Drew's Uganda Adventure - Part 3 of 3

Click here for more photos from Drew's time in Uganda - teaching, spending time with members of the Terrewode community, and enjoying the local culture and flavors. 

Drew's Uganda Adventure - Part 2

Click here for more photos from Drew's time in rural Bululu, Uganda, working with Terrewode. This album includes the group from OSU learning to make paper beads and stuffed animals, the items Terrewode sells to help support its operations. Drew and his fellow volunteers also organized camps for kids from nearby schools. There are still more photos to come. 

1st Day of Senior Year

And so it begins... their last year of high school. 

Masquerade Night at The Escape

Emily and some friends are off to The Escape to dance the night away before alarm clocks and school bells kick-in on Monday.  Click here for photos. 

Oneonta Gorge

To commemorate the last weekend before school starts for the twins (heavy sigh) we hiked in the Oneonta Gorge, which included a trip to Triple Falls, pictured above, as well as Oneonta Falls. Click here for photos.

The hike to Oneonta was a short one but required climbing over the pile of logs pictured below, then following a creek bed for about 1/2 mile, through water ranging from ankle to chest deep. 

Drew's Uganda Adventure - Part 1

Murchison Falls pictured above is one of the places Drew has visited while in Uganda with fellow OSU entrepreneurship club students who are working with the non-profit Terrewode. 

Click here for more photos. He has two more weeks in Kampala, so there will be more to come when he has reliable WiFi and/or after he returns to Portland. 

Click here for a video documentary from last year's OSU trip. The program Drew is a part of has made a multi-year commitment to help Terrewode with business development. 

Here are some excerpts from his travel journal:

Entry 1... The trip started off with grilled fish (the whole fish) and ginger soda on the shores of Lake Victoria shortly after arriving at the airport. After checking out the lake and walking briefly we went further into Entebbe to find some pool to play. We found a nice bar with a table and after searching for 10 minutes and trying to get the white ball unstuck, we proceeded to play pool - some by the light and some by the lights of our phone flashlights balanced atop the regular light because the power went out.

Once picking up Calvin at the airport just after dark we headed for Kampala where the rest of the group was staying. We arrived an hour or so later after widely weaving through the dusty dirt roads and streets of Kampala, only seeming like we were going to get in a dozen or more accidents (note: Jeff is a Mad Man on the road). I will say though driving like that with Jeff made things a lot more interesting than US driving, if we drove like that back home we would not have people falling asleep at the wheel for sure.

We spent the night in Kampala only to wake up and spend the entire next day traveling to Paraa Resort Lodge, where we were going on a Safari. We had a really great time taking many tours of the park and a nice boat ride up the Nile seeing hippo, crocodiles, and elephants along the way.

It was very interesting to start the trip off with the Safari. The Safari as part of this trip adds to the overall cultural experience  we get while in country. While in country we experience the two different worlds of Uganda, the tourist world and the authentic Uganda in Kampala and the Rural Villages.

The resort world and the authentic view of the country contrast each other and provide a greater understanding and appreciation for the place we are in. If the resort life was all you saw you would leave with an idea that Uganda was right out of Tarzan and old Victorian Africa, and if the authentic Uganda was all you saw you might leave with the idea that it was just poor and impoverished. But with both you see the the country more fully and while getting to know the people you understand they are happy and lively people.

Entry 2... Now that we have left the safari and entered the rural part of the country out in Bululu, things have both slowed down and sped up. The work has become more a part of our everyday. It has started to feel like class a bit (I forgot I was getting credit for this.) Uganda has its own sense of time and everything is at a slower pace. We still wake up early but when we are suppose to leave is usually two or three hours after the set time.

Yesterday with the kids' camp we were suppose to be meeting the kids at 8, and the kids were supposed to be picked up at 7. It was 7:45 when the driver left the compound. It was 9 when we started walking to the school. The whole thing runs on Ugandan time. The kids' camp was amazing - so many little kids running all over the place. We played games, read them books, and played soccer. However soccer with 60 Ugandan Kids is basically just one ball and 60kids running until they all pass out from running so much.

I was drawn to and connected with this one kid Mukisa who was the only kid who was in a wheel chair from the 4 schools.  We couldn't talk much past how are you? and how old are you? But we shared the day together and ate with each other. It was very interesting to think about how hard it must be for a kid like Mukisa because of his condition. Getting around on all of these dirt roads, and getting to school every day. His wheel chair was built to last but the wheels had both fallen a part a bit, one with a very flat tire and the other the rim packed with dirt from the road from pushing him to and from.

We also attended a church service in the local community, which was very lively and an interesting cultural experience. We were welcomed very warmly with music and the choir. The service consisted of two sermons one in English and the other which we attended was spoken in Kuman the local language. There was an auction for goods that the community brought. The purpose was to make some money for the church and spread the goods people had around the community for those lacking those goods. We were warmly welcomed to the community. It is things like this that are making me feel more connected to the people.

Weekend in Leavenworth, WA

We just finished a long-weekend home exchange in Leavenworth, WA. It was our first trip to this Bavarian Village, just east of Steven's Pass, along the Wenatchee River.  We were in the water most of the weekend, but still managed a few photos, including some from a pit-stop at Mt. St. Helens. We floated the rapids on the Wenatchee River through Leavenworth on Saturday, then visited Lake Wenatchee near Plain, WA, on Sunday to float and paddle board. 

This is Jake preparing for our big float down the Wenatchee...