Mt. Nusu

Today was all about putting things in perspective while climbing a steep mountain called Mt. Nusu, with dirt roads, slightly muddy from rains last night, thin air due to the elevation, oh and did I mention it was 3000 feet high? We paid a Ugandan man name Julius who works at the clinic to be our guide up the mountain, little did we all know what we were getting ourselves into. Julius led Kristen, Michelle, and I along with 5 other volunteers, Kristen, Jordan, and Sarah (who are all going to be seniors at Virginia Tech in the fall who unfortunately leave on Saturday) and Lena and Tom (two faculty from LaSalle University in Boston.) We were literally climbing straight up the side of the mountain, legs burning, huffing and puffing, sweating bullets, tripping, falling, and the high elevation here made everything that much harder. The hike from the clinic, up the mountain, and back took us 5 hours. Now perspective.. people hike this route every single day, in no shoes, carrying baskets, fruit, wooden beams, etc on their heads, no water to drink, and they barely sweat or even lose breath. We have paved sidewalks, expensive running shoes, clean water as far as the eye can see, a/c or a fan for when you're hot and sweaty, our blessings are truly abundant. Instead of driving to Walgreens when you feel sick to get Motrin or Immonium, you have to first brave this mountain while you are already feeling terribly. As we continued to rise the mountain we assumed we would no longer see homes, or people for that matter, and boy were we wrong. There were dirt and clay homes scattered along our "path" (a relative word really compared to the wooded, muddy, not cleared trails we were climbing on a majority of the time), along with people working in the fields and farms they have created on the sides of these steep mountains. They would all smile, say hi, and stare as 8 white people continued to climb up the side of the mountain sweating and out of breath. What is comes down to is this: We cannot express to you how lucky we are to live in America. Nothing here is easy, you see 6 year old girls climbing up steep muddy hills carrying canteens of water on top of their heads, not playing in the safety of their own home with their Barbies and Disney princess toys. 

When we finally got back down, we spent some time finalizing visual aids for our teaching project tomorrow, then made the 20 minute walk back home, making a detour down to one of the rivers. Upon arriving back to the guesthouse we were met by Katie, a volunteer who will be here for the remainder of our time, I believe she is staying through July 19th. She is a sophomore at Notre Dame university majoring in pre-med and anthropology. Kristen, Michelle, and I are going to be doing some traveling on the weekends and hope she will be able to join us. It rains everyday here, a slight drizzle, but today we had our first real downpour and it was refreshing and so soothing. Elyssa, one of the volunteers who has been here since September and is leaving on Saturday made homemade banana bread today (remember we have no oven here so she did it in a steam bath type set up that she found out about in a peace corp cookbook) along with homemade flatbread and guacamole. So good :) Tasted like a little bit of home. Our plan is to copy down recipes from her before she leaves so we can bring word back to the States :) All in all, we are all doing well, excited for what the next few weeks will bring. Hope all is well back home!