Macey and Owen here!
We had our last breakfast this morning at Sports Outreach Gulu and sadly said our goodbyes to the wonderful people! We are so thankful to Richard, Jennifer, Millie, Titus, Moses, the kitchen staff, and everyone else for our fantastic time. The warm welcomes, excellent hospitality, and experiences we were afforded were a blessing. (To the people of Gulu, afoyo!!) We then departed to head to the Paraa Safari Lodge.
Within the last 45 minutes of the ride, we saw some giraffes, elephants, antelopes, and possibly lions (if you weren’t looking too hard and got creative)! After a bumpy ride, we made it to the lodge and were greeted by the excellent staff and were offered juice that was so yummy and fresh. We still don’t know what it was, but it tasted great! We then headed straight to lunch, where some of us had Nile River perch, and others chose steak. (We both had the Nile River perch, which was DELICIOUS; anyone who chose stake took the L to be honest). After enjoying our lunch for maybe a little too long, we had to rush to the dock to catch our Nile River boat tour ride! We had an incredible ride down the Nile River and were lucky to see so much wildlife. We saw over 100 hippos (according to Joel’s count), a crocodile, many elephants, water buffaloes, African fish eagles, and a beautiful waterfall. As we approached the waterfall, it started to pour, so we all got a bit wet, but it was such a beautiful scene. It made us appreciate the beauty of God’s creation.
Once the tour concluded, we returned to the lodge and hung out at the swimming pool. We then had dinner, where we had the option of having lamb or chicken, a salad bar, (excellent) green bean soup, and dessert. Some guys tried the unlabeled pepper dressing for the salad and immediately began dying from how spicy it was. Carlee was just fine. Overall, we enjoyed our wonderful meal and the conversations we had with our tables.
After dinner, we had our regular nightly group time. Instead of having deep conversations and sharing our testimonies, we played an icebreaker to switch things up! The game involved every person in the group pretending to be the person to their left in the circle. Shomari was assigned the role of “the therapist” and had to figure out what “condition” the group had based on how we acted and answered his questions. We had lots of belly laughs from Maddie imitating Zoe’s fear of bugs, David laughing at everything just as Macey does, Owen pretending to be Tina (a middle-aged woman with 4 children), and Macey rattling off the colossal collection of Joel quotes from the trip, etc. After a bit of a struggle and a couple of attempts to legitimately diagnose the group, Shomari finally figured out what was going on. This game showed us how close we all have gotten this past week and a half!
Today was quite a bit different than our other days here in Uganda. It showed us how fortunate we are that we’ve gotten to experience a “normal vacation” in contrast with the extreme poverty of the people in Kampala and Gulu, where we went. We have loved our time here in Uganda and can’t believe we only have a couple more nights left!! ): The only thing left tonight is to get some rest for our early morning safari!!
Really good one keep sharing with us. Thank you.