work with SLINT UGANDA, an organization which promotes sustainable livelihoods.

I realized I said the bumpiest matatu ride of life before, but this was actually like 400 times bumpier! So bumpy in fact that our bags kept falling off the roof, and then on one massive bump caused the entire roof to cave in and all of the supporting bars to bend and break. This is where we inser the phrase BLANK, something which has become common place on this trip. (It may be accompanied by an awkward turtle). So we end up arriving in this rather nice solar powered house (our home for the nest 3 days) at 4 am, and then sleep in quite late the next day. So in an act of forshadowing we are served Matoke for breakfast (mashed bananas that are not sweet but surprisingly good with ketchup..something which was not available at the time). Anyways so the next 12 meals of my life were Matoke and I think I have now decided that bananas will be ssomething to avoid for the next few months.

So we spend the next 3 days here, working on a bee-keeping project, touring the farmlands, helping children get water from the pumps, seeing cows with MASSIVE HORNS, and building two tree nurseries for local schools. I took to a machetti, where I cut really thick tree branches for the nurserie. I felt like a warrior.

OK...this internet cafe is closing (p.s. I'm in Kigali Rawanda, one of my favourite places thus far on the trip and have a HUGE blog to write about it). I leave for Mwanza Tanzania tomorrow at 6am, but I will get to the internet to write about Kigali soon. P.s. I can also communicate in Rawanda because the official language is french!!!!!!!

aNYWAYS, UNTIL NEXT TIME....

jOSH