I left my heart in Sipi!

Ok ready for the longest update ever in the shortest amount of time! It has been a busy past few days but it has been really incredible! So beginning with Martyrs day. For those of you that don't know what that holiday is, I will explain it to you. So In the 1800's the main religion in Uganda was Muslim. Then Christian missionaries began coming and spreading christianity among the people. The king at the time was scared that the people would begin worshipping Christ more than him and so he decided that he would just start killing them. He decided to start with the people that worked in his court. There were about 25 of them I believe. He began by forcing them to march to a village called Namugongo all chained up together. Once they got there, they were tortured, and burned alive in an attempt to have them denounce their religious beliefs. However, none of them did. Instead they sang hymns. Contrary to the king's hopes, this actually caused Christianity to spread and the man who ordered their martyr actually converted to Christianity as well on his death bed. The story is a little more complex then that, but that is the fast version. So now it is tradition for Christians throughout eastern Africa to make the same trek to Nomugongo in honor of those men. Since it was a national holiday, we decided to go experience it ourselves! So we woke up super early and headed to the site! It was incredible to see how many people there were gathered together. I couldn't understand anything that they were saying because it was in Lugandan, but it was still amazing to be their with them. There were two places that people gather. If you are Catholic, you go to this giant Cathedral and if you are Protestant they gather at this church. We visited both and were able to learn a lot about the Ugandan culture.
Then on Friday I went on an outreach to a village called Kayunga. Five of us went with Emanuel to do some HIV/AIDS screening and some physical therapy things. I ended up helping two girls on our team who have experience in physical therapy help some elderly patients who had back, knee, ankle, or shoulder pain. I learned a ton!! We also screened 45 people for HIV/AIDS and had 3 positive results. There was also a child there who was dying of AIDS and it was so hard to see her suffering!
On Saturday, 8 of us woke up super early to head to Sipi Falls. We had a reservation of somewher to stay, but we didn't exactly know how we were going to get there or anything, but we decided that that was all part of the adventure. So we headed off! And everything went great! After about 4 hours of driving, we pulled into the Ugandan mountains and it was absolutely amazing!! By far the most beautiful thing I have seen in my entire life!! We got to our sleeping reservation and met our guide, Fred. We had a lot of confusion though about everything and we ended up having to switch over to another camp site, but it was well worth it because the place we ended up staying was so incredible! It was located on this cliff that overlooked the falls and a picturesque landscape that allowed you to see hundreds of miles of rural Uganda! And we were going to sleep in bandas wich are mud huts with a straw roof! Needless to say we were very excited! Then Fred took us on a hike to see two other waterfalls. However cheesy this may sound, all along the trail everyone kept saying, "I think I just died and went to heaven!" It was just incredible how beautiful it was! Words can't even do it justice so I'm not going to try! Pictures can't really either, but I'll try and get one still anyways to show you! At the first waterfall, we hiked to this area that was directly behind the waterfall. There were dense green plants everywhere and a mist that covered the whole bottom! After taking about a million pictures, we headed off to the next one! The next one was equally as beautiful and we continued to the top! Once we got to the top, it was a little plateau area and there were all these little kids at the top playing games and cattle grazing! I'm not even kidding when I say it felt like a dream! We all wanted to stay up there, but Fred hurried us along because we were already late for our dinner reservations. (O just so you know, we imagined Sipi looking very touristy, but it wasn't at all! Everything is super small and it was all just so. . . perfect!) When we got to the hotel (relative term) where we were having dinner, we were just blown away again! It was this hut on a cliff overlooking all the beautiful things already mentioned, lit by lanterns!! It was so. . . romantic I guess you could say! There was only one other group in there having dinner becuase there were only two tables and it was a cute family from the UK. So we sat up there and ate our dinner watching the sunset! It was just incredible to say the least! Then we headed back to our banda where the guys running the place for the summer had built a fire on the overlook area and invited us to come and sit around it! So we did and it was so much fun! We sang songs and told stories and laughed at each other! And then in unbelief at how amazing the day went, we headed to bed!
The next morning, I woke up super early for some reason and grabbed a few things and headed out to sit on the overlook! It was still as amazing as ever! I also talked with one of the guys there about our next adventure in Sipi which was repelling down the falls! I was only slightly nervous about it until he confirmed to me that the falls was 100 meters high!! I started getting nervous and he was like, you can do it, just don't get to the top and chicken out! So I made up my mind to do it! After eating our African french toast (it is very interesting by the way) we hike up to the repelling area! When my turn came I walked over to the guy with all the ropes and he was just harnessing me all in and I looked down and freaked out! Comfortingly he said, "It's a long way down". Why he thought that was a good time to tell me that, I have no idea!! But I climbed over the edge of the cliff and started going down! It was pretty good for the first five minutes until my feet wouldn't reach the cliff anymore! I didn't know if that was supposed to happen so I kept trying to reach it, which ended up causing me to spin, which twisted the ropes, which made me REALLY freak out! I sat there for a moment trying to take in the scenery but slightly distracted about falling hundreds of feet to my death! But since I was in the middle of the cliff, I couldn't really do much so I just decided to go down spinning! It was quite nice actually seeing all angles of the waterfall and the view! So amazing!!!! I wished I could have taken a picture from where I was! Unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you look at it, I reached the bottom and got soaked by the mist coming off the waterfall!!
After everyone took their turn, we began hiking back! We met these two little kids Isaac (about 10) and his little brother Joe (about 4) and they led us back along the trail! They were so adorable! A girl in our group took off her shoes so that she wouldn't be slipping so much and Isaac picked them up and carried them for her. Once he reached some water, he began washing them for her. It was such a touching moment!! After reaching our campsite, we had to pack up our stuff and get ready to go! As we gathered our stuff together, the people up there asked us, "So when are you coming back?" It's pretty heart-breaking to be at the most amazing place you have ever seen and admit to yourself that you are most likely never coming back. But it was such a great experience and I'm so grateful for it! As we were waiting for the taxi to come get us, I was sitting in this little hamock on the overlook, listening to African music, marveling at the wall I repelled down and this monkey we named George jumping through the trees wondering how life could get any better!
It was a long drive home, and when we got there, we had our sight visitor here. He is from the HELP office and he is just out here for the week making sure that everything is going ok. After our meeting he broke out this bag of American candy (6 pound bag, 150 pieces) and I am not kidding when I say the whole bag disappeared in a half hour! Every felt so sick afterwards, but it was quite the treat! We also reviewed all our plans for the week (which is going to be super busy!) and began getting things organized! Coming up this week, me and Ally are going to go around and get things set up for a choir for children with disablities that I am super excited about and we are going to do an assembly for a secondary schoo here in Lugazi with the Youth Outreach Mission. They want us to go and give a little lesson about HIV/AIDS so the public health commitee has been frantically getting proposals done for funds as well as perfecting our lesson plan. It's going to be an awesome week and I"m so excited about it!
This past week, I have just been thinking about the things that I have enjoyed the most so far about being in Uganda, and I think without a doubt it has been meeting the people! I love just talking with them and getting to know their life stories, goals, and dreams for the future, etc. I wish I couls tell you about all of them, but as I said before, I don't have much time today unfortunately! But it has been incredible and I know it is going to be hard to leave!