30th November-17th December

Mubende-Kampala-Kabale-Rwanda-Kabale-Lake Bunyoni-Fort Portal-Mubende.

So I have not written a blog for a very long time, as we have been travelling and I just havn't had time in all the excitement.So…Naomi and I left our project on the 29th of November; we got a lovely goodbye from everyone at Project and a specially made plate of chips from Olivia (who cooks for us.) We then travelled up to Kampala where we met everyone at Backpackers. The next day we all relaxed or went into Kampala; Naomi and I went to Owino Market and an African Craft Market-the stuff there was amazing! I also had a few interesting games of pool that day with Gregg (one of the other volunteers). The last match we played if he won he got 48000sh (£15) and if I won I got nothing…anyway I won so all was fine.

The next day all of us departed our separate ways, 6 headed off to Kenya and then the 12 of us headed to the bus park. Molly and I were in a taxi by ourselves, when I started to feel really sick from taking my doxy (anti-malarial) as we went to pay Molly then realised her purse (with her bus ticket in it) was gone. As we got out of the taxi, Molly was frantically searching around and ringing people to see whether she had left it at the gate at Backpackers and I had gone very, very pale.By the time everyone else arrived on the rubbish filled muddy street of Kampala, I was being sick with Ugandans staring at me and Molly was panicking at her purse-we were a sight! Luckily the bus people let Molly on the bus and she didn't have anything important in her purse (it was her back up). After the windscreen was changed the bus departed from Kampala and 9ish hours later we arrived in Kabale (South Uganda, near the Rwandan border). That night we stayed in Kabale and my hand got nibbled on by mosquitos-it actually looked slightly mutated. After breakfast we travelled to the Rwandan border, as we had to leave the country to renew our visas. At the border we had a bit of a kafuffle over exchange rates and changing our Ugandan Shillings into Rwandan Franks. Eventually we got through the border fairly hassle free and then got into a taxi, heading to Kigale (Rwanda's capital city). After an hour and a half journey and the window smashing off half way, we got pushed into Kigale by some Rwandan men one of which looked as though he was about to cough it he was that old! The campsite we planned to stay at it Kigale was $10 a night for camping, which we thought was ridiculously expensive, so we got in a taxi and asked the taxi driver to take us to Hotel Gloria (another place of cheap accommodation according to the East African guide book). About 20 minutes later we rocked up at Hotel Gloria… a $95 per night hotel-the taxi driver got majorly confused and heard hotel Gorilla! We then managed to find someone who spoke English and he informed the driver to take us to Hotel Gloria…which didn't exist, we arrived there andfound scaffolding only;just brilliant. By this point we were all getting pretty stressed as it was getting dark and we were in a country that we were not familiar with and a town that had no rubbish, no street food and everyone spoke French! We then managed to get to a place called Auberge La Caverneand they told us it would be $27 per person! One of us girls were feeling really ill and had started to cry and we were just all fed up and we had to pay a bomb for the taxi that had drove us around for max an hour! Also when we arrived some smarmy middle aged French woman, who was staying at Auberge La Caverne told us to move on and that we were not welcome; even when she could see one of us crying! Eventually Naomi did some impressive bargaining and had a meeting with the manager-we managed to get a really nice apartment: 2 bathrooms, 3 double bedrooms and living room with dining table for $13 each which was really good. We all started to relax and ate a lot of very good food-I had THE nicest carrot soup I have ever had.That night 4 of us went out in Kigale the city was like a city in Greece, it was just so clean and the roads were all perfect.We got rides on bodas, but it was not like Uganda, no it was Rwanda style-strictly one person per boda and helmets with a plastic bit that came down and they drove fast… it was amazing! Next day we all checked out and then went to the Genocide Museum, which was really interesting. Previously I was completely unaware of the genocide and what happened. At the museum site alone there were mass graves that had 254000 bodies in it! The way in which people were killed was horrific; there were also displays on other genocides, which I had never even heard of, like one in Armenia.After the genocide museum we were planning on going to Lake Kivu which is a 3 hour journey from Kigale; but once again we had transport issues and got so stressed we decided we should just go back to Uganda! Two of the boys decided to go to Lake Kivu and then we attempted to get a taxi to the border and once again we had more problems. We got 5 in each taxi and he said he was going to charge us 15000 Franks which is 60000 Ugandan Shillings, which is a lot more expensive than Uganda. About 10 minutes into the journey the taxi driver said he wanted the 50000 as we stopped at a petrol station! 200000 Ugandan Shillings!! We didn't have time to find another taxi though because we were no way near the taxi park and the border was soon going to close. So we managed to get the price down, but we paid £80 between the 10 of us for a 1h30 journey, which is absolutely ridiculous in comparison to Ugandan prices. Anyway, by night fall we had arrived happily in Kabale, Uganda where we spent the next few days recovering from the expensive trauma of Rwanda. We experienced our first Ugandan karaoke, which was interesting to say the least…We witnessed the impressive bum wiggling of some tiny Ugandan ladies, an act that involved men dressed in drag-an interesting concept considering the fact homosexuality is punishable by imprisonment!

On the 6th of December we headed to Lake Bunyoni which is only half an hour from Kabale. Lake Bunyoni is beautiful, really beautiful.Gregg and Justine stayed in Kabale as Gregg had been really ill for the past week and was going to the hospital that day. We arrived at our campsite, which was called Crater Bay which was really pretty, we pitched our tents overlooking the lake. There was also lovely little shed type thing with tables and chairs and a deck with loungers and cushions and palm trees.That night we got the news that Gregg had been medevac'd to Nairobi hospital and Justine had gone with him; which is a real shame as it was Justine's Birthday a couple of days later and she spent it alone in a posh Hotel paid by the medical Insurance, but by herself because Gregg was having his appendix out! We stayed at Crater Bay for 2 nights and had a lovely time swimming in the Lake, attempting to move I dugout canoes (near enough impossible) and eating some very tasty chips and mayo. We then headed to ByoonaAmagara Island via speed boat. The island was very well planned out with good showers and toilets, a library and board games; there were some very tense games of scrabble because apparently I cheat (not true of course, they were just annoyed I won).

By the 12th we were backin Kabale and we were all ready to move on to our next destination,I went to book the night bus to find there wasn't one until the nextday at 11pm; so we went to the karaoke again that night. The next day I felt really ill all day and the night bus was horrific! The bus was supposed to leave at 11pm, it didn't leave until 2am! The journey was so uncomfortable and took a total of 12 hours, instead of the 6 that it was meant to! We arrived in Fort Portal at 11am and went to where we staying-'The Exotic Restaurant', it wasn't exotic in the slightest; the toilet was the worst toilet (if you can call it that) that any of us had ever seen in Uganda! I felt really ill still, I was ridiculously hot, I spent the next two days asleep in bed-I don't know what everyone else did. We then headed to the Crater Lakes, which were also really beautiful, the views were amazing. The campsite we stayed at hadn't seen any visitors in quite a while; I still felt really ill although managed to go for a swim in the beautiful lake. The campsite didn't really have a shower and the toilets were pretty rubbish, although they were a definite step up from the Exotic Restaurant! We also had quite possibly the worst soup in East Africa that took 2 hour to arrive; literally water with a dash of carrot flavour and the most pitiful portions imaginable. I then had the worst night'ssleep, I felt ridiculously ill still and I was really uncomfortable; wasn't in the best of moods when I woke up in the morning. That morning we headed to Mubende after a pretty funny incident when Blair pretended to wee on Kieran's tent, much to Kieran's annoyance who scrambled out of the tent shouting, looking very tired, struggling to cover him with a sheet-it was hilarious. We all got to our project and had a tasty feast, showers and there was a haircutting session by hairdresser Naomi.Kieran also managed to break the tap in our bathroomanother comical incident, all I heard was 'Becky, I've got a problem' the sink was over flowing but we managed to fix it after a load of us were piled into the bathroom laughing away mainly at Kieran in only his underpants for the 2nd time that day. After a good sleep in my own Ugandan bed, I finally felt better, the nest couple of days we enjoyed the free food, had a big Christmas card making session, washed a lot of clothes and just generally relaxed.We also got to see the foundations of the two new blocks at St Zoe, which was interesting to see.

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