Uganda: Day 5 - art of waiting and a new meaning to fast food

Today involved a lot of waiting. This is actually pretty typical, but today seemed like more than normal. We waited in the morning while work was completed on a parish newsletter. We waited at the Diocese for the funeral traffic, for parking, for the funeral itself, for food, for more traffic, and what what (this is a Ugandaism for etc.). Incidentally, the funeral was for a very young, very successful, and very respected member of the church that died of cancer recently. He was a friend of Emmanuel's. The funeral went long because so many people had testimonies. We didn't mind waiting.

The waiting seemed particularly hard because we were really just trying to get out of town as fast as possible so that we could head to Jinja. (We're posting via e-mail now so I'm sure Carrie has already mentioned this.)

Anyway, we finally got off, and the road here was turned out to be so much better and less congested than the traffic in Kampala. Emmanuel drove so I was able to take pictures the whole time. Thanks to Dave Tower, we are equipped with an excellent camera, and it takes video too, so I captured some key examples of the traffic. Unfortunately, I have no idea when we'll
be able to post them! :-( You'll love them though, I promise.

At some point along the way, Sarah decided that we needed to go to Uganda's fast food restaurant. Emmanuel kept asking if she was sure, so we knew that it was bound to be something cultural. We didn't really have much warning. They told us that we had arrived, and Emmanuel turned off into what looked like a bunch of roadside shacks with all of these people standing around. Our first thought was, 'really, how is there a fast food restaurant here?' This question was quickly answered when our car was literally swarmed by people shoving baskets of food into our open windows. Bananas, pineapples, water, matoke, even chicken on sticks were pushed in.. Imagine a tiny two-door car with 4 or 5 people at each of the driver and passenger side windows, a second row of people behind, and all of the twenty people trying to sell you their food. Added to the chaos was the bargaining. Emmanuel was a star, pitting vendors against each other, refusing to pay more than necessary for our waters, but also making sure that we did not get too much change from the person we eventually bought from. Unfortunately, no description will really do the experience justice. We'll try to get video on the way back of the whole ordeal. We were on the road again in a few minutes where we burst out laughing at the craziness of it all.

It didn't take long to get to our resort from there. We pulled in, got our rooms, and ordered dinner right when we arrived. Sarah's been here before and had a hunch that dinner would take some time to prepare. We went to the restaurant and ordered. We asked the waitor how long, and he said 'maybe 40 minutes. We said we would come back at 7:30 - just under an hour away - to which the waiter got a look on his face and told us that 7:45 would be better. So much for 40 minutes. We walked down to the water - an estuary of Lake Victoria, literally, the source of the Nile. There were long, thin fishing boats (turned tour boat I'm sure, in this case) and a thin pier that juts out into the kelp that lines the shores.

At the end of the pier, E looked into the water and saw a crab. He was very scared and pulled his hand out of the water - 'will that thing bite you? look out!'. It looked pretty small so I said - 'no, come here. I'll show it to you' and used a reed to dig it out. It was dead. Funny though - rather large fresh water crab. Maybe 6 inches across? Not so great a story actually, but I thought the whole thing was pretty funny.

Then some local boys came along to investigate the scene we had been making (laughing and carrying on like westerners do on vacation.) They all had names that we could barely pronounce and, after watching us for probably 20 minutes, I convinced them to pose for a picture (bribed by the promise that I would show them the picture right away!) They did pose, and laughed hysterically when they saw themselves moments later.

On our way back up for dinner, E and I saw a real live hovercraft under a tarp on the lawn. Talk about out-of-place. I was excited to explain the workings to E so the girls just kept walking.

We caught up at the resturant where we waited for our food to come, cold and at 8pm. After a relatively good dinner we all retired to our 'family cabin' which consists of a thatched roof hut, a bathroom, a queen sized bed, a kitchenette, and three single beds. We looked at the pictures I took on the way, and S went through our iTunes for music she has been missing since she left the states. Now we are safely tucked away in our mosquito-netted bed (gives a whole new meaning to tucked in), listening to the chirps of various creatures outside of our cabin. This place rocks.

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Posted from my pda in Africa! Yay for GPRS!