It's been a few days now and I am able to sleep through the nightwithout seeing rushing water everytime I close my eyes (just jokingMom)! On Tuesday, Maggie and I spent the day in Kampala, checking outthe city and trying to plan our travels. We went to grab a Coke fromthe food court at a mall there and ended up spending the craziestafternoon in the food court. The man who we bought a Coke from was aCuban dude who is living in Uganda and trying to start his own Cubanrestaurant there. He told Maggie and I that he would give us a freeCuban cocktail. Well one free cocktail led to an entire free tour ofalcoholic Cuba...we sampled the best Daiquiri, Sangria, Pina Colada,Mojito and Pina Colada version 2.0 that I have ever had...followed byshots of whiskey. We were then joined by an Indian man who ran theIndian food stall and he brought us over a free serving of cheese naanbread. It was the weirdest afternoon ever, but we got a ton of freedrinks and food, so who can complain!
Yesterday we drove out to Entebbe to spend the day at Ntamba Island,which is home to Jane Goodall's Ugandan chimpanzee sanctuary. We hadto prove that we have had a million vaccinations and that we do nothave tuberculosis. I had already had a TB test to go to South Africa,but Maggie needed an xray, so we arranged to go to a hospital inEntebbe first thing in the morning. And what a hospital it was...itwas a level "B" hospital, which meant that it was for poor people andlet me just say that thank God there is no such thing as a level "C"hospital. You could not pay me enough money to have any medicalprocedure there. The patients there were the sickest people that Ihave ever seen in real life. It was scary. However, Maggie's xrayonly cost $10, so we can't complain.
We had some issues hiring a boat to take us out to the island, whichis an hour's boat ride out on Lake Victoria. Eventually however, wemanaged to find a couple of guys to take us out in a little metal boatwith a 40hp motor. All was going well as we set out on the lake, butI was slightly nervous about the seemingly ominous-looking sky in thedirection we were headed. As we got farther and farther out, I becamemore concerned, because we were headed for one of thegnarliest-looking storms I have ever seen! Seriously, we tookpictures of it, cuz it just looked insane. As I was nervouslyscanning the sky, I saw a sudden flash of lightning and I nearlyjumped out of my skin. We were in a metal boat, heading into a crazylightning storm and we had to head further into the storm for another45 minutes before we would get to the island. I started panicking andscreaming at our boat captain, who didn't seem to understand what Iwas trying to tell him. Maggie and I frantically tried to spell outthat it is an incredibly stupid idea to drive a metal boat into alightning storm (especially since this metal boat had a metal cage ontop of it) and that we needed to find a way to go around the storminstead. They still didnt' understand us. They kept telling us notto worry, that our boat wouldn't capsize. This may play a closesecond to the level of fear I felt during the rafting experience. Icouldn't even look. I had to stare into my lap and pretend that I wasin a happy place and not in the middle of a lightning storm. Thestory has a happy ending though, since obviously we managed to make itto the island safe and sound, albeit soaking wet from the pouringrain.
We had an amazing day on Ngamba Island, doing the Keeper for a Dayprogram. Essentially, this island is home to 42 orphaned chimpanzeeswho have been rescued from various situations in Uganda, DRC, andother nearby countries. They often arrive at the island emaciated andnear death and are revived by the keepers and released into the foreston the island with the other rescued chimps. The chimps are not tamedor trained. They live wildly there, other than stress-relievinginteractions from the keepers. Throughout the day we assisted thekeepers to prepare food and to feed the chimps (the chimps get most oftheir food naturally from the forest, but are also given supplementsto ensure that they are rehabilitated effectively). We also got tocheck out their medical facilities and learn just about everythingthere is to know about chimpanzee behaviour. It was a truly awesomeexperience! We also got our names put onto plaques that will beposted on the island since essentially we were making a large donationto the facility by paying to do the Keeper for the Day program withthem.
We are currently back in Jinja to see the source of the Nile and somewaterfalls. We will be leaving via bus to Kigali, Rwanda eithertomorrow or Friday, where we plan to check out mountain gorillas, theGenocide Memorial, Diane Fossey's grave sight and some volcanoes.
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