Anita's Introduction and Coming Home

Anita’s Introduction and Give-Away happened Friday and the wedding on Saturday. It was all beautiful. The Introduction is the most traditional part and went roughly as follows: A group of female relatives of the bride presented themselves to the groom’s family. The family looks for the bride, saying “Where is Anita?”. In this case, the group answered, “Maybe she’s gone to fetch firewood”. They are given an envelope of money and leave. The next group of female relatives presented themselves with firewood- but still not with the bride the groom’s family is looking for. Having said Anita might be fetching water and receiving the envelope, they left and the next group came back with calabashes. Ah, but still no Anita. Finally, they all came back with Anita. The groom’s family recognized her. Anita then had to find the groom among the relatives. She found him!

The Give-Away happened privately- a negotiation between two families for the bride price. And the wedding and reception were joyful- with a bubble machine, sparklers, confetti, and fireworks in the flowers in addition to the traditional dancers, singing preacher, and a hip-hop dancer.

Yesterday was my good-bye pig roast. (done, as all things here, with the aid of google and jerry rigging). We found a pig in the village last week and brought it home to the compound. There were some rough spots with the three guard dogs. I designed a rotisserie and had it welded. The project gardener kindly slaughtered and shaved it. And, mostly, the process went fine.

So I have said many good-byes and am on my way home. Unless something unexpected happens, this is my last blog post. Thanks for your interest! The photos are of the women with calabashes, Anita finding her groom, dancers at the reception, and Anita and Amos. (I’m sparing you photos of the pig.)

Shared Solar

Electricity is slowly, slowly coming to Ruhiira. Due to funding bureaucracy, the plan to connect Ruhiira to the Ugandan grid has been put off. But in the meantime, a shared solar project has gone up. Most of the time, solar power requires a considerable up-front investment for individual solar panels. This project is similar to connecting to the electric company, then paying as you go. A small building in the village has several large solar panels and good batteries to store the energy. About 20 homes or businesses can then be hooked up. To use the system, consumers buy scratch cards that have code numbers on them; they then dial into an SMS system using a cell phone and put the number in. (This is the way cell phone airtime and internet time/data is done here- you pay prior to use using scratch cards and once your credit is gone, the cell phone or internet stops working.) As you can imagine, electricity use is MUCH lower in the village than in the US. There may be one or two high efficiency bulbs and a socket for cell phone- no refrigerator, dishwasher, air conditioner, etc., etc. (and the guy who wanted to hook up 125 watt speakers was told no.) So people may buy $1-$2 of electricity at a time; $1 would buy about 10 days of a single 8 watt light bulb shining 3 hours per night. The photos are of the panels, Innocent, the onsite supervisor, and the first test run of the system. A website that shows more photos of Ruhiira with the lights on is http://sharedsolar.mech.columbia.edu/

couldn't resist one more trip to Mgahinga

Despite just having made the 5-6 hour trip to Mgahinga National Park 2 weeks ago to track gorillas, I couldn't resist going back one more time. The inn there, a bed and breakfast called Traveler's Rest is SO inviting that staying there was half the reason for the trip. (Diane Fossey used to stay there sometimes.) On arrival, nasturtium petals are arranged on the towels and pillow- which I now believe in the definition of luxury. There's a beautiful garden with full views of the volcanoes and the cooking is great (suffice it to say that multi-course dinners with strawberry crumble for desert are rare here).

And then there's the park. The Virunga Massive is a chain of 7 dormant volcanoes, with 3 in Uganda. The borders of Uganda, Rwanda, and Congo meet here so at the top of Muhavura Volcano it's possible to plant an extremity in 3 different countries. The tops of the two other Ugandan volcanoes mark the border between Rwanda and Uganda. I had not planned to climb any of the volcanoes- I wasn't sure I could do it- but in the spirit of group cooperation with my travel partners we compromised on climbing the lowest, Mount Gahinga. Gahinga means 'pile of stones' and refers to its resemblance to the many piles of volcanic rocks in the surrounding fields. We were prepared for rain since the tops of the volcanoes are usually covered with clouds and rain falls throughout the year, but it was a gorgeous day. Gahinga is 11, 400 feet above sea level and we started the hike at 7500 feet. 58% of the small Mgahinga Park is covered by virgin bamboo forest so we walked though dense bamboo at the base. Bamboo stops growing at 10,000 feet and it was replaced by senecio trees, giant lobelia, and mountain heather. We walked 3 1/2 hours up and 2 hours down- some of the walk was steady uphill; other spots were stair-like; and then there were the ladders. The frequent ladders were made by cross branches nailed to uprights. I did many of them on all fours and on the way down did most backwards. At the top of the volcano was a 'crater swamp' which was otherworldly. Every 5 minutes or so a cloud would blow through and obscure the swamp, then it would pass and the swamp would reappear. The photos are of Mount Gahinga on the right and Mount Muhavura on the left (where the gorillas are) with Jackson in the foreground with his AK-47 in the event of aggressive animals, descending through the bamboo forest, and the crater swamp.

Tracking mountain gorillas

First the downside- the permits are really expensive and there’s been criticism of this type of tourism as gorillas can catch human disease.


Now the upside- I decided to see mountain gorillas before leaving Uganda and am grateful for the experience. Mountain gorillas -about 800 in the world- are found only in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in Uganda and in the Virunga volcano (dormant) range, which sits on the borders of Uganda, Rwanda, and Democratic Republic of Congo. These are the gorillas that Diane Fossey studied. The national parks in Rwanda and Uganda (DRC is not a tourist destination) sell eight permits per day to see each family. We went to Mgahinga National Park in the Virunga volcano range. Tracking is an overstatement (though that’s what my official certificate says!). There are trackers who go out early in the morning and go back to a camp in the evening and they know roughly where the gorillas are. It’s rainy season and the volcanoes are often shrouded in mist even on otherwise clear days so we were fortunate to have a beautiful, sunny day. We climbed to 9000 feet before crashing though the forest to find the gorillas. The gorillas have been habituated since 1994, meaning that humans have been approaching them daily since that time (not closer than 21 feet). The tracker makes a sound like clearing his throat to alert the gorillas that we’re approaching but otherwise there’s no interaction; the gorillas ignore us as a non-threat. This family is made up of 3 male silverbacks, 2 babies, and 4 females and they chose to spend most of the one hour we were allowed to stay in a thicket. We were told that the silverback leader had fought the oldest silverback for dominance and won but the older male was allowed to stay with the group. The dense underbrush and sunny day (us in the sun, them in the shade) made photos tough though, thankfully, the people I was with were undaunted in their photo-taking and gave me theirs. The adults were mostly munching vegetation though periodically cracked off large tree branches to ‘play’. The babies, 10 and 12 months, were more active, climbing bamboo trees and then falling out as their weight broke branches.