Give Me Banana!

9/22/09: Lake Bunyonyi, Uganda

A few of the members in our tour group decided to go on a “village walk” today. There have been village walks offered at a few of the places we’ve stayed at – you get a tour of the village, visiting one or two homes and generally seeing how the people there live. Since Kevin and I had been just hanging around camp for the last day, we decided it would be good for us to get out and get some exercise and see the village.

The guide came and picked us up at camp around ten this morning. We were told we would be back around one in the afternoon. Kevin and I both assumed the village would be a short walk up the main road. First mistake. We walked for over an hour on a dusty trail to the top of a hill. When we finally did get to the top of the hill and saw some houses, we assumed that we would be visiting the houses in the village. Second mistake. They took us to a school for orphans. (Side note: the orphans sang a song that went, and I am not making this up, “Welcome visitors, you are so good. We will never forget you…” and again, I kid you not, the English tourist sitting next to me sang this song along with the kids. It was hard not to laugh.)

After we were done playing with the kids, we then thought we would be taken to see the village and then back to camp. Third mistake. We were actually taken back to the main room of the school where we were asked to sponsor a child or donate money. By this time it was already one in the afternoon and Kevin and I were both getting pretty hungry. We decided to leave early and find our own way back to the campsite.

On the way back down the hill, we kept running into groups of school kids walking up the hill. A lot of them stopped to say hello. Some of them asked our names and where we were going, so we would stop and chat for a minute and then move on. Every now and then we would get a kid who would tug at one of our sleeves and say, “Give me money.” (Today we also heard “Give me sweetie,” and “Give me banana.”) It’s something we’ve sort of gotten used to over the past few days. I am much more heartless than Kevin as I always just shake my head and then move on, but he always stops and says something like, “We didn’t bring any money. We were just taking a walk. Sorry, sorry.” And then we just go along on our way. Except for today – when Kevin turned his back to continue walking after saying his usual “sorry, sorry,” the kid decided that response wasn’t acceptable. So he ran after us and hit Kevin’s bag. And I guess that wasn’t enough to relieve his feelings because a few seconds later, Kevin and I both heard a rock bounce past our heads. We turned around and saw the kid looking at us before scampering back up the hill.

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Puzzles for Postcards

Where Flexible Gorillas Live? Anagram

Nimble Apes Tree Fort

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Picture of the Day: I cannot be bothered to learn the alphabet. There is a huge boogie I need to take care of.

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Be Prepared to Wait 15 Minutes or the Rest of Your Life

9/21/09: Lake Bunyonyi, Uganda

Sometimes it’s good to take a day off. Today we did just that. We did laundry, caught up with the blog, read, and I wrote in my journal. In Africa though, even in days off, we experience many things unlike we ever have before. A few highlights from today:

Laundry: Drying laundry is a pain in the butt in a country where it rains nearly every hour. (I’m still not sure how we made it through the Gorilla Trek with such good weather. We’ve already moved our clothes three times today to avoid the intermittent thunderstorms. Nothing’s dry.

Lunch money: In America, you are given a bill detailing how much you owe after a meal. Not here. After our lunch, I asked the waiter how much we owed him for the food. “20,000 shillings,” came the reply. I knew for a fact that this was incorrect, so I pulled him closer and walked through the meal with him item by item. We owed 15,500 (approximately $8.25).

This reminds me of another interesting habit of many people here in Uganda. If you owe 15,500 Ugandan shillings, and give them a 20,000 shilling bill, they will immediately state that they don’t have change. However, if you talk to them for a while and butter them up a little, they’ll pull a huge wad of cash out of their pocket, clearly having enough change to buy a goat.

Dinner dancing: Before dinner, a large group of children came to the campsite and began singing, dancing and playing drums. They continued to do so for about half an hour, pulling in people from the growing audience to dance with them. We would later find out that the children were from an orphanage over an hour’s walk away. The skies opened up midway through their dance, but it didn’t faze them at all.

Dinner: At this particular campgrounds restaurant, there is bold print at the bottom of each menu telling the customer to expect a wait of 15 – 60 minutes for the food to be prepared. Apparently 60 African minutes is the equivalent of 150 American minutes, as several people at our table weren’t served for 2.5 hours.

…

During the long wait for dinner, a familiar sight came on the TV at the bar here. I nearly jumped out of my pants when I saw it.

Sportscenter!

In the middle of the African jungle thousands of miles from home, this was my first reminder of life in the States. As nice as it was though, I’m nowhere near ready to go back. (Which is good, I suppose, since we still have over ten months left on our trip…)

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Picture of the Day: Nowhere else in the world can you jump into the East side of Lake Bunyonyi in Uganda from a platform over 20 feet above the water’s surface.

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