Kasese

We got here on Saturday night, and the next morning, we went on what was easily the best hike of my life. There are a ton of mountains here in western Uganda, and we got to hike along a river that runs through some of them. We started the hike in this one village, toured part of their hydroelectric power set up (which reminded me of a log flume), crossed a wood plank bridge, then set out on our journey up/along the mountain. We walked through the open forest first, which consisted of a bunch of banana and sugar cane farms mostly. And then came the fun part—the thick forest :) I literally felt like I was climbing through a jungle. The path got really narrow and really steep at some points to the point where we had to climb down a big drop off at one point. We were ducking under brush and balancing on logs as we walked over small streams. And speaking of, the river was amazing! It was huge and had a lot of momentum because it was coming from high up in the mountains. At one point, we could look up to the top of the mountains in the distance and see the top of the river. I think it’s all fed by snow melt—yes, there is snow in Africa—it’s just a 9 days hike up the mountains. The path passed right by the river at one point, so we all jumped in, hopping from rock to rock and trying not to get caught in the current—even though Ben nearly got sucked downstream :P We continued our hike up the mountains, and right at the point where the path started to loop back is where things started to get interesting. We were all being really quiet as per our guide’s instructions because we were all hoping to see monkeys, but that lasted all of about 5 minutes. The ground started getting really soft, and while Muna, our driver, managed to hop from log to log and stayed completely clean, the rest of us were not so coordinated. We ended up half way up to our shins in dirt and mud :P All the girls were wearing toms, mind you. We had no idea we were going on a hike, so I left my good shoes in Kigali. We were able to wash off in the streams we came across, but we only got dirtier as we went along. Once we got back into the open forest, the path really narrowed down, and sometimes, the path would give way and we’d nearly fall off the mountain. Fun times :) Once we got back to the bridge, we stopped off to wash our shoes. Overall, the hike was amazing :)

On Monday, we went to go visit another microfinance institution (except this one actually supported health, training, and other development skills). We talked with some of the employees first, and then we went out to a village to meet with a SACCO (a group of people that collectively takes out a loan) of women who each had different businesses (selling tomatoes, watermelon, cassava, etc.). We met with them in the space between two buildings. The ground was hard packed dirt, and we sat on sacks in a circle. There were about twenty or thirty of them, and they told us about the health and business trainings they received, their struggles, and their successes. The head of the microfinance institution was an interesting guy. At first he seemed like we were wasting his time, and then once we got to the village, he started drilling the women on their loans, businesses, practices, etc. like he was preparing them for a test. It was odd/entertaining.

The last excursion we had was to a co-op of farmers. They took us to go visit a cotton factory and a cotton farmer. The factory was pretty awesome. There are stray pieces of cotton all over the city because it’s a big industry in the area and there are constantly trucks driving by piled high with sacks of cotton. Many of them end up at this factory where the cotton is deseeded and compressed for sale. We passed by several barns spilling over with cotton on our way to the factory building. Inside the factory, there was this huge machine with several inputs where women were putting in the unprocessed cotton where it was then deseeded and combed, in a way, then dropped onto this conveyer belt where it was then sent to a compacter, then bound and bagged for sale. We all got to drop a bunch of cotton into the machine and see the clean cotton come out. It was pretty cool. I kept a little of it and made it into a braid :) Next, we went to the cotton field and heard the farmers talk about the cotton farming business, which seemed super unpredictable and occasionally profitable. And we all clandestinely (or not so clandestinely) went cotton picking. Deseeding cotton by hand proved rather entertaining for otherwise boring car ride. It also reminded me of the most racist field trip ever (youtube it if you don’t mind foul language :P).