Goodbye

Well, this is the end. Today I fly out of Entebbe Airport, and after a few nights in London eating meat pies with Eric and Tom, I will be home in New York early next week. It's been just about 31 months since I left home and came to Africa with the Peace Corps.

31 months is quite a long time. The world has changed; to give you some idea, when I arrived in South Africa, Hurricane Katrina hadn't even hit and New Orleans was just another city. It was the summer of 2005, and I was twenty-four years old. Now, at twenty-seven, I'm returning home to the spring of 2008. I will be returning to a different place than the country I left, and I will also be returning a different man than the person who left.

There's no way that I can summarize my experiences in South Africa and beyond into a few closing paragraphs. Even the entirety of this blog is just a rough outline of what has happened these past 2 1/2 years. I'm curious to see what happens when I get home. How will I adjust? In some ways, returning home will be the most daunting thing I've had to do since I left. It will definitely require the most drastic readjustment. I've heard stories from other long-term travelers and volunteers who have returned home after long, life-changing periods away. And after a few brief questions from friends and family (like, "What was it like?" or "What did you do?" ---- I don't even know how I would begin to answer questions like that), the curiosity disappears and everyone returns to talking about their own lives and what's been going on in their world. And the travelers, having returned home, realize that they have changed and home has changed and there's this vast chasm separating the two. And they have nothing to talk about, nobody who can relate. Will that be me? I have no idea.

My experiences have profoundly changed me. And while I'd love to include some insightful quote from one of the many books I've read in Africa, what keeps running through my head are some verses from the song "Wanderlust" by Bjork---a song about leaving home and setting off for the great unknown:

"Did I imagine it would be like this?
Was it something like this I wished for?
Or will I want more?"

To answer her questions: No, No, and Yes. I'm not sure exactly what I expected when I left New York and flew to Johannesburg in August 2005. I'm also not sure exactly what I expected, two years later, when I left Pretoria and started my long overland trip to Kampala. I know for a fact I didn't imagine things would turn out the way they did. But I'm happy that they did. Our experiences make us who we are, and if I could do it all over again, I wouldn't change a thing.

And so, I'm leaving Africa, but I know in my heart that it will only be temporary---I will be back, one day, hopefully sooner rather than later. The places I've been and the people I've met have had too much of an impact to just leave it all behind and return to the life I knew.

Since I am leaving Africa, that means that this blog must come to an end. It's called "Omar In Africa", not "Omar's Life". So, to those of you who have been reading along and following me on my travels, and especially to those who have been following this blog since I started it in 2005, thank you.

Bye.

Travel Update #9: Fort Portal, Uganda to Kampala, Uganda

I'm happy to say that my trip is ending on a good note---my time in Uganda has been drastically different from my time in Rwanda, and I am thankful for that. Languidity has been replaced by activity. Since my last post just over one week ago, I have been busy pretty much non-stop.

On Sunday Brian and I were up before dawn and sitting on a bus to Kampala in the dark. We didn't leave for quite some time, though, and by noon we were in the big, bustling city of Kampala. We didn't see much because after getting off of our bus, we immediately got on a bus to Masindi via Hoima. Twelve hours after leaving our guesthouse in Fort Portal, we arrived in Masindi, a tiny insignificant town in the north of the country. Masindi's only real draw is that it is the closest town to Murchison Falls, a destination I'd been looking forward to visiting for quite some time.

We arranged a lift into the park that evening, and early the next morning (as usual, we were up before dawn) we left for the park. Our first stop was the Kaniyo Pabidi Forest, inside the Murchsion Falls Conservation Park boundaries. Pabidi is a very large, beautiful rainforest, and is also the cheapest place in Uganda to track chimpanzees. That was the real reason for our stop in the forest---chimps. Brian and I decided that instead of doing a brief chimpanzee tracking walk, we would spend the entire day doing what is known as "chimpanzee habituation"---that is, spending the entire day in the presence of the chimpanzees to habituate them to human contact. While this was also offered at the more famous Kibale NP, which we had biked through just a few days earlier, doing it at Kibale would have been more than twice as expensive as at Pabidi.

We arrived at the park visitor center, and within a few minutes we were off with two guides and one chimpanzee researcher. After only a few minutes of walking through the forest, we began to hear the unmistakable pant-hoot calls of chimpanzees, far up in the trees. Moments later, we were under a canopy of trees as a small group of 4 chimpanzees sat far above us, eating figs from tree branches. After a few moments of this, the chimps, in a flurry of hoots, moved on. After a few moments, we started following.

We were walking along the trail through the forest, looking around us at the beauty of our surroundings, a guide in the lead and me directly behind him, when he stopped dead in his tracks and put his arm out to stop me from going forward.

"Python!" he whispered.

I looked at the ground and there, on our trail, only a few meters in front of us, was the biggest snake I had ever seen. The giant python, which the guides estimated as being around 4 meters long (about 12-13 feet), was lying there in the grass, slithering along, its beady eyes looking around, its forked tongue flicking back and forth. We stayed there looking at this beast of a snake for about 20 minutes, taking pictures. It was fascinating; once the snake had heard us coming, it had stopped and was lying still in the grass, directly in our pathway. We couldn't continue that way to follow the chimps, so eventually (after a brief scare where the python suddenly coiled up, facing us, seemingly about to strike--at which point we all turned and ran away from it until we were out of strike range) we turned around and took a different path through the forest.

It was about an hour of walking through the maze-like paths in the forest, up and down hills, across wooden branches that served as "bridges". Eventually, though, we entered into another clearing, with some huge fig trees rising far above us. Up in the trees, we observed anywhere from between 15 to 20 chimpanzees, including some infants (I never was able to get a fixed count).

We set up shop; we put down our bags and sat down to observe. Unlike the mountain gorilla-trek, we were not interacting with the chimpanzees. We weren't anywhere near close enough to interact with them; we were on the ground, and they were in the trees. We also weren't close enough to take any quality pictures---perhaps with a camera with an extremely strong zoom, I could have gotten some quality pictures of chimps. And although that might sound very uninspiring, compared with the breathtaking experience of gorilla-tracking, it was wonderful. Sitting on the forest floor, or lying in a pile of leaves looking up into the trees, for hours, watching the interactions between these chimps, was a perfect way to spend a day. Their eating, their playing, their grooming and conflicts and their frequent hooting and shouting frenzies, their swinging from tree-to-tree, we just sat there watching it all. We watched these interactions until 4pm---8 hours after we had set out in the morning. Then, finally, we started the walk back through the forest to the visitor center. It took almost an hour, and thankfully we did not see any pythons on that return walk.

Our driver had been waiting for us, and from the visitor center we continued to the Red Chilli Restcamp, in the middle of Murchison Falls NP. He dropped us off there, and we walked past the marabou storks standing in the grass, watching us, and the warthogs grazing a few feet away, to our banda for the night. We had planned on taking a boat launch up the Nile River the following morning, and then hiking up to the falls, and then taking the afternoon boat back. Then, however, we discovered that there would be no boat launch in the morning; only in the afternoon. We spent some time discussing options and figuring out what to do----some late-night planning that is common when arranging things on your own.

Eventually we figured out and arranged a plan, and at 8am the next morning (thankfully, we did not have to wake up before dawn) a driver picked us up from the restcamp and drove us along a dirt road to the top of the falls. To give you a brief description of Murchison Falls: they are a 43-meter tall waterfall, where practically the entire Victoria Nile River, flowing from its source in Lake Victoria, is driven through a narrowing passage until it reaches only 6-meters wide; at that point, it plummets down. Because the water is narrowed so much (the Nile is a very wide river, and pushing all of that water into so narrow a space gives it a lot of surging energy), the Murchison Falls are the most powerful surge of water to be found anywhere in the world. The roar of the waterfall is extremely loud, and its spray rises up violently. It's an incredible sight, even moreso because it is not heavily touristed; when we went, it was just Brian and I, with no one else around, looking at the most powerful surge of water in the world.

We stayed there for a while, walking around, and then taking a hiking trail to some amazing viewpoints. After a few hours, when we had seen everything there was to see, and had stared transfixed at the roaring water until our hearts' content, we left. We drove back to the restcamp and, after a small lunch, boarded a boat along with other travelers and did the afternoon boat trip up the Nile to the falls. The 3-hour trip was notable not so much for the view of the falls that it afforded us (nowhere near as awesome as the view from the top), but for the huge amount of wildlife that we saw on the riverbank as we floated along. We passed more hippos than I had ever seen before, numerous crocodiles in the water and sunning themselves on the shore, waterbucks, elephants, and some very rare birds. I had thought the sunset cruise I'd taken on the Zambezi in December was rewarding, but that paled in comparison with the amount of wildlife I saw on the Nile.

After the conclusion of the boat trip, our driver was waiting for us, and we hopped back into the car. It was a long trip out of the park, and it was starting to get dark. We were driving fairly quickly, scaring baboons off of the road and sending colobus monkeys scurrying through the trees. Then our tire went flat, and our driver told us that we didn't have a spare. Thankfully another car was a few minutes behind us, and after some haggling between our driver and the passengers in the other car, Brian and I were squished into the other car along with our bags and the car's passengers, and we set off, leaving our driver behind.

An hour later, we were back in Masindi, and the following morning (having woken up in the pre-dawn darkness as usual), we took the Post Bus (the bus that takes mail from post office to post office) back to Kampala. Instead of going via Hoima, the way we had come a few days earlier, we took the direct road from Masindi to Kampala. I thought that maybe this would be a good-quality road, but I was gravely mistaken. I have been on all sorts of roads throughout Southern and Eastern Africa, and I have to say that the road from Masindi to Kampala may, in fact, be the worst (tar) road that I had ever been on---the only road that comes close to it is the highway from Maputo in Mozambique, in the area around Xai-Xai. First we swerved around large potholes, then had to wait for some construction vehicles, and then we entered a stretch of speedbumps---I have never seen so many speedbumps on a road. It seemed like we were going over a speedbump every 5 seconds or so for many minutes on end. It took us 30 minutes to proceed 10 kilometers at many points. Everyone in the bus was being bounced around by the bumps; I was actually airborne often, my rear jumping off of the seat and then slamming back down again. Perhaps if the seat had been comfortable it wouldn't have been a problem, but I arrived in Kampala with a very sore behind.

Again, we didn't stay in Kampala---Brian and I put on our bags and then walked from the post office to the "Old Taxi Park", which is possibly the biggest, craziest, most chaotic taxi park I have ever seen. It was ordered chaos in which I could not see the order. More than once, Brian and I would be walking through a narrow space between two matatus and would find that they merge into one lane, blocking any walkway. So we would have to turn around and retrace our steps. Ordinarily that would be fine, but with large bags, it was an ordeal. After a while of wandering around the maze of the taxi park and getting lost a few times, we found an omnibus (coaster) going to Jinja. We got on the bus, and soon the bus started moving---but it took quite some time for us to navigate the lanes through the taxi park, with people jumping out of our way and numerous other taxis coming precariously close to hitting us.

Eventually we left the city and were driving along the highway to Jinja. I was surprised to find that this heavily-trafficked route, connecting two very large towns, and the only way to get from Kampala to Nairobi, was only one lane in each direction. This is mind-boggling, especially considering that it is the main shipping lane for all goods coming from overseas to anywhere in Uganda or Rwanda (or even the eastern DRC). Imagine if the I-95 between New York and DC was only one lane, or if the 405 in Los Angeles was only one lane, and you have some idea of what this road was like. There were some hair-raising moments, when our coaster would try to pass a slow-moving vehicle and would have to quickly squeeze back into the lane seconds before

an oncoming car would pass us. Sitting on the coaster, I wondered how many accidents happen on that road, and I realized that I didn't want to know.

We eventually arrived in Jinja, and got into a car heading up to Bujugali Falls, our final destination for the day. The Explorers Campsite, where Brian and I stayed that night and the following night, was the first "backpackers" that we had stayed at since December, and it was nice to be around other travelers again. We were all there for one reason: white-water rafting. That's the reason why so many people travel to Bujugali Falls---to raft the source of the Nile. In the morning we set off for our full-day of rafting. I vividly remembered the insanity of the Zambezi when we rafted it, and I was prepared for the another crazy, adrenaline-filled day.


The first thing I noticed when we got into the water was the warmth of the river---the Nile is refreshingly nice to swim in, like a nice cool bath. The second was the scenery: while the Zambezi flows through the narrow, imposing Victoria Falls Gorge, the Nile is surrounded on all sides by green grass and bird-filled trees. Villagers washed their clothes in the water at the banks of the river as we floated by. On our raft, in addition to Brian and myself, were three Brits and two other Americans, Marcus and Jeff. Our guide, Paolo, is one of the best rafters in all of Uganda, and is a member of the Ugandan National Team---that was very reassuring.

We did a full day of rafting, and I really enjoyed it. Whereas the Zambezi was densely packed with 23 rapids, the Nile only has 12---this gave us more calm stretches inbetween rapids to relax or to float down the river. Quite a few of the rapids were Grade 5, and some of the other rafters were a bit apprehensive as we approached them, but Brian and I weren't. The Nile is not nearly as intense or as challenging as the Zambezi, and the steering is much less technical. Unlike the Zambezi, I never once felt in physical danger on the Nile. Perhaps that was a sense of over-confidence. We flipped our raft 3 times, as opposed to only once on the Zambezi. And although the rafting was not nearly as challenging (considering that the Nile is considered an intense, top-notch rafting destination, it's easy to see why the Zambezi is considered the biggest, most challenging rafting in the world), I have to say that I enjoyed my day on the Nile more than my day on the Zambezi.

The following morning, Marcus, Jeff, Brian, and I left Bujugali Falls and went to Kampala. This time, for once, we didn't continue onwards from Kampala, but stayed. I have been in Kampala since Friday---my final destination on this African journey. On Friday night, I went out to a local nightclub with Marcus and Jeff---we were thankfully the only muzungus in the entire place, and we spent the night dancing with the locals to Ugandan music and the occasional Western Hit---we were happy to hear TWO songs by Rihanna, and surprisingly not even one by Akon (the first time that's ever happened to me in Africa).

Marcus and Jeff left the following morning, but Brian and I stayed, and since then we've spent the days walking around, soaking up the city, eating delicious food and enjoying the atmosphere. I think that Kampala is my favorite African city among those that I've visited on these travels---it's huge and crazy and lively. The people are incredibly friendly. The matatus are comfortable---they only allow 3 people per row here!

The city is well-situated, set on hills and valleys, almost like Kigali but much much bigger and livelier. At the bottom of the main hill in the city center are the bus park and the taxi parks, and the huge markets (like the Owino Market which we visited----more like a market city than anything else)---a chaotic African city. But walking up the hill, past Kampala Road, the city changes and there are wide avenues, huge gated houses, and parks. It's all very clean and modern. There's even a shopping mall with a movie theater in Kampala (where Brian and I saw the movie "Cloverfield"). Kampala, in short, is almost like South Africa, but without the constant threat of danger.

Yesterday, Brian and I took a half-day trip to the Equator. Uganda is one of only 10 countries in the world that the equator passes through, and it's a 2-hour drive from the city center. We took matatus there and back. At the equator are two circular monuments marking the boundary between North and South, some overpriced craft shops, and some bowls of water where an employee demonstrates the Coreolis Effect (which, having seen the demonstration, seems actually true).

On the matatu heading back to Kampala, I realized that I was on my last long-distance matatu trip in Africa. Part of me was glad that I wouldn't have to worry about squeezing into tight seats for a while, it also hit me that my time in Africa was coming to an end, andl I wished that I could find some way to prolong my journey. At least the matatu trip wasn't boring, though. I was sitting in the back row, in the middle. A few minutes after I got on the matatu, we stopped to pick up some more passengers. One guy had a large sack, which the driver and conductor squeezed into the back, directly behind me. I immediately realized that the sack was full of fish, due to the unmistakable smell. Soon, we left, and immediately the matatu was filled with the intense, pungent odor of fish, like a fish-shop when the power goes out. It was very unpleasant, especially considering that the fish were directly behind my head.

After a few minutes of enduring this, the matatu pulled over. There was nobody on the side of the road, so I wondered why we had stopped. Immediately, the conductor slid open the door and jumped out. He ran into a field of bushes, grabbed handfuls of plants, and stuffed them into the back of the matatu, around the bag of fish. He was trying to mask the smell, and soon enough the matatu was filled with the aroma of the plants. For the rest of the trip back to Kampala, the matatu smelled like a lovely, fragrant garden.....full of rotting fish.

Brian left this morning. We have been traveling together for months, since Mozambique, but here is where our paths diverge. I'm heading to London and New York; he's heading to Istanbul. Today is my last full day in Africa; tomorrow I fly out of Entebbe Airport. I'm going to really enjoy the day, and to savor it. I will truly miss Africa----of course I will miss those unforgettable moments like lying on the forest floor surrounded by the hooting calls of chimpanzees, or of floating down the Nile River, but I will also miss the rotting-fish-garden matatu trips. I'll miss it all.

Travel Update #8: Cyangugu, Rwanda to Fort Portal, Uganda

My travels are continuing forward to their grandiose climax (or so I'd like to think) -- Uganda is my final African stop on my travels for the time being, and my time in Uganda is getting short. How did it come to this?

When I last wrote, I was in Rwanda, enjoying a wonderfully lush country. I had planned on visiting the Nyungwe National Park after I wrote; well, the next day, I did visit the park, and it provided Brian and I with yet another instance when our Lonely Planet guidebooks let us down in Rwanda. Thinking that LP knows it stuff, we went to Nyungwe with $20 for the entrance fee, as we had read in the guidebook, and were supremely disappointed when we arrived at the ORTPN office in the park and were told that it would cost us $50, not $20. Well, neither of us had $50 with us--we'd only brought enough money for the day. And so we were turned around and spent the next 90 minutes waiting on the side of the road for a ride back to Cyangugu.

That's not to say that our trip to Nyungwe was a waste, though. On the contrary, our early morning ride there was one of the most beautiful rides I've been on in Africa, leaving the terraced hillsides of the Cyangugu area and continuing on, up hills and around curves, through dense jungle, with imposingly large forested hills rising up around us. It was early, and all of the valleys and the spaces between the hills were covered with mist, rising up and giving everything an ethereal air. That drive alone was worth the hassle of the journey. Unfortunately the Onatracom bus that I was on was moving continuously; if it had stopped anywhere, I would have been able to take a fantastic photo.

The following day, Brian and I left at the crack of dawn and spent the next 6 hours on an incredibly crowded bus along a fantastic (and fantastically bumpy) dirt road from Kamembe to Kibuye. It had rained earlier, so the going was tough. Luckily Brian and I both had seats, unlike many others who were crammed into the aisle like New Yorkers on a rush-hour subway. Eventually we got to Kibuye, a small town with absolutely nothing to do. We were there for a few days, relaxing and napping and walking around and swimming in the cold waters of Lake Kivu. Even though the weather wasn't great while we were there, the scenery was still lovely. We also met a wonderful Canadian couple and spent hours chatting with them about everything from riots in Kenya to shopping malls in Dubai to poverty in Saskatchewan. Just talking to other backpackers was a welcome change---Rwanda is not a heavily touristed country, and Brian and I had not met any other backpackers for weeks. (and have barely met any since then, although that will soon change)

From Kibuye, it was another overcrowded bus to Gisenyi (on this one, I had the opportunity to sit in a window-seat where there was no window---just a lot of cold air blowing in my face). Gisenyi is on the northern shore of Lake Kivu, sharing a border with the Congolese town of Goma. Goma has a very interesting recent history, which I'm not going to go into now. I went to the Rwanda-Congo border post, but although Brian and I considered crossing into Goma to check it out, we decided against it.

It was in Gisenyi that it really hit us---we had set aside far too much time for Rwanda. Granted, we were waiting around because we had booked a trip to see the mountain gorillas on the 21st, and earlier dates had been booked. But, spending over 3 weeks backpacking around Rwanda can get really boring. For anyone who wants to visit Rwanda, I would recommend 2 weeks at most.

We spent 6 nights in Gisenyi. There was copious amounts of internet usage. There was the unfortunate night spent in a "dorm" consisting of Brian, myself, and 24 drunk Rwandese men. Needless to say, when the men started chatting at 4am and listening to music, the two "muzungus" were not amused. On a better note, we ate some of the best cheap African food I've had in all of my travels. I went to the beach and swam in Lake Kivu a few times---for as long as I could put up with the stares from locals and the blatant calls of "muzungu!" I also visited another wonderful market, but alas, I could not find any more "CU On The Ramps" t-shirts. At one point I was wandering aimlessly by myself through the market when two small children, probably around 3 or 4 years old, ran up to me and bear-hugged my legs. I smiled, but when I tried to walk, they clutched onto my pant-legs, following me. I was basically dragging these kids around the market, as they looked up at me smiling with goofy grins and women in the market laughed. It was all very amusing. In Gisenyi I also had the good fortune to spend time with locals--people around my age, with a working grasp of English (not always so common in a Francophone country). Spending hours with them, hanging out in their homes, eating meals with them---that's what I will remember about Gisenyi. Some have suffered and seen things I can't imagine. It hit me, looking through family photos and having people point out their murdered family members. And one guy in particular had both of his hands chopped off during the genocide but still managed to surf the internet with his stumps.

After Gisenyi, it was finally time for Brian and I to head up to Ruhengeri--our final stop in Rwanda. Ruhgengeri itself is an insignificant town, but when we were there, our eyes were drawn to the horizon, to the imposing Virunga volcanoes rising around us. We were only there for 2 nights; after our first night we woke up before dawn and were waiting outside of our guesthouse at 6am for our ride to take us to the Parc National Des Volcans. We drove out of town and soon were at the park, with the towering peaks of the volcanoes rising high in the background. This was where mountain gorillas had first been "discovered" and classified, and where Dian Fossey had worked until her murder.

We checked in and were assigned to our tracking group---Brian, myself, and 6 other tourists, along with our two guides and an armed soldier (for the protection of us? or for the gorillas?) set off to find the Hirwa group at the base of Sabinyo Volcano. Sabinyo, with its craggy peaks, lies at the junction of 3 countries: Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. We started off, and after about 30 minutes walking through pyrethrum fields, we soon entered into the forest. It was an easy hike through tall bamboo, and after 20 minutes or so we found them: the Hirwa group of mountain gorillas--1 silverback male, 5 females, and 6 children. We were able to get to within a few meters of these majestic creatures, and we spent an hour with them. It was absolutely incredible, and although it cost $500 (about as much as I had spent during the entire previous 3 weeks in Rwanda), it was money well spent. It was one of the best experiences I've had during my travels (possibly the best) and will rank among the best experiences of my life. When our hour with the gorillas was up, it was difficult to leave. I spent the rest of that day, my last day in Rwanda, in an elated mood. We had truly ended Rwanda on a high note.

The next morning, Brian and I crossed the border into Uganda. We went from Ruhengeri to Cyanika, across the border, and then from Cyanika to Kisoro. Kisoro is a crappy little town, from what I saw of it, and after 2 hours spent waiting in a matatu (minibus) for it to leave, we were off to Kabale. The 3 hour ride from Kisoro to Kabale was crowded, and amusing in parts (like when the matatu broke down on a remote road and was miraculously fixed), and absolutely breathtaking in other parts. There was one point on the journey, when we were high up on a mountain-pass, looking down across lush, hilly, terraced fields rising and falling to the base of the Virungas in the distance, and then we rounded a turn and were treated to another panorama, with Lake Bunyoni and its clear blue water nestled inbetween green hills.

Eventually we arrived in Kabale and continued on to our final destination of the day, Lake Bunyoni. For our two nights in Bunyoni, Brian and I camped. Bunyoni and the areas around it are among the highest points in Uganda, and up in those highlands, alone in my tent, I shivered through the night. For the two nights we spent in Bunyoni, I was thankful that I'd brought thermal underwear and a fleece on my travels.

On the one full day that we spent in Bunyoni, Brian and I hiked to the top of the tall hills that surround the lake. From that high viewpoint, we were able to look out at the lake. Bunyoni is a breathtakingly beautiful lake, studded with wooded green islands. After soaking up the view for a while, we descended back down to the lake, and rented a canoe. We spent the next hour or so doing what is locally known as the "muzungu corkscrew"--where we would both start paddling and would end up going in circles. We spent a long time trying to get our canoe to go straight, to no avail. Eventually we realized that we could only go straight if one person was paddling, and from then on we were able to maneuver our canoe around.

The next morning we left Bunyoni; Brian went to Kabale and I continued on by myself in a crowded matatu to the small town of Ntungamo; from there, I squeezed into a "shared-taxi"--basically a private car that ferries people around, cramming as many in as possible. With 4 in the front and 4 in the back, we set off for the town of Rukungiri, where I was headed to meet a Peace Corps Uganda volunteer named Megan, who I'd been put in contact with. I was really excited to be at a PCV site in another African country, to compare our Peace Corps experiences, and to see what local Ugandan life is really like.

Whereas I was an "education" volunteer living in a village, Megan is a PEPFAR volunteer living in the town of Rukungiri. She is a "new" volunteer, having just sworn into service in October, the same week that I COS'd (ended my service) and left South Africa. I spent three nights at Megan's house in Rukungiri, living the Peace Corps life again and loving it. We purchased fresh produce at the local market and cooked (my first time cooking in a long time!). I did dishes, I bathed in a bucket. All very familiar. We walked to and from Megan's office in town, greeting people in the local language, Runyankori. Or, at least, she greeted and chatted in Runyankori while I smiled. (I was also amused to hear Megan speaking in her "African voice"---any Peace Corps volunteer in Africa would know what I'm talking about---the Ugandan equivalent to saying lots of "Is it?" and "Eish!!")

I spent two full working days with Megan at work; as much as I'd love to say that I was a witness to majestic heroic acts of service and community development, I can't. That wouldn't be Peace Corps. Peace Corps is lots of waiting, and making small progress in slow steps. Things change bit by bit; that's why they give us 2 years. I read a lot when I was with Megan at work; so did she. On the first day, we were at her office in Rukungiri; on the second, we went out into "the field" on a project that she is working with--training people in local villages about starting and running small businesses----growing coffee, or raising goats, for example. The villages we visited around Rukungiri are beautiful, hilly and green, surrounded by banana trees. Megan was supposed to speak to the aspiring entrepreneurs and teach them about leadership, but due to miscommunications (as always in Peace Corps), nobody brought her materials or gave her any time to speak. Megan is highly motivated, however, and she has a lot of great ideas about projects that she's planning; we spent a long time talking about them and I gave whatever small advice I could from my own personal experiences in South Africa (which aren't always applicable in an entirely different country, a different culture, a different experience---but maybe). I'm sure she's going to do great this next year-and-a-half.

It was wonderful and refreshing, spending three nights in Rukungiri; but soon it was time for me to leave, and on Wednesday, in the pre-dawn darkness, I let myself out of her house and walked to the bus station at 6:15am (sunrise is around 7am in Uganda). I got on a bus to Mbarara, and finally after waiting, we left at almost 8am. I arrived in Mbarara at 10 and switched to a matatu; after 2 1/2 more hours of waiting, we were off to Kasese, with the driver speeding and the engine smoking. Southern Uganda is lush and green, there are banana trees everywhere, and rolling hills---just wonderful and lovely and beautiful. But as we neared Kasese, all that went away, and we were driving through flat, dusty, brown savannah. After Rwanda and southern Uganda, being back in a savannah seemed like the height of desolation and infertility. We whizzed by a sign marking the Equator; I had started my travels south of the Tropic of Capricorn, and had now made it all the way into the Northern Hemisphere.

A few minutes later we pulled into Kasese--one of the crappier little towns I've encountered on my travels. It was about 3pm by this time, and I had to wait at the taxi rank in another matatu until 4:30, when we finally left for Fort Portal. Soon enough, after about 40 minutes or so, the land lost its barrenness and flatness, and became green again. With the Rwenzori Mountains to our left and green hills around us, I was happy again. The scenery was soon just as it had been in Rukungiri and other parts of southern Uganda. I arrived in Fort Portal, my final destination, at 6pm, almost 12 hours after I left Megan's house.

Brian was here, waiting for me. The next morning we booked some activities for our remaining time in Uganda (he's leaving Uganda on the same day as me, and flying to Istanbul to start the 2nd leg of his long journey), and then we left Fort Portal, on a shared-taxi to the crater lakes south of town. This is a lovely, green, hilly area, and we stayed at a place called the Lake Nkuruba Community Nature Reserve & Camp Site---a community-run place where proceeds go towards a local orphanage. It's extremely basic----latrines, an outdoor bucket-shower, no running water, and absolutely NO electricity. But the staff---community members----are extremely friendly and helpful, and I really enjoyed my time there.

On our first day at Nkuruba, we went for a short hike, walked to a neighboring village and walked around a busy market, ate at a local restaurant and chatted with some highly talkative individuals. It was all great. We also went swimming in the lake, which is surrounded by thick, steep forest. As we swam in the lake, monkeys could be heard and seen jumping through trees or coming down to the water to drink. The lake is thankfully bilharzia-free (according to staff), but it is FULL of tiny fish, each only slightly larger than a grain of rice, and when I would stand or sit in the water, they would swarm. Thousands of them surrounded every exposed inch of my body and started nibbling, eating dead skin that I couldn't see. They were cleaner fish---like the ones I'd seen nibbling at a manta ray's gills while diving off of Tofo. Having these swarms of fish nibbling on me was one of the strangest physical sensations I've ever had---not pleasant, but not unpleasant either. Just very, very strange.

The next morning, Brian and I were up early and rented "mountain-bikes" for the day. I put the word in quotes because the bikes we got had no gears, terrible brakes, and hard seats. Basically, they were terrible bikes, but we set off with them anyway. We wanted to bike to the famous Kibale Forest National Park. The journey there was through small dirt trails, up and down hills---we'd have to walk the bikes up the hills and ride down clutching the brakes as hard as we could. My hands still hurt from holding onto the brakes so hard.

Kibale is one of Uganda's most famous parks; it is estimated to have the highest density of primates in the world, including many chimpanzees. To get into the park and go walking costs money, but there is a dirt road that goes through the park that it is free to drive through or bike through. That's the road we took. Walking up and riding down hills, stopping to see monkeys jumping through trees, and enjoying the wonderful scenery of the huge, imposing forest. From Nkuruba, we'd ridden and walked for 17 kilometers to the main park tourist office, and then took that same route back. 34 kilometers on crappy bikes, having to walk with the bikes up steep hills, was exhausting work. I'd say that we rode about 35% of the time and walked the other 65%---that's a lot of kilometers to walk uphill on dirt roads, dragging a bicycle. Add in the hot equatorial sun and some downpours, and it was quite the workout. But it was a beautiful trip through the forest, and it was free!

Today we had planned to go on a walk around the campsite and neighboring areas, but we were sore from our ordeal yesterday, and it was raining, so we decided to return to Fort Portal and take care of some errands (like writing a blog entry). Tomorrow we have a long day of travel ahead of us, to Masindi in the North-west part of the country. We have a lot planned for the next week or so---a stark contrast to all of the lounging in Arusha and Rwanda. Knowing that my time is limited makes me appreciate it that much more.