Bwindi Impenetrable Forest

The name lends itself to just about a million jokes but in all seriousness Bwindi is incredible. We took a 12 hour bus to get there and never even stood up once. At every stop people come on the bus to sell you fresh food anyway- we never noticed that we never got up which we realized means we are a little too used to Africa haha. So we took a truck through the mountains of Uganda to arrive at the Impenatrable Forest and it was stunning. Like many parts of the world - they farm landscape seemingly too steep to farm.. and people there dont see much muzungus- people just turned around to stare at us on the bus. In Bwindi it was different. A Gorilla permit cost us $400, so everyone there knows how much you paid and expect a cut for themselves. Despite this, we made a lot of nice friends in Bwindi and after a while they began to believe that we didnt have money pouring from our pockets. Seeing the Gorillas was nothing short of what it was famed by other travelers to see. There are 640 mountain gorillas in the world. I was 3 feet from one of them and he was looking me right in the eyes. We bushwacked through the rainforest following them for an hour. They are so human like. It was sweet to see how they took care of their young with such patience. Babies climbing everywhere, getting into all kinds of trouble, .. parents lounging, eating, scooping them back up. And when they travel the babies just hang on for the ride. I am so grateful to my family for pitching in for such an incredible Christmas present. You made me feel like a very lucky girl :)
In Bwindi we were impressed to see some really great programs that are actually working (this is not always the case). If you are looking for something nice to give your money to this season here are a couple of programs where the money is distributed responsibly:

Bwindi Orphan Development Center
http://sites.google.com/site/bwindiorphanage/

Bwindi Community Hospital
www.bwindihospital.com

Excerpts from my book:
A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah
Stories of a child soldier in Sierra Leone

From Rehab:
"Whenever I turned on the tap water, all I could see was blood gushing out. I would stare at it until it looked like water before drinking or taking a shower. Boys sometimes ran down the hall screaming "the rebels are coming". Other times, the younger boys sat by rocks weeping and telling us that the tocks were their dead family members. Then there were those instances when we would ambush the staff, tie them up, and interrogate them about the whereabouts of their squad, ammunition..... We were given school supplies and told to go to school between 10 and 2 but each time we were given supplies we would make campfires with them."

There are thousands of children soldiers around the world- but I was suprised to read that their are many in Uganda and 40,000 children commute in northern Uganda to larger villages so they wont be abducted at night and forced into serving.