The period of 1st of December to 1st of February in Uganda is the school 'summer' holidays. Temperatures are at their highest and so after completing their end of year exams the primary school kids go home to help their family with chores and play for a while. Since I volunteer at 'Seed Time Primary', their is nothing for me to do but travel. Living out of a backpack for two months is an experience, plus having the opportunity of being in East Africa and so all the volunteers wanted to take full advantage of being able to travel on a budget. This is what I did in the first half of the holidays.
Kenya 1 - Our Ugandan visas expired at the beginning of December and so this gave us an opportunity to visit one of Uganda's neighboring countries. Living in a Kenyan border town meant the choice was obvious. Unfortunately it also meant having to deal with the bureaucracy and red tape that developing countries are infamous for - the immigration officer only dropped the visa charge to its real price after we demanded proof that it had actually doubled. He then took us out for a soda to make up for his blatant law-breaking. And so a group of six of us headed to our first stop on our Kenyan trip, Nakuru - home of the Kenyan cheese-making industry - and so after eating our fill of cheese and peanut butter sandwiches we settled down for a night at the delightful care guest-house (two pound a night). We spent the majority of our time that week, camping on Lake Navaisha and being kept awake at night by the honking hippos crawling out onto the shore. A day was spent at the ominously named 'Hell's Gate' National Park, where we did a bicycle safari (!) We cycled ridiculously close to wild antelope, zebra, warthog, buffalo and giraffe. If that didn't have me gasping for breath the 3 hour gorge walk in the boiling African sun led by a local masai warrior (who clearly enjoyed torturing tourists by speed walking), certainly did. Did I mention that 'Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life' was filmed here? (probably the most exciting piece of information about this trip). Joe the masai's chat was very interesting - he told me all about the time he killed a lion with a spear and when Angelina Jolie drank his cow's blood.
Mt.Elgon - After taking a short lapse from the painstaking walks, I was back for seconds. Myself, Finn and Rosie decided it would be great to do a four day hike up Uganda's Mt.Elgon - and therein lied our great error. 9 hours walking uphill, 25km a day. No, really the hike was amazing fun, but it was in no means luxurious. As anyone who has climbed Kili will tell you, even in Africa camping up a mountain is bitterly cold. So there we were: Me, Finn, Rosie and a random Israeli man we'd befriended up the mountain, dressed up in four layers (plus sleepingbag), spooning in our tent til the cows came home. And I still couldn't sleep because of the cold. Food wasn't michelin standard either as you can only eat what you can carry and so meals consisted of much pasta, tinned tuna, peanut butter sarnies and a rather large quantity of glucose biscuits. We made it to Wagagai peak and 4321m above sea level by lunch time on the 3rd day and it really felt like an achievement. The walk back down was more rough than any of the days climbing up as we practically ran down the back-breaking-ly steep mountainside. After finally hitting the road we were given the option of either walking the last 8km to the guide center or catching a boda boda. It wasn't a hard decision.
Kazinga - Since the long holidays are really long, Project Trust encourage volunteers to do secondary projects. So I arranged with school headmaster Gerald to spent a week at Kazinga; an exceptionally rural fishing village in the Queen Elizabeth National Park and my original project destination before it was changed. When I arrived on Gerald's motorbike a massive herd of primary school children chased after the bike, through the little side streets, screaming with happiness and then clutching at me in hundreds of little hugs once I'd disembarked. I spent a lot of my time that week playing games with the kids (who were very happy to tell me all about their lived in the local language - shame I can't speak it). I also helped with preparing for the church Christmas party - a big event in the Kazinga social calendar - and my chores involved helping the mamas peel the hundreds of matoke bananas with a knife and doing a shopping run to Kasese. Needless to say the party was a hit (and I was certainly hungry after sitting through a 5 hour church service in a foreign language). On my first morning in Kazinga I was woken up by Gerald saying 'Ben, wake up. You're missing something special!'. I crawled outside, sleepy-eyed, to see a huge African elephant munching on leaves right beside the long-drop toilet. That is the exciting thing about Kazinga is the village residents share their front doorstep with the local wildlife, and I saw plenty of it every day - elephants, warthog, hippos, buffalo and gazelle. On our trip to Kasese, we were speeding around the dirt-track corners on a motorbike and literally nearly crashed into the side of a huge bull elephant. Gerald slammed on the brakes and tooted his horn until the big fella lumbered off into the bush. Kazinga really was an amazing experience that I'll never forget.
I'll be writing up next week the last part of my holidays - X-mas, New Years, Kenya pt. 2 and Zanzibar.
From an internet cafe in Arusha, near Kilimanjaro,
Benny
