See you later, Uganda

It’s been an eventful week. Last Monday, we moved the youth center from its tiny house in the Nabulagala neghborhood of Kampala about 10 min (walking) up the road to their HUGE new home in the Lubye neighborhood. The new house is just down the hill from the Kasubi Tombs, where a couple Bgandan kings are buried. The tombs are housed in the largest thatch-roofed hut in the world — and so they are a designated UNESCO world heritage site. So we were staying 10 min away from the biggest hut in the world… who knew?

The first week in the new house (and our last week in Uganda) was really chill, as we were mostly just moving things in, organizing, and chilling. The new house is SO big and spacious, with a gorgeous view of Kampala and a huge yard. The bedrooms were big enough for three bnk beds each PLUS plenty of space to move around, which was a huge improvement over our last rooms, where the beds were literally a foot apart from each other. We also upgraded from latrines to tiled squat toilets that FLUSHED! SOOO luxurious, I know, I know. The only downside was that the plumbing in the new house was not done being installed yet, so we had to haul in buckets of water from a tank outside and fill the tank of the toilet to flush. And we had to downgrade from cold showers to cold BUCKET showers, which believe me, are not as easy to take as they sound.

On our second to last night in Uganda, some of teachers from on of the schools we had taught at took us out to dinner to thank us for volunteering at their school. We had a traditional Ugandan meal (potatoes, greens, rice, groundnut sauce, chicken for the meat-eaters, and pineapple and watermelon for dessert) and watched the NZ vs. South Africa FIFA match. It would have been a really relaxing meal except the megalomaniac headmaster made three speeches, including one which he printed out and gave to each of us so we could read along… and all know when he was improvising an additional paragraph here and there and delaying our meal. Afterwards, we decided (minus the teachers) to go out and experience some Ugandan nightlife. The most popular club in Kampala, Silk, was supposed to be having college night, but when we got there we discovered it was closed (typical Africa). So instead we went to a local bar for *reggae* night. East Africa is allll about reggae and Rastafarianism, so you run into Bob Marley paraphernalia and Jamaican flags everywhere you go. We had a couple beers (Bell and Nile Special are the staples) and chilled out to reggae music and the NZ-Australia rugby game on TV (go All-Blacks!). It was fun for a while, but then we all got bored/sleepy and made our way back home.

On Friday at around noon half of us said good-bye to our Ugandan family and left Lubye for the airport :(

…And this when I end up stranded in Kenya.