Update from Kisoro
Greetings! Claudia here with an update from Kisoro.
Since our first post, so much has actually happened with each day being so eventful however due to our hectic schedules this was the only down time we found to be able to update you guys with a little bit of what we’ve been up to since then. After visiting the Ssanga and Kanga projects, Jennifer, Richard, Shawn and I headed off to Kisoro which is a 11 hour drive across the country. Our day started at 3:30am, loading all of our gear into the SUV then getting the show onto the road.
One of the new challenges I have faced on this trip is actually the constant re-packing we have to do. Essentially we’re constantly moving gear/personal stuff from one bag to another according to the style and type of trip we’ll be doing. For instance, Ssanga requires a bus ride, a good 30 minutes on the back of a motorcycle on open road then another 30 minutes off-road (quite an experience when it’s raining and the African mud is slick as heck). We spend the day there then hike back down to the main road. Our trip to Kisoro originally involved a lot of hiking and camping so we had to pack the bare minimum and move our “left over” stuff at Richard’s house. It’s very different from the usually “living out of a suitcase” type of trip I do. Each time we un-pack and re-pack, we have to use a lot of brain power just to make sure we sort out what exactly to bring and what to leave behind. Sometimes at 11pm or past midnight, it can be exhausting.
Here in Kisoro, we can see the mountains that border Rwanda and Congo. The temperature here is similar to the fall in Toronto hovering around mid-teens during the day (much hotter if the sun comes out) and perhaps around 10C in then evening. Rain has been a regular part of our day with the excption of today! During the toughest trek back down the mountain from an extremely hard to reach rural community the team finally experience the power and craziness of Uganada rain and what it’s like to be caught in it.
Our time in Kisoro has been fruitful and challenging at the same time. Many of the situations and scenarios require the team to think on our feet and roll with the punches. Some of them are so random and unexpected that you don’t really know what to say or how to react– like, a huge tree falling onto the road meters in front of our SUV as we were driving, or the chair-woman of a rural village helping us carry my pole bag down the mountain. On her head. With a baby stapped onto her back. Yeah…
Hope to update you guys with our day-to-day recaps once we get back to Mukuno. I can’t wait to share some of the amazing imagery we’ve been able to capture!
Thanks for checking in 
Claudia
