Africa Part 1

Kenya and Uganda

Well right from the get go you can tell you are not anywhere like home anymore. about 5 minutes after we left the airport in a cab Im sure we paid to much for we noticed very distinct differences. the complete lack of traffic organization was probably the first one. sometimes we had 2 lanes, sometimes 5 whatever people thought they could fit at the time. after you get over the shock of random trafic patterns you get to start really looking at what is happening. nittably people just wandering through the streets and dodging cars... just dodging them. oh and then... the children jumping up onto garbage trucks coming from the airport to eat the food that has been thrown away. It was a shocking introduction.

The first night in africa was spent at a hostel that can only really be descried with the word sketchy. it was just around the corner from an airea we were warned to not go down. the hotel itself was... old and not the cleanest place I have been. the bathroom was special. it was just a swuare room with a sink , toilet and a shower head. when you turned on said shower the whole bathroom got washed... I felt like it was a nice innovative touch.

our next adventure was the buss tour that we went on. we found our way to the meeting place and got introduced to our truck , driver, tour guide and cook. the next 14 days were largley spent on said truck and we got an intamate view of the small roadside towns and citys in Kenya and Uganda.

while looking out the window the first thing you are really going to notice is that there are 3 main types of houses.

1) the concreet house

this is easily the nicest of the 3 variety. it has 4 walls or sometimes it is 3 houses joined together with usually something like a corrugated metal roof on top. sometimes with doors but other times with fabric over the doorway. often with windows. these seemed to be fairly common for shops and could be found in both countrys. In Uganda there was also an influx of cylindrical concrete buildings.

2) Bricks
these houses were more common then the larger more sturdy looking concrete houses. many of them had thatched roofs and looked to be a little less finely finished. according to our guides they are less durable and need large scale repairs every 5 ish years. this was evident by the number of buildings with extra windows... also known as holes in them.

3) Mud

as I am sure most people have tried at some point in time to build something out of mud I think we can all agree this would be a challenging prospect. however the people here seem to have made great technological advances n the art of building mud houses and start with a base of sticks and pack the mud into it. these houses have thatched roofs and are very inexpensive to build. the problem being that the roof must be replaced every 3 years or it will leak allowing the rain to wash away your house...


Once you are done staring at the houses one might look closer to see the people of the city. for the most part you can see children running around wearing anything ranging from nothing to  a shirt or a nice clean school uniform. we tended to get a very good look at the children as  they had a habit of running towards the truck at high speed yelling and waving and jumping up and down. it was strange and we have been told a few reasons why they do this ranging from they are excited to see the big trucks to they think you will give them something. I would say it is a mix of both. 
while driving around you can see people hiding in the shade or just going about daily life. mostly the men look like they are hanging out and chilling while the women are carrying things around, cleaning, washing clothing and looking after kids. we have been told by a few people that African men are lazy and the woman does everything. you can see it.

other strange things on the side of the road include lots of garbage... and live stock.
yes livestock... just wandering around on the road. eating grass... eating garbage. just minding their own business... nothing is quite so unnerving as being stared down by a cow on the side of the road with 6 feet of horns on his head... no I'm not exaggerating. these things are huge.

another thing you are likely to notice while traveling in a huge  truck is that the roads are crap. in fact to call them roads is generous. mostly I think they just toss some asphalt on there and call it a road with no real idea of what kinds of process goes into making something that will last more then a weekend. 

As for our nights we were camping. usually at a camp site out of town with alternately hot and freezing showers with usually a bar and sometimes fun things to look at... like hippos... or the occasional warthog in the camp ground. these ones came with warnings like. don't use the toilet in the middle of the night. a family of warthogs sleeps there... just go behind your tent. oh.. OK well as Erin says just so long as we have a plan. 
I really enjoyed the camping. we set things up ourselves and helped with cooking and cleaning up. the tents were quite large and mostly didn't leak to much. the beer is very cheep here and usually after things wer set up we would go have a drink or to of the local brew. my favorite was tusker a Kenyan beer. but he Nile special in Uganda was also delightful.


onto the topic of the Nile river. we stayed at a camp site for 2 nights on the banks of the Nile river. during the free day we had there Erin and I went white water rafting. at the end of the day 6 rapids later  I had the thrilling prise of being the one to fall out of the raft the most number of times. yay for me... >.< it was a great day. we got to flip our boat a few times and go swimming down the river. we freaked out some of our passengers and basically had a lot of laughs. after the rafting our guide told us it was expected that we would all go hang upside down in a kayak on the ceiling of the bar to go have a shot... so we did. well I did. Erin did not. claiming she didn't want to in a skirt. oh well. it was a lot of fun.

other then rafting and driving we went through 2 game parks. we saw a lovely selection of giraffes and antelopes and birds. there were also elephants and water buffalo and on a boat trip we took one afternoon we got to see hippos and elephants swimming around. the animals were great fun and it was nice to sit and watch them. it was a bit difficult to always see everything from the large truck we were on but it was a fantastic time.  We also passed through a few local markets selling everything from camp stoves to raw meat from wood tables in the sun... yes raw meat. or you can get a still live chicken and deal with that yourself once you get home.. the options are endless. on one day in particular a group of us took a trip on the lake by where we camped with the gorillas to a pigmee village... that was... well... something. basically the boat ride was fantastic taking us past beautiful islands including punishment island where they used to toss the pregnant women within easy swimming distance of shore to die. and the island where they used to keep the sick people. nice... the pigmees themselves were drunk short people who get very angry when you don't pay them what they think they should get for jumping around and clapping.the hike after that was fantastic however and we got within view of Rwanda to take pictures.

all in all I lo9ved Kenya and Uganda it was a very eye opening experience I will not soon forget. I would definitely come back. we had a lot of fun and many adventures. probably to many to type in to one blog post in an hour. but this way we still have stories to tell in person later.