2009/02/10-21 best trip ever

Größere Kartenansicht

uganda. what a wonderful country - i am so glad that i actually visited eva; who turned out to be the perfect guide & host for me.. thank you for that!

we visited a lot of interesting places and i must say that i would have never expected it to be that beautiful; both nature and wildlife simply stunned me.

uganda's nature

besides being fascinated all of the time, though, i got to learn a lot about the ugandian culture & lifestyle.

lifestyle in uganda

people refer to us whites as muzungu, which is a common african term for strange, white people.

contrary to the austrians, who also have various terms for our foreigners, they mean it friendly.. it is simply their way to address us. in general people are very open-minded and interested; they have a good sense of humor, and if they are stunned, they laugh. so, for example, it is very uncommon for them to be able to swim. when we told them that we could, they non-believingly laughed and said 'man, you are good, muzungu'.

body contact is usual - it is possible that you hold your counterparts hand during the whole conversation. although homosexuality is illegal [that was quite shocking for me] men run around holding their hands.. just in a non-sexual way.

the way of conversation is totally different to the austrian, too. deriving from luganda, they do not use please or thank you too much; they mainly talk in commands. e.g. 'you take this', 'you go over there' instead of 'would you like to have this' etc. this is not being rude, it is just how they talk and how you answer. bargaining is also very common, it is a form of communication. when they offer you a certain price [which is generally a muzungu one, i.e. at least thrice as high] you just say 'you must reduce the price a bit' a start negotiating. something i had to get used to but turned out to be quite fun.

people have a simple lifestyle, but they seemed really happy to me. i really had to get rid of some of my prejudices.

ugandan people

food is awesome, too. local fruit are mangos, papayas, bananas, pineapples and avocados. we almost daily mashed tomatoes with them and filled chapattis, incredibly taste bread-crêpe-things.

to sum it all up - this was the best vacation ever and i hope to go back to this country soon. although the standards are low, the quality of life is undescribable due to the positive atmosphere.

2009/02/12 downtown

kampala downtown is simply crazy. masses of people running around incredibly close to each other,

..traffic jammed all of the time in- what it seemed to me [but i was misled] - absolute anarchy.

after arriving at the new taxi park [which is a curio itself] we lingered along the road to the owino market, where locals buy second hand shoes, clothes and accessories. if you're lucky or rather bargain hard you get brands like 'converse' or 'timberland' like really cheap. as a muzungu [white person] they certainly try to overcharge you; but that's alright. we also had to high five every second person for the american president after they had asked us if we were 'a sista of obama?' [which we certainly are].

the business district or rather parliament area seems pretty westernized, where you see plenty of wealthy people running around. furthermore we found a coffee house-ish thing, where they sold sachertorte [well, kind of], as the owner stayed in austria for several years.

as the stimuli were quite intense i was pretty happy to finally chill out there.

2009/02/11 3% lighter

today we took a taxi to masaka district, which lays on the aequator.
before getting deeper into that i should explain the public transport system.

these taxis can be somehow compared to our buses: they take up to 20ish people [although they are only licensed for max. 14],

..they are comparatively cheap and they always take the same route with marked stops.
what is different, though, is there efficiency - they only start, when they are full [which means that if you are the first on it, it's possible to wait for an hour before it leaves], you can ask them to stop whenever you feel like it and at the taxi parks or rather at their stops a zillion people try to sell you stuff.. which turns out to be quite handy when you're hungry or thirsty.

after a two hour ride the driver let us outat the aequator. it's not that it looks a lot different here, but just the feeling that you are now standing on it is quite exciting. this is subtly marked ..

the rest of the place is rather touristy. a lot of craft shops..

..and somewhat overpriced coffee houses [which still offer great food].

for what it's worth we got to learn some special things about the aequator.

if you stand on it you will weigh 3% less than usual; if you stand on the northern hemisphere water flushes clockwise, if you stay on the southern, anti clockwise.. and: if you flush it on the aequator itself it just goes down straight. amazing, isn't it?!

2009/02/10 arrival in wandegeya

my 24 hour travel to entebbe was quite exciting itself, as i had to stay at the airport in dubai for 8 hours. besides being fascinated by the cultural melting pot i chilled or rather went to sleep as everybody else did..



eva picked me up and i must say that from the minute a i walked out of the airport i was totally stunned by the wonderfully green landscape of uganda. i must admit that i had always figured that african countries have to be dry and savannah-ish; not greener than home!

the cab took us to wandegeya, the area where eva stays permanently at the akamwesi hostel.

besides the proximity to makarere university the area is known for being middle to low standard working class environment. which on the one hand means no luxury, but on the other ugandian every day life. i loved it!