Climbing Mt. Egon

It has taken me a while to write this blog on my trip to Mbale a week ago. Maybe because it was so much work that day that I wasn’t ready to relive it! So… Andy, Moses our driver, and I set out about 8 a.m. from the Peterson household on a quest to buy goats. We drove for about 30 minutes and then picked Julius up. It was a 2 hour drive and it was quite interesting. Also, there are no stop signs really in Uganda, but instead they have speed bumps and these are hardy African speed bumps. So every few kilometers when we come to another village all of a sudden you hit about 5 speed bumps and of course there are the potholes. Oh the potholes. Along the way I saw about 1,000 acres of papyrus. It was incredible. It went on forever! So we got to Mbale, a city in the southeast corner of Uganda. We wanted to meet with an organization called Jenga that places goats in rural farms. We waited for a while and finally got to go up. We had no luck with them and decided to just stick to our original plan to get our goats from Farm Africa. Julius picked up some rolexes for us to eat. To eat you say? Here in Uganda a rolex is kind of like an egg burrito but with chapatti, a greasy flat bread. They are SOOOOOOO good! So  off we go up into the mountains. We drove for about another 30 minutes or so up into the mountains to pick up these two guys from Farm Africa. We finally found them after getting lost once. Then of course they had to ride with us. We were in this extended cab tiny little pickup with 4 people already and the front seat was not a bench seat. So we crammed two more smelly bodies into the truck and off we went. They said the buck that was 100% was just down the down the road. So in Uganda any distance is “just over there”. This could be 10 feet or 50 km. You just never know. We got to the place but we weren’t allowed to walk down to where the goats were. One of the guys went down and drug up a Togenburg buck. We were immediately suspicious because we couldn’t go see their living situation. We looked it over and Andy wasn’t that impressed and neither was I.

Ok time out from that story: Karina just came in and updated us on a situation down at the school near one of the villages. There is a girl there that was running through the village and was trying to get to the water to drown herself. They caught her and she passed out. Karina, being a nurse, checked her blood sugar and it was 26. She fed her some sugar and the girl snapped out of it but then Karina said she was immediately taken over by demons. She was manifesting and writhing around on the ground. Apparently now she is in a coma like state. Geez. Apparently this also happens with her sisters. The mother is a born again and the father is a Muslim who does not want his children to get saved. This stuff is so common here. It’s just like everyday life and gets dismissed so easily, just like I’m about to do as I continue my story. Lord, help us here.

So we loaded the buck up in the back of the truck and went to another location. We went to 3 locations with does and the one that Andy wanted wasn’t for sale. The other problem was we discovered we couldn’t trust them about the purity of their goats. They keep saying all these goats were 75% pure, but then they explained that breeding a 75% goat with a 75% goat makes another 75. This is not correct; it makes a little over 50%. They keep saying the next one is just over there. Yeah right. The last goat we looked at, before we even got out of the car, Andy said he didn’t even want to look at it because he knew it was no good. So the two guys said they had another place they could take us and we have probably been with them for a couple hours already. Probably about 3 in the afternoon now. Andy said, “No, you tell me in real minutes how long it will take to get to this other place.” The guys then said probably an hour… oh how wrong he was. So Andy said ok, let’s drive since it was on the way back to Mbale kind of. This old man came stumbling over to me and touched my arm and then made a whimper and rubbed his tummy. He smelled like he had been dunked in a bottle of liquor. I said yeah me too to his hungry cries to me. Andy laughed and the old man looked at us, confused. Andy then handed him 1,000 shillings which is less than 50 cents and the guy stumbled back to the village. 9 times out of 10 they will use that money to get more alcohol. They make their own kind of alcohol here in gerry cans. If you get within 10 feet of this stuff, it will set your nose hairs on fire. It is gross to say the least. 

So back in the truck we cram. We get to our last turn to go up this road and it’s blocked. The road was being worked on and we couldn’t fit the truck up it. So what do those two guys say? Oh no problem we can just walk. It’s just right up there. LIAR! That road was so uphill it was like using stairs and we climbed it for a good 4-5 miles. I have never ever in my life felt more tired. Of course I feel behind by myself. I ended up a good mile behind the slim and fit guys. I’m pretty sure Julius could be an Olympic runner. I was just focused on putting one foot in front of the other. I had no water. I had gone without since noon. Now I’m starting to get a headache from lack of water and my mouth is dry, like I swallowed sand. I don’t know where the guys are and as far as I can tell they were not concerned with where I was. Andy never looked back once while I could still see him. One woman said, “Muzungu, where are you going?!” I said out of breath, “Up the mountain to buy a goat.” She laughed and said, “You are lying to me. There are no goats up there! You tell me a lie muzungu! I tell you there are no goats there. Come and sit here.” I just kept walking and talking back to here that there was a goat up there I was going to buy. Soon I saw Julius on a hill through the trees on the left. Good thing he stopped and waited to wave at me because I would have kept walking and then we would have really been in a dozy because there was no cell service up there. Then we get off the main road and walk across these hills past a school and onto a single foot path through the jungle. This was another mile or so. We finally reached this farmer who had a couple of goats. Of course Andy had been there a while waiting for us to catch up. He wasn’t impressed with these goats either but she was better than the others that were for sale. One of the guys then said there was another goat just over there. I stood, crossed my arms and said no way Andy. I’m not going any further because this is getting absolutely crazy. I was frustrated and drained and was sick to my stomach. So he went and looked at it and came back. He kind of pulled me aside and said he wasn’t really sure he wanted this goat that was in front of us. I turned to him and very seriously said, “If we just went through all of that and walked all the way up here and you don’t buy this goat, I’m going to be so pissed at you.” Haha. He said, ok and bought the goat. Haha. It was a funny story to tell later but in the moment I was dead serious. Haha. So now we have to walk back to the truck with this little goat that has never been out of her wood slated pen before. She has never walked more than a few feet. The guys ended up taking turns carrying her down the mountain. I shot down that mountain like I was in a race. I wanted the heck out of there! By the way, despite all of this, it was the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. The views of that place… wow. The pictures I took do not do it justice at all. It was amazing. We got to the truck around 6p.m. Now we all smelled super ripe and drenched in sweat. We dropped off the two guys in Mbale. Andy and I practically ran over any one in our way to get inside the grocery store and got the biggest bottles of water we could get and some soda. Then we picked up more rolexes and got on our way home. We got in about 9 p.m. So it’s pitch black outside and turned down the road for them to drop me off at the Peterson’s house. As we turned we say a man pooping on the side of the road and he stood straight up and pulled his pants up really quickly, knowing he had been caught in our headlights. We all just laughed hysterically. I got right in the shower and right to bed after retelling the events of the day to the family. 

Lessons learned: If Andy wants you to go somewhere, don’t go. ‘Just over there’ really isn’t just over there. A ‘few minutes’ isn’t really a few minutes. ‘One more’ means there are lots more but we will only tell you about one at a time.