Uganda - pre gorillas

The beginning of the trip didn’t start out so well. The plan was that I would come into Entebbe early afternoon Sunday and then make the 2-3 hour trip out to Mbale so I could visit a health camp we were doing there the following day. However, in planning this the office forgot that Sunday was the day that school started up again so traffic was ridiculous! It took us about 6 hours, so by the time I got there it was 8:30pm, I had missed dinner and was exhausted! The camp was good to see but they forgot to plan for lunch and it was in a rural village where there was no food for sale (and a cholera outbreak) and then we had to leave really early and because the traffic was such a mess again I didn’t get back to the hotel until after 9pm! I had to start training a group the next day, which isn’t how I like to start these trainings (exhausted) but the rest of the week went much better. It was also great to see Mbale and the countryside – tons of banana trees, very very green – maybe because it’s rainy season but I think it’s just a lush country. Also – people seem to be fetching water all day every day in big yellow containers. Usually, water fetching happens in the morning and the evening but here people were carrying these jugs around all day! Finally, the terrain is quite diverse, there were moments it reminded me of Pennsylvania farmland, and then moments of Montana plains with mountains in the back. But mostly it was jungle-ish.

The hotel we had the training at was very nice, Ranch on the Lake, which as the name suggests is on Lake Victoria. I think this side of the lake is prettier than the Kenya side but I haven’t really spent a lot of time on the Kenya side so I shouldn’t judge. One very nice thing is that Uganda doesn’t have the crime rates that Kenya does so it’s much safer. In the evenings I would go for a jog around the hotel. It doesn’t get dark until about 7, which left me time for a quick jog. The hotel is about 5km off the main road, on a dusty path. The first day I went with my iphone but the villagers (adults and kids alike) were so friendly that I felt bad that I couldn’t hear them. The kids wanted to race me, and because it’s not Kenya I could still beat them (in Kenya I’d lose). Ugandans are certainly very friendly – everywhere I went people would wave hello. Kids and adults. As I was jogging I actually felt bad because people would so jubilantly wave hello to me that they would lose the balance of the heavy jug they were carrying on their head. The next day for my jog, I went sans iphone and it was very fun to talk to all the kids. Some of the adults recognized me from the day before and would congratulate me on running every day. I ended up going to a church with a soccer game being played on the grounds. One little girl in plastic yellow flip-flops and a red checkered dress (a typical school uniform) jogged at least a quarter mile with me. Chatting and laughing hysterically! The jogs were definitely the highlight of my days.

It was weird to come here and get absolutely no sense of Kampala. I was really looking forward to the good Mexican place I’d heard about (you can’t get Mexican anywhere!) but that will have to wait until next trip.

I was originally scheduled to fly back to Nairobi on Friday morning but instead called to see if I could get a pass to trek to the gorillas and did!