Le Petit Village Kampala

... and the third is staying in the village for my return some day. The whole journey there and back was beautiful and for most of it I had Mount Elgon to look at...everywhere I have seen so far in Uganda is just amazing.<br><br>The school have a week of exams beginning tomorrow and the headmaster called me into his office yesterday saying "Emmy...I would like to speak to you about heroine and your ...

... road, so we missed out on a grueling 2-8 hour trek through the thick forest (luckily for my group, not having to find out how unfit I've become after sitting on a truck for 7 months)!! It was the quickest hour of my life, but once in a lifetime experience.<br><br>The 4 hour drive back from Bwindi proved one of the most beautiful and frightening journeys of my life. The plunging mountains, covering in thick ...

... gets along in a way you can only get along if you are together all day and in really close quarters. I guess it&#8217;s kind of a honeymoon period for us all, where nothing really bad comes out of us and you only see the good side. But it&#8217;s nice though. Everybody on the trip are really good people. Justifiable by the way we interact, and the way everyone is always smiling and waving at all the people and especially kids who wave to us barefoot and ...

... do some snorkeling on a reef in the vicinity. No sooner were we in the water than dolphins were seen, so a quick scramble out of the water &#8211; not easy as we have to remove flippers and get on to a rusty ladder as the waves rock the boat. Off in pursuit &#8211; basically you wait until the guide tells you to jump in and swim to the spot where he predicts the dolphins will surface. We did this about 7 times, having to get in and out of ...

... there and just that costs $500 US so I have to bring a pretty big wad. In my walking I saw a whole different side to Kampala and let me tell you there are some areas that are down right seedy but it seems pretty safe. There are a lot of armed policemen in Kampala and although there are exceptions the biggest worry is more pickpocketing than armed robbery. So now I'm off to try to organize my bus and hopefully everything will go well.

... boldly sauntered around our table sniffing and foraging, while heather and I stood on the table and GM did his Mick Dundee act. Now we are more animal wise we ignore the hogs. As we continue to travel we saw a wide variety of lifestyles, from fishing villages to mud hut homes. Obvious poverty and tough living conditions. People walk miles to get water from a muddy puddle, stream or if they are lucky a water pump. It is usual to see children with 2 or 3 jerry cans ...

... only eaten local food once so far, but will all next week at the workshops. It is usually a base of rice, with refried beans, some type of protein in a stew and a side of boiled sweet potato. Tomorrow, we finish off with our workshop preparation. We meet at the office at 9 am, which means I should have been asleep about an hour ago. I picked up the twilight series for this trip, and I am certain that I will still try to get in about 30 minutes of reading before bed.

... and flag waving and all sorts as well as an electrified band and the craziest pastors imaginable. After the first bout of songs they welcomed all the new people and asked non-believers to stand up (so I did) and we all got applauded and people from the congregation came up and hugged us! The whole service was dual-language but I almost understood more of the Lugandan as the pastor leading the service in English screamed in ...

... parts. On Sunday we were asked to attend church so I donned my only shirt and sat through a three and a half hour service in Lugandan, not understanding a word of what was said. Committed a bit of a faux-pas by putting the whole of my contribution in the first collection box and then a second for church maintenance was announced and I had nothing to give. Can't say I'm overly bothered - it's the biggest building in miles upon miles so I reckon they receive enough.