I'm back from 3 weeks travelling in Uganda and Kenya

Ok…so, I know I’ve been gone for a while…sorry! I tried to post an entry a few weeks ago, but my internet connection was giving me trouble and then I was off traveling til today. Here’s the low down on what you’ve missed:

May 3-7: in Kampala relaxing, buying new camera, clubbing at Ange Noir (the most infamous nightclub in Uganda), meeting new friends. I had so much fun dancing at the club from 2-5 am that at one point when I was going down really low busting my moves I felt a pop in the side of my knee which bothered me for a week or two and still hurts every once and a while! Also, on the way to the car that night I actually fell into a MAN hole! I mean, this country is full of potholes and crappy roads…but this was an actual hole in the road right beside the car that I had no chance in seeing in the dark. I stepped right into it with my left leg (or was it my right?) and hit my knee on the inside of the road. My friends were worried I hurt myself, but I just laughed as they retrieved my shoe…only in Africa!

May 7-9: Murchison Falls National Park; a gorgeous park full of giraffes, water buffalo, warthogs, birds, elephants, baboons, etc. We did a driving game safari one morning, then a boat ride to the falls that afternoon and a walk to the top of the falls the next morning. This is where the entire Nile River has to find its way through a small space. The power is amazing. The falls are gorgeous with a rainbow up top and crocodiles and hippos downstream below.

May 9-11: back to Kampala for two nights; Akon concert, too much partying with new friends and then back to Ange Noir with Wycliffe and Vincent again…but this time I was too tired to be such a crazy dancer and no man holes!

May 11-19: JINJA, my favorite place in Uganda (other than my little town)…the town at the source of the Nile. I went rafting twice (I couldn’t help myself!), relaxed by the river, had a bad case of food poisoning that we thought might be malaria (my skin was super hot but I was freezing, my back and head hurt, everything hurt except my stomach actually!) so had to go to the clinic to get that sorted out; must have created the record for most sober nights at the notoriously party central campsite (I only got drunk my last night…you should all be proud!); met some more great people (Ugandan raft/kayak guides and Western volunteers/students/workers) who kept me company; did my best to ignore all the drama that the boys like to create…which I find interesting since at home boys stay as far away from drama as they can!

And, probably most importantly…I spent several mornings (except when sick) at an amazing orphanage for children under 6 called Welcome Home. I’d always spend about 30 minutes in the baby room…there are about 7 under the age of 1 that you can just hold, feed and love and feel close to you. From 10:00-12:30 I’d be with the older children and we would just play or I’d sing to them and they’d ask for more songs; or they’d ask me to read from their children’s bible; or we’d swing or dance or whatever. Then lunch time was always my favorite because you start with the 25 or so 1-3 year olds in chairs on the floor, each adult trying to feed 2 or 3 babies. Some crying, some not interested in the food, some happy as can be. Then take them to their room to be washed, changed and put to bed. Then we’d serve the 25 or so 3-6 year olds and most would manage on their own, some would get distracted or want to just play, so you just help them along and then they get washed and put to bed. They’d all call me “Mami” and pull me in different directions and shoot me smiles and laughs and my heart just DANCED when I was there. The absolute best part of my day, drama free, just peace and beauty and life. It’s so easy to love those children…and I accidentally fell in love with two of them. I mean I adore and love and see so many of the faces floating around my thoughts…but Veronica and Joel were my special little ones that I will carry with me always. Veronica has an infectiously gorgeous, innocent, pure smile that she’d flash at me anytime I looked her way. And little, sweet, shy Joel. I loved seeing the smile on his face after I’d give him some kisses…his little lips would just slowly turn up and you could see his happiness. He’s 14 months old but still in the baby room because he’s soooo small (probably smaller than my nephew when he was born!). Although now at Welcome Home he has enough food to get strong and grow, that wasn’t the case before and the malnutrition he is still recovering from keeps him with the little ones. He’s just too fragile to head to the group of aggressive, excited, playful toddlers. But soon enough I know he’ll be running around with all of them! I’m going to have to try to get back to see them…

May 19-25: trip to Kenya. Started with a bus ride from HELL, 12 hours of crappy roads…4 of which were so bad that I was literally flying out of my seat and just exhausted from trying to brace myself from all the falls back down. I met up with a friend from DC, Valerie (a taste of home!), in Nairobi; had one day there which I just spent running some errands, then we flew to the coast to enjoy the beach. Well, we were hoping to enjoy the beach…but the beach boys made that difficult because you just can’t relax when they’re walking with you everywhere you go! I only got to lay on the beautiful white, soft sand once. We did take a few of the boys up on their offer to sail out on one of their handmade boats to the reef to snorkel and that was great! But Friday it poured all day and then Saturday was nice from about 11 am on, but we had to head to the airport at 4. So…it wasn’t all that we had hoped for, but it was an interesting experience in a gorgeous location!

May 25: night bus back to Uganda…not as bad as before, maybe this driver didn’t accelerate as much through the potholes as the other guy! But we were passing by Jinja and it was a gorgeous day and I just couldn’t NOT stop…so I got off and spent Sunday relaxing with a few friends at the campsite by the river. It was VERY tempting to stay…but I can’t keep feeding the addiction, so I stayed strong and got on the 5:30 shuttle to Kampala. We were 20 km from town and hit a major (traffic) jam because of flooding in the road from the rain on Saturday. We were forced to turn around and interestingly enough, I almost ended up back in Jinja anyways! Jinja. But we took a “diversion” road and our 2 hour trip turned into 5. Ugh. I was sick of buses!

May 26:  I felt like that was the world’s way of saying I should have stayed in Jinja but after a short night's rest, I got on yet ANOTHER bus…this time heading home to Lyantonde. The trip sometimes takes 5 hours, but today it was only 3. So I got into town just in time for my favorite food, Luombo (groundnut soup with roasted meat), matooke and yummy rice; I headed straight there and then home. The peace and quiet here is so welcome after 3 weeks of non-stop moving around and chaos. It’s such a simple truck stop of a town with little to do…but sometimes that is JUST what we need! At least until the river calls me back again…

Filing My First Police Report...

After another fabulous weekend spent staying about the Nile River and kayaking through the rapids...I had my first negative Ugandan (although it could have happened anywhere) experience on Monday: my Nikon D-40 camera (with 130 pictures from the river, the camp party that night and kampala) was stolen from my bag during the bus ride from Kampala to Lyantonde. I was devastated when I realized it. My heart literally sank. That was the one thing that I did not want to lose…ever. It was my baby. It was the only REAL gift I’d ever given myself (well, besides my travelling adventures). And here in Uganda, it has been my life, my heart. I have captured so many faces and places and animals and sunsets and moments. The pictures were my way of documenting this experience. I’ve absolutely LOVED working on my photography in this gorgeous environment, with all of the amazing people I have met and places I’ve seen. I have almost 1500 pictures already and I had so many plans and hopes for the photos that I was going to take over the next two months. But the world gathered a bunch of random coincidences together yesterday and at the end of a long bus journey, my camera was gone.

(You can skip this next paragraph if you don’t want to hear the story of how it happened)…
It had been a torturous, hot, sweaty hour sitting on the bus before it finally departed the bus park in Uganda’s capital. And then another 30 minutes sitting at a gas station for some kind of maintenance. Then, a cold 3 hours later we were about 20 minutes from Lyantonde when we came to a truck that had hit a pothole the wrong way and was stuck blocking the entire road. Our big passenger bus decided to proceed through the hills and rural side roads to by-pass the accident. Unfortunately, the very steep and unpaved first hill was too much for the weight of our bus so we were asked to get out and walk up the hill. I left my locked, although not completely secure, backpack on the bus since it’d only be a few minutes (it was only about 20 yards to the top from where were) and everyone was getting off empty handed. However, rather than waiting for us at the top of that hill, the bus continued for what ended up being about 2 or 3 kilometers. So when I finally reached the bus 30 minutes later on the main road, I noticed my bag had been moved, but it was still locked and I felt certain no one could get anything out of it. When we started driving away without the two gentlemen that had been seated beside me, I spoke up to the people around me and tried to get the conductor’s attention because I worried we were leaving them behind and maybe they had bags on the bus; they all said not to worry about it. But about 10 minutes later when I realized how strange it was that the 2 men were no longer on the bus, I decided to investigate my bag closer. And that’s when my heart sank. They had been able to open the bag enough to reach in, unzip my camera bag and take out my gorgeous, precious, beloved Nikon. The same man that had slept on my shoulder and breathed on me; the same man for whom I worried we were leaving behind with his things on the bus…had taken the camera that has captured so much of my Uganda. I immediately called to the conductor and started spitting out emotional words expressing how important it was to me and that the men had taken it! Had anyone seen this happen? Why wasn’t anyone watching our bags as we hiked through the hills??? The bus wouldn’t stop of course; they insisted there was nothing we could do now…it was too late. Upon arriving in Lyantonde just minutes later, a crowd of boda boda drivers (motorbike/motorcycle taxis) listened sympathetically to me and the conductor talk. Peter, my regular boda driver (such a sweetheart!), came to the front of the group and asked what happened and when I started to tell the story, the tears came. If we hadn’t come to that random truck in the middle of the road…those men would never have had a moment to even look in my bag. Sometimes the world works for us…sometimes, it works against us; but it’s all part of the universe and we learn from it. I wrote my statement on some random piece of paper that was then filed with thousands of other pieces of paper on a dresser in one of the small round offices of Lyantonde's Police "Station". I don't expect to see my camera again, but there's no harm in trying!

I consciously decided on Monday afternoon that I would only allow myself to be angry and upset about it that day. I don’t know if I was/am inspired by Liz Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love and her time in India (the part I just finished reading on that same bus ride)…but after the initial shock wore off, I knew that I wanted to center all of my energy on positive thoughts after a night’s rest (albeit a night of tossing and turning and a 4 am phone call home because I couldn’t sleep!). Yes, something very important and special to me (and my time here) was wrongfully taken from me, but life will go on. The pictures that I lost with the camera were memories that no one can ever take from me. I don’t have any pictures from my first weekend on the river, but that doesn’t take away from how truly amazing it was! And as I sit here and listen to No One, by Alicia Keys (I love you so much, Meam, for putting that on one of the mixes!)…I smile as I hear words from her love song that remind me exactly why I had to purge my soul of the angry, bitter, upset feelings I initially felt…she’s singing “no one can get in the way of what I’m feeling…” And she is so right! No one can take away the happiness that being in Uganda has given me. No one can take the calmness out of my spirit. No one can steal the peace that I have found in my soul. I won’t let them.


I know I’ve talked a lot about happiness recently; but since I don’t have many field stories to share…this is what is on my mind. This is what I’m constantly thinking and feeling. This is my life right now. I am in one of the world’s poorer countries and I am having truly one of the richest experiences of my life. I’m seeing the world through the eyes of an innocent child discovering everything for the first time. Not fully understanding all around me; not able to communicate well, although doing my best to learn some of the language. Learning the food, the music, the way of life; meeting lots of new people, seeing a lot of new and peculiar things. Each day completely full of curiosity about the world I have found myself in. Just like a baby discovering the world around him or her. It’s amazing to have the opportunity to see the world through such eyes of innocence. It’s beautiful. It’s life changing.

Before I got to Uganda, I was feeling really lost and stressed and overwhelmed. I couldn’t see myself anymore; It was hard for me to feel/find real happiness. And now I’ve found myself and my happiness again and don’t plan to allow anyone to take it away so easily. They may have my camera, but that’s all they can have. I will buy a new, less fancy camera this weekend; but the beauty, peace, calm, love and happiness that I feel daily in my heart and soul…you can’t find that in any corner store!

Kayaking Grade 5 Rapids on the Nile!

So, I really wanted to tell you about last weekend: I went back to the Nile River (and Nile River Explorers!), but this time I faced the Grade 1-5 rapids in a tandem kayak. It was amazing! Pretty hardcore; very fun; and, of course…gorgeous. We rolled in 3 of the rapids, although I was bad at that part and always got a bit disoriented. The first time I stayed under a bit too long and I was actually under the water thinking to myself, “I can’t breathe, I’m kind of drowning” but it never dawned on me to just release my skirt and get out. It was so peaceful; I felt safe; I wasn’t scared at all. When the boat and I surfaced for a second (my tandem guy, Charlie, had already released himself at this point…smart guy that he is!), I was surrounded by safety kayakers screaming, “YOU HAVE TO RELEASE…YOU HAVE TO GET OUT OF THERE!” It was really cute! When I finally got myself out of the boat and crazy waves and was holding on to the safety kayak (Hassan was assigned to our tandem kayak and saved me three times!) to get back to mine, I couldn’t stop laughing…it was great. Just like last time, I really loved being rescued by the safety kayakers. They are like you’re knight in shining armor riding a white horse, but in this case they are riding a kayak and wearing life vests and helmets! When you see them coming to get you out of the waves and rapids, you can’t help but smile.
The next two times we went under I prematurely released myself (smile) because I was nervous from that first time! Even though we were known as the “swim team” because we rolled and released so many times, I spent the day laughing (Charlie’s laugh is infectious), talking about life in Uganda and different events in our lives and enjoying the beautiful scenery. It was truly another amazing and special day.
Later that night I partied pretty hard, making up for the quiet of my life in Lyantonde I guess! Charlie and Alex (my rafting guide from the first trip) both hung out and several other Ugandans with me and my two new friends from the day, Emily and Alistair, an engaged couple from Tasmania, Australia. We even got the beer funnel/bong out (the pictures were lost with the camera)…which took me straight back to my college years! Sunday I nursed my hangover with 2 chapati omelettes from the Bujagali Chapati guy…mmmm…seriously amazing food and then several hours relaxing at one of the pools in town (with a beer and sprite cocktail of course!). It was another great weekend at the source of the Nile. Something about that area…something about it pulls me back. The happy/fun Ugandan kayakers and rafters; all the adventurous travelers; the Nile River; the scenery; the crazy bar scene at night, the chapati omelettes (!). Something about it is so peaceful, relaxing and fun that I can’t help but end up back there again soon!

I have DVDs of both the rafting and the kayaking to show when I get home!