Day 5: Shelly

Uganda Day 5

Today was a hike…literally. How many people can say they’ve climbed a mountain in Africa? I know I can, after today. For our “free day” we decided to go on hike and climb Mount Nuscu (pronounced Noo-Soo) which is approximately 5 kilometers (3 miles) high. At first, not all of us wanted to go because we had a long day and night yesterday, and if we wanted to go on the hike, we had to be up and ready to leave by 8:00. This sounded pretty dreadful to many people, including me because this meant waking up and being ready at 7:00…which sounded pretty dreadful to many people. However as the morning progressed, one by one more people were waking up. By 8:15 EVERYBODY was dressed and ready to go. The first picture you are looking at is before our hike and the second picture is the aftermath of our hike.

            According to Lena and Tom, when they visited a couple of years ago, and climbed Mount a Nuscu, it took them longer to come down (3 hours) than it did to climb (2 hours). But for us, it took us about 3 hours to climb and 2 hours to come back down. On our way home, I found out that our tour guide, Rasheid, who was amazing by the way, was lying to us the entire way. Every time we would ask him how much longer, he would say, “30 minutes” but it was actually an hour. “Rasheid, you’ve been lying to us this whole time?!” I asked when I found out. He giggled sheepishly and said, “Well I didn’t want to scare you guys. If I had told you 2 hours, you guys might have been scared.”

            He was right because after first 15 minutes, I (and I’m sure other people) wanted to turn around and go back home. So that was a good trick. Thanks Rasheid. This was one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done in my whole life. I’ve walked 20 miles for Project Bread’s “Walk for Hunger” two years in a row, but those 40 miles combined was nothing compared to climbing that mountain. I am not a person who likes to do physical activities but I was determined to come back to America and say that I climbed a mountain in Africa.

            It was a hike…a blazing hot, sweaty, stinky, painful, and at times dangerous hike. Along the way we saw many people, chickens, goats, cows, and cow poops, like every else that we went. The higher we climbed the steeper and more dangerous the hills got. At some points I feel like we were literally walking on the edge. Have you seen “Taken 2”…the scene where the daughter had to climb out of window and walk on the ledge to climb into the room next door? Well that’s how I felt, the higher we climbed. In my head, I kept picturing myself tumbling over the edge. Two seconds later I heard a crash behind me. When I turned around I saw Jessica sliding down below. She must have lost her footing or the ground below crumbled because one second she and Lena were behind me and the next she was lodged two feet down in the bushes. Thankfully there was a small tree and she grabbed a hold of its branches. Lena quickly went down to check on her and Ricky (who was ahead with everybody else) came over to help her. Amazingly Jessica only had a scratch or two on her legs and arms and big rush of adrenaline.

            I think from that moment on, things (and people) started going downhill. It was a slip-and-slide the rest of the way. We had to really watch our steps and hold on to the branches nearby. It was amazing to see how high up the mountain people lived. I asked Rasheid, “How do people get food and buy things, if they live this high? Are there markets up there?” He said, “They have some but not many. They have to go down to the market in the village when they run out of things. If they have a lot of people living in the house, they have to go often. They go on Saturday, Monday, or Thursday, depending.”