Today I went to the botanical gardens in Entebbe. I think I expected a manicured garden with mazes and tropical flowers like the Botanical Gardens in Kuala Lampur or Brooklyn. Instead it was just 48 acres that happened to have a lot of useful plants on it.
Essentially I walked around with a guide and he showed me plant after plant and I stupidly gawked at how all these things I buy and use regularly actually come from plants. Blah Blah Blah Americans are so disconnected from their food etc. but seriously, with the amount of chocolate I eat I should at least be able to recognize a cocoa plant, right?
We wandered around and the guide, Rafiki (which cannot be his real name) pointed to various trees, picked up their nuts or fruits, ground their leaves to let me smell, and gave me many serious "advisories". In a totally uncharacteristic fashion, I actually attempted to capture this experience on film.
You need to figure out if Rafiki is actually your guide's real name. Maybe he thinks that foreigners will get a kick out of it?
ReplyDeleteI'm almost positive Rafiki is not his real name and that prior to 1994 he told people his name was Kunta.
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