Well I'm back in Canada after spending 3 weeks in Uganda! I have some pretty interesting stories to tell as well as my observations on this amazing country.
I was traveling with my sister, my mom, and our friend who is from Uganda. We were going for our friend's brother's wedding. We left Canada on the evening of May 22nd. We were flying Emirates so we connected in Dubai. The really great thing about Emirates is that if your layover in Dubai is longer than 8 hours, they put you up in a hotel and pay for your meals. Our layover happened to be about 14 hours. We arrived in Dubai at around 6 p.m. so it gave us a chance to look around.
We went to the Gold Souk, which has all these gold shops with amazing (and expensive) jewelry. My friend was really interested in looking around at the gold but I ventured off to check out some clothes. Everywhere there are shopkeepers beckoning you into their stores because they have "best price for you!" Their best price is usually something completely ridiculous. One man asked me for $120 US for a simple scarf. Eventually I got him down to $10 US but I didn't buy it because I really didn't even want it!
Dubai is also ridiculously hot. I had a tanktop on with a scarf around my neck, but my mom told me to cover my shoulders because I was getting strange looks. I did, unfortunately - it was incredibly humid so any extra piece of clothing made you sweat like crazy. On the way home, we arrived in Dubai at 1 a.m. and it was still 37 degrees Celsius! When we left the airport it was like walking into a wall of water, the air was so thick. Immediately my glasses fogged up haha.
So we got to Uganda on May 24th at around 4 in the afternoon. The airport is about an hour away from Kamapala, even though it's only 30 km. The roads are very twisty and it's not really a highway. There are constantly people walking or biking on the roads so you have to constantly be slowing down. I totally passed out in the car, though, so I missed the drive in to the city.
Well Uganda is a totally crazy place...the streets have giant holes in them from...honestly I don't know what. You'll be driving along and all of a sudden you have to slam on the brakes or swerve out of the way to avoid this crater in the street. Plus there's no speed limit so the city has put up all these speed bumps which are just incredibly annoying. But they have to do something, otherwise people would just be driving at maniacal speeds all the time. There's also not very many lights or lanes, so when you drive you have to constantly be on the watch for people who might be randomly darting into your path, at times driving right towards you!
I eventually got so sick of the driving. The cars in incredibly poor disrepair so they're always spewing out this thick stream of stinky diesel smoke that makes you sick to your stomach to breathe it in. Plus there's the endless lines of traffic. And it might not all be so bad, but then it's really hot too, so it makes your patience give up a lot faster.
Then there were the buses. They looked like Volkswagon vans. I can't remember what make and model they actually were, though. Anyway, they were hot and usually quite crowded. But they were so cheap - about $.50 to get into the city from where we were staying. There aren't really bus stops - well, there are places where you can go to definitely catch a bus. But if you're just walking on the street and you want to get on, you just wave at them. The bus has a guy who is always waving his arm out the window at people to try and get them on the bus.
The other form of "public transportation" are boda bodas: motorcycles you can ride on. I took one in the last week of being in Uganda and it was so fun, I wish I'd taken one sooner. It felt very safe and it was great to feel the air through your hair and on your skin. You felt so much closer to everything you drove past: all the amazing scenery, the goats, the bicyclists, the people walking. You do have to be careful, though, because some boda bodas are dangerous if the driver likes to weave in and out of traffic without checking properly.
Being white in Uganda makes you an automatic celebrity. There you are called "mzungu" which basically means "white person", but not in a derogatory racial slur kinda way, just as fact. There really weren't many "mzungu" in the area where we were staying so the kids would totally freak out when you walked by. Some would seriously shriek and laugh and cry out "mzungu mzungu!" They would LOVE it if you said "Oli otya" (hi, how are you?) to them. They just can't believe that a mzungu would know something in Lugandan.
Even with the adults (especially the men), they will be totally impressed if you say anything in their language. And they all want to talk to you, because to say "hello" to a mzungu and have you acknowledge it makes them feel pretty special.
It's so interesting that being white gets you treated that way, because in Canada you would never freak out in amazement when you see a black person walk down the street. It would be pretty ridiculous, in fact, to see a white person saying "Oh my god, it's a black person WOW!!" here in North America haha.
There is some badly needed infrastructure in Kampala. The roads are in poor condition; there is no real garbage disposal system so people just burn the garbage, including plastics; the hospitals are understaffed and underfunded; there is no minimum wage and thus no assurance of any kind of expected salary for most people; no proper drainage system so when it pours rain, the water just eats up the streets. It's sad to see the condition in which most people live. There are a lot of slums consisting of one-room houses with a dirty yard full of flea-ridden stray dogs.
Despite all this, the people are so happy all the time! People are always sitting around and talking and laughing. They live such a slow pace of life, never rushing around and hurrying - just taking their time to get done what they need to do. I would often see men just sitting underneath a tree, not doing anything. I asked our friends what all these people were doing, just hanging out - they said they were thinking or working haha. Interesting...
Then we took a side trip to Zanzibar. Well actually, we were supposed to go on a safari in Tanzania but...Okay so it started out by flying to Nairobi. Our friend's friend picked us up from the airport and took us downtown. Before we left the car, she took off all her gold jewelry and locked it up. Apparently people in Nairobi will just come up to you and try to grab it off your neck!
Anyway, then we got on this shuttle bus that was taking us to Arusha, Tanzania. It was supposed to be a 4 hr. drive on a normal highway...unfortunately that highway was under construction and we had to take a diverted road which was worse than any gravel road I've ever been on in my life. Plus this bus had no suspension to speak of. Plus I was at the very back. And last but not least there was no air-conditioning so we had to open the windows which meant by the end of the EIGHT HOUR trip, I had about two inches of dust covering my entire body. Not fun.
Then we were arranging our safari with this guy (Basil) who supposedly knew our friend's brother. Well, Basil wanted us to pay him the full amount before we even left. That was pretty sketchy and we refused. Then we found out that it was only going to be us four girls in a private car with a different driver. We figured that it was just too dangerous for four girls to go off with some random guy into the middle of a game park full of wild animals. So we canceled and booked air tickets to Zanzibar!
So we took off to Zanzibar, which is a beautiful and incredibly interesting place. The streets are very narrow, even more so than European streets. There are tons of little shops selling crafts, scarves, clothes, and food. We hired a guide when we got there, a guy named Ali who was really cute. We ended up hanging out a lot more over the next few days and...well that's all I'm going to say about that haha.
Apparently a huge boat had recently sunk just off the coast of Zanzibar...and I mean just off the coast - it was trying to dock and it sunk! This happened just a few days before we arrived. Apparently there were people who were still alive on the boat, somehow trapped in an air bubble in the boat, below the surface. You would never know that this catastrophe had taken place, though - there were hardly any police or emergency crew around the docks. If this was North America, the place would have been crawling with people! It was terribly tragic and 7 people died as a result of the laxity of others...
Zanzibar is beautiful, though. The Ocean is very calm and the beaches are amazing. We went on a spice tour where we saw all kinds of different spices including nutmeg, ginger, turmeric, cloves, cardamom and all kinds of fruit including jackfruit, dorian, mangos, bananas, etc. We had a traditional lunch of creamed spinach, rice, chapattis, and curried bananas and potatoes in a creamy coconut sauce. We also swam in the Ocean at a private beach.
I didn't want to leave Zanzibar - it was my favourite place, and kind of a magical little side excursion. But we had to get back for the wedding, so leave we did :( It was nice to get back with our friends though. And some more family members had arrived that we had never met yet so it was fun getting to know them.
The wedding was massive. About 600 people were invited. The ceremony started at 1:00 p.m. and was a full Catholic Mass so it took about an hour and a half. People were still showing up to the ceremony at around 2:15 p.m. And then the priest went WAY over time even though there was another wedding ceremony immediately after this one.
It was pretty much like your typical Western wedding. The only major difference was the fact that the speeches went on FOREVER. In total I think we had about 4 hours of speeches. I think that was probably a little (aka a lot) excessive. But I guess it's a very special day and everyone wants to have their say!
Anyway, the trip was totally amazing and there are definitely things I miss about Africa: the heat; Fanta Orange; the greenery; the food. I also like how people are pretty chilled out, but that is also one thing I don't miss at the same time. People are frequently late for things, especially meals. We went for lunch at one guy's house. We arrived late, at around 12:45/1:00 p.m. I thought we would eat fairly soon after that...nope. We didn't eat until about 3:00 p.m., by which time I was absolutely starving. Strange.
I'm so fortunate that I get to return to Africa. It's easy to put aside your experiences over there now that I've returned. But the fact I get to go back and reinforce in my mind everything that I think and love and dislike about Africa is pretty special!
I can't wait!
