Voyage of the Peace Corps: Uganda, the Pearl of Africa

It was a Sunday, early morning in Port Bell, one of Kampala's harbors. We were trapped, fugitive in a city where no immigrations officials work on a Sunday to receive our documents for legal entry into the country. But in this port, no one cared.  In so far as we could understand their speech.  They spoke English, but it was a strange and almost incomprehensible sort of English.  And it was a shady place, this Kampala. Some would call it progressive. Or sinful. Full of signs advising against child marriage, and citing grim statistics on maternal mortality. Also, a place of modern decadence, sporting crosswalks in which people actually stopped for crossing pedestrians, public transport in which there was only one person to a seat, and other affections of capitalist running dogs. 

In all seriousness, I was totally impressed with the progressive educative billboards of Kampala. So sure, all the beer advertisements were things like "here's to the men who make a difference!" but that's not actually any worse than some things in the US, and there were billboard messages of “Would you want your daughter married before 18? Don't do it to someone else's daughter.” And “16 women die every year [or was it month? 16/yr seems really low] giving birth.” Also, some of guest houses just come with a bunch of condoms under the mattress, which makes sense since I've heard that one of the reasons Uganda has one of the lower HIV/AIDS prevalence rates in Africa, despite being most probably the birthplace of the disease, is due to their efforts to educate the sex workers. So overall, good on them! It came across as a much more progressive place than Tanzania. Plus, women showed their knees! It was liberating.

Finally, however, we received passport stamps, finally, we reached Jinja, the source of the Nile river, and we swam in the Nile's surprisingly warm waters.

The official start of the Nile, after Napoleon Bay at the very north
of Lake Victoria

Statue of Gandhi, because his ashes were scattered into the Nile.

The ubiquitous cormorants

Fish eagles!

We were there to test our strength against the surging white waves of the Nile, where it pours through class 5 rapids on its way out of Lake Victoria.

 

When we finally crawled from the river, bruised and sunburned, we rested on Hairy Lemon Island, in the midst of the Nile.  A camp operated by an old man from South Africa, a brute of a man who performed bench presses with a log.  

Can you spot the green mamba?

Our cabin.  A monkey broke in and stole our peanut butter

Why is our life so difficult??