Finally.. Parents Visit Blog (Part 1)

19 Jul 2011 1 Comment

by danrennt98 in Uncategorized

As promised, my friends, here is my blog about my parents visit and hopefully soon my parents will put the pictures up to add a little pizazz to this blog. It’s a seriously long blog, so I’m posting the first half now and the rest later.

 

Let’s start off with a meaningful quote from one of my old favorite songs:

You can travel the world,

But you can’t run away from the person you are in your heart.

You can be who you want to be,

Make us believe in you;

Keep all your light in the dark.

If you’re searching for truth,

You must look in the mirror and make sense of what you can see.

Just Be, Just Be.

 

They say learning to love yourself

Is the first step that you take when you want to be real.

Flying on planes to exotic locations won’t teach

Won’t teach you how you really feel.

Face up to the fact that you are who you are,

And nothing can change that belief.

Just Be, Just Be.

I need to Just Be.

 

I was lost,

And I’m still lost,

But I feel so much better.

- DJ Tiësto – “Just Be”

I left Kamuli the day before my parents arrived and stay at my friend Jon’s place in Entebbe for the night before heading to the lodge to wait for my parents airport arrival.

Whitecrest Lodge and Airport Pickup: I met Simon Peter (the owner of Whitecrest tours), who is an incredibly nice guy. We travelled me to pick up my parents at the airport for a few and they arrived in Entebbe for the first time in Africa art around Midnight! I was incredibly excited to see them and we waited for about 1.5 hour before they came out from the airport and gone through with immigration.  We had a nice reunion hug and then got back in the van to go back to our Guesthouse.

To me, after being here for a long time, the Whitecrest lodge is a decent hotel (with a toilet, cleanliness, hot water, etc.), but for my parents it wasn’t ideal, but since they threw two nights in Entebbe at the hotel for free, there wasn’t really a better choice. And having the Ugandan tour operator to tell them about things I don’t know about was great. Since I’ve been here for a year, it was much easier to understand me over the Ugandan think accent coupled with British English. Also, my mom was talking really fast, and my dad was a little bit slower, but Jeff (our week long tour guide) could understand me since he grew up in Iganga, which is nearby to my house and because I talk very slow and relaxed as it is.

We got back from the airport around 1 am and we retired for the day so we could get some sleep / energy before the next day of travelling. We showed them Kampala and Entebbe and then started travelling Southwest to Queen Elizabeth. We passed through Masaka and Mbarara (places that I’ve never been because they’re so far from me and on the other side of Kampala), so it was cool to see the environment that some of my friends work in. I think it was around an 8-9 hour drive on roads that were under construction. We stopped at the equator and then we watched an experiment on the equator line and how water flushes the opposite way below the equator, and directly on the equator, the water doesn’t swirl when draining it just goes down. We had a good lunch and the most amazing banana muffin that I’ve ever tasted. Then, we had to rush a bit because we spent too much time at that place buying crafts. Just before dark, we finally got to the lodge in the Queen Elizabeth National Park. They have a separate road to enter from, so that when you arrive at the lodge you get a free evening game drive. It was getting dark, so we didn’t really see that many animals, but we did catch a lone elephant eating large tree leaves.

Mweya Safari Lodge and Queen Elizabeth:

We checked into this “exquisite” hotel called Mweya. It was really nice and exquisite is the only word I can think of to describe it. The atmosphere was a little too upscale for me, but it’s better than my house in Kamuli haha! I got my own queen size bed and a bathroom with hot water and amazing water pressure, so I was happy and my parents were in the next room over. The dinner/all food at Mweya is a set menu of a few different things which are included with the package deal that they offer. But the dinners were exceptionally good, and we complemented the Mid-Eastern/Indian chef. It was really just great to sit and have a delicious dinner with them over a Nile beer and catch up from the past months of not seeing each other. After dinner we went to bed, and woke up at around 5 am for the early morning game drive so you can catch animals finishing up their night’s rest. This is when we saw most of the game for the whole trip. We saw weaverbirds, antelopes, water hogs, elephants, hippos, buffalo, crater lakes and a beautiful view of the Serengeti. It was a little bit early for me to be super excited, but it was cool to see all the animals. And as the sun started coming out, it was better for me. I didn’t bring a jacket on the trip, because well, I live on the equator, but our van’s roof pops open so that way you can view game right from the tour vehicle. So, at 6 am on the safari I was fairly cold, especially because of the mountains, the southwest is much colder than where I live (from Kamuli you’d have to travel 35 km before you get to a hill). Otherwise, it was a good time. Then, we had the afternoon to hang out, since we got back at 9 for breakfast.

Later my dad and I were eating lunch and my mom was still getting ready in the room alone. We called her to convince her to come over for lunch (since we had just eaten breakfast) and when she walked out of the room, she locked the door and when she turned — there was a huge water hog (think Pumba from the Lion King) sitting in the grass two feet from her! Since the hotel is in the middle of the national park, animals just come up and hang out near the hotel and there’s not much you can do to stop them lol. I wasn’t there but I’m sure she made some sort of yelping sound and then quickly unlocked the door to get into the room and had to sneak out the back door in order to avoid the water hog.

Crazy Boat ride with Germans:

Then later that afternoon, during lunch there was a crazy thunderstorm. We had a boat safari on the Kyebazinga channel (a channel that connects Lake George with Lake Albert – I think), but again it was cold and now raining. This is where we saw a lot of eagles and other birds. Tons of hippos and buffalo (they hang out together cuz they’re not predators of each other), a few elephants, and we finally saw a lion, which was cool! But it was so far away that you can barely see it in the binoculars. We were then on the way back and I could hear the boat engine sputtering and thought nothing of it, but then a few minutes later it just turned off. And I could sort of understand what the boat guides were saying, so I knew what was going on before they said it in English. But then he announced, “Sorry, but we’ve run out of gas.” My parents thought it was a joke, but knowing Uganda, I knew that they were dead serious, just because we paid a large amount of money for this trip doesn’t mean that there will be no “TIA” – This is Africa – moments.

I was joking with my dad and describing the difference between UGE (a saying made up by the American military guys who were staying in Soroti a few weeks ago – meaning Ugandan Good Enough) and TIA (from the movie Blood Diamond). So, after the boat ran out of gas, the guide called for the other boat to come bring us a jerry can of petrol, and he told us that the morning boat guide must have decided not to refill the engine with gas before heading back to the lodge. To explain the difference, my dad and I had a good laugh about this, that the Ugandan boat guide in the morning had a UGE moment when he looked at the amount of petrol in the engine and decided “Eh – it’s good enough for the afternoon trip.” And now that we’re on an expensive boat safari, where problems like this shouldn’t happen for that amount of money, we ran out of gas which was a This is Africa moment, because only something like that would happen here.

But otherwise the boat safari was good and we were on the boat with a 3 German volunteers and 1 of their German mothers. They were nice and we shared some funny jokes and a laugh about the gas situation on the channel in the pouring rain. And also we were close to shore and ran out of gas near an elephant – after we realized he was coming to investigate us since elephants have poor eyesight – we had to shove off the shore to maintain our safety. But it was cool to observe a wild elephant up close for that long.

Again we had a really good dinner, I had papaya soup, which besides corn chowder was probably the best soup I’ve ever eaten in my life and I don’t even like pawpaw (what they call papaya in Uganda). I think I had some sort of steak and at this point to my parents it probably looked like I had an eating disorder because I was eating whatever they wouldn’t finish and ordering everything on the menu. It was because I hadn’t had good muzungu food in so long that every meal was like a special birthday meal.

Travelling to Kasese and gift pickup:

On the way to the next hotel, we stopped in Kasese, a town on the far western side of Uganda that is not too far from the Congo. I ran off so I could use the bank and buy my mom and dad some gifts. I got my dad a pair of sandals for an early Father’s Day and I got my mom a traditional Ugandan mat, along with some other crafty bracelets and money holders for her birthday. We stopped at Ndali lodge for lunch which is situated on a mountain overlooking two huge crater lakes. Then we continued our way to Kibale for our monkey trekking part of the safari.

Arrival at Kibale (pronounced Chi-baa-le) Guest House:

We arrived at a place called the Chimp’s Nest guest house, which was a decent hotel, but not as upscale as Mweya. The had treehouses to stay in, but we opted for the traditional cottages, though the treehouses were really cool because you can see monkeys and other animal life in the canopy where you sleep. I had my own cottage and porch which was nice and my parents had their own as well. This place was more out in the deep forest/village, so you had to arrange for hot water at a certain time and plan for dinner at a certain time. They also didn’t have a refrigerator. Nonetheless, it was nice and I felt comfortable there. The bathing / bathroom area for the cottages was outside, so it was cool to take a shower in open air (not that I don’t already do this every day with an outside bucket bath). The dinner was again a set menu, but the food was still great and getting away from Ugandan food for the 10 days was for sure a treat. You could’ve given me a hot dog and I would’ve told you it was the best meal I’ve had in weeks. After dinner, we retired to our rooms where I did some reading, but after dark out there in the forest, there’s not much more to do besides sleep.

I did start reading “White Man’s Burden”. Which I read one chapter and it was amazing, and truly supports the idea of things like Peace Corps – where we teach people skills and help with ideas and sustainable projects, rather than just giving handouts. When you give people hand outs, you give them something, then a few days later they’re doing the same thing. You look over and the same people are there with their hands out asking for more. Now, I think a lot of the work that these large agencies do is good, but also the Western countries have been pouring billions into “undeveloped” countries for years and it hasn’t really gotten them anywhere. Uganda, I believe, is the largest recipient of American aid money in the world, but things are staying the same. It’s fairly frustrating, especially now that when I walk around anywhere in the country it’s like I have money growing out of my head and people see dollar signs when they look at me and just expect me to give them something – just because. Anyway… that was off topic, but the truth – and somewhat of a warning to those donating money to random charities. Research their aid activities before you donate or else you might just be fueling the fire.

The next morning we went chimp-trekking in the Kibaale national forest nearby. This was nice. We were paired off with a nice older American couple and we stomped through the woods and really swampy areas before another group had found the chimps and radioed in. There’s one community of chimps in the area that are conditioned and accustomed to humans and they don’t really mind our presence. It’s been my mom’s dream to see chimps up close like this, so I know she was happy. There was about 10 in the treetops and a few little babies. They were eating these huge breadfruits and one came down to the ground and was eating about 5 feet from us like we weren’t even there. We got a lot of good pictures of that guy. That was probably the coolest part. And one rule that’s best too follow is to not stand directly underneath the chimps. We monitored them for an hour and they were chucking the ends of their fruit down to the forest floor and just peeing and pooping all over the place. And one even let out a really loud fart which was hilarious. After an hour we went back up to the home point and I got my mom a painting of some monkeys for her birthday.

We then had lunch at the nearby lodge and continued on to our swamp walk. Of course, it was raining again. It never rains in Kamuli and when it does, it’s almost always at night. After living here for a year, when it gets below 65 degrees I start to get chilly – it’s going to be a rude awakening if I come home in the middle of December. But the swamp walk was alright. We saw some lemur type monkeys in their acacia trees, happily eating the leaves. It was raining for most of the walk but it was still nice. The walk was about 3 hours and my mom got stung by some ants. I don’t know why the ants chose to sting my mom and not my dad or me, I guess it’s just her luck. We were wearing huge ponchos which made us look like walking plastic bags. A woman walked by us and said to our tour guide that we were like muzungu caveras (cavera is the Uganda word for bag).

After the walk, we all got cleaned up and showered (hot water provided by a fire burning under a hot water tank) – all of my clothes that I wore that day were completely ruined. I saw a fellow Peace Corps volunteer that trained us in IT last year when I went up to have a beer before dinner. He was with his parents staying in the treehouses at the lodge. We had dinner with his parents and him which was nice. I supposed it was nice for Peace Corps parents to share experiences with other Peace Corps parents – so that they know they’re not alone in their worrying about their kid living in the middle of Africa. And also it was good because we were on opposite schedules. They were picked up at the airport and drove straight to Zach’s (the other PCV) site and stayed at his house in the village (a harrowing experience for parents coming straight of the plane from America) and then came to Chimp’s nest and then were going to Mweya. They were on the hotel upgrade, while we were on the hotel downgrade.. going from really nice to really basic. Then, the next morning we had breakfast and moved on back to the Whitecrest Guest house back in Entebbe.

To be continued in the next blog in order to maintain your attention span…

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