Two weeks with Karna

My friend, Karna, came for an extended visit, leaving just last Saturday. Upon her initial arrival, I felt like I was just walking around in the states with my friend rather than that my friend was walking around in Uganda with me! It was just such an odd experience, seeing her in this context.

Having Karna around was quite wonderful because, frankly, Karna is such a wonderful friend. She’s laid back, introspective, knows how to laugh, and is just plain fun to be around. While she was here, we split our time between Jinja, Mukono, and Murchison Falls National Park, so that’s how I split up my descriptions below.

Jinja:

Karna & I at the source of the Nile, apparently there is an underground spring right by where we are standing.

Besides taking the obligatory visit to the source of the Nile and walking around the small downtown of Jinja, we also volunteered at Amani Baby Cottage (http://amanibabycottage.org/). Amani an orphanage that takes care of roughly 60 children ages 0-5. Often they try and reunite the kids back with someone from their extended families, but they will also help to facilitate adoptions. Being in the orphanage was very interesting, but also exhausting. They have quite the system down for the kids making everything go rather smoothly considering the numbers and ages of the kids they have to corral. And though they certainly don't get all the individual attention they need (it’s hard to recreate a real home), overall they certainly are at a good place, are well-cared for, and, most importantly, are loved. We were only there for a few days, but serving their ministry was enjoyable.

Karna, hanging out with one of the little ones at the bonfire (a special activity that the kids talked about all day)

Mukono:

In between Jinja and Murchison we spent time at UCU, mostly cooking, relaxing, and watching some TV episodes (Call the Midwife, mostly). Karna tried chapatti, jackfruit, passion fruit, Ugandan pineapple (which is sweeter then back home), fried chicken (the equivalent of the hamburger here—in my opinion), cooked cabbage, Stoney (ginger-flavored soda), Krest (bitter-lemon flavored soda), African tea, Irish potatoes, and the Pioneer Women’s cinnamon rolls (not Ugandan, but we made them for the first time in Uganda so it makes the list). We also visited Vision for Africa (http://www.visionforafrica-intl.org/en/aboutvfa/index.html where they have vocational schools and then you can buy their work--pottery, ect) and Bajo Glass (this great place that collects recycled glass then blows it into glassware).

Karna & I at Bajo Glass--The floors & walls are all decorated with melted, recycled glass.

Murchison:

Murchison Falls National Park is a beautiful park in Northwestern Uganda with a good amount of game (animals) and, of course, an amazing water-fall. Getting to the park is always a bit of a challenge as roads are not well kept here, and dirt roads less so. As a result it takes about 2 hours to go the 30 miles from the town of Masindi (located just outside the park) to the Nile river running halfway through the park. For a particularly bad stretch it took about 15 minutes to go a little over a mile. Despite these trials, we had a nice time. Groups of giraffes and elephants and tiny deer (can't remember their official name) dotted the savanna and wandered near the roadside. At times they posed quite perfectly, allowing Karna and I to snap their portraits. My favorite part was getting to see the lion! At the park they usually only see 1 or 2 lions a week, so we were quite lucky. Plus, we were able to drive up really close to it and were probably around 5 feet away from the young male lion when Karna and I popped up through the open sun roof to take pictures. The lion just looked at us then laid back down for a nap, but it got my heart racing a bit :). 

The other major activity of our park excursion was a hike up to the top of Murchison Falls. It only took about an hour, but it was beautiful. The rock on the path is formica, so it glistened in the sunshine and covered my chacos with some nice little sparkles. Eventually the path took us so close to the waterfall that we could feel the cool spray of water issuing off it. This also provided the perfect circumstances for lovely and complete double rainbows! Though there was no gold at the end of it...just formica.

The bottom of Murchison Falls

A little worse for the wear, but here's us at the top of the falls and at the end of the rainbow :)

Now Karna is safe back home and I have begun preparing for classes which start next week. Since I just received the syllabus a few days back, there is a lot of work for me to do -- so vacation officially over.