So, when I left off, we were traveling into the city of Kampala just fresh off the plane, in the bus with Joel. After about a 45 minutes drive, about half of which was spent, within the city due to traffic, we arrived at the place that has been my home base for my trip thus far, Makerere University. I know, looks like its hard to say. Sounds a little like this, I think: Mak – eh – ray – ray (but when an Ugandan says the r’s it sounds almost like an L. The group of us seven are staying at the Makerere University Guest House, which was built as a kind of hotel for people visiting the university, like professors and such, but will really accommodate anyone who is looking for a hotel in the area. It has turned out to be quite a little hub for ex-pats in the area, as it is well-maintained, on a campus that is a little separated from the bustle of the city, and has good security. In fact, even though the university students are on break right now, the guest house is busier with occupants, and also with hosting parties and functions, another source of income for them. Several times we have come back to find a business party, outdoor cocktail, or wedding reception outside on the lawn which is being hosted by the guest house.
Anyway, that first day, Joel just dropped us off, and told us to get some rest, and settle in, asking us not to leave the university grounds until he was able to take us around in a car tour of Kampala the next day, when he planned to arrive at 3pm after some work at the hospital.
We went straight to our rooms, showered for the first time in two days of flying, napped for a bit, walked on a few streets around the camps, got some Uganda Shillings at the ATM, and got a table at the restaurant housed in the guest house for dinner. We sat outside, since the air was so very nice at night, probably in the sixties, and ate, talked, and listened to the sound of the evening prayers being sang from the mosque, as they were broadcast over a loud speaker over the whole city (which happens multiple times a day…and makes me feel like I’m in Africa). After dinner: we all crashed.
And…about 11 hours later, I was up around 9am. My body felt rested, and I didn’t get up because I felt I had to, but because I was just ready to. A few others were up already, and soon, all of us students were up and trying out first included breakfast at the guest house. It was Saturday, July 5th.
. Us three nursing students from UNC also knew that our professor (who is administrating our summer online course that is involved in this travel experience) was in Uganda, having arrived a few days before us and setting up contacts for us at the local hospital and nursing schools. We called her when we got a chance, and made sure she knew how to get to us, so that we could have an Indian dinner with her like she had requested a few weeks earlier, since apparently Uganda is supposed to have the best Indian food outside of India. So she was set to meet us at the guest house at 2pm that afternoon.
A few more hours of sitting around, reading travel books and figuring out the guest house’s internet café, and our teacher arrived. We caught up, found out who she had been meeting with over the last few days, and met with a neurosurgeon named Sam who wanted to meet our team. As 3 o’clock came and went, we were wondering where Joel was, but remembered about Africa time, so we just waited. Joel came in his personal car, and his friend, another neurosurgeon we had yet to meet, Hussein, came in his car at around 4pm to pick our group of 8 up for our tour of Kampala.
Split up into these two cars, we had a little two-car caravan around all the major parts of the city, trying out best to learn the streets between our guest house and Mulago Hospital, and other general important places to know about. They also took us all to Garden City, a local shopping center, that was very much like what we would call a mall. You cannot believe how surprised we were to see this mall and parking deck, because up to that point, the only shopping and restaurants we had seen were just local markets and all blended in with the typical poorer-look of much of Kampala. It was really quite odd. At first you feel a little excited to know that there might be some good restaurants in here that you feel safer eating at, and a grocery store to buy some essentials and snacks at, but then you just realize how economically different Garden City is from the rest of the city, and you feel kind of wrong to be going there. Then you see the large number of foreigners who shop there, including more white people than we’d seen thus far in all of Uganda, and you understand the kinds of people who can afford to shop there, people like you. It’s just a really strange mixture of feelings for me about going there.
Anyway, Joel and Hussein took us to Garden City so we could all get mobile phones that worked in Uganda. It was one of our few erquests for that first day, to get phones, so that later we could keep up with each other at the hospital, etc, whenever we weren’t all together. After the confusing nature of buying Chinese built phones, and sim cards from Ugandans, and loading Ugandan calling credit onto those phones, we all left and continued more of our tour. I wasn’t really able to put to memory much of the directions and roads they were teaching us, since it was all so fast, but it was just nice to be able to see this city I’d be living in for a few weeks.
We timed the rest of this touring so that we could arrive at an Indian restaurant, Haandi, right when they opened for dinner service at 7pm. The eight of us sat down to dinner at his restaurant, which was definitely upscale for Kampala dining, but even thought their prices were higher than most places in town, its was still only a little over ten dollars for us, including a few sodas or waters each, since in Uganda, sodas are always delivered in glass 300ml bottles (not much). I had my first Indian, here in Uganda, which I think was a pretty cool place to do it, and I ate Chicken Tikka Butter Masala. The dinner conversation was good, varying from Uganda culture when talking with Joel and Hussein, to plans for the hospital and surgery work, to plans for us nursing students and engineering students, to the safari at the end of the month, and so much more. It was just all-together exciting. And with African time, this already large dinner, lasted pretty long, and became a really cool social event for us to get to know each other. Already, after only 3 days of knowing Tamara and Ryan, the two students from that terrible university down the road from UNC, I was learning a lot about them and becoming their friends.
Before Joel left us, we were sure to talk with him about options for where to go to church the next day, since everyone in our group of seven was interested in going to a worship service for our first Sunday in Uganda. We knew we would be going to one of the mega-churches later in the trip, once the large team arrived, so we asked him if he knew a smaller church that would be good to visit. He told us to come to his and his family’s church, All Saints Cathedral, and even drove us by there so we would know how to get there in the morning. Joel also gave us the name and phone number of a taxi driver that he knew and trusted well, Ssozy, so that we could get our own personal pickup from the restaurant and get back to the guest house. Ssozy would soon get added to my phonebook, as we built relationships with this cab driver, and we have continued to call him whenever we need to get somewhere and give him our business since we have been networked with him and he’s such a nice guy. Back to the guest house for our second night in country, and some more welcome sleep before our church service the next day, which we decided we’d attend the middle service at 9:30am.
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