Hike

So it is 1AM here and I have Basil in one arm making it harder to type but he needs TLC more than I need to type quickly so it is all right. His IV is unhooked for right now so I'll hold him while I can. He gave us a scare over the past two days- he became very dehydrated very quickly. (When you only weigh 2.5 kg you don't have much "margin of error") We tried ORS in the night but he kept getting more lethargic and stopped sucking. He earned an NG and an IV by morning. He does seem to be trying to eat a little more now so we'll see. But this post wasn't going to be about the kids. It is about the walk we took yesterday.
Last evening Tim took us for a hike. We headed out of Soroti in the late afternoon heat. The road is rough, the area undeveloped to say the least. Past the LRA bombed out building. Past the cotton factory burned by the rebel forces. The road is dirt and very uneven Keep going toward the large outcropping of rock in the distance.

The single hill on the flat savanna keeps looming closer. We park right at the base. The rock is loose a slides around but isn't too difficult to climb. Small trees and scrub brush cling in the cracks. Higher up decades of nature have deposited enough dirt for growing large trees with their roots deep in the cracks. Lizards are everywhere in the yellow grass as we keep scrambling upwards. Monkeys too but they are too skittish to let us have more than a quick glance. If you stand with you back to the setting sun you can see for miles on the flat grasslands. Way up here it isn't hard to put yourself back 50 years and if you squint you can see an ostrich or a gazelle. A small collection of huts indicate a family, this unchanged in those 50 years. These collections are few and far between though. We start to head back down, slightly easier than up. Between the dusk and the thick red dust from the road visibility seems limited. But in the distance lightening crackles out of the bottoms of large clouds, so clear it seems close. However, too far away to hear any thunder so it just seems near. The whole thing is just breath taking. I wish I could share more of it than just these words.