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Published: July 10th 2009
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Daneal and Johnny
Two other guys I met who, not mentioned, were about to head off to do some aid work a little way out of Entebbe. A quick bit of backtracked and filled in writing. Thus I am writing this from 4 days in the future, or about events 4 days in the past. Whatever view tickles your fancy.
Well I had a great end to my horrible airport stay. Business class upgrade, so good, the perks, bring them on. For dinner we were served some kind of salmon and cream cheese starter followed by pan seared springbok medallions, closed by a date pudding. its strange airplane food that actually tastes good.
Anyway, one thing to note about Uganda as far as initial observations go, its so much greener than the other parts of Africa I had seen till now (that really just being Zimbabwe and Johannesburg). And, Lake Victoria, it's massive! It disappears into the horizon at some places... maybe a number of places. The feel getting off the plane was quite different to Zimbabwe too. A lot less depressing. This crazy Ugandan running and jumping off the plan shouting how he loved Uganda and kissing the ground may have contributed to that.
Anyway, during my flight over I started conversations with other passengers where opportunity presented. No one I had thus spoken to (translator and telecommunications) seemed to be involved in anything I might have been thus far interested in. However I persevered with my attempts at starting conversations.
Finally while waiting for my to be declared 'lost' (I knew what had happened to it...) baggage round the conveyor, I met two young guys, one some medical type and another... an engineer type, wow, doing some local village volunteer work. After speaking with them briefly, I explained that at the moment I was not here for too long, but if they needed a hand on anything, flick me an email before the 10th and I could change flights to come and give them a hand.
After confirming my bag was now actually 'lost' (I was still maintaining in my head I knew what happened too it, but I was admittedly a little concerned), I headed over to... the lost baggage desk. Where I met... Jeremiah.
After initiating a conversation with him I found out... guess what? Yeah he was here on some sort of international aid mission. So anyway to keep this succinct, we swapped details, told him to email me. He gave me his email address too, which I used the next day.
Then, yeah I was talking to this decrepit old woman. (Side note I thought the Mother Theresa type of old woman was supposed to age into a bundle of smile lines, not the walking corpse before me). Hey guess what she was doing here..? She was working on some aid mission in a local village, so true to my current form, I gave her my email address.
This is long. Sorry you little short attention span munchkins.
BUT those who have persevered will be rewarded. Onto the scene steps the hot little Scandinavian blond girl. Initiating conversation with her will make her think im hitting on her, you think? Would you, do you, don't you? Meh, anyway guess what she is doing in Uganda?
Haha got ya! You wouldn't believe it (or would you) but hot little Scandinavian girl was working for the world bank, did I ever say how much I like the world bank? Anyway I was way wrong about the world bank, I mean she was just inocently collecting statistical information on the use of cell phones by 'poor' Ugandans, nothing suss here...
Just a little side tidbit, there was another big group of people in the airport that day, with bright yellow shirts, outlines of Africa and little red crosses over where Uganda is, wonder what they were doing there..?
I couldn't help but think what started off as good fortune ended up leaving me with thoughts over there are a good number of people trying to make a positive difference here, just doing what I would be doing, was there room for me?
Oh and on my last night, 6 hours before heading off to the airport once again, I met two women. Who were heading off to a local village to help the villages build composting toilets. After telling them I was off to Nairobi they offered the email of a woman building an orphanage across there. I accepted, they got distracted, I reminded... then I left for bed, without the contact.
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