Blogs from Uganda, Africa - page 148

On se lève encore avant le soleil. Il fait encore noir. Pour déjeuner et démonter les tentes ça prend encore la lampe frontale. Ce n’est pas un achat inutile. Nous arrêtons comme d’habitude sur le bord de la route pour le lunch. Toujours la même chose au menu : sandwich composé au choix de viande froide (parfois d’allure douteuse), tomate, concombre, mayo ou moutarde, quelques fois du fromage râpé le tout, accompagné de Kool-aid à l’orange. Miam, miam un vrai festin. Ah! J’oubliais, on mange aussi les restes du souper de la veille. Mais le tout, que ce soit du spaghetti, du bœuf Stroganoff, du cari au poulet ou autre, toujours froid. Miam, miam un vrai festin. On mange assis sur des petits sièges de camping, notre assiette en équilibre sur nos genoux. C’est pas facile ... read more

I’m traveling now with Dror - one of the Israelis I met in Tanzania few months ago. Dror and I are like twins who got separated at birth - we have the same personality only exactly the opposite character…. So - we went to sipi falls. Beautiful spot - amazing views, mountains. All I wanted to do is: sit on the balcony and watch the falls… All he wanted to do is: go and swim in the falls - aka go hiking….   So - we decided that we’ll go and have some breakfast in the village and then - Dror will go hiking and I’ll sit on the balcony. Since it was Sunday I put on my best shirt (best = almost clean t-shirt, 50% of the t-shirts I have) and my sandals and went ... read more

Africa was always going to be the working part of the trip! We were heading to Uganda, Kampala to visit Watoto Child Care Ministries and then Rwanda to visit our Compassion children and that was about all of our planning! We knew that we were in Africa from the first moment at the check in counter in Cairo. Kenya Airways had lost our reservation, despite the fact that we had seats allocated! So onto standby we go... pointing out that it is midnight! We were the first in a long line of standbyers - all of whom had the same story as us so we were feeling pretty good that we would get onto the flight! However we then got our next reality check that we were now in Africa - everyone behind us in the ... read more

As with Rwanda, Uganda is a suprising country. I'm fairly sure that, ever since a young age, I have not believed greatly in democracy, preferring the idea of a benign dictator as the most preferable form of government. Clearly in the real world this is as unrealistic as socialism or communism, except perhaps in rare cases. Now I'm completely out of my depth here, having learned most of what I know of Ugandan politics from guide books and a dodgy daily rag that would make the Sunday Sport editors blush. It seems that Musaveni, the Ugandan president for the last 20 (?) years, comes pretty close to fullfilling the benign dictator roll successfully. I'm sure his human rights record is as bad as any western government one would care to mention, and Uganda has huge problems ... read more

It was a long day of buses from Kabale to Jinja and the roads were dry and bumpy. It felt like the last long bus journey of ours in Africa and it wasn't easy. We sat on a bus in Kabale for about 3 hours since the very aggressive bus touts put us on the one that didn't go first. When we got to the minibus rank in Kampala we got onto a nearly full bus to Jinja which was smart since people were trying to get us into empty ones that would wait for a long time - once bitten and all that (If only it was only once). When we got to Jinja it was hard to get to the Backpackers - but we got a taxi there and then after waking up the ... read more