Parents Visit (Part 2)
19 Jul 2011 Leave a Comment
……Continued from Part 1.. Back in Entebbe after a 6 hour drive to the Guest House. It was really meant to break up the trip from Kibale back to Kamuli. So we had a decent Ugandan dinner and breakfast and then took the 4 hour drive from Entebbe through Kampala to the east side of Uganda. And north up to Kamuli. We arrived in the afternoon and I used the van to pick up my new chair for my house and said goodbye to the tour guide and dropped the rents off at their hotel. It’s probably the best hotel in Kamuli and it’s owned by the treasurer of my SACCO and very close to my house. But it’s lowest class of hotel my parents would be staying at during their trip – it has the basics a sink, a toilet with a broken seat (they’re lucky they even had a seat to be honest), a mosquito net and two full size beds. After a few hours I went back and there was a “disaster” during my absence – my mom found a gecko in the room. I laughed so hard. Having geckos in the room is completely unavoidable and they take care of all of the creepy crawly bugs in the room and just hang out on the ceiling. I don’t bother the ones in my house and they don’t bother me. Needless to say, they killed the gecko and there was another one in the room the next morning. But we went to my house so they could see where I lived and I prepared some corn to take with us to the dinner at my manager’s house. Some of my neighbors came, and everyone I work with came. My manager prepared a huge dinner of goat, beef, matooke, cabbage, dodo, potatoes, posho and some other Ugandan staples. She really was great and made such a huge dinner and went well out of her way to make my parents comfortable.
Of course, we couldn’t just have a dinner without an agenda/program for the night.. where people were scheduled to give speeches about me and welcome speeches to my parents and the head of the household speech. I just don’t understand why Ugandans love talking in front of large groups of people. I told them to cut out like 4 other speeches, because I didn’t understand why we needed to have a dinner agenda.. couldn’t we just talk and then eat? We ended up getting back around 11:30 pm.. dinner ended up being at 9 instead of 7 as planned. But regardless, it was a bit overwhelming to my parents, but still good because they got to see the real side of Uganda rather than what you see on the bubble that is a tour safari. I dropped them off at the hotel and picked them up the next morning for tea at the SACCO. They came to my work and they met all the staff again as well as the Board of Directors. Since it wasn’t so late, and it was a fresh day, it was definitely less overwhelming and a little more laid back. We had some tea/coffee and snacks (and pork….mmmmmmmmmmm so good) and had a good discussion. They got my mom a dress and my dad a traditional kohnzo Ugandan robe to take back to America.
After spending some time at the SACCO, we packed up our stuff and hopped in to our super high class (haha!) private hire to take us to Jinja. The trunk wouldn’t close because it was broken so we had to have a mechanic come and fix it. And we had to stop like five times to reclose the trunk on our one and a half hour ride on a shite road to Jinja. And when my mom tried to get out the whole door handle fell off, and my door didn’t even have a handle. I now don’t even use the inside door handles, my natural instinct is to reach through the window and open the door that way. But the driver is a member at our SACCO and he’s a trustworthy guy and drove us for a good price. He also drove us safely instead of flying like some of the taxis do.
At that brings us to the last leg and my favorite part of the trip – 2 Friends Hotel in Jinja. This hotel is really nice, but not too over the top, and makes you feel like you’re in a tropical paradise with huge rooms with great stone bathrooms and a pool with a waterfall. Here we were able to relax and not worry about any TIA problems. We went into town and did some shopping on muzungu avenue. Had a pizza dinner and just hung out after a busy first week in Uganda. The next day, my good friends Anna, Chelsea, and Joanna came to the hotel and we hung out and talked for a while. For that night we went on a Nile/Lake Victoria booze cruise. On the bus to the landing site, we met the other people going on the cruise, which happened to be about 20 college age girls. In which case, my dad and I were the only men on the bus. Realizing this opportunity to taunt me, Anna and Chelsea decided to announce that I was single and looking to the whole bus. If you can catch the irony of the situation, it was pretty funny. For 2 hours, we got free drinks and a barbeque dinner that was great. And we got fairly drunk and Chelsea and I left the boat with a beer in each hand. Back at the hotel we plopped down on a table and had some more drinks and talked. Chelsea and Anna went back to their hotel and I shared my king size bed with Joanna and had a delicious breakfast in the morning. Then we spent our last day in Uganda together all of us just relaxing by the pool and enjoying the company. In the evening, Whitecrest tours came to the hotel to pick the rents up and take them to the airport, while Chelsea, Joanna and I headed into Jinja to spend another night out.
All in all it was a good trip. The first part was fast paced and in retrospect it was really good that we had planned everything out before because once we got there everything was planned out for us and we didn’t have to worry about anything really. Jinja was my favorite part because it was nice for my parents to meet my Peace Corps friends and show them that I had a good support system here in case anything goes wrong. And it was just a good time to relax and feel like we were on vacation instead of a constantly moving safari. I truly had a spectacular time with them and I would live it all over again if I could. Heading back to Kamuli alone after that trip was hard and it really took some getting used to, in order to settle back in at home and at work. But the next few months have a few good things in store for me to look forward to while I work towards my first year of being at site in October. Then it’s all downhill from there. Well that about covers the parents visit and I have another blog for what’s been going on since then.
Love,
Dan
