Over the mountains

This week I made the climb over the mountains to Fort Portal with various team members and visitors from the Sudan team. Fort Portal is the nearest sizeable town, but it takes over three hours by car over the winding roads around the mountains. Walking in a roughly straight line over the mountains, however, it’s only about 15 km from Bundibugyo – the trick is that, over that 15 km hike, you gain 5000 feet of elevation on the Bundibugyo side and then drop about 2000 feet on the Fort Portal size, making for a very steep scramble both up and down. Walking past Bakonjo houses and fields perched improbably on the slopes, we were serenaded by the endless calls of “Mujungu! How are you?” from children who would often start yelling at us when we were a hundred feet below them, and continue until we were well above them. We passed into the park that runs along the top of the mountains, walking through a serene bamboo forest and finding a 2 foot long earthworm. No joke. I guess that in this climate everything grows better, including worms. When we got down the other side, a 15 minute ride on motorcycle taxis had us in Fort Portal town, sweaty and dirty, ready for a big meal at our favorite restaurant and a warm shower at the hostel (Fort Portal has enough elevation that it gets cool in the evenings, something that is worth the trip by itself).

While talking to a store owner in Fort who I know, he asked how I came, and I told him that I came on foot over the mountains. Instantly, multiple shoppers looked at me in disbelief, commenting on how difficult that hike must be. It was one of the first times I’ve ever felt tough here, since usually, it’s we Bajungu who drive places in our typical hurried state, while Ugandans walk. This, of course, is all relative, and any feeling of toughness is quickly expelled while sucking wind, hands on knees on the steep trails, while 60 year old Bakonjo women with loads of firewood that must weigh 50 pounds strapped over their foreheads plod steadily up past me. It makes me think – here I am, doing this largely for fun, and here’s a woman, face wrinkled with the sun, back bent with heavy loads, feet flattened with untold miles of carrying firewood, who’s been doing this since she was a child, because that’s what needs to be done to survive. What different realities we have known in our lives. I’ve realized that here, life is largely spent doing the things that need to be done to live. Hours and hours a day walking to the fields, gathering firewood, hauling water, slowly cooking matooke – those are the things that seem to make up much of life. And those sort of things are the ones for which I don’t feel I have time. It’s hard for me, coming from my background, to put myself into the position of someone who has always know that reality.

Anyway, Luke and I headed back over the mountains the next day, making the climb twice in 24 hours. We made it in record time, just over four hours, literally running down the last half mile of steep trail into Bundibugyo (I’m amazed I didn’t sprain an ankle), and I’m still paying the price in the form of sore legs and aching shoulders. It was good to get out in the mountains, enjoying the scenery and glimpsing the lives of the people who make their homes on the slopes.