I’ve had a few weeks in my life where the highlight has been finding a fiver outside Spar or catching the start of a Come Dine With Me omnibus. This last week has been different.
It turns out that we volunteered to paint a few classrooms in a primary school rather than an orphanage. We whizzed through the work and three rooms later we had a break. Then it happened. Lunchtime. There were gazillions of children pouring in from every available point of entry into the yard. There were shrieks of excitement when we showed them pictures of themselves, and a short video created even more ri ra agus ruaille buaille (yes, I remember that one). We messed around with the lads until they had to go back to class.
We returned to our campsite and got ready for our night out on the all-you-can-drink booze cruise. It was a bloodbath. We paid $15 for two hours and loaded ourselves with the most expensive mixes available, just because we could. As we left the boat at 7 o’clock, the night was pretty much over for many of us. They were helped into their tents while the rest of us tried to watch the Champions League whilst remaining concious.
The people that I’m here with are great craic. There’s only nine of us now with more to join in a week or two. The variety ranges from a crazy Kiwi dental nurse to an American who has served within the highest ranks of the U.S. army for the past 35 years.
We had one of the tents slashed by some messer looking for something to rob. Luckily there was nothing in it but it was a bit of a wake up call for us. I would have just opened the zip and had a look in, I’ve no idea why he needed to cut the side open. The Zorro of Uganda isn’t going to be listening to my ipod anytime soon anyway.
We’ve stayed at few dingy campsites during the week. I walked into the bar of one particular site and thought it was a waiting room for an Ikeaphobic dentist. One of the showers looked like the Chokey out of Matilda and there was a very loud party on across the road where they only played Lionel Richie.
‘Hello? Is it me you’re looking for?’. Yes, actually. I’m looking for you to shut your face so I can go to sleep thank you.
Queen Elizabeth National Park was great but still no leopard. I literally scanned every single tree we passed only to see a few leopard shaped nests and branches. On top of that, the only snake I’ve seen is on my Nokia. I’m not expecting nature to present these to me and I’m more than willing to draw upon my patience and wait until she’s ready to grace me with a big juicy python or something.
Hippos tend to stay submerged in a lake or river during the day and come ashore to graze during the night. The name of the latest place we stayed at was called ‘Hippo Hill Campsite’. It is situated beside the Kazinga Channel which has a generous population of the fat herbivores. I assume that you’ve guessed where this is going. We were not allowed to go to the bathroom alone or pitch your tent near any yummy grass patches. It was very strongly recommended that you had a powerful torch on you at all times. I was at the bar and I asked the guy serving me if the hippos often grazed on the site and he responded with ‘Yeah, obviously...’. Coming to and from the bar I didn’t see any but I did wake up in the early hours to a loud grunt. They weren’t far away at all.
The morning before we arrived at the hippo camp we stopped off in Mbarara to get lunch and dinner supplies. Moses, the tour leader, was negotiating with this street vendor who produced a rather confused looking chicken. Moses nodded and starting flicking through his wallet and then waited for about 5 minutes. The vendor returned with a bag and the standard transaction process occurred.
‘Mo, what’s for dinner tonight?’
‘Chicken, bro’
Awesome.
When we arrived at the camp we were greeted by zounds of flies which undergo a population explosion once a month. They chose that day to do this, just for us. They were absolutely everywhere. There were clouds that seemed to actively stalk you and unceremoniously smother you at any moment. I’d say I ingested about a kilogram of them in one night. I still had some space in my tummy for that chicken though. We are to be spit roasting a pig in Malawi and Mo said I can help slaughter it if I want to, I want to. I’m a carnivore before a veterinarian.
I’m currently in Ruhengeri in Rwanda. It’s amazing how much the landscape is changing as we’re go along. Kenya was full of dry savanna, littered with Acacia trees. In Uganda everything got a lot greener, it’s a very noticeable difference. Then when we hit the Rwandan countryside we were suddenly driving through this incredible mountainous terrain. It’s G-day tomorrow. We are to be sharing the same air with a wild family of gorillas. This is due to be a certain highlight of my entire trip, I’ve been counting down the days since Nairobi. I’m gonna be hopping outta my bed at 5 o’clock tomorrow so I better go. I’ll let y’all know how I get on with another post on Thursday.
Silar erbody.
Any gorillas today???
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