Landed in Uganda!

After our forever and a day touch down in Ethiopia, we got off our final plane in Uganda!! Whooo! 23 hours of flying is a bit tortureous, even with a nice break in Dubai. At any rate, the air is warm and humid, but not too hot (thank god) and has the third world charm of burnt trash lingering in the scent.. Yes. I'm stoked. There is something soo exciting about the smell, I guess it's the smell of a new adventure. We wait in line to go through passport control, which is really just buy your $50 visa control. While waiting in the mess of a line, I took Kira to the bathroom (the only other 'girl' in the group at 12.. But she is a very mature 12 year old and fun to be around) at any rate, while I was waiting for her I noticed someone struggling to get out of the stall next to her. Eventually yelps and little shrieks starting coming too and I almost had to laugh that someone was stuck in the bathroom. I went over and tried to help, but I couldn't budge the thing either. The woman was definitely starting to panic as there was no way to crawl under or over really. I don't think her English was so hot, but after almost ripping the stall door off, I realized we had to get back to the passport line and I told her I was calling for back-up. I told the luggage man outside to go rip the door off in there, he looked very confused, and I'll never really know if he went in there or even rescued the lady.

So like Dubai, the exiting security was a joke, as we all lined up and stuck our bags and boxes of jerseys and soccer balls through another X-ray machine. The black people just walk on through. I am only allowed to call them that because they call us mzuyungu... Aka white person! (this always includes a finger gesture of sometime.. Usually just one pointing at as and chanting.. Sometimes is a bad wave which means don't even think about taking a picture of me bud, and on one occasion it was the middle finger.) so the clan of mzuyungus headed ou the airport and met up with isaacs brother, mark. Isaac is kinda like our local conductor of the trip... Sort of. Hes our part organizer to help with local logistics.. But I just made him sound wayy to fancy. We headed out of Entebbe toward Kampala (the capital) where we would spend our first night at a little guesthouse just a few streets off the hustle and bustle. It was above my expectations (which yes can be extremely low) hosting a fairly legit breakfast and a weak wi-fi signal in the little checkin room. Everything was super nice and clean, the shower was hot, and the bed even had a nice drapping mosquito net. Not too shabby at all. We headed to the mall where we got dinner and some groceries for the dinner we will be cooking soon. The food court seems at first like a reallly lame cop-out of a first meal in Uganda, but as a few of the people on the trip already knew (they've been here a few times) , it def was not. as soon as you sit Down at a table, a person or two from each of 7-8 little circling restaurants attacks you with a menu. Within 5 seconds of seating, there were definitely 30 menus sprawled across our 8 person table, with a Ugandan over every other shoulder and the rest standing back slightly as spectators. I learned quickly that like many other countries the personal bubble got left back in America. I was cracking up as they each try to put their menu infront of you and point to their favorite dishes... Which are def the ones I would never order... Sorry the cheeseburger on the 'Lebanese' menu and the grilled gizzards are not my first choice. I'm always down for an adventure, but imagine the rapid increase in sales any of these people could have if they suggested things that somewhat interested you. Anyway, after all the pointing and pushing, we all sat there like what the hell did I order? We ate and pushed our extremely still jetlagged bodies down stairs to get some water and our pasta materials the grocery store is one of my favorite local experiences always.. Here is an opportunity to really see how the locals go about their everyday lives and be a part of it. Well, this experience was a little like that time in the Egyptian grocery store, where there are people EVERYWHERE and chaos fills the air. Granted, it was like 8 o'clock which sounds like a good shopping hour (vs in Egypt we were there at midnight and it was packed) but I could reallly pull up a chair in any supermarket and just people watch for days. I grabbed a mango, but had this slight hunch that I was supposed to pre-weigh it somewhere like in Europe, but in all the chaos I thought I'd just wait til checkout to find out. I love the back of the grocery store where they have fabric, tall heaps of suitcases for sale, and random other items you would never in your life see at Safeway or Albies.
Well, that was about enough excitement for one afternoon and evening, so we worked our way back through the traffic of Kampala to our guesthouse (it's just the word for hotel here) and I had many flashbacks of being in Bali. The smells, the crowds of hectic people and the busy dirt roads of honking cars, swerving motorcycles, and people carrying ridiculous amounts of weight and objects on their heads and shoulders must've all contributed :).

The next morning started really early with the stupid jetlag wake up call of 3 am. I managed to lay til 7 before hoping in the bucket in the shower.. I felt so good and comfortable in that shitty shower that I laughed.. It was clean and good by Africa standards I'm sure, (I mean it is my first one here but I can just guess) but I had to laugh at how great it felt. We gathered our lives, called home with my last 57 cents of Skype credit on the wi-fi--mom that's why the call ended.. I toldddd you to get on Skype, and had some brekky and were all ready to go by 9, our anticipated departure time, but at morning #1 in uganda, we forgot to factor in Africa time. So we hung out on a bench, Kira did my hair, we discussed buying goats vs cows for the winner of our upcoming tournament, how the tournament would work, etc etc etc until about 10? 10:30? Who knows. The only reason we know what time it is is because we all have iPhones.. Pathetic Americans. Ha ha. I'm yet to see a single clock anywhere on this trip... Not even in Dubai. No wonder no one gets anywhere on time! Eventually issac and our driver Wilson rolled up, and then we headed to the slum to check out the poor of the poor.. No one knew how to get there because no one ever goes there,, so through the traffic and people pointing us in different directions, and through the gangs past experience of being there, we eventually made it through the "jammin" (traffic) .... La might have nothing on some of these roads. We strolled looking for this guy, eventually found his store, and found out he was gone for Christmas. There is an overwhelming amount of christian influence here, so christmas today should be interesting!! Ahhhh! Merry merrry Christmas! So strange. So anyway, for the rest of our christmas eve, we wandered and gathered quite the crowd of little Ugandan children. They all just want their picture taken so the can see themselves on our cameras.. It's probably the first time many of them had seen their own faces. Some demand things, expecting that when white people show up, they give us things. So, through the Weiss' experience we tell them to give us something first, to hopefully send back some sort of message that white people dont just show up with gifts and give them to meet the 5 year old's demands. They are cute little buggers though, and so welcoming and happy.

We next started our trek to luganzi, where st Andrews secondary school is and thus the field we are building. We took some 'backroads' to avoid traffic and it was really cool to see the different villages we rolled through. Some were having these crazy BBQ parties where there were grills cookin up a storm, and sellin pieces of chicken on stick by the bundle down the street. This may seem strange, but it seems the only way to sell anything is to stand on the road and weave between cars. Whether it be sticks of chicken, live chickens held by their armpits, plastic Christmas trees, or bamboo sticks for herding your cows? I loveee the 3-5 story chicken cages piled randomly on the side ofthe road its like a crowded chicken condo where you go to get your Xmas dinner. When you pick out your dinner, you carry it home by the feet or under the armpit like a purse. We stopped at a gas station for lunch because we were starving.. Our stomachs haven't shrunk yet! I think it was actually a restaurant attached to the station, but the cook was out, so after trying to order everything on he menu, we asked what we could eat,, basically everyone got pilau and meat.. By process of animal deduction, we decided meat is goat. That's fine. Goat is alright. And pilau is tasty rice. Some had this m---' something that is banAna mush... Also as we were eating, the radio advertisers rolled in for some petrol, and I realized that noone even flinched. This music was BLARING and everyone just carried on with life. If someone with a quarter of that volume rolls in to a gas station at home, they are greeted with discerning stares and a whole lot of rude judgements. Here, it's life... Just mind your own. We eventually got to st. Andrews after having to walk up the muddy hill. It was super cool to see the school and the field that is about to be mowed over in a few days. This will be fundafields 8th field. Right now there is grass on a slanted hill with 3 sticks stuck together as the schools soccer field.. I can't wait to see how it's transformed soon! We found more Ugandan babies to photograph.. I'm wondering if we will get over it in the next few weeks or if I will have a photo of every child in ugandA by then!

We were supposed to tour isaacs village and see the sixth field fundafield built but due to Africa time, we headed to bujagli where were staying for a few days and holding the soccer tournament on one of the previous fields fundafield built (the fifth one). what a trip..this place is REAL Africa.. I say just what you would picture in the jungles of Africa.. One dirt road with a few wood shacks barely standing lining their way to the onlyy attraction for miles and miles in any direction (the source of the Nile). Where we are staying at Eden Rock is inside the gate.. But just like Bali, don't even think of trying to head down to the falls without first backtracking to the guard booth. The guard sports a gun and it up for big debate if it actually has any bullets in it. So, we arrived safe, went down to the rafting/backpackers bar, had some din din and off to sleep we went.. Or so we tried. The last night of jet lag didn't have me up til 4:30 with the roosters and the growling large animal outside our door. It sounded like a wild boar, so in a debate if I should go check it out, or try fall back asleep, I couldnt resist the anicipation of my first real African wildlife (other than the HUGE ibis like trash eating birds that stand at least 4.5 feet tall) and fled to the window. Shame it was just two dogs, and even a bigger shame thru were growling over lisa's shoe they stole from the porch. Good morning Christmas in Uganda.