Oly Otya!

Oly Otya! (Lugandan for Hello how are you?) After many hours of travel Jen and I arrived safely into Entebbe, unfortunately that was not the case for Beth last night. After a mechanical at JFK, Beth arrived into Heathrow 4 hours late and missed her connection in London, was re-routed through Dubai and after 55 hours of flight finally made it Entebbe this afternoon.

Last night we were met at the airport by Josephine and her husband Jonathon, along with our intrepid driver Jack, and transported back to Kampala. Josephine works closely with Sweet Sleep, when they operate in Uganda, she is so sweet and an excellent person to have on our side. We spent most of today with Josephine and Jack our driver, since we needed to wait for Beth’s arrival.

As we approached Adonai Guest House last night there were a few things I noticed immediately:
-the fortress like entrance
-the security guard with the gun
-and our guest house keeper unlocking the padded locks off the iron doors in the building we were sleeping in, which then made me notice all the windows covered in iron….which then made me think “crap we are sleeping in a bloody fire trap”

Jen and I settled into our room- three twin beds outfitted with mosquito nets, a closet, small desk, fan and bathroom. We got ready for bed and passed out. I can tell you I did not move an inch last night, I was so tired from all the travel.

We got the day started with breakfast at the Adonai house, then Josephine and Jack came to pick us up so we could run a few errands before going to the airport to pick up Beth. We loaded into the van, Josephine and Jen in the back seat and me riding shot gun…because of course that’s the best seat in the house and makes for excellent photography opportunities.

There is something about the chaos of third world countries, I thrive on: Cars, trucks, boda bodas (motorbikes), people, bikes weaving in and out, along with a few farm animals thrown into the mix. I’m taking it all in, I notice this man sitting on the sidewalk, in tattered clothing, I mean tattered, as I go to take a closer look, I totally saw his penis, like full on hanging out of his tattered pants. I’m sure the look on my face was priceless! OMGoodness- whoa that was unexpected! I almost shouted to Jen in front of Josephine and Jack- Oh my god- I just saw a man’s penis, but I thought better of it.

First stop- the supermarket- I love going to supermarkets in foreign countries, always fun to see what American products they are selling and of course buying foreign products to see what is good and what is gross.

We stopped at a market so Jen could purchase a bunch of the necklaces and bracelets Sweet Sleep’s sells to raise money for beds in Uganda. I picked up a few things of course too.

We then went to the bank so Jen could exchange the cash we have for purchasing the beds….let’s just say Jen’s carrying around a brick or two of Ugandan shillings…technically we are Ugandan millionaires right at the moment.

As we were driving along, I noticed this little girl couldn’t be older than 18 months old leaning against this metal wall, with what appeared to me to be no parent anywhere, I snapped a few shots of her. I didn’t really know what to do about the situation, but all of the Ugandan adults walking over her or around her didn’t seem to mind. I have a feeling the vision of her will haunt me for awhile, I definitely have been wondering all day, if we had stopped, exactly what would we have done?!

I also snapped two photos of these three girls as were driving, as we were getting caught in some “jam” as in traffic…they ran up to the window asking for shillings so I gave them a couple coins but one little girl kept running along side the car, it was funny, yet dangerous for her.

For a lot of my photos I was leaning out the window to capture the shot, I was constantly making Jack nervous, because there have been situations of people grabbing into cars to steal bags, cameras, etc. I told Jack “no worries a, I’ll smack them upside their head so quick they won’t know what hit them”…but every time traffic slowed and there were a lot of pedestrians Jack would start to roll up my window, I would laugh and roll it back down.

Once we picked up Beth sans one suitcase at Entebbe, we headed back to Kampala for dinner. It was a fairly Americanized menu, much to my chagrin, but good nonetheless. After dinner Jen wanted to find these “mosquito zapper tennis rackets”, you buy them from people selling them in the streets ala Tijuana at the border…so Jack locates a guy as we are driving, waves him down but we can’t park, so we have to drive like 3 blocks, and the dude selling them totally catches up to us…so now we are parked along side a dark road and Jack is doing some heavy negotiations…I chime in with my two cents and Jack gives me the “are you crazy woman let me do the negotiating look” Jen and Beth are in the back seat piping in with their two cents and the guy is stubborn refusing to sell the two rackets for less than 30,000 shillings (about 15 dollars), but Jen won’t pay more than 20,000 shillings. People were honking, we were negotiating back and forth, about ready to give up when he finally agreed….good stuff.

Now we are back at the Adonai house, leaving early in the morning for Gulu, with our bus chock a block with linens, bibles and mattress covers…along with 10 cases of water for us over the next 2 weeks as prices are cheaper in Kampala than Gulu.

I'll end on a funny note: as we arrived last night to the Adonai house one of the employees mentioned the following “there will be a group leaving at 3am for safari, they aren’t bad they’re just English”…too funny. Wonder what he says to them about the Americans that are here.

Thanks for staying tuned,

ajg

Photos from the day: