Yesterday after work I went with one of my co-workers to a local forest- Zikka Forest. It's only about 15 minutes from my house and is a great place for hiking. It was a nice break from my usual routine. We spent the first half of our time there climbing the tower. I'm am afraid of heights so this was quite a feat for me. We ended up far above the trees and sat there for a while watching the birds. It's too close to the city for much wild life so we had to be content to watch the birds. We eventually climbed back down, which was much scarier to me than climbing up and hiked for a while on the trails. There were hundreds of butterflies, some as big as my fist.
One note of caution: don't hike in African forests wearing flip flops. I stupidly do this quite frequently because of my disdain of wearing any other kind of shoes. Yesterday it proved to be a hazard. We had to walk through a path of thousands of ants. These ants happened to be the biting kind. Not exactly a pleasant experience. Thankfully, they only bite and don't have any after effects like itching. Once I was able to remove all of them we we able to continue with our hike. Also, thankfully, they didn't manage to climb past my feet.
The forest really is a lovely place to marvel at God. It's amazing to me that some of these trees have been here for hundreds of years and are still standing strong. One of them was so big that even it's roots were big enough for me to climb on.
On to another subject: water. Water is frequently an issue in Uganda. A lot of times for whatever reason it is turned off. Luckily for the last week or so this hasn't been a problem in our house. However, because of having a landlord that doesn't mind about keeping up his property, we have other water issues. The sink in the kitchen only spouts out black water, and I do mean black, not just a little murky. Therefore, it is useless to us. The sink in the bathroom has a similar problem. Although the water is not black, it smells like sewage so it is also useless to us. No one wants to cook, wash their hands or brush their teeth with black water or water that smells like poop. We've been calling to complain about these problems for the past four and a half months. We're always promised that the plumber is coming but he still hasn't turned up.
Well, this morning the toilet broke. It no longer flushes. This means to keep flushing the toilet we have to fill a bucket from our one remaining water tap to pour down the toilet. Hopefully, this one remaining tap will continue to work as it is our only source of water for flushing, cooking, brushing our teeth, washing our clothes and bathing and prayerfully I will have found another place to live by the beginning of December. This could also prove to be a miracle since right now there's a saying around Kampala that "It is is easier to find Bin Laden than to find housing in Kampala."
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