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white water rafting, bungee jumping, a deserted island with a mad old hermit - only in Uganda!
The next day after leaving the orphanage we hopped on a bus and headed to Jinja, Uganda. That bus trip has got to be the worst bus trip of my life. We headed to downtown Nairobi late at night, since the bus was due to leave at 11:30pm. But, since this is Africa of course, it didn't leave untill 1:30am. We collapsed onto the bus, ready for a long 12 hour ride and a good sleep - no such luck! We didn't realise that our back seats were possibly the worse seats to choose - you feel every pothole and bump in the road, and there were ALOT of potholes. the road was so bad that everytime i would fall asleep i would be thrown into the lap of the person next to me. i don't think i actually spent more than 3 seconds on my seat at one time. With many police checks, a border crossing, and turning around since the road had actually flooded, it ended up taking 16 hours.
In Jinja we stayed at a very nice backpackers
place right on the Nile, with monkeys everywhere. Minus the bats and rats in our dorm it was a really great place. The next day Ricci, Laura, Krystyna, Renessa and I decided to head to the Ssesse Islands in Lake Victoria before our white water rafting which wasn't for another 2 days. Having no clue of what we were doing, with only a few pages of the Lonely Planet guide, we caught a boda boda (motorbike - the best way to travel) into town, a minibus into Kampala, another minibus to Entebbe, and yet another one to the water. We got to the shore of the Lake (which i kept forgetting wasn't the ocean - its so big!) and asked for a boat to the island Kalangala. After alot of confusion we finally found out that the boat would leave until 5pm and it would take about 4 hours which was too late for us. Instead we were told to go to an island where a mzungu called Dominic would help us get to Kalangala. After a couple of hours the wooden boat (packed with people, babies, and supplies) finally left.
After 3 hours we reached a very small
island, "get off here" we were told. Bewildered we jumped off, about to ask where we were meant to go when the boat sped off. With no idea where we were going, and night approaching, we headed off towards the other end of the island looking for this mzungu. We passed through a very basic village, with chickens, bamboo huts, loads of children and stray dogs. Getting very nervous that there was no place to stay, we asked some locals to take us to this Dominic. They took us through a dense jungle that went from one end of the island the other - about 2kms. The sun went down and it got very dark and we finally came to a clearing where the locals refused to go any furthur, and just left us there. We saw a building in between the trees, and when we got closer, it looked like a derelict old haunted house, with broken windows, building materials and bush everywhere. Seeing us, some people and dogs came around the corner and led us to our room which actually turned out to be really nice. "go to the beach" we were told, and we were led down
to the water, where, finally, we met Dominic - an old retired mzungu who had grown up in Kenya and now owned the entire island - getting drunk and stoned. After explaining our story he cried "mad respect girls, mad respect! no ones been down that path in years, its full of black mambas!". We spent the night hanging out at the beach drinking his homemade 'banana juice' and watching the storm in the distance over Lake Victoria. The storm was amazing - everything was still and then suddenly the wind picked up and it was pouring with huge amounts of lightening and thunder.
The next morning we took a tour around his place, saw his 'castle' he was building, and saw how he was totally self sufficient on his island. It was such an amazing night and day and we wished we could stay for alot longer, but we had to leave that afternoon for white water rafting the next day!
Ive run out of time but will update as soon as I can, but it might be a while since Im going out to masailand to my new placement today!
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Christine
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Dominic the Mzungu
Hi Hannah, I love reading your blog, I can never guess what's going to happen next! I've just read your adventures trying to get to Kalangala, to our Dominic - he was very amused to hear about his namesake. Did you ever get to go white water rafting? Good luck in Masailand!