The plan was to leave for the mountain bright and early at 8am on Saturday, December 2nd. Of course, this is Uganda.
We left at 11am because no one had told the driver which only they can contact.
Food preparation took much longer than I ever imagined. Joshua and I were in charge of the meats. There was chicken, beef, matooke (cooked green banana), cabbage, fish, rice, porsho, and maybe something else. Preparing the meat was not exactly the most sanitary. And for the beef there was no de-boning, or sorting. Basically everything was hacked in chucks and used.
Still it was fun to see how the ladies made the other dishes on open fires and see how to make meat with curry powder and cassava flour (Joshua's department). There was a lot of people, children and adults, in a make shift tent being entertained by music, dance, and games. I provided some prizes for the games.
Mostly I was in the "kitchen" but I did manage to slip away from the cooking long enough to paint some fingernails. Those were the dirtiest hands I ever painted. I was literally painting over the dirt that was stuck to there nails. It just really struck me. Regardless, the girls seemed to enjoy it.
Because there was over 200 children I didn't have enough glow sticks for everyone. So I lit a few up and they passed it around. I wish we could have played catch or Frisbee with the glow sticks but they would just be a massive fight over them. I let a few older children have the lit ones to take home but Joshua pointed out later that adults were stealing them from the children to use for themselves.
That's another thing here in Africa. Adults here are often just as greedy about toys as the kids. By numbers 47% of the population is under age 15. My guess is young parents (pregnancy at age 15 or 16 is very common, average married age is 20) don't have a chance to grow up before they are raising their own kids.
We left the mountain under a bright full moon. It was so peaceful and calm and the air so fresh. Beautiful. We reached my hotel around 9:30pm. A full day for sure.
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