Happy teeth!

Who doesn't love to brush and floss their teeth? No one. But, some people don't have toothbrushes, and even if they do, they don't know how to properly care for their little pearly whites. One of our volunteers, Megan Richards, went above and beyond and asked her dad to send out some hygiene kits with second wave volunteers so that we could teach some hygiene lessons. We know that the paste will run out, and that the brushes won't last forever, but hopefully the knowledge we left behind will make a difference. We decided to take some of the kits out to Rose & Pauls and leave the others with the Andrew Lovell Academy soccer team. At Rose & Paul's the kids were delighted to share the lesson with us and then literally overjoyed when we distributed the little dental kits. After the lesson, we played "pata, pata, encoco"  (duck duck goose) and then taught the kids the hokey pokey. Another fabulous day in Buwala with some of the coolest kids we know.

African Safari at Murchison Falls

After a long and good work week it is fun for all of the volunteers to go on a weekend trip as a way to see the different areas of Uganda. This last week, many of us went to Murchison Falls National Park to go on a African Safari!

The first half of the trip consisted of a game drive. Our goal was to see the "Big Five", which are the lion, giraffe, elephant, rhino and the hippo. Our guide told us that it had been six days since anyone had spotted a lion. We must be doing something right because we not only saw one lion, but two! There were two male lions that walked right towards us on the road. They got so close it was actually kind of creepy. They stared intently at us and then sauntered off the road long enough to pass us and then they resumed their position. 

The other animals were found pretty easily. We didn't see any of the rhinos on the game drive becuase the only rhinos in the country are in a special reserve. When we visited the reserve however, we were able to get about 20 feet away on foot, for pictures! There have been three baby rhinos born in the reserve and one of them they named Obama because the mother was a white rhino from America and the father rhino was a black rhino from Kenya. Ha ha... they are so witty... 

The second half of the day was spent in a boat down the Nile. This is where we saw a ton of hippos and Nile Crocodiles.  At camp, we stayed in tents that had two beds in each. There were many warthogs, or "pumba's" as we liked to call them that liked to walk through the camp scavaging for food. All in all the day was a huge success.

Jessie Jensen signing off saying Waylaba...