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f***, I'm so tired. Yesterday We went out partying in Kampala with the new volunteers. Crazy time with a lot of dancing.
The last week we've been staying with the new volunteers that arrived to Uganda last saturday, I think. Monday till Wednesday we were in Jinja og since then we've been at the MS-guesthouse in Kampala. Thea and I came down to meet them and talk to them about our experiences and try to prepare them for what they can meet. While in Jinja we hung out with the to girls from our group who are staying in Jinja. They took us to the best coffee house in Uganda and for the first time i almost 4 months I had a good cup of coffee and a fantastic piece of cake...
We wnated to go somewhere nice for easter so thursday we left for the Ssese Islands in Lake Victoria. We weren't really sure how to get there but we just figured we could find out on the way. Alla we new was that we should catch a ferry from a town called Bukakata. We took a matatu from K'la to a town called Masaka (3 hours), in the southern part of Uganda when we arrived we wanted to find a matatu to Bukakata, but that proved to be difficult. We ran around asking everybody and were told that the matatu left from Nyendo. It seemed impossible to find out how to get to Nyendo, everybody just said 'You take taxi' when we asked them where Nyendo was and how long it would take to get there. In the end we just took a Boda Boda, but he had trouble finding the taxi park in Nyendo so we drove around for a bit. When we finally got in a matatu towards Kalangala, the biggest town on the Ssese Islands we were (as always almost) too many in the car and I sat between the real seats and a 'foldout-seat'. Argh. Not funny when you are driving for an hour and a half on red dusty roads from hell. When we finally arrived to Bukakata we found out that it was not, as we had expected, a town but just a parking lot where cars and people could wait for the ferry. And so we waited. Firste we waited about an hour and a half for the ferry to come and then we waited about three hours for the ferry to be repaired!!! When the time closed in on 7 pm we started getting worried. We had not booked any rooms in kalangala and was not totally comfortable with arriving to the town in complete darkness... But there was really nothing to do; no cars were driving back to Masaka, so we had to stay and wait. The sun went down as we sailed the 50 minutes from Bukakata to the Island. The view was almost worthe the long drive and all the waiting. So beautiful. We arrived to the island as expected in complete darkness, the landscape was only lit by the full moon. we still had at least an hour of driving ahead of us and the matatu was falling to pieces. At one point I noticed sparks flying from the from wheel, that's when I got worried. Some people on the matatu helped us find a room and at around 10 pm we could relax after 12 hours of travelling.
We had plans in Kampala on saturday, so we had to go back already the next day, so it really wasn't much we got to see of the island... On the way home we took the boat to Entebbe, which left kalangala at 8 am. Unfortunately it was raining and very windy so we were completely store together inside a very small seating area on the boat and it smelled like puke because people got so seasick and had to run back and forth to the toilet. 3 and a half nice hours! A very weird trip, because we really didn't get to see that much, but we had fun and learned even more about the African transportation!
Tomorrow we are going back to Masindi and next time we are leaving it will be for good. That's weird. We only have to whole weeks left in Masindi and I think time is going to fly by. We'll still be working at the school and we finally achieved an agreement with TASO (The Aids Support Organisation) and we'll work there in the afternoons. That's going to be very interesting. Monday the 26th we are going to K'la to have the last couple of days together with the rest of the group and even the three girls from Sudan. And then home.... uha!
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