six foot, seven foot, eight foot BUNCH!

When we were in Kenya Mr. Ozar made a comment that he would like to take a picture of all the different things the Kenyan women keep on their backs. For instance, they put normal things - like babies and groceries - and then they take it up a notch and carry, oh, a winter's worth of logs or a queen sized mattress. Once it's strapped on they walk a good 2 or 3 miles to drop it off. I thought this was pretty impressive...until we road into Uganda. The women here do the same thing only they carry it all on their heads. You want 2 weeks worth of laundry? Let me just toss it in this basket and walk it uphill 4 miles for you with it on my head. Couple bricks? An entire field of grass? Sure, not a problem. Just give me a minute while I slip on my flip-flops and strap my baby on my back before I go.

Incredible.

Equally incredible is the men who "ride" their bike to work with just about everything but the kitchen sink strapped on the front and back. I use ride loosely because I rarely saw them peddle - just push the stuff up hill after hill after hill. My favorite guys who do this are the banana pushers. No, they don't try and sell laced bananas to innocent school kids. They strap about 30-40 bushels of bananas to their bike and make their way to the town to sell them or put them on trucks. By the way, I'm not sure if the official unit of banana is a bushel but you get the idea. If you'd like a better idea you can do this little exercise at home: Break out the ten speed and ride it to Dominicks. Once you are there proceed to the produce section. Purchase all the bananas they have. This may not be enough in comparison but it should give you a rough idea. Okay...now ride the bike to Indiana. That should do it.

We were able to see a lot of this in action as it took us a solid 9 hours of driving to get to our current destination: The Impenetrable Forest in Uganda's Volcanic Region. Dum, dum, dum. It was a long drive but we managed to kill some time by looking at the amazing scenery and gawking at the banana dudes. Once we reached the foothills of the volcano our mouths just dropped. Ireland has nothing on Uganda when it comes to greenery. It's absolutely beautiful. Sure, there aren't any cozy pubs and I probably wouldn't stay at a good 95% of the roadside guest houses but hey - it's pretty. The drive was a little rough going (not for those pron to car sickness) but the scenery was just stunning. Oddly Colin didn't make a single Joe vs. the Volcano reference. Interesting. We'll see if this keeps up tomorrow when we begin our climb up it to see the gorillas. Considering he likes to reference that movie on a random Sunday around our apartment it's funny that it wouldn't come up while we are at the actual base of a volcano. Could this be the first sign of yellow fever?!?

Hmmm. I'll keep an eye out on him. Okay, so I realize that some of you may be wondering who is doing all this driving on this trip of ours. Great question. Not Colin and I. If that had been the case we would now be at the bottom of one of these green hills with sugar cane sticking out of our ears. We hired a company called Escape Expeditions to take us around and provide the camping gear we will be using. We have a driver and one other guy on our trip and we travel about via 4X4. The "other guy" is a Brit named Peter and the driver...well....that's another post all together. The internet place is closing so I have to go. Sorry for the cut off but the volcano known as the woman from this place is about to blow. Hopefully more tomorrow after the big gorilla climb. I'll also tell you about the campaign against sugar daddy's they are running here. Awesome.

Until tomorrow...