Community Day

Today we had some time with the community. In the morning we visited the Bwindi Heath Center, a hospital started there by an American who gathered donations some years ago. .. It has become an award winning center, employing 4 Ugandan Doctors and at present 2 volunteers from the UK. ( the father of one of these was with our gorilla trekking group yesterday, so was there with his daughter to visit some more today ). I love this model -it's full if wellness and prevention as well as traditional medicine. Spreading the word about washing hands and using mosquito nets is paramount. Rather shocking if the fact that they see so many cases of malnutrition ( it's difficult to convince the people to feed their children goatsmilk -there are many goats -but all for the mead.)
Then a visit to a women's sewing cooperative run by a very fine lady - they teach the women to sew and send them out with a sewing machine.
After lunch, we went for a community tour of a village in the hills.. We weren't prepared for yet another walk up up up. :-). Saw a traditional healer -who was 73, so the same as us--who also does some work in the hospital ( holistic)... But less than in previous years. And we learned how to make gin from bananas - tastes like aquavit, ...or grappa.:-)
And about all the crops - tea, coffee, millet, bananas to eat and bananas for wine and gin. The whole country is amazingly fertile land. At the end of the day , we visited a Batwa village - (the old Bushman, Pygmy, Bantu) there are still about 800 in this area but no longer just living in the forest as traditional. They had a little entertainment for us which is this blip- they aren't so small like they were - and I confess it makes me very uncomfortable to be this sort of tourist - it's pretty contrived - on the other hand, they can certainly use the tourist money, and of course we buy a few of their crafts. Not sure if it's a good thing tho. Which brings up the well to do tourist in a 3rd world society of this week. Uganda is more and more dependent on the relatively new tourist industry . Gorilla trekking started in 1993 after 3 years of habituation of 3 gorilla groups ( on Dian Fossey's suggestion and guidance. The parks are geared up . But the roads and the infrastructure is behind and difficult.
The little girl with the round eyes in this blip chose H to dance with her. I got to take photos. ( he's used to dancing with a small granddaughter :-)))
After all of that we had a lecture by our UW prof on birds here ..

I know I am several days behind- it's been much to busy to deal with the Internet and not always even possible. Hope to catch up before we leave ....