So I stayed there Sunday night, and Monday morning I set out to see Entebbe. There's not much... pretty sure I covered all of it in a day. First I went to Aero Beach, which is on Lake Victoria to check that out... you pay 3000 shillings (about $1.20) to get in, and they gave me a ticket so I was able to go back later, which was pretty sweet. Then I went to the Entebbe Botanical Gardens. It was pretty nice, and I had a guide who was very knowledgeable take me around. He smelled like the local brew (like reeked... it was Easter Monday at like 10 am!) and pretty much guilted me into giving him a 20,000 shilling tip (about $8) after already having to pay a 10,000 shilling admission fee ($4). This is RIDICULOUSLY expensive for East Africa, especially if you consider that for both my safari and gorilla guides, I gave them each $20, which I considered to be a good tip, and I was with the safari guide for 3 days, and the gorilla guide for 2. I was with this local-brew-smelling-brah in the gardens for mayyyyybe an hour.
These are royal palms. I did get to see a lot of stuff, I was surprised by how much it was trees and bigger plants and not as many flowers. But still very cool. He said that they filmed Tarzan there (like the old version? I'm not sure since I'm sure I haven't seen it), and showed me the vines and whatever where they filmed:
It was a very scenic spot. Then it started to rain, so he walked me to the edge of the garden where there start to be hotels and restaurants. This was when he finangled the tip out of me (he had already mentioned it earlier, so it was pretty ridiculous). I ended up at Goretti's Pizzeria, where the ovens weren't ready yet to make pizzas, and so I got the cheapest thing on their otherwise overpriced-for-touristas-menu - Goat Brochette. This is basically like seasoned grilled goat on a skewer along with some onions and peppers. This place served it with matoke (not the mashed up kind, just literally the cooked green bananas, tastes the same both ways to be honest), the place in Kigali my first night served it with matoke chips (fried, therefore, better!). I actually really like goat, I can't believe Kigali was the first time I had it, and I think I've had it 3 or 4 times now. Its kind of like a slightly tougher, fattier lamb, but its quite good on the skewer.
Then I caught a boda with little time to spare (since it took them about an hour to make the brochette) to the Uganda Wildlife Education Center, where I was supposed to be there at 12:30 to leave on the boat to Ngamba island at 12:45. Ngamba island is a chimpanzee sanctuary on an island in Lake Victoria (Entebbe is right on the lake shore). Well I got there at 12:40 and literally RAN to the docks, where I met this woman named Christine who worked there. She SUCKED. She was like "oh we tried to call your hostel and cancel on you earlier this morning." I said that was ridiculous, that I had made reservations weeks ago, and had confirmed them TWICE (true). She made up some bullshit story, and I called her out on it (I used the word bullshit, I really hope she understood me) and got VERY mad. I talked to her supervisor on the phone and let her know that even for Africa, this was horrible customer service, and that as soon as I got a decent internet connection I intended to go on all the travel review sites and write truthful, poor review of them, and her in particular. Well she got all worked up about it, and they were trying to get me a spot on the boat, but it obviously wasn't going to work since they had overbooked it.
At this point I was kind of over going at all, since the boat trip was going to be $107 USD in total, and I had just spent a ton of money on the rest of the excursions. But I didn't let them know this, and I continued to rant and rave. As it turned out, no one got to go since the water was too rough. So I chalked it up to getting to see some monkeys in the park, and having an extra $100 in my pocket to use in South Africa.
So I went back to the hostel where they were watching Vertical Limit (pretty bad movie), had a Nile Special, and then Ekky was going to go to the beach so I decided to tag along. We walked there, the long way, and finally arrived around 3:30 or so. We were the only people there who spread out towels and sat on the beach. Everyone else was dancing, standing by the water, and partying it up. I went in the Lake and made friends with a bunch of teenage Ugandans who tried to get me to teach them how to swim... unsuccessful. Its pretty weird here that most people don't know how to swim, even the ones who live on the lake.
Then we were sitting on the beach having a beer (Club) when two kids rode by on a camel... and I decided I had to do that. So here it is:
It was pretty awesome. We definitely stuck out like sore thumbs (whatever that means) at the beach, since we were sitting on towels, I was wearing a bikini, we were clearly foreigners, etc. Some people came over and asked to take a picture with us. Weird. Little kids came over and just bothered us, and finally we took a couple pictures of them and they went away. It was just a weird place, people were obviously weirded out by us. Before we left, we made sure to take some touristy shots on the airplanes that they have there (its a weird place):
We walked the shorter way back to the backpackers, and then later I went to dinner at the Red Rooster sports bar (just down the road from the hostel) with Ekky and another of our roommates, Ricardo (a Brazilian working for the UN in South Sudan).
Tuesday morning, I took a matatu to Kampala, once we hit traffic I got off and took my life into my hands by taking a hair-raising ride on a boda boda to the Elgon Flyer bus station. Grabbed a bite up there, and then took the noon bus to Mbale. Got in at around 4, ran some errands for Lisa (stuff for me really, like bread and candles and mosquito coils, also passion fruit for cocktails!), and then took a matatu to Bubulo and a boda boda from there up to Matuwa. Quite a day of traveling. I was supposed to travel back in a private car with Emma, since a new volunteer Cait was supposed to get there (hence the order for the trip and the ending in Entebbe and waiting until Tuesday to return to the village). However, her flight from NYC to Istanbul got delayed such that she missed her connection to Entebbe, and now will get in very late tonight (actually I think technically it'll be Thursday morning), so she and Doug will come up together on Thursday. So I got to ride the bus. Awesomeeeee.
Today I just worked on the grainsacks I need for the Girls' Group (menstrual cycle and Tanner stages of male and female development). This meant I ended up covered in flour... like disgustingly so. Good thing tomorrow is laundry day.
We also have two visitors today from the FIMRC clinic, residents from Philly (I think one is an MD and one is a DO, not sure). So they saw patients today and are staying over tonight before going back to Bududa.
I also realized that in exactly one month from today (May 11) I'll be back home... crazy. I'm in the village for the next three weeks (drive to Entebbe on May 2 and fly out to SA on May 3)... so posts will be less exciting than they've (hopefully) been. More later.
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