The crew just left JJ's and is getting ready to spend a night in Mbale before heading off on a 9 hour bus ride to Fort Portal tomorrow. To recap, after leaving Jinja last week, we caught a ride into Mbale where we celebrated Zoe's 18th birthday! We had a nice dinner at an Indian restaurant and enjoyed an East African supermarket cake. The next morning we met up with JJ and his family. JJ founded the Mirembe Kawomera fair trade Coffee Cooperative so we got to learn a lot about the process behind the growing and marketing of coffee. The Coop has greatly improved the quality of life for participating farmers by allowing them to earn up to 5 times as much as they would otherwise earn selling locally or through non-fair trade organizations. The other cool part about Mirembe Kawomera is that it's an interfaith organization, peacefully uniting Jews, Christians, and Muslims in an area high with religious tension.

We got to participate in and witness the first Jewish Shabbat of the year at the local synogogue with JJ's friends and family. The service was beautiful with many amazing songs and afterwards, there was a really interesting discussion which provided a space for everyone to question and talk about the service and the faith.

We went on some really cool hikes while we were there - one of which was to the rock cave where JJ used to secretly practice his religion before Uganda became more religiously tolerant. The other was to Sipi Falls, about an hour out of Mbale. The hike took about 4 hours and provided us with amazing close up views of 3 different waterfalls... it was pretty unreal. Overall, it was an amazing week. JJ's family really took us in and showed us some incredible hospitality for which we are very grateful. We look forward to traveling on to Fort Portal and doing some work at the Yes Uganda orphanage later this week. Thanks to all who showed us a lovely time in Mbale.

- Will and Taylor