A Hairy Lemon

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We used the last of the, seemingly endless, election public holidays to return to Jinja and the Nile. We spent one night in Jinja, which has a fairly lively nightlife which seems more accessible than Kampala. After negotiating a 1500 shilling discount (50p!) for lack of hot water and TV we went onwards to the Hairy Lemon.

The Hairy Lemon is a camp on a little island in the middle of the Nile, mainly frequented by international kayakers who use it as a base to explore some (apparently) fantastic rapids nearby. It was fairly pricy for Uganda but offered full board and few activities to tempt us into spending any more money.

My short blog entry reflects how little there was to do but it was a great place to relax and do nothing. We had two nights there, which I think was about as long as I could manage not kayaking. My restlesness had made me search for a good swimming spot (there isn't really one) had already (slightly painfully) taken me down a mini-waterfall. The friendly South African owner offered fishing trips and to take us out kayaking which would have happily taken another couple of days had our budget stretched to it.

The owner proved the main source of entertainment, showing us his plans for developing campsites on nearby islands and linking up the base with bridges. He also had some fascinating, and frightening, stories about his time running an anti-poaching company in Tanzania and an interesting take on international volunteering. “I don’t understand these Europeans and North Americans that come over here to volunteer.”
“We came to learn and gain work experience.”
“But what can you really learn here, people have very limited training or technical expertise. I can see the point if you wanted do work experience in somewhere like a Western hospital where there are many highly trained experts in their field but here….” It’s an interesting if slightly flawed point.

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