Just some photos

Thursday 29th August- Mosque and going home.

I woke up early along with Dec, Samir, Sarah and Zeddy as we were going to go visit the mosque and try and visit Zeddy's family's old factory.

The 4 of us walked out of the hostel and waved over some Boda-Boda riders. Boda-Bodas are basically the Ugandan cab service. It's a motorbike where you just sit on the back and cling on for dear life as the driver drives like a mad man through the city. We all hopped onto the back of our bodas and asked to be taken to the mosque. Thankfully the journey to the mosque was pretty much just a straight line, so we weren't whizzing around corners everywhere. Although my Boda did speed across a road narrowly missing oncoming traffic before pinging between a couple of vans.

View from the Mosque

The Mosque which had started being built during Idi Amin's reign is huge, dominating the centre of Kampala. At the mosque we were given a private tour and Sarah and Zeddy had to cover their heads. The inside of the mosque was huge and incredibly intricate  and we were able to go up one of the huge towers on each corner of the mosque. At the top of the tower we had an incredible view of the whole city. On the way back down the tower Dec was allowed to drop a shoe down the staircase to see how long it took to reach the bottom, . As we were going back downstairs I felt my hand brush against something on the banister, I turned to look at what I had touched and saw the biggest bug I have ever seen, it must of been some kind of cricket.

WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?

From the Mosque we got Bodas to where Zeddy's old factory was. The journey was longer than the last one, and a lot scarier as it was going through unbuilt roads and through some of the less developed parts of the city. Sadly at the factory they wouldn't let us in to have a tour and seemed to be extremely worried when Zeddy mentioned that her family had used to own the factory.

After our rejection from the factory we got Bodas again back to the hostel. On this Boda, I shared with Samir and I had to sit on the back and cling on to barely any seat until we got to the hostel. We were back at the hostel by 9:30am where I quickly went to finish packing and say goodbye to the volunteers as I would be heading to the airport with some others.

After dropping the earlier bunch off at the airport, the rest of us went to a nearby restaurant for a pizza as we didn't have to be there for another couple of hours. At the restaurant the other volunteers who we had left at the hostel turned up and had a 'last supper' with us before we headed back to the airport.

There really isn't much to do at Kampala airport so after much sitting around and waiting, the small group of us boarded our first flight to Dubai. I had booked my seats home with Kit and so we spent the journey watching 'The Internship' and 'Monster's University'. At Dubai airport, myself and Kit had 4-5 hour stopover while the girls had 10 hours or more. We all first went to a restaurant for a free buffet, because if you are stopping at Dubai for more than 4 hours you get food vouchers and other discounts. After the meal and some wandering around the airport, Kit and I said goodbye to the last few volunteers and headed back to our flight home to Gatwick.

Spending 6 weeks in Uganda has been by far the best summer I've ever had, and the best thing that I have ever done, made a lot of friends that I hope I will keep in touch with. And I hope that one day I will return and hopefully see my P4 class again.

Wednesday 28th August- Hungover and Kraft market

I found myself in the early hours of the morning running to the bathroom to be violently sick for a while. It wasn't great. As a result of being so hungover and ill, I decided I wouldn't go to visit the Kraft market until later the afternoon.

Around 1 ish myself and a group of others went into the vans to head to the kraft market which is only a half hour journey away. Along the way we had to stop off at a petrol station to refuel and to use the cash point. While queuing with everyone for the cash point I had to quickly leave the queue and throw up again all over the floor by the gas pump. A lovely fluorescent greeny yellow puke. I got some strange looks from the Kampala locals who would be greeted by a puking Londoner when they turned the corner by the petrol station.

Eventually I felt good enough to get back in a van and go to the market. At the market I instantly went to the cafe and stayed there basically passed out on the seats for a couple of hours while everyone else went around the market. After I had ate a toasted sandwich at the cafe I felt good enough to walk around the market for an hour or so. I bought a North Ugandan tribal mask, a yellow Ugandan national football shirt, some kind of goat skinned harp and a Ugandan bottle opener.

After the market we went back to the hostel for dinner, chilling out and to wave off a group of the volunteers who were leaving.

Tuesday 27th August- Night out

I stayed in most of today, just going online and catching up on things that I have missed. The other half of the volunteers arrived in the afternoon. Once everyone arrived, Caz and Laura began handing out the shirts that we had all ordered, which would have a number of our choice on the back, and something written on the back, chosen by the other volunteers. I was number 15, and on my back was, 'Idiot Abroad'. Super.

In the evening, myself, Pav, Rachael and Ella headed off on our own into Kampala to try and find a film festival that was supposedly going on, while the rest of the volunteers headed to a restaurant. The 4 of us turned up at where the festival was supposed to be finding absolutely nothing there other than a lot of lorries and cabs. Pav then started going up to everyone who walked past asking them about the festival, but no one knew anything about it. We called a cab to take us to where the rest of the volunteers were at the restaurant and got something to eat. I had a spicy beef dish, which was really nice.

After the meal we headed to a night club for a few hours. At the club Dec and I got a big apple Shisha and started smoking it for an hour and a half with a load of Ugandan guys and some other volunteers. The drinks in Uganda are pretty cheap, a pint only costs roughly £1 and as a result a lot of the volunteers, and myself were pretty drunk. By midnight, there was only half a dozen of us left in the club as the rest had gone back to the hostel. When we had finished all the shisha, I headed off to get another and on my way over, I must of somehow angered some bloke as the next thing I knew I was being lifted into the air and was being yelled at by a couple of blokes, before being thrown to one side. I wasn't 100% sure what had just happened, but I didn't stay around to find out and went back to the bar to get another drink. Around this point I randomly hear a geordie voice blaring out over the sound system, I went up to the DJ booth to see Paige DJing and yelling random stuff in the microphones.

Towards 1am when the last of us were thinking of going back to the dorm, Me, Dec and Paige got a last drink. Immediately Dec and Paige started being severely ill, Paige especially so. It was quite difficult getting into the van to go back to the hostel because of it. We think that we had our drinks spiked due to how quick it happened after getting the drink. Eventually we made it back to the hostel and collapsed in our beds.

Monday 26th August- Journey back to Kampala

At 5am in the morning half of the volunteers woke up to begin the long journey back to Kampala, the other half of the volunteers would be leaving the following day.

15 minutes into the journey, Ross pipes up and exclaims that he left his passport back at the lodge, so we have to go back and get it. As a result we bullied Ross for the rest of the journey. 

A few hours into the journey before we got to the equator, a few of us in the van needed to take a short break, our driver pulled over in a village and asked the man outside if we could use their toilets. The toilet, as we expected, was a hole in the ground, but was thankfully clean. By the time we had all finished and were piling back into the van, a small crowd of locals had gathered and were waving at us and pointing at us.

We arrived at a nice small hostel where we set up our stuff in our new dorms and tried to use the wifi to watch the Chelsea Vs Man Utd game before going to bed.

Sunday 25th August- Last day of safari

Dec and I woke up in the morning to the sounds of Rihanna blasting through our tent from behind us, assuming that this must be the alarm we thought it was 5am and time for us to get up and dressed. It was just before 4am and was in fact the alarm for the staff, so we tried to go back to sleep, but were woken up again by the sounds of hippos. We both got up kind of worried and got out of the tent as quickly as possible; as there was no way that I wanted to be trampled to death in a tent by hippos. The hippos were clearly very close as the sounds were really loud and had woken up a couple of the other volunteers. We wanted to go to the toilets but they were a short walk from the camp and we would have to go with a security guard. Walking along with a guard who was panicky, shining his torch in every direction was both worrying and amusing. As a result me and Dec began laughing at the whole situation we were in, which angered the guard who started angrily whispering at us ‘STOP LAUGHING, WE IN A LOT OF DANGER RIGHT NOW! HIPPOS ARE BAD AND DANGEROUS!’ Straight after, we heard Hippos again and rushed to the toilets and got out of there as quickly as possible.

By 7am we were in the vans and heading out for the morning safari, our van was the 2^nd to leave, we caught up with the first van which had stopped and were apparently yelling something about seeing a leopard, we (…) decided that they were trying to trick us so we carried on past them. Along the main road we saw ahead of us a herd of elephants crossing over the road. We sped up so that we could watch them cross the road, at the point where they were crossing there were still some elephants in the foliage who hadn’t crossed including a huge angry elephant. The Elephant suddenly trumpeted at us which made us all jump, other than Dec who for the whole safari had been begging for something to ‘KICK OFF!’ We were all standing in the van 15 metres from the elephant when suddenly it properly ‘KICKED OFF’, we were watching it and from it casually watching us and eating, it did a fake charge at us. Everyone practically wet themselves, and was yelling for Aggrey our driver to drive away, Robyn managed to film our terrified cowardly reactions, and screams of terror.

The Elephant that 'KICKED OFF!'

Later we arrived at a small touristy place looking out over a lake, when we were there we found out from the other van, that there was in fact a leopard, that we had chosen not to see. At the touristy place, there were a group of Asian tourists posing with this huge camera that they had bought. Afterwards we went back to the campsite where we packed up all our stuff, got back in the vans and started the journey back to the lodge. On the journey back my red hat which had been on the floor of the van, must have been against some metal, as the front of the hat was melted. For some of the way back I sat on the back of the van with Dec and Robyn, my other hat which I was wearing suddenly blew off my head, never to be seen again. Somewhere in Uganda there is now a really cool Lion wearing my hat.   

Look at the size of that camera.

Driving back to the lodge we went over a large a pot hole where we all jumped up from the impact. I turned around to Robyn to see if she was OK and she was holding her head. She took her hand away and it was like something from a horror film, there was a thick red line of blood going all the way from her forehead to her chin. She had managed to smack head on a nail hanging from the ceiling.

That night was mine and several other’s last night at the lodge so we had some drinks and said goodbye to everyone as I and some others would be going to Kampala a day early.

Saturday 24th August- Safari

We woke up at 5am to be on the sunrise safari but didn't see much bar more cob, some bucks and monkeys. Our van decided to play a joke on the van behind us by pretending we could see a lion. We suddenly stopped the van began pointing in the distance towards a group of cobs while pretending to take photos. We told the van behind us that there were lions under the tree to the right of the group and then they all started saying how they could see them and how amazing it was. Apparently there was a male and two females watching the Cob, even team leader Graeme (TLG) was claiming he could see them. We played along for 5 or so minutes more before announcing that there was nothing there and then driving off.  By 9 we had gone back to the campsite, packed up the tents and were on our way to a different part of the Park that we would be spending Saturday night at.

The journey was about an hour and half long, on the way we saw baboons on the road so we pulled over and Aggrey (my van’s driver) threw crisps at them. The baboons were huge and some of them had babies clinging to them. After watching them for a while we carried on down the road before coming to a huge lone elephant standing facing the road half submerged in the trees.

Before getting to the new campsite we got to a restaurant where I had pork and chips for roughly £5, the majority of everyone else had fish and chips. The meal was actually really good despite it taking about 45 minutes for the food to arrive. From the restaurant we drove through the safari to the campsite, along the way we saw more elephants. We must of seen roughly 20 of them just strolling around and eating, but we couldn't stay too long as we had a boat safari at 5pm.

On the boat we went along the lake to the opposite bank where we saw loads more hippos, fish eagles, cobs and lots of buffalos as well as some crocodiles.  A lot of the buffaloes we saw were ‘loser’ buffalo which meant that they were outcasts from their herds which explained why they were on their own; it also means that their time is running out because isolated animals don’t usually survive long.

After the boat safari we headed to a Ugandan 5 star hotel for our dinner. The meal was a really good buffet with fish and a lot of meat. After all the food that we had been having (not that it was bad) everyone was going mental for the food. I as well as a lot of others went up 7 or more times for food which annoyed some of the hotel residents, but we were hungry. After the meal we hung out in the bar for a bit where Pav decided to buy a £25 bottle of wine. Sometime later the vans arrived and took us to the camp site for bed.