Here is our guest house midway up a rather steep hill
_Every morning I wake up between 6:30 and 7:00am. This is done without the aid of technology due to nature's alarm clock: the faithful rooster. Many local villagers keep chickens and have a rooster. So every morning, before the sun rises, we hear the loud and faithful "cock-a-doodle-doo" of the many roosters surrounding us. Carolyn has usually been awake for hours, listening to the chanting or the drum beats through the night. I lie in bed and soon enough the sun pops up. Yes, it literally pops up. Being on the equator, the sunrises and sunsets happen quickly. Within a half hour of first light the sun shines brightly.
Basically, all the guests at the guest house are up by 7:15am. During our stay, there were 7 guests (our family of 4, Sabia, Anna and Tom) along with Barbara, the owner/manager/head Big Boss Lady. The first one up . . .
Dawn from the front porch of the Guesthouse
_We are having an interesting time in Uganda - this is quite a trip! We are living up in the mountains near the Kenya border. No electricity, no running water, no toilet, no fridge, no car, no stores etc. Shower from a bag of water hanging on a stick that Birch hooked up. Birch and John, along with a local teen named Albert, carry the water over a kilometre straight up hill from a river below (every drop we drink, cook or wash with). Propane stove and a fire for cooking. However, solar-powered batteries for the laptop and a cell-phone tower nearby help tremendously. Amazing what we can get used to living without...
We are in a house of volunteers: Barbara (65 year old Canadian who runs everything), plus university students doing a GAP year and a Peace Corps worker - and Birch is hanging out with them. They are having . . .
_Today I did my situps and pushups, brushed my teeth, and set out for the school. On the way to the school Barbara pointed out a kid who had a sponsor in Canada that sent money every month for school. But he wasn't going to school, because he was at home. That really made me angry. Some people are sending money from the other side of the globe to help this kid get an education. And what does he do? He doesn't even make the effort to go to school, and he probably just pockets the money. It just teaches bad work ethic, and it really doesn't help the kid in the end. You'd think that they would be happy to be helped, but they make it really hard. Anyway, when we got to the school, we had an assembly. We were introduced, and the school kids sang some Ugandan songs for us, so we returned with Land of the Silver Birch. They had all this amazing rhythm, percussion, and harmonies, and we were pretty weak, to tell you the truth. Afterwards, I was given a job as . . .
_We have landed in Uganda, Birch and Allegra and my first time on African soil, along with and Carolyn's third time! We get through customs which takes longer than expected and when we finally pick up our bags and leave the passenger area we are met by Sabia, a wonderful American / Ethiopian woman that is working as a Peace Corps volunteer with Barbara in Bududa. Sabia gives us all a warm welcome and immediately starts answering all our questions: How long have you been waiting for us? Where are we staying tonight? How far is Bududa? How long have you been working with Barbara at the school in Bududa?
We walk along to the parking lot where a Toyota van is waiting for us to take us to our overnight accommodation just 5km from the airport. The driver is pleasant, we all load in along with all our backpacks and . . .
Birch is taller than I am! Here he is at the top of a small mountain with Pushkar, Rajastan, far below. Today I am grateful for $2 all-he-can-eat buffets...
_ A good friend has asked whether I love India - I have great memories of when I first came here (1984) - at that time, I vowed to come back for 6 months to see all the places I never got to. Our guide had organized everything through his company Canadian Himalayan Adventures - we stayed . . .
_Today we went to Amber Fort which is 12km north of Jaipur. The weather in Jaipur is brisk -- dry and chilly when you are in the shade and very warm when you are in the sun. This brisk morning we were on a bus heading to Amber Fort. When we got there the first thing that caught my attention were around twenty monkeys grabbing food from each other, chasing each other around and jumping through crowds of pigeons causing them to scatter in a cloud. When we got inside the gates to the Fort there was a long walkway over a moat that led to a huge stronghold overlooking the valley. Following us were a whole bunch of vendors and hawkers who were yelling prices at us and telling us to buy their stuff. Being seasoned travellers of India by now we knew to . . .
_ All guests and devotees of the ashram are expected to do a minimum of 2 hours of seva or volunteer work while visiting or staying for extended periods. Seva in Amma's words is "selfless service". During our week long stay at the ashram, I did quite a variety of 2 hour services for the community. It is very organized which is necessary because we are told there are about 5,000 permanent residents or renounciates as they are called. This number can almost double with visitors during busy times of the year. Providing and running such a large community requires a very efficient system of organizing and scheduling.
The next morning after arriving we all go to the "Seva" desk. Here a person gives you a list of various jobs that are needed to be filled for the days ahead which are accessed through the ashrams computer network. As guests we can then choose which jobs we arinterested in and are capable of doing. Most jobs are menial, grunt jobs that are necessary to keep the ashram functioning. For example . . .
_We have spent an enjoyable three days at Green Palm Homes and now we are travelling south again to a tiny fishing village along the coast of the Backwaters where a modern day guru has estabilshed an ashram with a huge following. A few weeks earlier, while we were in Auroville, Carolyn met a woman who asked if we knew "Amma" the hugging Guru. We had never heard about her and the woman said Amma had changed her life and if we had the opportunity we should go and visit her ashram in Kerala. We discovered that we were not far from the ashram and a daily boat plys the waters of the region which stops at the Ashram, so we . . .
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