80 degrees on 0 degrees

"While the other kids were Rocking 'Round the Clock, we were hopping and bopping to the Crocodile Rock."

Elton John

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Last Monday, I left you all with the hopeful message that our water was trickling back on... I never knew water could be so heartless. It was all a sham. We got a trickle for about an hour - just enough time to get our hopes up that it was coming back on full force - and then it disappeared again for another few days. Our water was out for a whole week which made my trip to the Serena Hotel a little bittersweet; I was pretty excited to see the hotel, but I was also pretty peeved when I saw just how much water they had.

I'm willing to bet that the Serena Hotel is the nicest, most lavish building in all of Uganda. I think they almost called security when they saw a dirty white girl trailing after a couple of local Ugandans to do some inventory in their gift shop. Clearly I didn't belong in that beautiful building.

This was in the lobby of the hotel. And yes, those are streams of water falling between those pillars. I can't even tell you how tempted I was to take a shower right there in the middle of the hotel lobby.

So much water, and not a drop of it flowing into my bathroom at home. It was heartbreaking.

Because we're adults in Africa and we do what we want, we decided to skip out on work the next day and venture down to the equator. And because we have the coolest boss in the world, she not only approved our trip, she came with us!

One more thing to check off my bucket list!

And of course we couldn't pass up the opportunity to check out some local wildlife on the way back to Lugazi.

Just call me Steve Irwin. Alright, not really. The keepers obviously didn't let me touch their crocodiles. Regardless, I knew it would be a cool experience when I stepped out of the car and was greeted by this beautiful hostess.

The most beautiful cat I've ever seen!

Things went from cute to creepy in a matter of minutes.

There were at least ten cages like this filled with twenty to thirty baby crocs in each one. If you ever need proof that dinosaurs existed, just check out one of these bad boys.

They seem too lazy to be dangerous. But then we saw one run. I think we startled it when we peeked over the wall, and he slithered out to the water faster than I'd have thought possible.

This big guy is 65 years old. His name is Benjamin, but I thought our tour guide said his name was Danger Man. I think Danger Man is more appropriate.

Meet Romeo (to the left) and Juliet (in the water). I wonder if The Bard ever thought a couple of African crocodiles would be named after his most famous characters four centuries later.

We wrapped up the week's adventures by visiting Ssezibwa Falls. 

It's not a bad place to spend a Saturday afternoon. Although I could have done without the group of drunk men sitting at the top of the falls. We decided that maybe it wasn't the best idea for a small group of girls to venture into the middle of a pack of rowdy, inebriated men. Because of them, we weren't able to see the view from the top. Jerks.

Somebody is lucky enough to live right next to the falls. I'm positive I wouldn't be able to make a cave my home. But hey, anything to avoid rent - am I right?

The boda ride to and from the falls was incredible. Bodas are definitely my preferred form of travel here. You have nothing to block your view of the beautiful Ugandan landscape.

Baby wipes: not just for babies

"The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others."

Mahatma Gandhi

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It was a pretty routine week, so I don't have a lot to report on. Although I did finish all but one of my interviews! I'm so close!

I'm pretty lucky; between interviews, I get to hang out at the workshop with the coolest kids in Lugazi.

I dare you to find a cuter pair of best friends.

I thought we were going to take a nice, normal, smiling picture. Emma and Elvis pulled this out at the last second. Boys...

Bath time was especially hilarious on this day. I'm still trying to figure out what they were laughing at.

And this little girl came back to visit!

Tina invited us to help out with a service project in Mukono on Saturday. We cleaned up the street that the LDS church building is on. We met a group of BYU students who had just arrived in Uganda that morning. We also met the mayor of Mukono!

Tina is hands-down the best boss in the world.

Because we were already halfway to Kampala, Tessa, Kathryn, and I jumped on a taxi and continued on our way to the city after the service project. Our mission: Western food. It was quite a trek to get there. First of all, I refused to get on the taxi until the conductor promised me 3 times that he was taking the Kireka route to Kampala. Well, guess who's a big fat liar? The man dropped us off miles away from where we asked to be dropped off. Seriously, miles. We asked a police officer for directions to the restaurant, and she told us it was about a kilometer down the road. So we started walking.

We ran into this guy on the way. I wouldn't
ever want to get on his bad side.

We had been walking for more than a kilometer and the restaurant still wasn't anywhere in sight. I thought I was going to pass out from heat exhaustion; it was boiling! Finally we just hailed some bodas and rode the rest of the way there. The things we do for a little comfort food from home! It was totally worth it though. Just look at that beautiful ice cream sundae!

That ice cream gave us the strength to get through the rest of the weekend - our water has been out since Friday night. It is now Monday night and it's finally trickling back on. It has been a long, dirty weekend without water. I don't know who invented baby wipes, but he/she is a saint in my book. He/she probably never imagined three girls in Africa would be using them obsessively as emergency "showers," but I'd say a quality of a good product is versatility. Right?

Untamed & Uncut: My Animal Planet Moment

"The heart wants what it wants."

Kathryn Donville

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Okay, the quote has absolutely nothing to do with what's been going on here. I just promised Kathryn I'd use it.

We had just about the most fun day ever at the workshop a couple weeks ago. We did some holiday-themed photo shoots! This is the whole reason this day was so much fun:

Nicole is the cutest cupid in the whole world! Not gonna lie, I didn't get much of my own work done this day. I just helped with the photo shoots so I could hang out with this little munchkin the whole time. I can't wait for the Valentine's Day photos to be released!

She's the best.

This is the second year in a row I haven't been at home for the 4th of July. We actually thought we'd have pretty exciting plans - we thought the American Embassy was throwing a party. Unfortunately we were mistaken, so we quickly threw together a party of our own. We invited all the Musana women and their families; I can't believe we fit that many people into our little house! I don't know the exact number of people who came, but our initial pre-party headcount was around 70.

Honestly, I missed having fireworks and a barbecue, but I think it's safe to say this party was a success. It was actually really fun. Who'd have thought that one of my favorite 4th of July celebrations to date would have taken place in Uganda?

Plus I introduced Tina to Lady Gaga, so I'd say it was a successful day. I told her Gaga fans are called Little Monsters, so the above photo happened.

Post-party happiness!

But the excitement of the week doesn't end with the party! We made the trek to the Entebbe Zoo the next day to meet the coolest little guy:

Well, he's not exactly little. But he's not full-grown yet! Meet Charles, the 3-year old elephant. He was rescued when he was a week old (his parents were unfortunately poached) and he's been living at the Entebbe Zoo ever since. We thought we missed his visiting hours, but the staff was nice enough to bring him out to meet us privately. How's that for customer service?!

He loves bananas. And I love him.

Unfortunately the zoo doesn't let its guests meet the lions or the leopard (I asked), but Charles was a pretty amazing alternative.

Team Bazirra!

"The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun."

Christopher McCandless 

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For all of you who read my blog to make sure Linden, Tessa, Kathryn, and I are still alive, I apologize for keeping you waiting. We had a little bit of trouble getting the pictures from a couple weekends ago, and I couldn't post anything without them.

Remember how I said I had big plans and to keep your fingers crossed that they didn't fall through? I was worried because we had another intern come, Lauren, and she was only here for a week. Since she was here for such a limited time, we weren't sure that she could take a whole day off work to come with us... Good news! Everything worked out perfectly and the five of us did one of the coolest things that Africa has to offer:

That's what's up. We went whitewater rafting on the Nile! We were by far the coolest team out on the river.

From left to right:
Fred, Spencer, Kathryn, Linden, Roberto (our guide), me, Lauren,
Tessa, and Marvin

The very first rapid we encountered was a Class 5. The most dangerous rapids are Class 6. Why mess around with those wimpy Class 1's and 2's when you can just dive right in (pun intended)?

Class 5 waterfall: our introduction to the Nile

In fact, we rafted on nothing but 4's and 5's the whole day. There was one Class 6 but we weren't allowed to raft that one. I tried convincing Roberto to let us go, but he mumbled something about "danger" and "legal consequences" and other crap like that.

Our team was ready to handle anything though. We named ourselves Team Bazirra, aka Team Warrior. In my humble opinion, we handled the rapids the best. And we definitely were the fastest. We were getting into races with other rafts the whole day, and guess who won every single time? Team Bazirra, duh.

Halfway through the day, we stopped at an island in the middle of the Nile to eat lunch. Before reaching the island, we fondly referred to it as Lunch Island but we changed the name once we saw it:

Source

Welcome to Bat Island! When we were still a little ways out from the island, we saw this dark cloud of creatures flying around and assumed they were birds. Nope. Swarms of bats were flying just feet over our heads. We weren't able to get any pictures because none of us had our cameras with us on the raft - I found the above picture from another girl's blog. That photo doesn't even come close to the number of bats we saw on our trip. I've never seen that Alfred Hitchcock movie The Birds, but I imagine what we saw on the Nile was similar to that. Just substitute bats in place of the birds. And none of them attacked us.

All day long, I was doing great on the rapids if I do say so myself. I never even came close to falling out of the raft. Well, the Nile apparently needed to remind me exactly who was in charge. I got thrown out of the raft on the last rapid. Roberto told us it was a Class 5 so I thought it would be a piece of cake... I think he lied. It had to have been a Class 6 - it folded our raft in half!

Moments before I almost died in the Nile

See that poor, unfortunate soul with her feet in the air and head
in the Nile? Yep, that's yours truly.

I've never prayed so hard in my life for a single breath of air. The logical part of my brain knew that I wasn't going to die, but it's hard to listen to the logical side when thousands of gallons of raging water is beating you around. I'm pretty sure I inadvertently swallowed half of the Nile. I probably have about 12 families of parasites living inside of me right now. The joys of Africa living!

Long story short, I survived! I popped up near Tessa, so we just floated down the rest of the river together. The Nile is actually pretty peaceful and relaxing when it's not trying to drown you. 

Once we got to shore and met back up with our group, we found out that everyone got thrown off the raft except for Linden and Fred. Even our guide got dumped into the river!

Shoutout to Linden, who was the ONLY member of Team Bakirra
to never fall off the raft!

Everything about this day was perfect, including my NDE at the end. How cool is it that I can go home and tell people I almost died in the Nile?

Every time I experience something new here, I think that nothing else can top it. But Uganda always proves me wrong. I love this place and I love the experiences I'm lucky enough to participate in.