Mzungu photos!

A few updates - I have my mosquito net up now; the impending psychological crisis was averted. I haven't eaten maatoke (mashed bananas) in a week and one day, which is an incredible feeling. Most importantly, I was able to make myself a quesadilla. The small joys of being a mzungu .

I was finally able to post some photos - not very many, but a few good ones. I tried to reflect the stories I've told here earlier as best I could. If you click on the thumbnails the pictures will enlarge, although I had to shrink them dramatically to upload them at all. The posting process was quite an ordeal; however, I like being in Ms. Amy Lancaster's good graces. All of you should take a moment and fully appreciate your Wofford high-speed Internet connections.

Myself hiking up the mountain to Sipi Falls. Sipi Falls is in Eastern Uganda and not terribly far from the Kenyan border. This was in no way a safe hike, although it was a great one; luckily this photo was taken before I was covered in mud.

Another pair of waterfalls at Sipi Falls. Although I'm not sure of the exact number of falls in this valley, we were able to see 6 without leaving the cabin we were staying in. This was taken during a hike the day after the picture above was taken.

Sipi Valley.

This photo is of a young boy in a Kampala slum. I was visiting the Single Parents Association of Uganda when I took this. The group, primarily made up of middle-aged HIV+ women, are collaborating to empower themselves economically and better provide for their children. These efforts include growing mushrooms (which is a bizarre process, by the way), raising pigs and chickens, doing craftwork, and other forms of small commerce and agriculture.

This photo was taken at Oruchinga Refugee Settlement. This camp serves several thousand primarily Rwandan refugees in western Uganda; all of these refugees are ethnic Hutus. I wrote about this very emotional and difficult experience earlier on in this blog. The children were the only people in the camp whom I felt comfortable looking in the face; though many of their parents directly participated in the genocide that claimed the lives of nearly a million Tutsis, these children simply wanted to play and have fun with the mzungus.

This sign was outside of a church in rural Rwanda that is now a genocide memorial site. In one attack by the Interahamwe, over 40,000 people were killed on this property; ten thousand in this very modest building and thirty thousand hiding on the grounds surrounding it. If you look closely, you can see the holes in the roof where the Interahamwe threw bombs to scare the Tutsis and moderate Hutus into revealing themselves. The sign is in Kinyarwanda, the local language of the people in the area; it means "If you knew me and you knew yourself, you would not have killed me."

This is a very typical scene in rural Uganda; this photo is somewhere between Mbarara, where I live now, and the Rwandan border. Children are very involved in subsistence agriculture in virtually all parts of Uganda. This causes a great deal of problems with truancy in schools; although Uganda's president, Yoweri Museveni, has introduced universal primary education (albeit in a mealymouthed sort of way), many children are unable to attend school in harvesting seasons as their families need their help.

This was taken while I was sitting on top of a van in the savannah of Queen Elizabeth National Park. These two lions were, at the absolute most, 30-35 feet from me and have never lived in captivity. I was hoping from the depths of my soul that they would attempt to eat the kob (sort of like an African deer) in the background. They were, disappointingly, not hungry.

My homestay mom, myself, and my homestay brother. My homestay mother wanted me to try on this kanzu; it is the formal dress of the Buganda people, the tribe to which they belong. It is ordinarily worn to weddings and the very elaborate Buganda introduction ceremonies. Introduction ceremonies are highly ritualistic events in which the families of a couple meet to determine whether or not they will be allowed to be married.

This was one of the most beautiful moments I've ever seen; this was at my rural homestay in Busia, Uganda, right after I got back from the market in Kenya. These two children were playing outside when a strong wind blew thousands of blossoms loose from "Christmas Trees," as the local Samia people call them. These blossoms raining down seemed to be a familiar phenomenon to the children and they had a great time trying to catch them.

The world's kindest polygamist, Wasike - my rural homestay father. Also in this photo is one of his 21 children, Were, who is named after a god in the indigenous religion of the Samia people. My friend Katherine is introducing Wasike to the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He's a fan.

My friend Matt and a Ugandan with a very good sense of humor - click the thumbnail to find out why. This was taken in a picnic area by the Nile River.

A photo someone took of me chatting with a friend on the banks of the Nile River, although you can't see the friend. I promise that I'm not just being pretentious and looking pensive for a photo-op.