Sunday, September 29, 2013

Sipi Falls

A few weekends ago the gang and I took a mini-vacation to Sipi Falls. Sipi is located high in the mountains of Eastern Uganda (on Mount Elgon, to be exact), near the Kenyan border. Here the temperatures are cooler, the air is fresher, and the sights are stunning.

Though a last minute trip for Katie and me -
Lori: "Hey we're going to Sipi Falls with a friend of Vanessa's and two of her friends, you wanna come?"
Us: 'Sure! When are you leaving?'
Lori: "Tomorrow afternoon"
- it proved to be a wonderful getaway and a nice change of scenery from Jinja.

Thursday afternoon after returning home from sewing class, Lori, Vanessa, Katie and I loaded up our stuff in the private hire car we'd called and set out on the 3.5 hr journey to the mountains. Along the way we were blessed (for the majority of the trip) with incredibly good roads and got stuck at the tail of a funeral procession for some political figure going somewhat slowly and preventing anyone from passing around it.

Once we made it to Sipi we were a bit confused on where exactly we were staying because the hotel  has 3 different locations, ALL with the same name! Eventually we got everything figured out (after deciding to change locations the next morning) and settled into our 'home' for the next 3 days - Noah's Ark. Did I mention it was complete with somewhat creepy stuffed animals in the 'lounge' area?


Our first day was filled with hiking, Hiking, HIKING!!! Before lunch we hiked up the mountain to see two of the three largest waterfalls at Sipi. As I'm sure you can imagine, they were amazingly beautiful - and thanks to the invention of the camera, you can see for yourself with the photos below!

The lovely ladies of Lubogo Road - pre-adventure

View from the bottom of the mountain


BEHIND the waterfall!

Learning about the man-made salt caves behind the falls.

Woo-hoo!

Katie and my 'first day of school' picture of the trip

Above Waterfall #1 - Overlooking the Karamojong Valley
 
Waterfall #2
 

That is one big waterfall . . .

The Sipi gang - minus the photographer

For scale - we look so tiny!
At lunch we headed back down the mountain to Sipi Falls Lodge (directly across the road from Noah's Ark) for some food and to gear up for the last waterfall of the day.

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Scarves For Sale - Get 'em While They're Hot!!!

You want to look cool?
 
You want to look stylish?

You want to have fun?


Then allow me to introduce . . . 

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After a long blog absence I'm excited to announce that the handmade batik scarves we've all been working so hard on are officially for sale online!!! They went up September 7th (i think it was) - sorry about the late notice - and hopefully will be available until the end of the year. Unless they sell out of course, which would actually be pretty great for us, but sad for you if you can't get one. BUT fear not because we have an additional purchase order in place for this line and another for a new spring line! Wow-ee!!

The Details:
If you would like to purchase a scarf, thus supporting mine and Fount of Mercy's work, as well as help raise money for orphans all over the world (who knew a scarf could do so much, right?) click your mouse on this link: https://my.goproject.org/project/fount-of-mercys-go-shop.

This link takes you to our Fount of Mercy GO Shop, where you can learn a little more information about our project and how it helps Ugandans in the local Jinja community. ALSO - and this is the really important part - ANYTHING you buy through this page (just click the orange "Shop the GO Exchange Store") will support us with 25% commission!  If you don't use that link, you can type "fount of mercy" in the affiliate line at checkout which will give us the 25% commission as well. This is awesome because the commission money goes directly to Fount of Mercy to help keep it running!

Sound like a win-win? I thought so too. Now go on out there share the news, share the link, and let's buy some scarves!