Conquering Mukinge "Hill"

Our Nshima lunch wasn't so bad. Nshima is basically cornmeal mush that is rolled with your hand into a ball, then dipped in "relish", which could be a variety of options such as beans or stew with meat, or cooked pumpkin leaves (kind of tastes like cooked spinach or collard greens). Since we didn't use silverware, it got a bit messy. Nshima by itself is rather tasteless, but the relishes were mostly enjoyable (Jeremy liked pumpkin leaves much better than me). We had planned to hike Mukinge Hill on Saturday after lunch, but we were rained out by a very impressive thunderstorm.

We should have thought twice about hiking up the hill anyway. First of all, the path started out as a tiny hint of dirt amongst waist-high grass. By the time we got halfway up, there was no path at all, and when going back down, we basically blazed our own trail through grass (very difficult in a skirt). We also think that hill is an understatement as we were all very breathless nowhere near the top. In spite of our certainty that we would land on a snake the very next step, we luckily saw nothing bigger than a few spiders and a few bright orange mushrooms that are supposedly edible. Although the leafy trees made it difficult to get a perfect view, we were able to appreciate the scenery, making our adventure worthwhile.

Sadly, the premature baby died yesterday. Apparently, several of the incubator bulbs burned out in the middle of the night and no one caught it until morning rounds. By that time, the baby was very cold and not doing well. In spite of scavenging for new bulbs and rewarming the baby, he continued to do worse and the parents decided to take him home rather than continue medical care. Although it was incredibly frustrating to find a freezing baby in the morning with everyone oblivious and to think that this problem could have been easily fixed, I'm glad the parents were at peace in taking him home.