There were not as many organized activities for the kids to do for our two days in the Budongo Forest, but I think that was just as well. In the middle of a week-long trip, two days of free play for the kids is just about perfect! The first day we were there we had our whole-group short forest walk with a ranger, and the second day they didn't manage to arrange anything for us, so we went for a walk along the dirt road through the forest. They advised us (or ordered us, I'm not sure!) not to go into the forest by ourselves, and with the dense vegetation and the criss-crossing paths, it did seem very easy to get lost.
The rest of the time the children just played. I had thought there would be more lawn-ish area for outdoor games, so we had brought some outdoor toys. It turned out the main activity was sewing. I had brought some little felt projects, with the shapes cut out and holes punched around the edges, but with quite a lot of needlework involved. The older children dedicated themselves happily to producing lemonade and hamburgers and pizza, which then became good toys to go around and pretend to eat and feed to everyone else!
I wasn't sure how the forest walk would go, because all three children were tired and irritated and antsy, especially our big and antsy little girl! But as soon as we got into the forest, the older children became totally focused on all the interesting things to see, and the little one settled happily into her snuggle on my back. The guide was excellent and did a great job with the children, finding interesting stories about all the plants and insects that we saw. He warned us at the beginning that we should use our quiet voices so as not to scare the animals away, so needless to say, anything that could walk or fly or climb managed to get totally out of our vicinity!
Early on the walk, he showed us a fuzzy caterpillar crawling up a tree, and told us how all the fuzz was actually poisenous spines and we should never touch him. A while later, after Buttercup napped and woke up, the children found some fluffy seed pods from a tree, and petted them and passed them around. But Buttercup pulled her fingers away and absolutely refused to touch it, because she remembered the dangerous fluffy caterpillar!
Hibiscus was the most active in leaping around and finding things to look at. I was about to write "new" things, but this actually wasn't a concern of hers at all, and after a while the guide had to tell her to not stop for every single mushroom or seed pod, because we had already talked about that one over and over, and if we stopped for every one in the forest we would never see anything new! Hibiscus has amazing eyes for spotting little things, and brought to our attention a cricket, who was so well camouflaged in the leaves that most of us had trouble seeing him even the guide and Hibiscus were pointing right at him!
The next afternoon we spent mostly relaxing on the restaurant veranda, after being told various different stories about when our guide would take us out birdwatching. Then it turned out that there was no guide at all, and we decided that the children had sat around long enough and needed to go get some wiggles out. My mother and I rounded up our crew and headed out to the road, which seemed like the one safe place to walk, and the accountant from the lodge either felt bad enough about not finding us a guide, or worried that we couldn't manage walking along the road, that he ended up coming with us too. He didn't know much more about the forest than we did, but we did get him in some conversation and learn a little bit about his life and story. Our whole trip was out of the Buganda kingdom, and it was very interesting to me to hear the stories and languages of people who live very different lives in Uganda.
I realized that this was actual my first walk with my new children! Our family loves walking and hiking, and I think Emerson went for his first hike up our local mountain when we was only a few weeks old! Obviously, he was carried a lot, but when he got old enough to toddle he got to toddle along some of our walks too, and he has walked more and more every year. Last summer he and I spent almost two weeks camping on our own, and I decided he was just plain too big for me to carry him and our gear, so we each set off with our packs and went at little-boy pace. We took long hikes every day, and a couple of them were at least seven miles, which he walked all on his own as at three and a half! So it was a surprise to realize that I had never yet had a chance to take a plain old walk with my girls.
Since we could walk at child-pace and stop for child-interests, it was also Buttercup's first chance to take her own walk. She walked and ran and jumped for almost the two hours we were out! Both of the older children wanted to be carried for part of the way back, but Buttercup wanted to "me walk" the whole way. I finally put her on my back for the last couple hundred yards back, because her strides had turned to about two inches long each, and I thought everyone needed some dinner before it got dark, but even then she screamed and cried to not get to "me do it!"
On the way out we played all sorts of running and catching and Mother May I games. My mother is great at these kinds of games and the older children love playing with her! Buttercup trotted along behind, working on imitating whatever they are doing. Her physical development is very far behind for her age, but she is instinctually inspired to keep trying new things. So we played with running while kicking our feet up, or putting them out to the side. She practiced jumping and hopping and walking backwards and swinging on our hands and reaching for the sky!
And what is it with kids and sticks? Everyone found sticks that they carried and dragged and poked and swung and eventually broke, and then they cried, despite being in a forest which is naturally well stocked with sticks! We also saw giant spiders building giant webs over the road and in the trees.
And then we got home and had our sumptuous dinner on the veranda. At least, the first night was suptuous and everyone enjoyed it, except the soup was much too spicey. The second night we clarified that we didn't want things spicey, and the kitchen agreed, and then sent everything out an hour too late and with pepper all over it. Ugandan food is not spicey at all, so either this chef has particular taste or he has decided that foreigners like heat!
Meanwhile, the children discovered that they liked hot chocolate, and wanted to order a new pot approximately thirty-four times a day!
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