Monday, June 25, 2007 ~ Mokono Town

I’m going to be backtracking a little bit here because apparently my last entry was Thursday, and it is now Monday! My how the time flies when you are having adventures!

My account might not be as accurate due to recent head trauma, but I will do my best (and I promise to explain more about the head trauma later).

Friday morning Joe, Festus, and I caught a taxi on the road near to our house headed into Mokono. We rode for about 10 minutes (which is usually our 30 minute walk) into Ntejeru and then we stopped, and the driver tried his best to pick up other people from the village. After a good 15 minutes of honking and yelling out the window he slowly started to crawl out of the village-not without stopping, looking back, and even going in reverse to check if people wanted to get on the 2nd time we drove by. Needless to say since it was 8am, and no one was really out of their houses yet anyways, they didn’t.

We picked up Erin (the Peace Corp volunteer) and headed into Mokono (not without stopping and repeating the same process in three other villages as well as dropping off and picking up people along the way, AND filling up on gas twice).

We went to the internet cafe (which is always a joy-the only downside is there is always someone reading over your shoulder while they wait for their own computer).

Then Joe, Erin, and I caught a taxi to Kampala (which took a little over an hour because of traffic) and then we went to Garden City (which is the mall in Kampala). Joe and I switched some money and then we went to the food court (the sole reason Erin came with us, other than showing us around).

The food courts are funny here because they are set up as usual, but instead of going to the restaurant, representatives from each place come to you. They bring a menu and then stand behind you until you decide which restaurant you want to eat from. There is a lot of pressure involved because each person is trying to tell you what is good from their menu and there are 10 restaurants to choose from.

I got a garden burger(!) with fries, which was really nice to have after a couple weeks of only having mtoke, beans, and rice.

After that we walked to a small craft market that is only opened on Fridays. There were only about 12 booths, but they all had enough stuff. I'm pretty sure between all of us we cleaned the place out. You have to bargain with them which is difficult to do if you don't know the language. More often than not you get stuck with the Mzungu (tourist) price, but I had Erin help me bargain.

I returned to Mokono, but Erin and Joe continued on to Ntenjeru. I went back to the internet cafe, and found that Festus was still there. I have no idea what he was doing the whole time, but he spent all day in there. I was impressed.

I had dinner with everyone at the house and got to know the other volunteers a little better. Some were from other villages like me, staying for the weekend, but most live at the house.

At first I was pretty jealous because they have electricity, a fridge, access to the internet, a supermarket nearby, etc. But then I found out about their giant cockroach problem, and I was jealous no more. They are everywhere, and you can here them squeaking all the time. You can here them crawling on the walls and on the floor (you wouldn't believe how loud they are!) and they are in the latrines. I thought having a gecko watch you pee was weird, but having cockroaches crawl out of where you are currently peeing into is much worst.

Apparently they also have bats in their walls. Every once in a while you'll just hear this loud "whump" coming from the walls or ceiling-it's kinda terrifying.

The next morning, on Saturday we took the bus to Jinga (which is known for being the source of the Nile) it was a 2 hour bus ride there, but I think that is because we had to pick up a group of English volunteers from King Fisher first.

The drive there was beautiful, we drove by a lot of tea plantations and a national park. Everything here is a vibrant green and really pretty.  

Once we got to Jinga we had a fruit salad breakfast and got a rundown of how the day would go. Then we were fitted into once-size-fits-all helmets and life jackets. Most everyone got paddles (they were short a few, and the numbers only got worst throughout the course of the day). There were 3 boats-2 regular boats and a "safe boat" that wasn't supposed to do the scary stuff (like flipping or grade 5 rapids).

There were 8 GVN volunteers, so we filled up one of the regular boats and the British group filled the other two. After we got through the preliminary commands of 'Go forward,' 'Paddle backwards,' and 'get down and hold on!' we were ready to go. Right off the bat we went down a class 3 rapid, it was kind of scary, but mostly just fun. Then we paddled. A LOT.

That was how most the morning went, a series of rapids, and then lots and lots of paddling. During the down time we entertained ourselves singing, looking around, waving to the people on shore, and swimming.

It was really surreal just swimming down the Nile, and enjoying the scenery. The thought of crocodiles and other big-Nile-fish came into my mind, but nothing nibbled on my toes, so I wasn't too worried.

Right before lunch we went down a class 4 rapid and our boat flipped (probably because we ended up going down that one backwards) everyone ended up falling out. It was scary, but fun and pretty refreshing.

We stopped on shore for lunch and had rice and potatoes (surprise, surprise). We were barefoot and someone mentioned chiggers and ticks being in the grass, so I did my best to stay on this little patch of dirt I found.

At one point I had to go to the bathroom so I went traipsing behind some bushes (I'm sorry all my stories involve me going to the bathroom, but for some reason that is where my best ones come from) I heard something rustling in the bushes next to me and I was thinking "Oh my God poisonous snake!"  but it turns out they were African tree frogs-a ton of them. Normally I would be freaked out by frogs but they were little and cute and better than snakes (although looking back, they might have been poisonous as well.. good thing I didn't lick them I guess).

There were a group of kids hanging out with us during our time on shore. And Sandi (one of the girls from our group) was putting on sunscreen. Some of the girls wanted to see it and ended up pouring a huge amount out and rubbing it all over themselves. They used way too much so it didn't rub in and it turned them white-ish. Everyone thought this was hilarious and called them "Mzungus." I wish I could have gotten a picture of them, they were pretty cute.

After lunch, we paddled for a really long time, and enjoyed the scenery. We even saw a monkey in the trees! :)

We went down a lot of other rapids and then the last rapid we went on was class 5 (out of class 1-6). Our boat flipped and I wasn't expecting it, when I went under I inhaled a ton of water and hit my head hard on a rock (I think) and then came up choking water. One of the other guys in our group (who used to be a life guard) got me and held me up, but had to let go because we were only half way down the rapids, so we ended up riding down the rest of the way without the boat.

I took in an entire stomach full of water, and my head was killing me. Luckily we only had a little more ways to go. I couldn't see straight and I really wanted to puke.

There was a class 6 waterfall at the end of the trip, but everyone is supposed to go to shore before reaching it (because it is too dangerous to go down) but for some reason the safe boat didn't make it to shore and ended up going over the class 6 rapid. (Ironies of ironies, after lunch one guy from our group who didn't want to get flipped again joined the safe boat-only to go over the most dangerous rapid out of the whole trip. He ended up getting stranded on a rock in the middle of the rapids and had to be rescued).

The rest of the people in the safe boat rode down the whole way without a boat and got pretty knocked around, but mostly just scared out of their wits.

By this time, I was really out of it and the girls I was with had to keep hitting  and poking me to keep me awake. I was really nauseous, dizzy, and tired. They fed us and I felt a little better, and then we drove back. I went straight to bed and slept a couple hours until about 2 in the morning. I woke up and really had to puke. I got a bucket and puked continuously until about 7am. I was outside on the porch because I didn't want to wake anyone in the house. But apparently, the people who lived below heard me because when I went downstairs in the morning to clean out my bucket again, Regina (who lives right underneath) saw me and said "Sorry Stacie," confused I asked "Sorry for what?" and she said "Sorry Stacie...Sorry for the puking."  Whoops. She was really nice though and insisted on making me some tea. Then I got really bad diarrhea. The worst part about it was that the latrines are down 4 flights of stairs, and the doors are really hard to open and shut. Not a good combination for a bad case of diarrhea.

All yesterday I slept and used the latrine and was pretty much miserable. It didn't help I had the worst headache ever. That was from hitting my head and/or too much sun from the trip, but being sick was either from taking in too much water, a parasite, or (the puking at least) could be from hitting my head. But today I was nauseous and got sick while at the internet cafe. Leslie (the coordinator) was at the house today and she said that was from dehydration because of losing so much fluid yesterday (especially from the anti-diarrhea medicine because it dries you out and doesn't cure you). So she gave me a re-hydration packet, and I feel much better.

So yesterday and today was a lot of lounging and doing a lot of nothing. I feel bad because I haven't gone back to the village yet but I talked with Festus yesterday and today and he was okay with it. Today I got to hang out with a lot of the Mokono volunteers more. It is really weird because 3 or 4 are leaving this week, and I have so much time left. I am looking forward to everything I have to do, but at the same time (especially because I have been sick) I really really miss home. And 8 weeks seems like forever.

I will hopefully go back tomorrow to the village, which is good. I miss my nice clean latrine, and my own bed. I'd choose a clean latrine and no cockroaches over the internet and fridge any day.