August 27

A day off and a free ride to the zoo and botanical gardens. Peace Corp took us on an outing and it was wonderful. 2 hours at the zoo looking at the exotic animals that are now indigenous to the country I am in now. It was a poor zoo by our standards but the animals looked content and fat. The zoo is on Lake Victoria so it has a great location. The problem of Lake Victoria is that it is so shallow it is luke warm and rather stagnant with a lot of snails and animals that have shisto. A bad little parasite that gets in your skin and goes to your liver. It can live without bothering you for years or can bother you with in 3 weeks and cause liver scarring and even death. So I am reconsidering rafting the Nile. Especially since everyone who has done it has said that the rapids are class 5 and every raft goes over. And some fear for there lives as they are careened down the Nile toward Egypt. This was suppose to be the plan for Thanksgiving more to come on this plan. Tom has already said no way, no shisto for him. The botanical gardens have a rainforest area that is huge trees and flowers everywhere on all the trees and vines. It is what Uganda would look like if it hadn't been deforested for the lumber to make charcoal which is what is used to cook over if you cannot afford paraffin ( kerosene) for your one burner camp stove. When it burns it stinks up the house like fuel oil so they try and use it in the garage part so the smell is less. The electricity is out again so I sit by my solar light and charged computer recounting the day. I bought the bullet today and paid the sister who lives here to do my laundry. I justified the action by telling myself I am helping her pay for college which costs $10,000 / year. She said she would do it for 1000 shillings which is 35 cents I doubled it. Big of me huh.