The end has come - sob sob!
Today, Thursday, is our penultimate day, and we're back in Nairobi, which now feels like our African home. Amazingly, unlike previous visits, the weather has been beautiful and sunny - and refreshingly cool compared to the tropical temperatures of Uganda. Not that Uganda was unbearable. It never topped 30C. And our last few days confirmed that it's such a pretty country.
On Sunday, Travis showed us round a few of MACRO's clean water projects between Jinja and the mighty Mabira Forest (the biggest forest in East Africa). In one of the villages we met with Vincent, the co-director of MACRO, and a part time politics teacher. Travis claims to "hate politics", because of corruption, despite throwing himself into influential debates about government and government policy in the forums he attends. I think what he means is he dislikes high politics... Anyway, by contrast, Vincent is very interested in the area so we had some interesting chats! Away from the hustle and bustle of urban Mukono and Kampala, the unspoilt fertile hills of Uganda, hosting huge sugar cane plantations as well as small-scale fruit and vegetable farming, opened out. Later that afternoon Travis drove us to Jinja, and it was time to say goodbye. After giving us a bit of a motivational speech, probably to inspire us to keep our promise of raising money when back in England for MACRO, Travis actually shed tears when we had to go our seperate ways! The previous day we'd said our farewells to Mary (his 'combination', i.e. girlfriend, who'd been cooking us food and making us yummy chai) and Geoffry, from his sickbed, which was very sad.
Geoffrey's still really sick. His condition was a lot more serious than we'd realised when I wrote the last blog. He got worse, and he was barely conscious when we went to see him at his house on Saturday night. His family (all 20 or so of them) were gathered around his bed, trying to give him some food and drink, as he was really weak. He could barely acknowledge our presence. As we waited outside before greeting him, we heard a a strange crying that I assumed was his sister or mother. That would have been bad enough, but I then realised that the sobbing was Geoffrey's. It was pretty heart-wrenching. We were really worried about him. He was no better on Sunday when we saw him before we left. On Tuesday Travis told us that his condition had been rediagnosed as typhoid. I think his condition is stable, but he will take about 2 weeks to recover. We're awaiting further news.
On a brighter note, Jinja, on the shores of Lake Victoria at the source of the Nile, was fantastic - so beautiful. We visited the official source site. It's about as touristy as Uganda gets, with a couple of bars (decked out, naturally, with English football team shirts and flags), touts offering boat trips, various souvenir stalls, a plaque, and a statue of Mahatma Ghandi. (This is one of the sites where the ashes of the Indian icon were scattered.) As for the source, there's not a lot to see, it's just the location where the Nile begins out of Lake Victoria. Supposedly water rises from underground, but it's very difficult to see any evidence of this. But when you think that this is the beginning of the longest river in the world, which stretches all the way to the Egyptian coast of the Med, it's pretty impressive. We stayed at a backpackers campsite at Bujugali Falls, about 9km up the river from Jinja. The setting is stunning: high on the lush green banks of the Nile with spectacular views of the falls (more like a set of violent rapids) from the bar. And from the showers - the cublicles have no back wall to enable a more scenic wash than your average. I went white water rafting on Tuesday. It was a pretty extreme experience. We rafted 30km over a series of 12 rapids, about half of which were grade 5, the highest a rafting company will take rafters through. Supposedly the rafting I've done in Switzerland was grade 4/5, but there were no flips involved in that! We flipped about 4 times, which meant being thrust down into the choppy white waters of the river, spat out, and thrust back under a fair few times. I don't think it helped that everyone in our boat was skinny and small - and for half of the day had only 3 passengers. The other boat was full, mainly with big bulky men, and flipped only once! My ears didn't relish the ride, and I didn't massively enjoy having my sinuses and mouth flushed out with the water that we'd for 3 weeks been advising people to boil before touching. It was soooo much fun though; the scenery (when I could breathe and see enough to take it in) was spectacular, and our African guide was hot!
We left Jinja on Wednesday afternoon, via a Kampala-Nairobi night bus that picked us up from the roundabout in Jinja town. We had a fun ride on boda-boda (motorbike) to the roundabout, it was a bit of a struggle up the hills with all our luggage but well worth it. I love boda-bodas! Not unexpectedly, we had a 2 hour wait at the roundabout - which was interesting itself. Africans haven't quite grasped the concept of roundabouts it seems: traffic was going round in both directions... The journey was fine, but I guess we're used to it by now. Even the 20 stops at roadblocks in Kenya seemed, if annoying, pretty standard. So since 5.30am yesterday morning, we've been staying at the Nairobi backpackers. Right now we're watching the Merchant of Venice. Or at least, Tash is. We're waiting for the bees, which appear to have infested our dorm in their hundreds (literally), to die so that someone can sweep them out, and so that we can go to sleep. Fun!
At 4.30pm local time tomorrow, we fly home. I'm really going to miss Africa - the food (posho, matokee, cassava, baked beans, g-nuts - yummy stodge!), the sweet chai, the ginger beer, the weather, the almost frustratingly laid-back pace, the crazy things that happen, and the beautiful African people (especially the children) and their good humour. I've even got used to the latrines and the bucket showers. We've seen a lot but there's soo much more that we've not seen - and we've visited only 3 of about 50 African countries below the Sahara. Maybe next time!
On Sunday, Travis showed us round a few of MACRO's clean water projects between Jinja and the mighty Mabira Forest (the biggest forest in East Africa). In one of the villages we met with Vincent, the co-director of MACRO, and a part time politics teacher. Travis claims to "hate politics", because of corruption, despite throwing himself into influential debates about government and government policy in the forums he attends. I think what he means is he dislikes high politics... Anyway, by contrast, Vincent is very interested in the area so we had some interesting chats! Away from the hustle and bustle of urban Mukono and Kampala, the unspoilt fertile hills of Uganda, hosting huge sugar cane plantations as well as small-scale fruit and vegetable farming, opened out. Later that afternoon Travis drove us to Jinja, and it was time to say goodbye. After giving us a bit of a motivational speech, probably to inspire us to keep our promise of raising money when back in England for MACRO, Travis actually shed tears when we had to go our seperate ways! The previous day we'd said our farewells to Mary (his 'combination', i.e. girlfriend, who'd been cooking us food and making us yummy chai) and Geoffry, from his sickbed, which was very sad.
Geoffrey's still really sick. His condition was a lot more serious than we'd realised when I wrote the last blog. He got worse, and he was barely conscious when we went to see him at his house on Saturday night. His family (all 20 or so of them) were gathered around his bed, trying to give him some food and drink, as he was really weak. He could barely acknowledge our presence. As we waited outside before greeting him, we heard a a strange crying that I assumed was his sister or mother. That would have been bad enough, but I then realised that the sobbing was Geoffrey's. It was pretty heart-wrenching. We were really worried about him. He was no better on Sunday when we saw him before we left. On Tuesday Travis told us that his condition had been rediagnosed as typhoid. I think his condition is stable, but he will take about 2 weeks to recover. We're awaiting further news.
On a brighter note, Jinja, on the shores of Lake Victoria at the source of the Nile, was fantastic - so beautiful. We visited the official source site. It's about as touristy as Uganda gets, with a couple of bars (decked out, naturally, with English football team shirts and flags), touts offering boat trips, various souvenir stalls, a plaque, and a statue of Mahatma Ghandi. (This is one of the sites where the ashes of the Indian icon were scattered.) As for the source, there's not a lot to see, it's just the location where the Nile begins out of Lake Victoria. Supposedly water rises from underground, but it's very difficult to see any evidence of this. But when you think that this is the beginning of the longest river in the world, which stretches all the way to the Egyptian coast of the Med, it's pretty impressive. We stayed at a backpackers campsite at Bujugali Falls, about 9km up the river from Jinja. The setting is stunning: high on the lush green banks of the Nile with spectacular views of the falls (more like a set of violent rapids) from the bar. And from the showers - the cublicles have no back wall to enable a more scenic wash than your average. I went white water rafting on Tuesday. It was a pretty extreme experience. We rafted 30km over a series of 12 rapids, about half of which were grade 5, the highest a rafting company will take rafters through. Supposedly the rafting I've done in Switzerland was grade 4/5, but there were no flips involved in that! We flipped about 4 times, which meant being thrust down into the choppy white waters of the river, spat out, and thrust back under a fair few times. I don't think it helped that everyone in our boat was skinny and small - and for half of the day had only 3 passengers. The other boat was full, mainly with big bulky men, and flipped only once! My ears didn't relish the ride, and I didn't massively enjoy having my sinuses and mouth flushed out with the water that we'd for 3 weeks been advising people to boil before touching. It was soooo much fun though; the scenery (when I could breathe and see enough to take it in) was spectacular, and our African guide was hot!
We left Jinja on Wednesday afternoon, via a Kampala-Nairobi night bus that picked us up from the roundabout in Jinja town. We had a fun ride on boda-boda (motorbike) to the roundabout, it was a bit of a struggle up the hills with all our luggage but well worth it. I love boda-bodas! Not unexpectedly, we had a 2 hour wait at the roundabout - which was interesting itself. Africans haven't quite grasped the concept of roundabouts it seems: traffic was going round in both directions... The journey was fine, but I guess we're used to it by now. Even the 20 stops at roadblocks in Kenya seemed, if annoying, pretty standard. So since 5.30am yesterday morning, we've been staying at the Nairobi backpackers. Right now we're watching the Merchant of Venice. Or at least, Tash is. We're waiting for the bees, which appear to have infested our dorm in their hundreds (literally), to die so that someone can sweep them out, and so that we can go to sleep. Fun!
At 4.30pm local time tomorrow, we fly home. I'm really going to miss Africa - the food (posho, matokee, cassava, baked beans, g-nuts - yummy stodge!), the sweet chai, the ginger beer, the weather, the almost frustratingly laid-back pace, the crazy things that happen, and the beautiful African people (especially the children) and their good humour. I've even got used to the latrines and the bucket showers. We've seen a lot but there's soo much more that we've not seen - and we've visited only 3 of about 50 African countries below the Sahara. Maybe next time!
posted by Lucy at
7:30 pm
