Masindi bound! Yippee

We left for Murchison Falls national park a 3 hour drive away at 9am with our driver,Michael. A kind, gentle and soft-spoken young man with wife and 4 kids (9, 6, 2 and 3 months). He does guiding for muzungu for a living was recommended to us by Grace’s sister Deborah who knows him well.

We stopped for lunch in Masindi, 2 hours later, at a lovely hotel and restaurant where muzungu stay on their way north to the park, called the New Courtview Hotel. They had traditional bandas (huts with grass thatch roof) for people to stay in with banda gazebos for outdoor lunches. I had chicken curry, Thai fish cakes, chapatti, and 2 COLD cokes! It was yummy and my eyes were bigger than my stomach again.

We stayed at the Boomu Women's Cooperative, 500 m from the park entrance where we stayed in traditional banda huts. Jim and I each had our own (with 2 beds) while Gisele and Colleen shared one. The doors are built very low.  You have to bend low to enter the hut and miss the thatch grass on the edges. I didn't and hit it with my backpack and grass showered me in my hair, and down the back of my t-shirt. Very itchy and picky! Margaret who is the founder of the co-op was our host. I bought a lovely basket made by one of her members for my sewing room for 20,000 sh or $10. She offers accommodation with meals and other outings like a community village walk which we had planned for the next morning. Supper was in a large dining banda with goat stew, roast potatoes, and fresh papaya. We had outdoor showers under the stars which was beautiful with lukewarm water from water tanks that were still warm from the day during the day. Then it was bedtime. When I got settled into bed for the night after a trip to the outhouse (with TP provided!), I heard a malaria mosquito buzzing around my ear. I looked up with my headlamp and found a fist-sized hole in my net. So I moved my stuff from the other bed and re-arranged my stuff coming into my net with me (cell, Kobo, headlamp and eyepad). And read and then went to sleep or tried. It was a warm night and hot and stuffy in my banda and I was worried about geckos landing on my net which I saw crawling around and we won't even talk about the spiders!

Nonetheless Boomu was peaceful and quiet with beautiful grounds all clean and well looked after as you will see from the pictures I took when I get to show them. Boomu cost us $30 plus $5 for the village walk and $7 for breakfast and supper. a steal!