Day 2 in Kampala
All I can say is that anyone in the US that complains about traffic has never been to Kampala during rush hour! We started our day nicely at the Monyunyo Hotel on Lake Victoria and saw some amazing birds, especially this stork.
There was a field at the hotel filled with these birds that remind me of an old grandpa!
After leaving the hotel we had some fun with Turkish Airlines. We arrived at their offices hoping to get some resolution to getting our bags back in our hands and get some funding to replace some of our clothing. It was an interesting dialog not worth getting into, but in the end they provided us with $300 for our inconvenience. In addition, I will need to go to the airport tomorrow morning at 4:30 AM to pick up our luggage since they won’t promise it to us until late afternoon.
We are planning to leave at 9 AM tomorrow morning so that won’t really work. I mentioned in a previous post that I never want to take that ride to the airport in the dark again, but it is going to happen tomorrow. At least it will just be me and not the whole family.
Once done with the airline fun we headed to another mall to get some clothing and some lunch. We were accompanied for the day by Amin Mohamed again and he was very helpful. He will be the one taking me to pick up the luggage in the morning.
We met with Deb in the afternoon and we were able to meet Oloya Patrick for the first time. I have been communicating with Patrick for months now via Skype and it was nice to meet him in person. When we picked him up our next project was to go to the local market to purchase 13 pairs of soccer cleats for the U-TOUCH team in Gulu. Well, that was an experience!
I have been to many flea markets in my life, but this shanty market was amazing! It was booth after booth of everything you can imagine, with a floor of mud. We went to buy clothes at the mall, we should have gone to this market, this is where all the locals shop. We purchased the cleats slightly used and paid about $115 (285,000 Shillings) for all of them. That is less than $10 per cleat. Not sure where they all came from but not asking 🙂
Tomorrow I head to the airport early and when we return we will be off to Jinja, the source of the Nile. From there we will travel to Mbale, the home of the Abayudaya Jewish community. Not sure I will be able to blog during our stay there so I won’t be back online until Sunday or Monday.
‘Til then …..
Larry Kesslin 