Trip out to western Uganda

-->The most manliest looking woman sign ever.

I took a trip out to western Uganda to visit a few more BRAC branches out on the field...

After arriving in Kampala at 7am on Tuesday morning to meet Prossy, my research assistant, we found the coach bus for Bushenyi (southwestern part of Uganda). According to surveys, Bushenyi is supposed to have one of the best sanitation in regards to the % of people who own toilets (or pit latrines). We got on an empty bus at 7am. I had a bad feeling but the bus ended up waiting in the parking lot until 10am until the bus was completely full. Then, 5 minutes after we took off, the bus got in a crash and ran into a car. The driver of the car & the bus driver were arguing for about 30 min with a crowd of people around them listening while they argued. The passengers in the bus were complaining and moaning but no one seemed to go outside to stop the arguing men. The police finally showed up and escorted the two somewhere else. 30 min later another driver hopped in the bus and we were finally on the go. Prossy told me that the originally driver got his license revoked.

We arrived in Bushenyi around 4pm and the branch manager was still there so we asked if we could visit some community health promoters. The community health assistants (?) brought us to the CHPs so we could survey them. As we arrived at one of the CHP's homes, the husband came out to greet us, offered us passion fruit juice, and was really begging for attention. After realizing that we were there to interview his wife, he went away. But as I was leaving his house, he begged me & Prossy to stay over at his place that night. I said no thank you but he insisted that I do. Then, he asked for my phone number... I was taken back and didn't know what to say. Then Prossy told him I don't have a phone. Thank god. She later told me that he said he wanted me... gross. On top of that the CHA tried to embezzel out of Prossy and I. She told us a different price for the boda than it actually is and we were pretty sure she got a cut from the boda drivers. She also tried to do the same with the guest houses she took us to. I was so shocked that someone at the office would do something like that. But I should have known since she kept complaining about how underpayed she was.

Ok. My trip had a rocky start but my trip to Fort Portal was a very pleasant one. The branch manager and the staff at Fort Portal were really sweet. The photo on the right is one of the staff, Irene. She kept calling me Hellen.

We stayed in a cheap guesthouse at the beginning of the trip ofcourse but after Prossy left, I decided to splurge and stayed in a nice guesthouse (well... it cost $25 but that's big money) and ate an $8 homemade meal at the guest house. The guesthouse was super cute. It's called Rwenzori View Guest House and overlooks the Rwenzori mountains. Its owned by a Dutch man and he was a friendly one. The set up of the common area really reflects his personality. The guests all sat around this huge table and shared the Dutch/ Ugandan homecooked meal house style. The guests were all older travelers from Europe. I ended up talking to this 67 yr old British man sitting next to me the entire time and even after his daughter retired to their room, we kept on talking... about Africa, agriculture (he is retired and has a farm as a hobby), wildlife, ecology... He had a lot of stories to tell and super interesting. I was just amazed at his vitality and hoped that at his age, I would have as much curiosity about the world & vitality as he did.

My room was pretty sweet too. I think my bed was like a king size and had the nicest looking bednet =) I even had my own front yard... really convenient for hanging all my laundry I had from my trip.

I really wanted to lounge around but I also had a dire need to see the town & all the wildlife around Fort Portal so I hired a special hire and took a trip out to the Bigodi swamp for a 3 hour hike with a private wildlife guide. Saw a bunch of monkeys, baboons, and exotic birds with my guide, 23 yr old Ivan. Ivan was super shy in the beginning but opened up as we started walking. He comes from a family of farmers so he knew a lot about the crops grown around the swamp... Tabacco, maize, coffee, tea, bananas... pretty much everything was there. But every Ugandan I had met seems to be pretty knowledgeable about farming. Its always very impressive.

Ivan was really nice but Paul the driver on the other hand was straight up obscene. All his conversations seemed to end up somewhere along the gutter. I played it off and was laughing at all his sexual jokes but that seemed to have encouraged him even more and told me that I should date a black man so we could be sister and brother. Well, as long as he could get me safely back to the guesthouse, that was all I cared about. The roads were really curvy and no one seemed to drive on the right side of the road.

I took another coach bus back to Kampala and arrived safely back to my hostel. Had an avocado & fruit salad with a bunch of dried soybeans... my favorite snack. Reminds me of setsubun in Japan.

This trip ended up being a really pleasant one at the end. Fort Portal is definitely a recommend for anyone traveling in Uganda!