Especially for Sarah...

And she knows why. But we thought the rest of you would enjoy this as well. We went hiking down into the steep Chambura Gorge in western Uganda in search of chimpanzees, and look who we found instead! Quite a spectacular (and large!) critter.

The gorge is beautiful -- very rain-forest/junglelike with thick tall ferns everywhere, towering trees reaching high high up trying to find the sun, sounds of loud birds all around. Most of them were invisible in the foliage but we did catch a sight of a couple huge casqued hornbills.

We were walking in elephant footsteps and hippo footsteps, gulp, but they mostly are just there at night, right? Our ranger guide also found plenty of sign of chimps, including their own footprints and places where the grass was bent down indicating they had gone by not that long ago. But they were proving to be true wild things, and we never saw them. At one place the ranger pointed to a clump of bushes. There's a certain kind of fruit the chimps like that makes them intoxicated, apparently, and after stumbling around drunkenly and playing pranks on each other, they go sleep it off in the bushes. Sometimes they disappear for weeks at a time, he said, as he tried to make the mzungus feel better about not seeing this latest type of wildlife.

It was OK with us. The place was amazing even without the chimps, and like Theresa said once before, we actually like it that the animals aren't all perfectly cooperative about presenting themselves on cue.

And heck, this spider was nothing to sneeze at! Enjoy it, Sarah.

What they hear and what we say and vice versa

We often get communications wrong, it’s just hard to understand two kinds of English.

Just now Bill went down to check on the guys who are washing little Topapa, our car (it’s been raining and the car is now red-mud, not blue). One of them said there was a wire in the tire, and it was leaking. “This one,” as they refer to each other, said he could fix it and Bill figured he’d patch it. Then Bill went down later, and the guy had put the spare on. That’s what he meant by fix it. Bill came back, shaking his head about how we get about 80 percent of what we hear.

Here’s another example. On the way home from the airport after dropping off Steve and Bobbie, our driver/friend Elias was talking as usual about the wonders of the USA, how the streets are paved with gold, etc. It was about 10 p.m. and we were driving through downtown Kampala. The bustling businesses on Kampala Road were quiet, their doorways empty. I had a sudden vision of downtown Seattle doorways after hours, and in my usual attempt at reality, I told Elias, “In the US, the homeless would be sleeping in all these doorways.” Whereupon he paused, and then replied, “People here really don’t like homos for some reason …” It took a good five minutes for me to realize he thought I had said “homos,” not “homeless.” Somewhere he had learned (or learnt, as they say) that term for homosexuals. What kind of vision of US city doorways at night must my statement have created for Elias???

Actually, homosexuality is a crime here, and it is taken very seriously. There is a lot of mob justice for things like stealing and adultery: lynchings, beatings and stonings are common, especially outside the city. I don’t know about homosexuality, but I suspect it prompts the same reaction. The American gay friends we have met here are careful. Probably a good idea. Elias has driven some of them, and he wants to be accepting of his mzungu clients!

Anyway, we continue to stumble along. Mpole mpole (slowly by slowly).

Where we've been

I know, I know. We haven't posted since that Game of All Games. The main reason can be seen in this picture of Bill's brother Steve and his wife Bobbie. They braved 40 hours of travel (a missed connection catapulted them into an international airport endurance test) to come see us, and just after they arrived we took off on safari to Lake Bunyonyi (green, terraced hills), Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (gorillas), and Queen Elizabeth National Park (elephants, etc.). Then they learned about how to dodge boda-bodas in Kampala. And how to have some African clothes made for them right in the Bugolobi Market. That's why they look so, uh, Ugandan in the picture!

We had a great time together, gawking at birds and animals, drinking wine in assorted tented camps, bandas and safari resorts. And we laughed. For some reason we laughed alot. They now know what a short call is, and a long drop. And lots more. Now they are gone and our little flat is back to being boringly organized and quiet.

Before S&B came, we spent five days in Soroti in eastern Uganda doing journalism training. Really charming little town with crumbling colonial buildings and fringed bicycles. More on that later.

Okay, hungry blog-readers. I will attempt to catch up with the writer's trick of bullet points. Later I will try to post the pix on Flickr, though that takes HOURS with our connection.

Highlights from the safari trip:

• 10 gorillas! We hiked only about 15 minutes to find a giant silverback and his entourage right on the trail.



• One hour with the gorillas; the family played together more peacefully than most human families. One baby almost ran over my feet.



• Disappointing gorilla pictures - hey, they don't call it the Impenetrable Forest for nothing!



• Two leopards at Queen Elizabeth. Well, it might have been the same one, but we saw it twice. They are the most beautiful animals in the world.



• Great Blue Turaco at Bwindi; big beautiful bird glimpsed from the car.



• Roads! Twisting, turning, gulp-inducing, slurping roads. Ezra (let's give him a plug: Impala Car Hire) kept us from getting stuck or worse.



• Friendly people, but oddly enough something we have seldom seen here: children with their hands outstretched in Bwindi. Some asked for pens, since that's obviously what they have been given. So different from the usual cheerful greetings that follow us. Tourists have a lot to answer for.



• Dead hippo in Kazinga Channel being eaten by a crocodile. Ah, nature ...



• No chimpanzees even though we tracked them for a couple of hours. Ah, nature ... no guarantees.



• Six days of non-stop stimulation, thanks to a beautiful country that we are just beginning to understand.

Uganda Oyee!

Saturday we went to the football (soccer to us) Big Game: Uganda Cranes vs. Nigeria Super Eagles. Here’s the deal about the game: in March, the same two teams played and Uganda was behind 1-0 until nearly the final second when it scored the tying goal, but the referee claimed it was invalid. The whole country went nuts, and still was until Saturday’s rematch. The last time Uganda beat Nigeria was in 1978.

This is a pretty laid-back place, but beginning early in the morning you could feel the energy in the air. Horns were honking, and matatus, bodas and assorted trucks sported Ugandan flags – and frantic fans.

We had been warned that we needed to go to the stadium about mid-day, though the game didn’t start until 4. The traffic would be in what they always call “a jam” though this time it would be worse than usual (and usual is totally unmanageable). We could take a boda, or wait in traffic forever – or walk. (Actually, there was also a train, newly refurbished for the event, the first time in 14 years the train actually worked! But it wasn’t practical for us since it left from downtown.) We decided to walk because it wasn’t that hot a day, and it was about 4 miles, easy-peasy for us Northwest hikers.

It became a mzungu parade when our young friends Anna and Jon, and their three friends who are working in Rwanda joined us. We walked through neighborhoods of mud houses and little vegetable stands, and then onto the main road toward the modern Mandela Stadium. Kids waved and people gave the victory sign along the way – Bill and I were wearing our new Uganda jerseys, and some of the others had paper hats made out of New Vision newspapers (sound familiar, Seahawks fans?). As we got closer, the crowds grew, until we finally squeezed our way in and found seats.

It was noisy. Uganda fans blew long yellow horns and whistles, had painted their bodies yellow and red -- which, along with the black of their skin, are the national colors - and cheered just like at home. A couple of things were different, though: no beer or alcohol is allowed in the stadium, a good idea since a year or so ago several people were killed in riots as they left the stadium. And the president came into the stadium with no fanfare, just an entourage of guards. “He should sit in the cheap seats,” I told Bill, but of course no dice (I guess that isn’t different after all!)

Nigeria made the first goal, and there was depressed silence. Then in the second half, after two penalty kicks, Uganda won! We were wondering what would happen next -- riot police in flack jackets guarded the door to the locker rooms, and the crowd flooded onto the field, people turning summersaults and rolling around on the grass in euphoria. Jon said, “We should get the hell out of here.” But we didn’t want to miss the action – Those still in the stands (like us) yelled “Uganda oyee!,” which is like “Yay Uganda,” only more fun to say. People bumped knuckles in triumph, jumped on each other, waved flags – you know. We finally made our way out of the stadium, and then we could see what was happening in the city!

Crowds lined the roads, yelling and cheering as the stadium-goers paraded by. People, matatus, bodas, bicycles – everyone was on the move through the people lining the streets. Eventually the walkers had to move to the side, single-file along the crumbling shoulders, but the parade continued, all the way back to Bugolobi and, I’m sure, everywhere else. But the seven mzungus walking, some of us in our Ugandan sports gear, got special attention. I was in front in my yellow, red and black, Bill behind me in his Cranes shirt and then the others, all trying to navigate the potholes and deep pits along the road, at the same time as yelling like true fans. Some people laughed out loud when they saw us, and then cheered. (Thomas from Boston thought they were making fun of us, but they weren’t – they love mzungus. As our housegirl said this morning, “They weren’t expecting mzungus to be walking like everyone else.”)

Little kids ran out to high-five us, women and men gave the victory sign, or ran to bump knuckles with us. Everybody cheered at us, from the roadside and from trucks and cars, with some yelling “Weebele!” (Thank you.) We had no idea why they were thanking us, but lots of people also yelled in English, “Thank you for supporting Uganda!” It got darker, but still the people lined the road – there were some bonfires of celebration, which we veered around. Little oil lamps lit the tiny shops and houses. There were so many kids the roadside looked like an orphanage. “Uganda Oyee!,” “Yay, mzungus!,” “Hey Mama mzungu" (that was to me), “Marry me" (that was to Anna).

We finally got close to home and settled into a beer garden to recover. We touched so many hands as we walked along, it was like we were royalty – or, as Anna said, “It was like Beatlemania.”

We will never forget the Big Game, but mostly we will never forget our walk home, where we felt firsthand the pride of the Ugandans in their country. Oyee!