Kenya, Day 2

This time, we hired a car for the day, and head out with a goal in mind: animals.  Animals are a big deal in Africa, and Nairobi's theme seems to be "animals you can touch."  We started with a baby elephant sanctuary where the elephants were fed and played right in front of us, and then some friendly ones were invited to walk around the perimeter and we could touch and interact with them.  We also went to a giraffe sanctuary where you could feed the giraffes right out of your hand, and decided we were too tired for the crocodile farm, where apparently you can hold baby crocodiles.  Um, sometimes wild animals are supposed to be wild!  The elephant orphanage seemed like a really neat place with a genuine mission and philosophy.  They bring in baby elephants too young to survive on their own, keep them until they're old enough in this area, and then have two more camps in a national park.  The elephants gradually go out into the wild from these camps, and keep returning at night for as long as they need to, until eventually they are accepted into a herd and stay wild -- a process that takes 5-10 years, depending on the individual!  So while they are in the orphanage, they become accustomed to humans in many ways, but at the same time they are trying to keep them prepared to go back to being wild elephants one day.  It was pretty amazing.

As for the giraffe sanctuary, I was less sure about a mission, other than "giraffes are really neat, and if people get to touch them, then they will like giraffes better," or something like that.  We spent most of our time on the wilderness trails, which we really enjoyed.  It was neat to see the natural dry-land forest of the area.

In the middle, we had lunch in a mall.  We had pasta and cappuccino (at least one of us did; the other one had three sips of strawberry smoothie), and had another quick chance to go shopping.  My clothes are getting all worn out, and I'm looking forward to doing the last adoption errands not looking like a bag lady!  I thought this was a nice outfit, which is good because it was about the only thing in the entire store that wasn't awful on me.  The kind of colors which suit a quiet, Soft-Summer blond, are not exactly the ones that are widely stocked in Africa!

Then we went back to the hotel.  The idea was that we would take a shower and go out for an early dinner, but the hot water ran out during Emerson's bath-ish thing.  It turned out that they didn't have the power on for the hot water, so we had to wait for it to heat up.  Goodbye, early dinner!  I was feeling frustrated and irritated, but at the same time, some quiet time in the hotel was probably good for us.  Emerson intently played legos on the hotel bed, of course.  It seems so much easier traveling with one child than three, that I forget that I still need to take things at child-pace.

I was half tempted to skip the nice dinner, but I decided we would go after all.  I selected a place that the guidebook had been a historical start-and-end fine dinner for Kenyan safaris.  There was a sign behind our table commemorating 50 years of operation, from some time in the 1950's!  A nice dinner turned out to be just what we needed to wrap up our little trip.  We had some delicious food, the waiters were a combination of western-level competence, and African-style friendliness, and it was a calm way to end the day and the trip.



The picture captions have more about the specific events of the day.  Go halfway through the album, to the sleeping boy, to see the second day.
Kenya pictures

Amazing Animals

Amazing Animals

In each place that we went on our safari trip, our guides were amazingly knowledgeable, helpful, and patient, and they always ended by asking us to please share what we had learned with our friends, so we could spread the news and desire to save and protect these amazing animals.

I was hoping that my trip would help me re-fall in love with Uganda, since I have been feeling frustrated with it lately.  I loved the beautiful scenery, and I found one very valuable reason to be proud of my current country: they are doing amazing work to preserve and protect their natural resources.  For a third-world country, this is rare and commendable.  For instance, my parents said that when they were in Cameroon, they didn't see any monkeys in the forests because they had all been killed for meat, and even in the national parks the game was thinly spread.  So I am sharing some of these valuable stories with you.

Entebbe Wildlife Education Center:

Once upon a time, this was a zoo, but at this point it is designed for rescue and education.  The animals are mostly rescued from poachers or other disasters, so there are no non-Ugandan animals, and no Ugandan animals which haven't needed rescue (for instance, no elephants).  They work to help them live a natural life, and engage the visitors in understanding their lifestyle and needs.  On our first visit, a guide came over to our little group and accompanied us for our whole visit, sharing many stories about the animals and keeping the kids engaged and learning.

Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary:

Rhinos became extinct in Uganda during the unstable years of dictatorship.  This group has imported six white rhinos and provided them with a huge natural space, and is monitoring them as they breed.  They have had seven babies so far.  When they get to 14, they will start re-introducing them to the National Parks where they would have naturally lived.

Rhinos are currently being killed at the rate of one per day.  Their meat is inedible and they are peaceful animals, so the only reason for their murder is their horns.  They are actually made of the exact same material as fingernails and hair, so all of the "magic" potions made from their horns would be the same if they were made from fingernail clippings!  

Rhinos have a social order, but spend most of their time alone, because otherwise they would fight for dominance.  However, the children might still stay close to their mother.  When she has a new baby, she will chase the older children away while she takes care of the new one.

We were able to get very close to four rhinos as they were grazing.  They were surprisingly graceful animals, and just magnificent to be near.

Chimp Tracking in the Budongo Forest:

It is amazing how similar chimpanzees are to our own selves!  Their faces and hands are expressive.  They live in groups of 40 to 130 individuals, which proves that they are very intelligent to be able to understand that many inter-relationships.  Another proof of their intelligence is that the babies are still juveniles and stay with their mother until they are about 10 years old, which is about a quarter of their entire lives.  Both of those are about the same proportions as human beings!  The mothers are loving and attentive, and play games with their babies and educate them.  If a mother chimp dies, other chimps in her group will adopt the babies and take care of them as their own.  A mother might have another baby every 2-4 years, and have up to five babies in her lifetime, and she continues to take care of all her different-aged children -- again, strikingly similar to our own biology!  Chimps do not pair up in permanent partnerships, and different male chimps are allowed to present themselves to a female in heat, and then she can chose whom to mate with and in what order.  (Hopefully not an exact human parallel!)  If a male chimp gets mad about being scorned and decides to hit the spurning female instead, the other males in the group will come and rescue her.

Chimps live in large communities, but during the day they go out in different groups to feed, which might only be a few individuals.  They had many different calls to communicate with each other, including drumming on certain trees to report to each other across the forest.  For instance, while we were there, five chimps came across the road, called and discussed with other groups, and soon 18 of them came back to the first side!

Chimps eat primarily fruit and leaves, but also a small percentage of meat.  I had known that, but assumed that it was small rodents or birds.  It turns out that the group we visited really loves to hunt the colobus monkeys, and different groups have complicated and specific ways that they hunt their game and then share it with the group.  For instance, in one group only the hunters get to share the meat, and in another they might share first with the dominant males or the juveniles.  

Chimps are still hunted for their meat, and because African witch doctors like to use their teeth and bones in their potions.  Also, people capture the young chimps as pets or for display.  Several chimps in the non-zoo were captured from the wild and put in small cages in someone's house, and they charged people to come into their living room and see them.

They were beautiful, graceful and powerful animals.  It was a privilege to be able to spend time near them.

Murchison Falls National Park:

This has been a national park for some time, since before the dictatorship years.  But I am not writing a history of the park, but about some of the things that they do to protect and build pride in the animals and the heritage.

For instance, 25% of the park entrance fees goes to the villages in and around the park.  This money is allocated to help them raise livestock, put up water treatment facilities, or whatever other projects the village deems useful.  They do this so the local people will see the park itself as a resource worth protecting, instead of poaching game for meat or for sale, or killing the majestic predators to protect their livestock.  It is a long, slow road to change traditional ways of thinking about the animals.  Like many poor people, it is easy to think about having meat for today and tomorrow, and more difficult to think about preserving income for years and generations.  

They are also trying very hard to education visitors about things like not feeding the animals, taking things out of the park, and littering.  These are VERY difficult concepts for the African mentality!  Every game drive has a ranger accompanying the party, and visitors are not allowed out of the main areas.  They frame this as protection for the visitors, but I suspect it is just as much to protect the animals from human stupidity.  

They have recently discovered oil within the park's boundaries, and we saw a couple of oil wells.  When we asked the ranger about it, she said that she doesn't know if the oil wells will be able to coexist successfully with nature, but that the company did a lot of research and worked very hard with the locals and the experts to try and make it fit in with the park's needs.  In a place like America, this would be expected, but here in a poor country like Uganda, even making the attempt is commendable.

Animals like giraffes have disappeared from most of the other national parks, including Queen Elizabeth which we had visited earlier.  They are working on figuring out how to reintroduce them to their previous native habitats.

There are many National Parks and National Forests in Uganda, and they seem to be working very hard to protect the areas, education the locals, and welcome national and international visitors and give them pride in their natural resources.  Hotels are carefully limited in the parks, and all of the ones we saw or heard about were careful with their resources, blending in to the surroundings, hiring locally, and supporting artisans and workers who helped the park.  For instance, the gift shop in the Budongo Forest sold greeting cards decorated with wire from snares set all over the forest.  The income from projects like this allows the de-snaring projects to continue.

Our safari trip was very expensive by Ugandan standards, and a big investment even by our American ones.  First of all, I felt like it was worth it to give the girls -- and all three children, actually -- pride and joy in Uganda, and to give them a chance to have memories of something very special about their country.  However, as we made our journey, I felt like it was money well spent for other reasons as well.  A poor country like Uganda cannot support its natural resources on its own, like the US does (at least in part).  It is us, the visitors and the people who care, who keep everything going.  Our fees are literally saving the lives of animals and even entire species!  For instance, we paid over $100 for the group of us to go track the rhinos.  You can buy a lot of groceries for that kind of money around here!  Was it worth it for an hour or two?  It was an incredible experience, and I do think we will remember it for a long time, but it is also keeping those 14 incredible animals from being killed for their horns, and hopefully eventually bringing rhinos back into the wild all over Uganda.

And on a final note, just an interesting fact about birds.  Over 1,000 species have been identified in Uganda, including many that live only here, and more are being discovered all the time.  The fascinating part is that this is MORE THAN HALF of all the bird species identified in Africa!

Safari Pictures

I have a lot of pictures from our safari.  Here is the link to some of the best ones of animals and the beautiful scenery.

https://picasaweb.google.com/Christy.Margaret/Animals?authkey=Gv1sRgCKHLyuPZ0-qi4AE

Travel Notes V: Murchison Falls National Park

Travel Notes V: Murchison Falls National Park

A safari van came to pick us up at Budongo Forest for the last phase of our trip.  The really exciting part.... it was a NINE passenger van, with luggage space in back.  You will notice that we have six bottoms between us, and all of our other cars had no more than four spaces for bottoms to go!  It was a relief to let the kids stretch out, wiggle, and nap.  The other exciting thing about it being a genuine safari van was that the top opened up, so when we saw animals we could just stand up and look out the top, with no windows or car parts in the way.  On our final drive out of the park, we were looking for lions, and everyone ended up standing up to scout out the top the whole time.  I guess it's safe to tell Daddy, because no one fell out and died!  They were good hold-er-on-ers.  Except for Buttercup, who was in Gramma's arms, but kept pushing the arms off in order to "me do it," and then declared that she wanted to "go dere" to the other side of the van, sans Gramma!

As we drove into the park, we stopped to hike to the Top of the Falls.  This park is down in a valley and at a lower elevation than most of Uganda, and it is mostly open savanna, so it is MUCH more hot than what we are used to!  Even my little African girls were melting in the sun.  To get to the lookout was a short little hike, but it was steep and it was hot, and we were all flagging.  Hibiscus somehow got the walking stick from one of the guides, and she looked like a little Zulu warrior princess, striding along with her long bare legs and her stick!  She is actually short for her age, but she has that long-limbed build that makes her look tall and elegant.  Gramma had brought sunhats for all the children, which added considerably to the adorable-ness factor as well!

We admired the viewpoints and were headed back when a rainstorm hit us.  And can it ever rain!  It's like a bathtub coming down from the sky, except so nice and cool and refreshing!  I would have actually enjoyed it, except I was worried about the camera not appreciating a bath.  We actually had a terrible time with cameras on this trip.  My husband had brought a new telephoto lens for our DSLR, specifically for animal photos but it also captures the children's faces very well. It took beautiful photos of the rhinos and the children playing on the first day, and then mysteriously stopped working.  Then a couple days later the lens on my parents' point-and-shoot also stopped working, and of course you can't change the lens on that one!  So we started with four camera options, and ended with only two, with our favorite ones going out of service!

Of course, the rainstorm ended right as we got back to the car.  We regrouped and headed back out to the close-to-the-falls viewpoint, and saw a beautiful rainbow.

Then we went up to our camp, which is the only non-five-star accommodation in the park.  The Red Chilli Rest Camp has a large grass-thached restaurant area, room for pitching tents, wall tents, and a few concrete bandas.  We were given the key to a family banda, which has a small common area, two small bedrooms, and a not-very-clean bathroom with a very large shower.  It was perfect for us, and really a relief to not have to go back and forth between two different areas.  However, it turned out that they had told us that six people wouldn't fit in a family banda (despite there being six beds!) and that we needed to book two bandas, but then the manager forgot to give us the key to the second one until we were busy going to bed.  Now, when you are busy putting three wildly over-tired children to bed while organizing all your equipment for the next day and hanging a clothesline around the room for damp clothing, do you really want to go carry half your stuff across the lawn to a different banda?  No, you do not.  Maybe if you have the kind of grandparents who enjoy admiring their cute grandchildren from a distance, but we are very VERY blessed with grandparents who do things like take a shower with the children and get down on her hands and knees so the girls can do her shampooing!   The toilet might not have flushed properly, but we got some really good mileage out of that giant shower area!

Also, the Rest Camp had a laundry station.  After five days of travelling, complete with an unexpected beach, everything we had was REALLY DIRTY.  One of those random things that drives me crazy is dirty clothes. I don't like feeling it on my body, and I don't like seeing it on my children.  I don't mind children (or me) GETTING dirty, but I hate cleaning up but not having clean clothes to put on.  So it was a great relief to fill up some tubs and attack those clothes!  However, it also inspired me to say a very passionate prayer of thanksgiving that our apartment is equipped with a washing machine!  Three children make a LOT of laundry for one mama!  

The camp is just some buildings on a hill in the wilderness, which means that there are all kinds of animals all over.  They seemed much more accustomed to humans than in Budongo Forest.  There were warthogs sleeping under the trees, just feet from the restaurant, the baboons looked even more avaricious and greedy, and apparently hippos like to graze in front of our cabin at night!  Once when I came out of the banda to join the family in the restaurant, I had to wait for a family of warthogs to finish wandering by.  We didn't actually see any hippos, but the possibility of them being there was another excellent reason to not be lodged in separate bandas!  But apparently the hippos and the warthogs keep the grass down, because there was a nice small lawn in front of our patio, and the children had some chances to play velcro-ball and Mother May I, with their wonderful playing grandparents.

The theme of these wilderness resort restaurants seems to be that they offer three options for dinner, and you order your meals and the time you want them ahead of time.  Dining out for days on end, especially with little children, is never easy, but this practice makes it go a lot more smoothly.  It means as soon as you manage to drag your crew to the dining area, the staff brings over your meal within a few minutes.  We just ate everything family style, which meant that we passed the plates around and everyone got some of whatever they wanted.  Including things like two kids hovering over a plate while Emerson carefully picks out the noodles and Hibiscus carefully picks out the vegetables while the parents yell things like "please use your fork!" and are ignored.  Except Hibiscus didn't like the peppers, but instead of avoiding them she speared them and headed them off towards what she deemed a more appreciative mouth, so suddenly there was a sauce-soaked chunk of green pepper hovering over Buttercup's head toward's Bubba's cheek, or diving over all the water glasses at my forehead.

While we're on the subject, I have mentioned that the children are becoming much better behaved and controlled, but they still get the Five-o-Clock Exhaustion.  Especially Hibiscus.  By the end of the day, she is just a walking, manic disaster.  And clumsy!!!  Oh my goodness, is she ever clumsy!  Her fork is on her head and her elbow is in her dinner and her feet are up by her head, and as she walks across the room everything within a ten-foot radius magically falls on the floor or becomes crooked or breaks into a million pieces.  I have read books wherein the heroine is awkward and pathetic as a child -- I think Anne of Green Gables was one -- and how they are always being scolded.  Living with a child like that, I suddenly have an overwhelming empathy for the children AND the scolding parents.  I understand that she has poor motor control and poor impulse control and her brain neurons aren't all connected in the right place, but somewhere in the sea of broken glass and puddles of water and a sibling crying because their dinner ended up on the floor (how did she even get to that side of the table?!), the empathizing-with-Anne-Shirley patience is about worn out.

The next morning we had to get up EVEN EARLIER than our Budongo Forest early, to be across the river soon after dawn.  I will let you imagine our early morning craziness!  

We picked up our pre-ordered breakfast, including two styrofoam cups of delicious tea.  Mmm, drinking tea makes everything better!  Usually our van would drive us the quarter-mile or so to the river, but the car ferry was supposedly grounded so the driver kept the car on the other side, where we needed it.  So we all walked down to the boat yard, where the driver was very surprised and pleased to see us there on time.  Actually, we were 15 minutes after he had asked us to arrive, but still 15 minutes before the ferry left, which is early by African standards!  And then it turned out that the car ferry did leave that morning, but after that we took small boat shuttles.

We went over to the other side and organized ourselves to get into our car.  Gramma had most of our luggage, I had the girls with me, and Bubba was carrying one of our lunch bags in his hand.  Hibiscus called out "look, baboon!" and squashed closer to me, but Bubba didn't hear, and before any of us knew what happened the baboon ran right up to him, grabbed the bag out of his hand and ran off with it.  He quickly tore it open, gobbled up all our chapatis, and ran off with the other packet of food.  Cue the children's pandemonium!!  But they WANTED the chapatis, they wanted to EAT them, they didn't WANT the baboon to get our chapatis!!!  Luckily Gramma had the other bag of food and we still had some breakfast left, because there wasn't anywhere to get any!  But the beloved chapatis were very much gone.  

Now all the children hate baboons passionately, which I am not sure we adults disagree about!  Hibiscus is determined to punish the entire species by not allowing anyone to take their picture any more!  I still had visions of them grabbing the children and plucking their eyes out, which I did not share with the children in question, but they suddenly became pretty good about not wandering far from an adult's side!  Gramma and I took the children off to the potty house a little distance away, and we saw the baboons closing in.  I personally think they were eyeing Buttercup's fat little legs hanging out of the wrap and debating whether it was another Red Chilli breakfast package!  The baboons didn't care when the children screeched at them, but I used my best "bad dog" voice a few times and they slunk away.  When Bubba was with us, he only had to stand up and loom a little bit, and they decided to keep their distance!  It was a relief to know that they really would be intimidated.

Finally we got in the van and drove around looking for animals.  The scenery was also beautiful; a wide savanna, but dotted with trees and bushes, and rolling hills in every direction and blue mountains in the distance.  We were off before 7:30 AM, so it was still nice and cool.

We saw some elephants from a little distance, lots of giraffes close up, and herd after herd of hartebeest, Ugandan kob, and buffalo, and tiny little Oribi and dyker antelope bounding around.  We had interesting discussions about whether they are Uribi or Oridi or something else, and the girls loved the idea of dykers because they thought they were DIAPER antelope, which of course is very funny!!  We ended up at the hippo pool, with an elephant on the far side and lots of birds nearby.  We also saw some beautiful birds, both large spectacular ones, and small colorful, graceful ones.

When we got back across the river to the camp, everyone was very ready for their lunch.  However, they also had too many wiggles and wouldn't settle down for a nap or even a rest, which we thought would be a good idea after waking up before 6.  When does a parents' opinion about sleep have any validity?  We had some tantrums, but no rest.

So before anyone was ready, we headed back down to the water for our river cruise.  This was also a spectacular event, and we sat on the upper deck and saw lots of wildlife come down for a drink, bazillions of hippos relaxing in the river, crocodiles, and all kinds of birds.  The boat went right along the bank most of the time and stopped whenever we were close to something interesting, which was very nice.  The journey ended looking up at the giant and spectacular Murchison Falls.

We also had three children on TOTAL MANIC mode.  The older ones were somewhat entertained for a little while by doing their coloring books and going downstairs to the bathroom, but that did not last for the four-hour trip.  The animals probably merited a .74 second glance apiece, which also did not take up the entire trip!  One very fortuitous activity was the chance to drive the boat, which took up multiple minutes and merited actual smiles.  Gramma was an amazingly patient crayon-hander-out-er and general peace-keeper, who managed to keep all of our belongings from slipping out of little hands into the mighty river below.  Self-selected activities included putting on all the life jackets in sight and laying on the deck (underneath the 37 pairs of adult feet wandering around), bounding around wildly, and climbing the walls.  Literally.  Since the walls were what kept the children from falling into the river, this activity was not adult-endorsed, and we had the one total melt-down of the trip when I had to sit on Hibiscus while she screamed bloody murder, because whenever I got off her she plunged towards the stairs or the river.  I told you we provide entertainment everywhere we go!

And what about Buttercup?  Here, my friends, I tell you: BABYWEARING FOR THE WIN!!!  Her little feet did not even touch the deck for the entire trip, which meant she was the only child who was in no danger of falling overboard.  Since her toddler enthusiasm for "me do it" involves arching herself over backwards and flinging herself around randomly, this was necessary; I think the older children actually understood that falling overboard was highly undesirable and USUALLY made an effort to not do it!  I started Buttercup off in a hip carry where she could look around with me, but actually what she wanted to do was jump around hysterically and grab everything in sight, so we switched to a nice secure back carry, which she successfully could not even kind of jump out of for the entire four hours.  And believe me, she tried!  She wanted to color and she wanted to run around, and for all I know she wanted to go pet a hippo.  Lacking that, she put on sunglasses and she threw them down, she nibbled on cookies and dropped them down my back, she screeched and chattered.  But what was the most fascinating?  What was right in front of her.  She pulled my ponytail and grabbed my ears, and she grabbed my shirt in her little teeth and reared her head around.  It was quite something!  If that sounds annoying, it pretty much was, but we were well compensated by the part about her being out of the way and safe!

Meanwhile, the scenery was beautiful and we got to see some wonderful animals and birds.  We saw some colorful bee-eaters and kingfishers up very close (oh, how I missed my big lens!), but after I checked my birding list from the Queen Elizabeth boat ride, I was a little disappointed that I didn't have any new birds to add to it.  But soon after that discovery, we saw many Yellow Billed Kites circling overhead, and while we watched the falls some rare Rock Pranticles were on the rock next to us, and on the way back we got to see the Saddle Billed Stork, whose amazing beak is the colors of the Ugandan flag.  So my newly developing birding habit was satisfied!

We made it home.  We made it to dinner.  We even made it into bed!  Then we had to get up equally early the next morning in hopes of seeing animals on our way out of the park.

On our second game drive we did not see any new animals, and we didn't spend as much time close up.  We saw some new and beautiful scenery on another side of the park, and the driver said that lions like to hang out in the underbrush in that area.  Apparently the lions didn't feel like hanging around the road that day, which wasn't terribly surprising, given that they have a giant park to meander through and no other guides had seen a lion near the road.  We all had fun hanging out the top of the van looking for them, though!

Once we were out of the park, it was still a long drive home.  We got to see another small waterfall when we crossed back over the Nile, and some more monkeys and baboons, and some small villages with traditional mud and thatched houses.  The driver said the villages were small and spread apart because this area had been decimated by insurgencies and warfare, which has only recently been resolved.

Apparently our whole trip was just the right length!  On our last two journeys, when hearing that a car was coming, the children asked where we were going and cried out that they didn't want to go back to Ggaba, they wanted to see more animals.  However, on our last drive, the children were whining that they were tired and they wanted to go home.

Wish granted!  We made it home and back to our own beds before dark, with time to run around the yard (for the kids) and take a trip to market (for me).  And I had that pleasant sensation of familiarity and relief of being in a place that I knew, with the familiar fields and goats and rutted roads around me.  I had been feeling tired and disconnected about the non-home-ness of my Ugandan home recently, so perhaps the whole trip was worth it just for the sense of "coming home" to my African home.

Kids in Budongo Forest

Travel Notes IV, Budongo + Kids

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!

Budongo Forest, continued

Just about then we did finally find a group of chimps feeding, and we were able to spend the full hour with them.  The guide was very knowledgeable about their behavior and we got to learn about what we were seeing.  The chimps were very calm around us, and sometimes watched us but didn't mind if we talked or moved around.  We saw babies and a huge male moving through the trees.  As I said, I had never sat around and imagined communing with the primates, but it was a magical experience.  They were beautiful and powerful animals, and in so many ways amazingly similar to ourselves, and in other ways so exotic and special.  My neck got very cramped looking up into the trees, but other than that, the hour passed very quickly, and then it was time to walk home.

We had also signed up for a long birding walk.  I thought that two of us could go chimp-ing and two of us could go for a different kind of forest walk, and all three adults could get out into the forest.  Of course I kind of wanted to be the lucky one who got out twice, but I wasn't counting on it.  When we arrived and were preparing the kids for someone leaving for a while, my mother warned them that "Mama would be gone for a little while and Gramma will stay with you, and then later Gramma will be gone and Mama will stay with you."  My father had been pretty frustrated with the kids' (dare I say?) chimp-like behavior, so I agreed and understood that he might not be willing to deal with them by himself for several hours.  However, after the chimp walk, he said his foot was bothering him a little bit, and that he would stay with the kids while we went out.  What a treat for me!

They were being a bit of a handful, but we have all been very pleased and fortunate that it has been pretty ordinary busy, lively kid behavior.  The violent sibling rivalry that dominated the first few weeks has faded into ordinary competitiveness and play, and the tantrums that have overwhelmed our lives for so long have become occasional instead of constant.  What is left is three children who are very lively, active, imaginative, possessive, curious, and very noisy!  Fortunately, we were the only guests staying at the forest lodge that weekend, so there was no one else to bother.  My observation is that the local people have no patience for children being rude or disobedient, but they do not mind children simply acting like children.  I think they all have little children or siblings or cousins at home, and they just smile at the children playing the drums for sale in the gift shop, swinging off the railing, and stopping them to eagerly tell them some disjointed but suddenly important story.

The animals are most active early in the morning and in late afternoon, and in late afternoon our guides seemed to be MIA, so we again woke up before 6 in order to leave by 7, soon after the sun was up.  Fortunately for everyone, the children seemed to have figured out the routine and the disappearing mama after the first time, and they were much calmer for their morning with Bubba.  He was very proud of how much Hibiscus helped get her little sister ready, eating the big hotel breakfast took up a good chunk of the morning, and then the children worked on their projects and played until we got back.

The birding walk was very different from the chimp walk.  I have been really enjoying looking at all the different birds that we see here in Uganda, but this was my first time on a real birding walk.  Apparently I did it all wrong!  Mom brought binoculers for both of us, but we were also supposed to bring our bird identification book, notebook, and pencil to record what we saw.  The ridiculous thing was that I actually had all of these things, but I left them in the room because I didn't think I'd use them in the forest!  Oops!

We walked very slowly, and spent a long time on the road, because we could see the birds in the treetops more easily.  Again, the guide was very knowledgeable, and shared information not only about the birds, but also about her own story and her life (as we asked and asked).  I think she was kind of bemused about how we were totally inexperienced, but then enjoyed showing us things that were totally new to us.  I get the impression that many people stop at the Budongo Forest on their way in or out of the main park to do a chimp walk, but fewer people actually spend time there, and maybe only real birders stop to do a bird walk!  There are a spectacular number of species in the forest, including some that are endemic to only that exact area.  We were fortunate to see the little brown groundbird, Purvells illadopsis, which only lives in this exact forest.  All in all, we saw twelve bird species, and clearly heard and could identify five more.  Some of them were glimpses, but other ones we got to watch through the binoculars for a long time.  Although there are so many birds in the forest, they are very difficult to see because there is so much vegetation.

I think possibly getting into birding could be an interesting hobby.  I am not so naturally interested in all the specific names and details, but I really enjoyed having something else to look for and examine in the woods.  I felt like I am getting to know and be involved with nature much more closely as I learn to know the birds.  In some ways, I enjoy seeing the birds even more than the animals, because they are so prevalent.  We can see and hear birds all the time!

We had another special bonus on our walk.  The day before, we had walked for a couple of hours before we got near to the chimps, and then they were feeding very quietly, but while we were birding we heard the chimps whooping, calling, and drumming right near to us!  They were talking to each other and getting ready to cross the road.  It was amazing to hear all their different sounds and communications so near to us.  Even though we weren't officially tracking the chimps we saw several of them as well, and through most of our walk we could hear them talking in the distance.  I was happy to get to experience a new side of the chimpanzees, and I was even more happy that my mother got a chance to experience them.

Well, since I am not winning any journalism awards for this disjointed entry, I will skip around and describe the lodge a little bit.  We debated whether to spend one night or two, and we were all very happy that we spent two days.  The lodge was tucked into the forest in a very natural and beautiful way.  There was one fairly large building with the kitchen and administration, with local-wood couches set up inside, and dining on the veranda.  As I said, it seemed like most visitors didn't make it past that main area, but then we followed little paths into the woods where the bandas (cabins) were tucked in the trees.  I think there were smaller ones, but we were lodged into one building with a room on either side -- and unfortunately no door in the middle, but we could knock or call back and forth.  The rooms were clean and they were set up to be fairly elegant but also made with natural materials and fitting into the forest environment.

There were nice porches and chairs, but we couldn't take much advantage of them, because of the baboons!  Since the lodge was just in the forest, the animals could come by any time they wanted to.  It sounds like most of the truly dangerous animals, like leopards, are very shy of people, but baboons are real pests and not shy at all.  Apparently they would get into anything we left out and ruin it.  Also, they do eat some meat and love to hunt monkeys, so we didn't want to let any of the children run around alone, especially Buttercup.  The baboons apparently know better than to take on an adult human, but also know that they are bigger and stronger than little children!

There was also a giant row of safari ants making a path between their nest and their food going right across the path near the lodge.  Safari ants are fascinating and cooperative creatures, and it would be interesting to stop and watch them, except they also start crawling up and biting anything that disturbs them, like people-feet.  They don't have venom, so the bites don't continue to be irritated, but it hurts like the dickens when they suddenly start crawling along and biting over and over again!  We all got some bites, but pants tucked into socks and close-toed shoes solved most of the problem.  However, Buttercup kept getting ants mysteriously in her legs or arms that started biting her at totally random times, like the middle of dinner.  We don't know how they got there at all, since Buttercup always got carried over the ants!  It kept our bigger children close-ish to us, though, because they didn't want to go over the ants by themselves, so there was no running off to the cabins when we didn't expect it!

And Now We Are SIx

Grandparents!

The long awaited day has arrived, and yesterday Gramma and Bubba stepped off the airplane and into our arms!  Everyone is full of excitement and love.  It is exactly two months from the girls' first night in our home.

Hibiscus was proud of herself for rolling one of the giant suitcases to the car and she's been following Gramma around like a little bug.  Gramma and Bubba are pleasantly surprised that they haven't seen any of the disastrous behavior they had been expecting!  Her devotion opens the opportunity for Gramma to teach her all kinds of new things, while she listens attentively and adoringly.  Some of these are fun bonuses like what the suits on cards are called, and some of them are things like some table manners and how to clean yourself properly, that I haven't felt ready to embark upon with her.  I've felt like our relationship has too many things that I'm telling her to do, that that my position is to hold the boundaries of appropriate behavior absolutely firm.  I haven't wanted to push into telling her to do things that I'm not ready to fight about, but now she has a totally new relationship and has emotional room to listen and imitate.

Buttercup was ready to sit on Gramma's lap on the car ride home, and today she's following everyone around and bouncing up and down, and winning hearts with her general adorableness.  I still can't believe this is the passive, withdrawn, giant-bellied shell of a child I met a few months ago!  Her grandparents are impressed by her ability to imitate everything, her tiny little precise drawings, and most of all, her vast repertoire of songs and lyrics.

Emerson has fallen right back into his loving relationship with his grandparents, but they've noticed some new confidence and maturity.  Gramma was amazed that he let her wash his hair without screaming, and this morning he woke up and tumbled right into their bed, instead of wanting to see them but waiting at the door.  However, they don't notice that he's gotten any bigger!

And as for me -- I just can't explain how nice it is to have a normal conversation, in normal English!  (I know I should be open-minded, and that African English is a genuine dialect, but sometimes it jars my ears as just plain WRONG!)  And when I made lunch, Gramma spelled me toasting the bread while I ate mine, and then Bubba cut the watermelon up.  Those little things are so amazing -- I could sit down to eat and converse!  And it's a relief to talk about the girls knowing that our conversation are natural and private.  Big things seem smaller when you can laugh about them a little!

And the stuff.... oh my, those wonderful suitcases full of STUFF!!  Bubba couldn't believe that we needed all this -- and okay, I can admit that some of it isn't "need."  But I packed for a two-month trip almost a year ago (when we thought we were leaving in February) and our normal things are wearing thin.  Literally.  The fabric on all three of my wear-able skirts is disintegrating, the medical kit is getting used up, Buttercup is exploding out of the clothes that used to fit, the art supplies are getting too sparse to share three ways. And as for the plastic golf kit they are currently batting around the lawn.... yes, getting three children to play outside is a NEED!

Also, cheese.  Chocolate chips.  Baking pans.  Almonds.  ALMONDS!!!!  I could hardly stop nibbling them last night, except I didn't want to nibble them up.  I really, REALLY miss tree nuts, and I also miss the healthy protein and fat they add to our diet.  My parents have noticed that I'm skinnier than I used to be, too... eating all vegetables and rice will do that to a person!  

And more wraps!  With Monday's bonanza they are all arriving at once, which wasn't really the plan, but after the post office fiasco I think in-a-suitcase is by far the best point of entry!  Two of them I ordered and had shipped, and I'm really relieved to add a long wrap and a short one to my stash, and then there are two more that an on-line friend is loaning to me.  All wraps have very different wearing qualities, depending on how they are woven and what the materials are -- some are bouncey, some are strong, some are hot, some are thin, some are cushy on the shoulders -- and getting to trade and borrow wraps is one of those little treats that I really miss, being over here.  It will be such fun to get to try out a couple unique wraps for a couple of weeks, and it also feels loving and special that someone carefully picked these out knowing my needs and preferences!  I will get to wrap love and attention from home all around myself every day, like a wonderful hug that I can hold and hold.

Bedtime.  I've been longing for some help at bedtime for so long, apparently, that I put my help out of business!  By now I have bedtime down to something between a science and a military drill, although if you were watching the naked kids swing off the bedposts and land on their faces on the other mattress, screaming with laughter and egging each other on, it probably wouldn't put you immediately in mind of the military!  Tooth-brushing from youngest to oldest, baths from oldest to youngest (but Buttercup's bath in the morning), Emerson's hair every other night, put your pajamas under your pillow and find them yourself, boom-boom get Buttercup ready and pop her into the wrap.  We turn on and off certain lights at certain times, the kids lay in the same places to read books, and I even read the books they pick out in the same order each night (Buttercup first, Emerson last, because he's in the middle by the other two systems!).  I didn't even know what to do with the extra hands!  Luckily, my mother is a very mom-ish sort of grandmother, and she figured it out herself.  She bathed the older kids and helped with their pajamas, which I usually make them do themselves.  They both reveled in the extra attention and touches.  Extra touches is more than just a bonus right no, for these emotionally raw children, and Buttercup spending hours a day in a wrap is the only one getting "filled up" with loving touch.

Adventure.  Since Daddy left, I've barely taken the big kids out of Ggaba!  In that first week, we hired a car to get paperwork and went to the swimming pool once, but since they started school we have just been going to school and back, from a combination of their exhaustion and my own.  But I want the children to learn to love their native (or newly adopted) country, and they'll see more to love if they get to see something at all!  We are planning some small trips to cultural sites and the zoo and a big trip to a National Park.  I was feeling a little luke-warm about seeing sites that I visited with Emerson, and again when my husband was here, for the third time, and then I remembered how little children learn by repetition.  You see new places on vacation once, but you see your own local sites over and over again, so we can afford to have the Kabaka's palace and the downtown gardens become repetitive.

And we're planning a big safari!  We'll go to Murchison Falls, which is the other major park, and spend a couple days in the nearest town, a couple days in the forest reserve, and a couple days in the savannah park near the waterfalls.  (It's actually not really what I would think of as a "safari," but that's what all the people call it here.)  It will be expensive and complicated, but I think it will be worth it.  The last trip made a big impression on the children, and they still pretend to be lions and point out all the birds they see every day ("look at the blue one! take a picture, Mama, get the camera right now!" for an ordinary small bird at ten yards - but it is pretty!).  The grandeur of the landscape and the animals deeply touched all three children.  As we drove through the rolling hills, Hibiscus looked out the window and exclaimed "WON-dah-fulll!", which was the one English word of beauty she had at the time, her whole body quivering and her face alight.  

One day, when the girls are struggling with their identity and feeling worried or ashamed about "being different" in so many ways, I want them to have memories of these spectacular green terraced hills and majestic lions in the grass; and not just the slums of Bbunga and being hungry, the trash in the streets and getting chased by stray dogs.  Some people spend huge amounts of money and time to come all the way here, and I want the children to have memories of the Uganda that draws them.  

And meanwhile, the children get to be surrounded by love, love, love!  Three adults for three children -- what luxury!  And they get to hear more language, get different explanations for their questions, learn some things that I wouldn't bother to teach, and watch some normal, healthy adult interactions.  Being alone with three children in a foreign country is hard for me, but this is a hard time in each of their lives, too.  They each have major changes and major challenges in their lives right now, not just in our family but in language and school relationships and physical expectations.  For each of them the new expectations are a little different, but they are all dramatic.  I can't buffer them from very much, and I can't even give them the space and quiet time to be able to talk about it all.

I have never seen more clearly how children absolutely NEED love and attention in order to grow and thrive -- Buttercup didn't start to gain back her delayed two years when she started getting food, she started to develop physically and mentally when she got LOVE.  I think I have enough love and attention to give the children what they NEED right now, but they still have of extra, lonely space in their hearts.  

And all of those little hearts are figuratively sniffing the air.... and leading their little bodies straight into the arms of some grandparently love!!