Thankfulness

Thankfulness.

It has been popular among some of my Facebook friends, especially at my church, to do a post about something they are thankful for each day of November, as a spiritual practice.  I believe deeply in the spiritual practice of thankfulness, and it's something that I try to incorporate into our daily family life.  I meant to do the "30 Days of Thankfulness" challenge, but clearly I am mildly organizationally challenged, and have not gotten to posting on Facebook each day.  But every time I see the posts it reminds me to say my own little prayer of joy, and I wanted to write down some of the things I think about.  Writing in general is about working through our challenges, and I hope by writing this blog I can tell stories that encourage others to work through their challenges as well.  But it is also important to stop and write down the words of strength, blessing, and power.

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I am thankful to live in this place in the world.  I am thankful for the beauty that God creates around me each day.  God made beauty everywhere in the world, and I am thankful for that as well, but I am glad that fate set me down in this place.  I love watching the seasons change; I love that I don't know what the weather will be next; I love our long gardening season; I love the cool and rainy days as much as the sunny and inviting ones.  The differences make me more grateful for everything.  In this place in the world, I am thankful to be within a few hours' drive of the ocean, the mountains, and the high desert.  I love each of these places for their own reasons.  I am thankful that we can camp in the summer and explore more of our world.  I am thankful that there are so many places to explore and discover within driving distance of our home.  And this moment, I am thankful for the beauty of the leaves, and the yellow beech tree outside my bedroom window.  And the icicles that hung off each leaf, transforming the landscape, which we were blessed with yesterday.

I am thankful for the community where we live, as well.  I am thankful for my individual friends, and also our church home, where I feel involved and welcome.  I am thankful for all the ways and places that embrace my children and their needs: I feel incredibly blessed to have a school that fits their unique educational needs, and moreover is loving and supportive to them as human beings -- all of which, AND they are well organized!  I am thankful for our local support group for adoptive families.  I am thankful that we have options for classes and learning for our children: I am thankful that we can choose a dance studio based on positives, not just finding one that doesn't play skanky music for little girls; I am thankful that we have options to choose horse riding, gymnastics, and other opportunities for the children to exercise their bodies and minds.  I am also thankful for the professionals in our community.  I am thankful that we have a pediatrician who is respectful of my choices as a mother; I am thankful that we can find counseling and therapy solutions that are appropriate to help our children work through their challenges.

I am thankful for the nature all around us.  I am thankful that I can take the dogs out on the trails near our house, and that those trails are surrounded by trees, and mist, and the blooming and fading flowers of the different seasons.  I love the trilliums and trout lilies which appear for only a few weeks in the early spring; every year they are like a special treat from nowhere, and they remind me both that life is fleeting and precious, and also amaze me with how well they are adapted to live and thrive in such a specific environment.  I am thankful for the orchards and farms near our home, and that we can eat fresh produce grown from our own fertile land.  Nature truly is a place of calm that restores our souls.

I am thankful for the opportunity to have lived in different places in the world.  I have lived on different sides of America, and I have lived for at least some time on three different continents.  I have learned and grown with each new place, and the chance to live in other areas has given me a deeper appreciation and joy for being where I am now.

I especially am thankful for the chance to live in Uganda.  I never planned on it, and I might not have made the choice to spend so long there if I had known what it would entail.  But no amount of reading or spending time simply traveling or visiting can give you the same deep appreciation of a new place, than truly committing yourself to a new place.  It was difficult to be away from my own culture, but when my only associates were Ugandans, I learned a deeper level of friendship.  When I close my eyes, I can still feel the golden warmth on my skin, still taste the red dirt in the air, the constant smells and sounds that are so different from our polite and purifed life in America.  I am thankful to have made some part of Africa, into some part of me.

I am thankful for so many of the small things around my home, all the things of beauty and memory.  I am thankful for my bed which is both pleasant to look at and comfortable.  I am thankful for the antique *** in the dining room, which is useful, lovely, and gives a special feeling to our home.  I am thankful for the pictures of my family on the walls, and holding tight to each little memory.  I am thankful for the mementos of our travels and our special times together: a plate from Italy, boats and drums representing different cultures.  I am thankful for our painted walls, which are beautiful, and which I created in the time before I had children, when I was imagining a house full of children.

I am thankful for clothes to wear, which make me feel both pretty and confident.  I used to try to move beyond trying to be pretty, but as I have learned more honestly to assess myself, I have become a more complete person by accepting my face, my body, and my desire to feel good about myself.  I am thankful for friends and for systems that have helped me figure out what to wear to feel good about myself, and I am thankful for plenty of second-hand stores in town so I can have the fun of shopping without investing too much money in clothes!  I am also thankful for my children's clothes.  They are warm, comfortable, and help them feel attractive and joyful in their bodies -- also I am thankful for the big consignment sales in our community which allow me to do a season's worth of children's shopping at one time, and for a very reasonable price!  I hope that these tools, both the outer accoutrements and the inner wisdom that I am gaining, will help me to teach my children about loving and taking care of their bodies.  I hope to be able to teach my daughters to honor and respect their physical selves, and my son to be able to identify and be drawn to the way inner beauty reflects on the outside of a woman.  I am grateful for a community of women, both near and far, who are supporting my journey towards beauty; both those who advise me, and some wonderful women of color who have stepped up to offer special words of encouragement to my daughters.

I am thankful to be an American.  I spent many years disappointed in many things about my country, or envious of the history and culture of other countries.  I think much of that is youthful idealism, and that over-idealizing any country does not help to work to improve it.  But going through the process of adoption helped me to focus on what I really appreciate: our country is  made up of so many different kinds of people, from many backgrounds, many colors, many cultures, many thought processes.  Our country is still more welcoming than many to new immigrants who come to appreciate the opportunities we have to offer, and as they come they strengthen America and give so many opportunities to learn and grow to those of us who already live here.

I am thankful for our health.  Although each of us in our family has one or two weaknesses in our body, they do not interfere with our daily lives.  We are each strong enough to go hiking, to hug each other and run and create.  We have not been struck with any serious illness, and if one of us were, I am also deeply thankful for the medical care to which we have access.  There are serious problems and stressors with medical care (and the opportunity to access it) in America, but at least it is present.  And many doctors, nurses, and other people involved in medicine are truly helpful and doing their best to connect as human beings and help us be well.


And at this point, I could go on and on and on.... each time I think about something that I am thankful for, it reminds me of something else, and I look around and think of something else.  I am thankful the education and opportunities I have; I am thankful for the people who have raised me or who affected me in my youth; I am thankful for our warm home and running water; I am thankful for small things in life and ones so large I know I cannot fully comprehend them.  I don't think anyone will keep reading if I keep writing all night long!  But every single one of these items that I mentioned are things that I think about every day -- and I do mean every day.  Maybe on one day I won't think so hard about being an American and another day I might not think quite so hard about my furniture, but my daily litany of thankfulness is too long to write down.

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So I will end with the bedrocks of thankfulness.

I am thankful that we have enough money to make choices.  I recognize that so many of the other blessings come from the power that power.  Yes, there are many blessings that are free -- but the space and mental freedom to enjoy them is directly related to having enough money to first enjoy security.  We still have to worry about where we are going to spend our money, or how to plan for things in the future, but I know it is such an incredible blessing, that we know for sure that we have the basics in our lives: food, shelter, transportation.  And that because we are secure in those things, all of us -- children and adults -- can dedicate our energy to higher mental and emotional processes.
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I am thankful for my family.  Every single day, so many times a day, I look around at each of them and I am so thankful to have each of them around me.  I am thankful for my cat, KC, whose fur is so soft.  I am thankful for my dogs, their unwavering devotion and how they inspire me to be outside and active every day.  I would not take care of myself nearly so well if they weren't there to remind me, and I don't need to sigh about my babies growing up and away from me when my dogs are happy to fill that role for the rest of my life.

I am thankful for Sunflower, who made me into a mother.  I don't think I ever would have gone on the journey I have been through since, if it weren't for that love that has transformed me.

I am thankful for Buttercup, and her sweetness and gentle personality.  I am daily amazed how different she is from the other children, and she fills a unique role in our family.

I am thankful for Hibiscus.  Every day with her is full of challenges, but she shines with such a brilliant light.  It is my honor to be her mother, and have the chance to guide her through her life.

I am thankful for my husband.  We are similar and different enough to compliment and balance each other.  I am thankful for the times when he supports me and we work as a team to run our household and raise our family, and I am thankful for the times when we are able to sit down and talk, and we always have new things to say to each other.  And I look back and forward with thankfulness at the trips we have shared and the new experiences in our future!  As much as my children take my time, energy, and physical love, my marriage and my husband is the heart of my family.  I am thankful to have such a good life partner, and that our love keeps growing and deepening as the years pass.

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And I am thankful for God and the divine, and that every day and every year offers the chance to deepen my understanding and faith.  I would not have enough strength or courage to continue every day without knowing that some One much deeper is sustaining me.  When I am worn out and frustrated, and yet still find patience and love for my children, it is because He is pouring it through me.  I can manage to see this difficult journey of motherhood -- and personhood -- with fulfillment and joy, because through God I see it as a journey and not a destination.  I do not expect myself to be perfect already, because I know my entire life is a journey towards the "me" that God has dreamed for me.  I can take a deep breath and forgive myself at the end of the day, because I know that God has forgiven me first.

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While writing this, I keep thinking of more things for which I am thankful.  I remember them and am joyful in my life every single day.

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.