The pearl of Africa

Uganda, the country most famous for Idi Amin. One of the worst dictators of modern times. Also the country where you will find Lake Victoria, Mountain Gorillas and The Nile. Anyway, this is where I am at the moment. I will come back to what I am doing the last 15 days of my African Adventure. First I want to update you on what happened since Thursday, though it is not much interesting. However, I will include some photos from Nuru because of Camilla commenting on my last blog post.

So here it is:

Backfire and the rest of the kids at Nuru are showing me their new dance. By the way, he is a quite talented drummer.


Esther is drawing, and I am supposed to say hello to Camilla:)







Ok, so now you got to see some pictures. Unfortunately I did not take many photos at Nuru, but I had a good time there. On Friday I visited the Norwegian and the Swedish Embassy together with Lisa and Charlotte (the Swedish volunteers at Nuru), and Stephen. To be honest, the personnel at the Swedish embassy were far more enthusiastic than the personnel at the Norwegian embassy. With good reason maybe, since SIDA (the Swedish Norad) has been supporting Nuru for some years.

On Saturday I was hanging with the kids. Watching a dance show and some drumming, playing football, and just talking with them and letting them use my camera. It was a nice day. On Sunday, I went with Stephen to downtown Nairobi to buy the ticket with Kampala Coach, and to do a short sightseeing. Nairobi is as modern as a city gets in these parts of the world. The rest of my time at Nuru, I was just relaxing and getting used to getting up at 6 every morning (that would be 5 back home). I did not tan even a little bit due to every day being cold and cloudy.

Yesterday was terrible. A ten hour bus trip taking at least 14 hours. That's the way it is. It is life threatening every time you put yourself in the position of letting an African bus driver taking you somewhere. Fortunately I felt quite safe yesterday, but we could see at least 3 big trucks that had had serious accidents on the short trip from Malaba to Kampala. The worst thing yesterday was the heat and the traffic jam the last couple of hours coming to central Kampala. I was often thinking that it must take shorter time to walk the last couple of kilometers.

Now I am in Kampala, Uganda. The final destination of my trip. The flight going back home leaves only 40 minutes from Kampala. I will however not hang around in Kampala for 15 days. I will stay here for four night, and then go on a safari to Murchison Falls. I booked it today, and it will not be too expensive due to the group being 13 people. In Murchison Falls we will go for a hike up to the waterfall, go on a boat safari on the Nile, a wildlife game drive (it may not be as interesting as the ones in Tanzania and Kenya, but I am just hoping to see a giraffe and those are supposed to be there), a chimpanzee trek and probably a little bit more that I can't remember.

The safari will happen this weekend, and then I will try to go southwest. First to Kabale where it may be freezing cold as it is on more than 2000 meters above sea level, and then to Lake Bunyonyi which is supposed to be stunning. I will hopefully get around one week there, before heading to Entebbe where the international airport is located.

I am actually looking forward to go home as I am a little bit tired of travelling already, but I will enjoy my last weeks now that I am finished with those terrible bus journeys. Now it is only the short 8-10 hour trips to Murchison and Kabale that's left.

So long, Øyvind