Ssezibwa Falls

This past Sunday, we decided to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city and headed out to Ssezibwa Falls.  It wasn’t the largest of falls and the hike was a lot shorter than we hoped for, but never the less it was still nice to get out for the afternoon.

There are a lot of folklore stories behind many of the places we’ve visited and Ssezibwa Falls was no different.  The legend goes that a woman was supposed to have twins, but instead gave birth to twin rivers.  This has made Ssezibwa a very spiritual place and we were shown some of the shrines that have been set up.

The first shrine our guide showed us.  People use this as a fertility shrine or if they've already given birth to twins, they will come here to pay honor and leave a gift (the pots or coffee beans).

Another spiritual sight people visit at the falls.  The open and closed hands are for catching the bad and praying for the good.

The pots contained offerings with wishes for good luck and fortune.

We, of course, got to take in the beauty of the falls along with a few new birds we don’t get to see at our house.

Katie & Greg at the top of Ssezibwa Falls.

Ssezibwa Falls up close.

Ssezibwa Falls.

Bird nests.

These guys were everywhere at the falls, but we haven't seen them anywhere else, the Great Blue Turaco.

Because you know I'm all about the birds, 'Bout them birds

I have been ever so patiently waiting for our UAB shipment to arrive (mainly so I can have a few items from home like more clothes and some extra food and spices) because it had two very important books in it.  The last time we came to Africa I invested in the National Audubon Society Field Guide to African Wildlife and Princeton Field Guides Birds of East Africa.  We arrived in country on February 5th, our stuff arrived February 9th, yet somehow no one ever seemed to know what was going on and it took until March 7th before we finally had it in our possession.  Don't even get me started on our HHE because that is driving me up a wall with how many times we've been told a different story as to where it is.

Anyways getting back on track, now that I finally have my books I can figure out who all the cool new birds are I keep seeing.  Uganda is interesting in that it sits on the Equator and therefore the sun basically rises a little before 7:00 AM every day and sets around 7:00 PM every evening.  Since it gets hot in the middle of the day, the best time to view most of the birds is at dawn and dusk - good thing Greg has to be at work by 7:30 AM so I get to see and hear all the birds every morning.

There are a few birds we see and hear all the time.  I'm always hearing the Eastern Grey Plantain-eater throughout the day and every time I do I get excited that we might finally have monkeys in our yard because they sound exactly like monkeys hooting at each other.  Unfortunately, we have yet to have any monkeys, but we've been told when the mango trees are ripe we might get some, fingers crossed.

Eastern Grey Plantain-eater - this guy is always hiding in a tree & sounds just like a monkey!

Yes, that's an avocado.

Another frequent visitor is the Hadada Ibis.  You can always tell when they're close by because they constantly sound like they're laughing.  They can be very pretty when the sun hits their feathers just right making the green in their wings shimmer.

Hadada Ibis - these guys are everywhere & sound like they're laughing haa haa ha-aaa.

Hadada Ibis.

Hadada Ibis.

Another frequent flyer is what I believe to be the Greater Blue-eared Starling.  I say I believe because they fall into the Glossy Blue Starling category and they, of course, all look almost exactly the same and all live in about the same location.  It could also be the Lesser Blue-eared Starling or the Bronze-tailed Starling.  Apparently, the different calls they make is the easiest way to tell them apart, but I'm no expert.

Greater Blue-eared Starling - makes a very annoying noise & can sound like a cat.

Greater Blue-eared Starling after a rainstorm.

The final little guy I see on a daily basis reminds me a lot of our robins back at home, the African Thrush.  He normally comes out around dusk and loves our garden area.  He's always finding bugs and when our gardener comes you can catch this little one drinking out of small pools of water.  (On a side note we ordered a bird bath and are patiently waiting for its arrival in the hopes it brings out even more birds, and our stray cats don't try to eat them.)

African Thrush.

"Our cat" stalking an Ibis in the yard.

One afternoon we had a decent rain storm and a few birds I hadn't seen before or since showed up to our yard.

Variable Sunbird.

Double-toothed Barbet.

Double-toothed Barbet.

We have many different fruits and vegetables growing at our house before we ever even planted anything.  We have 2 mango trees, an avocado tree, a ton of banana trees, and 2 papaya trees along with countless veggies and spices we keep finding.  One day the birds decided they wanted our papayas and again we saw birds we had yet to see and haven't seen again!

Speckled mousebird.

I believe this little guy is some time of Weaver bird, there are so many types that are all so similar I'm not positive, but am thinking either the Lesser Masked Weaver or the Baglafecht Weaver (don't quote me on it though).

Some type of Weaver bird.

Unfortunately, there are quite a few woodpeckers with red heads so I'm not sure exactly who this guy is.

Tropical Boubou - He caught a bug & kept hitting it on the ground.

Tropical Boubou.

These guys are rather ugly and large, but you can find them just about anywhere.  There's always a bunch flying in the sky, we see them all around the slums, and this particular group was hanging out by a craft market we went to over the weekend.

A bunch of Marabou Storks sitting in a tree.

Marabou Storks.

I can't wait to start going to all the National Parks so I can find even more interesting birds!

Food, Glorious Food!

So what have we been eating this past month?  Breakfasts are a pretty normal and are usually some combination of eggs (which have orange yolks!), cereal (I got one healthy and one chocolaty kid's kind), and the occasional green apple.  Bacon here is less fatty and cooks better in the oven since it doesn’t have the same grease to cook on the stove top.  There is milk and it comes in two types, either as the long lasting, doesn’t need to be refrigerated initially carton kind, and the lasts only about four days 1-liter bag type.  The bag type tastes way better than the carton, but it doesn’t last long (both expiration and quantity) so we have to buy it frequently.  There are a lot of different types of juices with combinations that I’ve never seen like cranberries and kiwi, a pineapple-mango-banana-guava-passion fruit called Tropical Mix, and a passion fruit-orange-peach-mango-apple-pear called Whispers of Summer.

Some boxed milk, spices, cookies, juice, and a soda that I swear tastes like grape Dr. Pepper.

Lunch if I bring it from home is nothing too special, chicken, rice, tuna fish sandwich, etc.  Basically your normal boring lunch.  If I don’t bring lunch, the Embassy has a cafeteria with all of the American staples, and it is actually really good.  There is a ton to choose from like burgers, pizza, breakfast foods, Mexican food (Mexican-American?), fish tacos, smoothies, and of course desserts.  Prices are expensive by Ugandan standards, but I think normal for the average lunchroom back home.  A cheeseburger (even the juicy lucy cheese on the inside style) is 22,000 Ugandan Shillings, which is about $8.  There is also a local option that gets you a typical Ugandan lunch for 6,000 UGX (about $2.50).  I finally pried myself away from the comfort of a cheeseburger lunch and tried the Ugandan option.

Local Ugandan lunch.

The meal had a lot to it, but in reality is pretty simple and hits a lot of the usual Ugandan foods.  It is made up of:

• Rice with veggies and broth poured over it.
• Beans.
• Diced up cabbage.
• Two types of potatoes (pretty sure at least) – One I think is a sweet potato and the other is some kind of African potato.  It doesn’t taste like a potato back home and is a bit harder.  The potatoes that we are used to are called Irish potatoes and I’ve only seen the smaller kinds.
• Beef from a beef stew.
• The purple stuff?  It is a groundnut sauce.  Actually tastes like peanuts for the most part.
• Ugali (under the peanut sauce) – Cornmeal cooked with water to make a white ball of doughy starch.
• Matooke (under the peanut sauce) – A type of banana that is mashed up, steamed, and ends up looking like yellow mashed potatoes.  I was told that it doesn’t actually taste like bananas, but yep it does.  Probably the most typical Ugandan food, basically what rice is to Japan.  One Ugandan at the Embassy told me that if he didn’t have matooke with a meal, it’s like he didn’t have a meal at all.  The bananas are seriously everywhere at the markets.

All in all, the dish was just alright.  You really can’t beat the price, but it’s really heavy in starch and I, unfortunately, am just too picky of an eater at times to enjoy all of it.  Though the good news is that I was told, by a Ugandan, that the Ugandan meal at the Embassy isn’t cooked as well as one I could get at a restaurant or local house.  So I will have to venture out and give this type of meal another shot one day.

Finally on to dinner and everything else.  Dinners cooked by Katie and I are nothing too unusual yet.  We’ve ventured out a bit on our cooking, making up some dishes with goat and minced lamb, but we haven’t tried to make anything too crazy yet.  That time will be coming soon though!  For eating out, there is surprisingly a huge selection of different ethnic foods and they are pretty tasty.  We have had Mexican, Greek, Italian, and Ethiopian to name a few.  There is even a site\app called HelloFood (which is like Grubhub), that you can order from, and a boda-boda driver will deliver the food to you.  Oddly enough we haven’t tried a Ugandan restaurant yet, but it’s probably because we are still stuck to sticking to things that we know and crave.  Speaking of craving, I went a bit overboard this week on buying baked goods from the market that comes to the Embassy every Friday.  I ended up buying 5 chocolate filled croissants, 3 chicken meat pies, 2 cheese sticks, 1 pizza guy, and 1 beef samosa.  My excuse is that they are all really tasty, and I maybe shouldn’t shop when I am hungry.

Ethiopian meal complete with Tusker Malt Lager.

I’ve been wanting to do more street food, but we have to be a bit careful with what we eat, due to having weaker stomachs than the locals.  We did though get to try a street food called rolex.  It was a mix of eggs, cabbage, tomatoes, shallots, and spices put onto a hot plate, stirred around, and then when it’s just about cooked, a flattened chapati is placed on top and cooked onto it.  This is all then rolled up and looks a bit like a crepe.  How did it get the name rolex?  Say rolled eggs fast and pretend English isn’t your first language, that’s how it was named.  There are also a ton of people selling fresh fruit on the side of the street.  Katie is loving the ability to buy pineapples and sweet melons (a smaller watermelon) for $1 apiece.  The people also have a variety of other fruits for sale like mangoes, avocados, papayas, bananas, passion fruit, and jackfruit.  Jackfruits are large, and prickly, with a rubbery fruit inside.  We can’t really place the taste, but it is described as a mix of apple, pineapple, mango, and banana.  More than one Ugandan has been surprised that we had never heard of jackfruit and that we don’t have them in the U.S.A.

Rolex making.

A Jackfruit, they grow quite large.

There is still a ton more that we have to try and eat, and luckily I have a huge appetite and not enough sense to think about what I am putting in my mouth!

Kids Club Kampala

Yesterday a friend of mine took me along with her to a place she’s been volunteering at since she came to Uganda a few months ago.  Kids Club Kampala is a nonprofit organization that was founded in 2009 aiming to bring hope and love to vulnerable children and to transform poor communities in Uganda.  They are currently located in 17 communities and reach over 4,000 children in Uganda every day.

Going into this, I knew we were off to one of the largest slums in the Kampala area (we visited the Katanga Slum), but I don’t think anything can prepare you for the life that we came from to the life that these children are living on a daily basis.  We arrived early and I was offered to be taken on a small tour of part of the slum.  I was informed that in this tiny little area some 25,000 people call it home.  As we made our way in I was immediately greeted with a smell that at times made it difficult to breathe.  You had to be careful where you stepped as there was trash and what I can only imagine sewage everywhere.  Little children followed us through as we made our way, everyone wants to smile and wave to the “Mzungu” (white person).  One thing I’ve noticed since arriving is Ugandan’s are some of the friendliest people and are always very polite.

Outside the Katanga Slum.

My tour guide, one of the school teachers, pointed out how to get up to the main road, people’s homes, and small shops as we made our way through.  It was an eye-opening experience that I know I will never forget.  Words cannot begin to describe all the sights from the inside (sorry, no pictures of this as I felt it was rude and improper).  As we made our way out of the slum and headed back over to the one-room classroom, I wasn’t sure what to expect.

The children were adorable and ranged in age from infants to pre-teens.  Unfortunately, school is very expensive and most families cannot afford it.  This place gives these children the opportunity to come and learn until they hopefully get a sponsor so they can get a real education.  Since it’s not a real school, they don’t have uniforms and most of their clothes were tattered and torn.  Many of them were in mismatched outfits that were either too big or too small.  Some of them weren’t even fully clothed.  And shoes, if they had shoes on them they were lucky although most of them the shoes were also half broken or not the right size.  During our visit, we only got to spend time with about 30 or so children.  I was informed that on a normal day they have 80-100 plus kids joining them.

One of the little girls they help.

My friend helping teach a lesson.

Most of the kids knew my friend and were very excited to see her.  But, as most children are, everyone got a little quiet when it came time to greet me because I was new.  That quickly changed as we began reading the kids letters from their new pen-pals back in the US.  The letters were from my friend's nephews second-grade class and were dated from early November so all the American kids talked about was Halloween and the leaves changing colors.  Being directly on the equator, it was hard to explain that back home the US has four seasons instead of sunny, cloudy, windy, and rainy like the poster in the classroom had.  Once the kids heard that their new American friends also liked to play soccer, or football as the kids here call it, and many of them enjoyed swimming, we were back on track.  Our kids came up with their own questions for their new friends and we spent the afternoon writing letters back to them and drawing pictures.

Reading some of the letters to the kids.

Sitting in the classroom.

It was a wonderful and rewarding experience and I hope to go back.  It made me truly realize how lucky we were to grow up in the US and to be able to go to school every day and get the educations we did.  I was even luckier in that I knew I had 3 hot meals a day, clothes and shoes that fit, and a family I knew would be there for me.