Date Wrote: July 20, 2014
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| My Homestay Family |
The last couple of days of homestay in Hoima were a lot of
fun and I was somewhat sad to leave my family but I was very excited to start
the next adventure. That adventure was a four hour wooden roller coaster ride
from Hoima to Fort Portal. The main roads leading out from Kampala are usually
paved but it is the side roads
between towns that are not and when riding in a taxi they become a wooden roller
coaster. I have never been so car sick in my life, thankfully my friend Jon had a plastic
bag. After arriving covered in dust to Fort Portal for the future site visit or FSV (three days with our organization), I made my way by car to my site
which is a 30 minute drive from Fort Portal (those thinking of visiting – Fort
Portal is very clean, tourist friendly and lots of white people, lots of
amazing food, and lots of activities to do in the area). Anyways, my house is situated on the edge of a tea plantation which goes on for miles and the school that will be my home base has pretty
much a 360 degree view of the Ruwenzori Mountains and surrounding areas in all
directions. I only had three days which
was not enough time to learn everything about it but hey I have two years
starting in a couple of weeks. I am very excited to get rolling in a couple
weeks. I was able to visit
three schools total in the area and meet a few students. I happened to arrive
for FSV during their busy time so I spent a lot of it sitting around waiting to
meet with people which was fine, I found a book and read through it. It is very
classic and normal to arrive and sit and wait in Uganda. My organization was
started by a professor at Harvard and lots of students from Harvard, MIT and
Princeton were there doing work or studies of some sort. Met a young woman from
Blaine, Minnesota working at MIT and a wonderful kind mother and daughter from
the UK. I traveled into town and had some amazing pizza… not going to hide it I
eat a whole medium sized pizza and I LOVED IT! Fort Portal is very nice and I
can’t wait to get to know it better. My housing situation is very nice and I
will post some photos soon. After site visit, Jon and I took the four hour bus
ride from Fort Portal to Kampala thankfully on a paved road through the tea
plantations and beautiful countryside that goes on for miles.
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| View From My Front Yard |
Many people are happy that Entebbe is right next store and
there is a bar up the road. This morning we went to the zoo! How funny is that
we come to Africa where there are safaris and amazing animals in our backyards
and we go to a zoo. A highlight was getting to see two white rhinos and a few
other interesting birds but for the most part the zoo felt empty. They had one
giraffe which ran away when we came. I want to make it clear I came to Africa
for the giraffes so this was a massive buzz kill! I plan on bringing one back
when I am done in a couple years. Also we got chased by a slightly crazy monkey
(think it had rabies) it chased our group up the road, this small monkey was the
size of a large cat and the boda guys just sat on their motorcycles laughing at
us but those things are slightly scary when they go after you. Don’t worry
though we are all fine. The zoo was right next to Lake Victoria which was cool
to see but sadly the zoo needed a lot of money as it was very run down. We had a great
lunch and went to a mall which had a legit supermarket.The mall had just opened. Off to get some sleep and prep for another day of lecturing tomorrow. Blah
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