Uganda but not forgotten!

So we made it to Uganda! After a 3 hour bus trip to New York, a 7 hour flight to Brussels, and then a 10 hour flight to Entebbe, Uganda we finally made it. We watched the sun set, rise, set, and rise again through the window. We were greeted by the Country Director and Peace Corps staff at about 11:30 pm and they took us to Banana Village where we will spend the next week and a half learning about our projects, Uganda itself, and each other. It is basically a small motel like living situation with little grass-thatched huts as rooms. It is pretty nice actually. I think they are trying to ease us in very slowly. We were woken up our first morning in Uganda by tons of birds, a rooster that apparently didn’t know when to stop its wake up call, and monkeys. Monkeys in this village are EVERYWHERE…and they do nothing but cause trouble. The 2^nd day there a friend had put a banana on a ledge to eat for later and it snuck up behind her and stole it! That’s not stereotypical at all. 

Also….a random camel to confuse you about the area of Africa we are in…

We have 46 volunteers altogether. We found out that 14 of the volunteers are actually over the age of 50, which is a record number for PC Uganda.  We all get along so well it’s hard to believe that we haven’t even known each other for one week.  Since arrival we have been learning about the culture, safety and security, and basically how we will be able to meet basic needs while in homestay. We have all been learning survival Luganda which is the language spoken other than English in Kampala (the capital city) and our homestay families. And by English I mean Uganglish which might as well be a different language.

On Sunday we had a fieldtrip to Kampala to “get to know” the city and exchange money/get phones. “Get to know” more or less means become confused and overwhelmed. Kampala is famous for having the worst taxi park in the world.  In an attempt to alleviate this situation they built a brand new one.  Now they have the two worst taxi parks in the world. I have never seen anything like it.

Ok so Africans are OBSESSED with Barack Obama. While in the bank exchanging money we couldn’t help but crack up because there was a huge Barack Obama plaque with this long paragraph about how the prophecy was fulfilled. Ha! But really they are obsessed. There is a girl in my group named Michelle and she has already been bombarded with people loving her because she has the first lady’s name. Walking down the streets of Kampala was interesting. Everyone looks at you and little kids run at you, wave, and scream “Mzungu!” which means white person. They are absolutely adorable. What I did not expect to see were the kids sitting on the side of the street begging for money, sometimes looking younger than 5. Patrick and I definitely had not prepared ourselves for that. Only until did they inform us that there were actually multiple organizations/orphanages that house these kids and sometimes they can be a trap to tourists. Regardless, their situation is heartbreaking. So we spent about 2 hours weaving in and out of bus/taxi parks trying to navigate the city. I felt like I was sitting on the street directly behind an exhaust on a car for 2 hours. YUCK. Other than that, the city itself is awesome. Walking through Kampala definitely felt like we were in Africa, a whole other world. Then we went to Garden City which might as well be an American mall which was a very good change of pace. We got our phones there and then proceeded to buy our SIM cards for our phones in the median of the busy road. Random.  We were also instructed to buy a “night bucket” in Kampala. You ask what is a night bucket?  WELL, our homestay families will have a latrine (hole in the ground) outside. You can’t go outside after dark due to the guard dog being out there and the fact that they lock the place up like Fort Knox. So……… I’ll leave the rest up to your imagination. Good thing Patrick and I think it is absolutely hilarious because if we haven’t had humor in this experience so far we would be in trouble for sure.