Mittwoch, 16. April 2014

Uganda

After a night in Kampala I took a minivan to the equator. A line on the road, but a must for all tourists.


I felt so comfortable in Uganda from the first minute on that I could not resist to try hitchhiking here. So I did. Got a ride all the way down south to Kabale, where I went around with Rodney. He works in a hospital there, so I got to see one, and I started to appreciate German hospitals. It looked like the equipment exists out of anything they could find and spare.
Lake Bunyonyi is the sight there, so I went to see it. There is, among many others, a tiny island with one tree on it, where, not too many years ago, pregnant, but unmarried girls got send to die.
Her guy could swim over and run away with her, but if you ask me, I doubt that happened a lot. If she was lucky another guy who did not have enough cows to pay the usual bride wealth would save and marry her instead.

Lake Bunyonyi

I hitchhiked through the Queen Elizabeth National Park to Fort Portal. Got stuck on my way to Masindi and took the ride back to Kampala with Francis, a CocaCola Sales Manager, who speaks 10 local languages and whose childhood friends were a tribe of warriors, who were loincloth and steal cows, cause they believe all cows belong to them. Well he advised me not to camp, cause I might get eaten by cannibals. But I didn't bring my tent anyway.



Kochbananentransport

Fort Portal

Next stop were the Sipi Falls near the Mount Elgon National Park. I went to one of many falls there and had a beautiful view over Uganda and a just as beautiful sunset.

One of the Sipi Falls


In Soroti I met Sassi, a half Indian- Singaporean, who studies in Norway and checked out Uganda for the travel club of the university. He invited me and I joined him and Moses, the driver, to Lira and the massgrave of Barlonyo, where the LRA killed a few hundred people in one night in February 2004.
On our way to the Murchison Falls National Park we bought a chicken, which some park rangers cooked for us, while we toured the park to see all the wild animals. We missed the lions and the Falls, but had a great tour and good food anyway. Crossed the Nile and stayed in Masindi.
Since Kampala is the crossing point, we went through the capital again, stopped for some Indian food, which I appreciated, cause I did not find too much delicious Ugandan food yet.

those are alive




Echte NILpferde

Das Hühnchen wird vorbereitet

In Masaka we split and I tried to take the ferry over to an island of Lake Victoria. But I missed the last ferry and had to stay in the village for the night. Didn't get much sleep though. First someone tried to open my window with a knife, but left when I shouted at him, followed by a heavy thunderstorm. The rain hit incredibly loud the tin roof, the lightnings were blinding and the thunder was just mighty.
I opened the door and enjoyed watching it, hoping that the guy with knife does not enjoy thunderstorms as much as I do. He didn't.
Next morning I walked to the ferry dock, but it started raining again and I was completely soaked when I got there. Since the sky didn't clear up, I made a ferry cruise out of it without being on the island and went back to the mainland.




I stopped in Lukaya to give away the rest of my sweets I brought for the kids, but they weren't enough. You will always be short on candies here. You start giving candy to 2 kids and within seconds they are 20. They go crazy on sweets and photos.
From the kids I also learned my first local word, 'Muzungu' (white man), which they will shout as soon as they spot you and wave happily. You just got to love them.



Now I am back in Kampala, where I soon will meet the group of people I will spend my next 5 months with. Here we go.