Bella's Baby

I've just returned from a whirlwind safari which, even after considerable delay, was amazingly worth it. After a few days in Kampala, I took off Monday morning with "Team Monarch"-- basically a whole bunch of northern Europeans. Did you know most of those countries still have kings and queens, and the parliaments serve at the request of the monarchy?? Astounding. Anyway, I was the lone cowboy.

On the first day we drove for what felt like a million hours (but was really only about five) and ultimately reached the top of Murchison Falls. This place is truly surreal-- the Nile river gets squeezed by a rock formation and pushes itself through in a zigzag formation until it spurts out the other end. There is spray in the air and huge rainbows. Totally worth its spot in "1000 Places to See Before you Die." Then we headed up to the camp, where we were given a serious briefing about the gravity of keeping food in our tents. We would do so under threat of death by hippo stampede. This camp, see, is smack in the middle of the park... so it is frequented by hippo, warthogs, and baboons. Anyway, everyone happily turned over their packets of cookies.

After an awkward night during which I shared a tent with a 20 year old Dutch guy (I tried not to feel awkward about it, but he was a total stranger only that morning and our beds were about six inches apart in the tent... sometimes traveling alone produces the oddest outcomes), we were off the next day on the game drive. Within the first hour, we had already seen elephant, giraffe, tons of antelope-like creatures, water buffalo, and a gagillion birds. Before our four hours were up, we even spotted a lioness. We also drove right into the middle of a herd of elephant. It was fantastic. Then after lunch we took a cruise up the Nile to the bottom of the falls, and we saw tons of wallowing hippos as well as crocs and elephant grazing by the water. This whole experience was just like on TV... only in real life.

Another night with Team Monarch making me defend the U.S. ("But I don't get it... what is wrong with Americans? Why don't they want health care? Why can't Americans understand what is good for them?"), and we were off to track rhinos. Basically rhino became extinct in Uganda during Idi Amin's time-- the lawlessness enabled poachers to nab them for their supposedly aprhodesiacal horns. Recently they've been trying to re-introduce them, and now there's a sanctuary that has seven of them. They had six, but then one mother, who had been donated by Disney's Animal Kingdom in the U.S., and one father, who was Kenyan, produced a seventh. By dint of his lineage, they were delighted to name the new calf... Obama. So anyway, there we were in the 7-rhino sanctuary, where an armed guard took us into the brush to see if we could see a rhino. After much trekking around (and likely disturbing countless nests of mambas) we finally reached a rhino, named Bella. She was... spherical. A huge, hulking, prehistoric looking creature. And it turned out the spherical nature of her massive body was due to the fact that she, too, was pregnant. After she gave us some brief turns of head and horn such that we could snap a million photos, she basically turned on one side, groaned, and disappered into the grass. At which point the guard took us back for our lunch. As we were leaving, there was a flurry of activity. Bella had-- mere minutes after we'd left her-- given birth to a calf, a calf which was only the second rhino to be born in Uganda in 28 years! It was a good thing we left when we did, because mother rhino are extremely protective of their offspring. Of course, we did have a briefing about "what do do when charged by a rhino." The advice was-- "Find a tree. Climb high." Anyway, we were all pretty psyched to have gone in while there were seven rhino, and to have come out while there were eight.

After another interminable ride back to Kampala, I jetted off to the world's most chaotic taxi park to squeeze through buses to find the coaster to Jinja. As I negotiated with my backpack into my infintessimal seat, I was slightly dismayed to see that the woman sitting next to me got off the bus as soon as I got on, saying something in Luganda that I didn't understand but that definitely had the word, "mzungu" in it. I don't really know how to process that... afraid of mzungu? It's the first time it has ever happened to me. And I have been showering! And using soap! Anyway. Then, the next woman who got on happened to be carrying a live chicken with its feet tied which she put under her seat. But then, because, you know, it was LIVE, it scooted on over to hang out by my feet. Nothing feels weirder than a live chicken doing rotations with one wing around your feet. For three hours.

Finally I reached Jinja, and, at long last, my little village of Kyabirwa. Moses' children were so cute, they ran up and gave me hugs and were so excited to see the pictures on my camera. They particularly loved the one of the baboon drinking out of a juice box. Then, today at school, when I walked in to teach my class, the kids jumped up and cheered for me. It was a big warm fuzzy for me. Also, before I left I'd written this long exam for them, which I had gotten copied in Jinja to the tune of $28, because there are 90 of them. Apparently they never get paper exams-- they always have to copy mountains of questions off the blackboard into their little exercise books. When the teacher told them there was an exam and then brought out the paper copies, they stood up and clapped and cheered. Imagine? "Hooray! We have a long exam, but it is on paper and we each get our very own." It really is a different world.

So now I'm off to jump in a taxi to head back to my village. Tomorrow is Independence Day, which means there is no school... I think I'll spend it working on my Lusoga and my tan. How's New England treating you guys, anyway? ;-)