Back to Kampala

Hello,
Well, our time in Lira came to a close. On Friday we finished what we could. We all got to put in a good day of labor and made a lot of stoves.

On Saturday, our host, Mathew, drove me, Peter, Christine, & Adelitus back to Kampala, the capital city & largest in Uganda. Ken, our leader, is staying for another week to finish more stoves with the crew of people from Lira that we trained. Hopefully, he can manage to hand off the project to them to continue after he leaves at the beginning of June. On the 250 km drive to Kampala, we started losing tread on one tyre, so Mathew changed it in the pouring rain. Poor guy, but he didn't want us to help. He was such a perfect host and guide thru all the parts of getting things done in Lira.

We arrived in Kampala, checked into a lodge, and headed to Ggaba Port on the shore of Lake Victoria. It's a fishing village and lots of smells as you can imagine. Lots of fish heads too (rolly polly fish heads :-). For a fresher view of the Lake, we drove over to Munyonyo and the Speke Resort area where we enjoyed the view from their elevated dance pavilion. We left before the wedding party moved in. That night we went to the Garden City Mall to see "Star Wars Episode III." Last year I got to see the new Harry Potter movie in Ireland before it was released in the USA. So I got to go to premier weekend in Kampala.

On Sunday, we started off seeing the sites around Kampala. It is a city that has everything, but it is all falling apart. Idi Amin's era was hard on this country and it is still trying to bounce back. The roads are all full of pot holes, sidewalks have collapsed, concrete is disintegrating, deisel pollution dirties everything, and new paint is needed desparately. However, there is new construction and lots of business people bustling in the streets during the day. Mathew gave us a tour of his university, Makerere, and then took us to the market stalls for souvenir shopping. We went wild because prices are so incredibly low. That night we had delicious Ethiopian food (a first for Mathew & Adelitus) enjoying eating with our fingers and trying mysterious colored items.

Monday, we took Christine, Peter & Adelitus to Entebbe Airport and then Mathew dropped me off at the "oh my God" congested taxi park. It's unbelievable how many they can fit in one huge parking lot. You leave when the bus fills up; there is no schedule. Once all the regular seats are filled, they pull down the aisle seats and fill it up to bursting. Needless to say, my experience in New York City helped prepare me for all the close human contact you get on public transportation. I took a 2 hour bus ride to Jinja where 2 woman live that worked in Lira with us as volunteers for one week. Monic (pronounce Monique) & Rosette greeted me. I had lunch with both of them at a restaurant run by a woman from Sweden, but Monic was able to take the day off and show me around. She gave me a tour of the Secondary School where she teaches geography. It is like everything in Uganda, very productive, but in dire need of repair. Classrooms are open air and books are so old they can barely keep their binding together. She then walked me to the Source of the Nile River. It is where Lake Victoria ends and the Nile River begins. It is not too far from the Owen Falls Dam that was built on the former Ripon Falls to harness the energy of the river for electricity for all of East Africa. We took a boat out on the fast moving river to exact spot marked by engineers. We also visited the monument to Mahatma Gandhi; some of his ashes were scattered at this location into the Nile. We then went by taxi car to Bujagali Falls to see the spectacular powerful water and the crazy kayakers.

Today, I hired a car to take me to the Equator. It is 78 km south of Kampala (2 hours with traffic). I paid a small fee to see an experiment that they do for tourists. There is one water basin 3 meters north of the equator, one 3 meters south, and one right on the Equator itself. The northern one drains in a clockwise swirl, the southern one drains in a counter-clockwise swirl, and the one on the Equator just drains straight into the drain. Amazing but true. I saw it for myself !!! I then headed back to the center of Kampala to walk around and look through their best bookstore, Aristoc. Spent some money :-), then headed to... you guessed it: the Main Post Office. The stamp clerk was so nice and I mailed my remaining post cards (I had cleaned out all the postcards at the Lira Post Office and the small town there didn't have any shops that sold them, so I had to buy more in Kampala). Now I am finishing the day at Web City Cafe'.

Wow, what an experience!

Tomorrow, I fly to London to spend 9 days exploring England & Wales.
Bye,

Chuck