Work, Travel, Repeat

So again, I apologize for my blogging absence. I’ve been working a lot, entertaining friends and colleagues, and working some more. And once it’s been a while, it’s hard to get back into blogging because I feel that I have so much to catch you up on. But it’s a bad excuse, and I’ll be better… I promise. Anyway, because it’s been so long, this blog is going to be a bit of a brain dump, so sorry for the lack of creativity and cute stories—you’ll get the facts and you’ll like it. ;)

Anyway, life has been good. Busy, but really good. Two weeks ago my colleagues from Harvard were in town, so after working our little behinds off for a week, we relaxed a bit by traveling to Kibale National Forest in Western Uganda. Kibale is a rainforest dominated by primates. While the forest has 13 varieties of monkeys, the star attraction are the common chimpanzees. We spent one morning tracking these creatures, and were not disappointed. Though my neck was a bit sore from looking up in the canopy all morning, it was worth it to see these ADORABLE and funny creatures in their habitat. Best part was Jillian getting pooped on, but that’s a story for another time. Check out some photos courtesy of Jillian my coworker who has a far better camera than I…

After returning from Kibale, I worked like crazy for a week until my friend Gwen from grad school arrived! Gwen is working as a community development specialist in Afghanistan and therefore is required to take R&R (rest and relaxation) in region every couple of months. So lucky enough for me, she decided to rest and relax in Uganda!

We had a great time. After relaxing and seeing Kampala for a few days, we headed east to Jinja to raft the source of the Nile. Now I have been rafting on several occasions in Colorado, but it was NOTHING compared to this rafting. There were a few times where all I could see was a wall of water and I was pretty sure I was going to wash up in Ethiopia or Egypt somewhere. Fortunately between death-defying waterfalls and breathing in half of the Nile, there were some nice calm places where we drifted along lazily past Ugandans washing their clothes and probably wondering why the mzungus were so crazy as to attempt such a river in such a small rubber boat. We also got to see some beautiful birdlife and on one occasion, an adorable river otter! Luckily we didn’t see any of the Nile’s more dangerous residents—the hippos or crocs…

After surviving the Nile, Gwen and I headed up to Murchison Falls National Park, where we went on a game drive and saw tons of antelope, hartebeest, giraffes, warthogs, cape buffalo, monkeys, and elephants (but unfortunately only from a distance). I also saw a pack of lions sunbathing in the grass, but everyone else in my car (and the park for that matter) maintains that it was in fact a lion-shaped termite mound. Whatever, it was a lion to me! After the game drive we hopped on a boat to check out the park’s river residents. We saw HUNDREDS of hippos and several frighteningly large crocodiles (one in particular that was about 15 ft long—eek!) We also cruised to the bottom of Murchison Falls, which is actually two lovely waterfalls that come together in a notch in the rocks and let loose into the Nile. Really spectacular!

The next morning we awoke early to head off on a hike around the top of the falls, which was even more gorgeous than the bottom. After jumping around on the rocks for a bit, we loaded up and headed back to Kampala, stopping briefly for lunch and a few impromptu electricity interviews with local business owners in Masindi (apparently I never stop working…)

After returning to Kampala, we spent a few days relaxing and enjoying Kampala’s many eateries. After attending Jillian’s cleverly named Kampala-ween party (as Sarah and Bristol Palin--I was Bristol), Gwen returned to Afghanistan. I miss her already, but had a great time and lots of fun memories (and pictures!).

For more pics from our adventures, see http://picasaweb.google.com/courtneywbabcock13/GwenRaftingAndMurchisonFalls#