At 6 am I was delightfully woken up by the largest Magpie on this continent.\u00a0 He obviously cared little for the beauty sleep I needed and was making a huge fuss right under my window.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Another odd very large bird and I’ll have to find out the names of these things for now I’ll call them…ugly cranes.\u00a0 They are perching atop buildings and finding food scraps here and there but they are the ugliest things.\u00a0 When I am more awake and not such a walking zombie with the jetlag I’ll start taking more pictures!<\/p>\n
Folks, my dream came true!\u00a0\u00a0 Yes I was waking up in Africa!!!\u00a0\u00a0 Cannot believe I am here.\u00a0 It is all surreal.\u00a0 This is not the Africa I imagined.\u00a0 It is better than the Africa imagined so I am delighted.<\/p>\n
Today was Martyrs Day.\u00a0 When Tina was explaining to me that this was a holiday, her accent was strong and I thought she said “mothers day” so I wished her happy mother’s day.\u00a0\u00a0 I think she thought I was nuts.\u00a0\u00a0 Finally we understood each other!\u00a0\u00a0 I couldn’t get the modem because all the Orange stores were closed for the National Holiday.<\/p>\n
I got a sim for my phone but I didn’t buy enough time in it so between calling to Katie, and the drivers, all my minutes are used and I have a zero balance within one afternoon.\u00a0 UGH.\u00a0\u00a0 Without me realizing how much things really cost here yet I’m just at a loss.\u00a0 For anyone traveling to Uganda, 5600 Shillings of airtime MTN phone lasts no time!<\/p>\n
We went to the Garden City Mall, and it was really beautiful.\u00a0\u00a0 I ate at the food court and it was delicious but expensive.\u00a0 My meal cost about 8.00 USD.\u00a0 Which I think in Uganda is pretty pricey.\u00a0\u00a0 It was so delicious though and I was so thankful to have it.\u00a0 There were so many shops in this triple floor mall and somewhere there was an ice skating rink, theater, bowling alley and lots of other fun things to do, a very Western style mall for sure.\u00a0 I was waiting on Robert and Katie to come here to meet me and when I called them back they were walking through Kampala to get there!!\u00a0\u00a0 I had my driver go pick them all up.\u00a0 Tina and the driver didn’t want to leave me at the mall alone to wait on Katie and Robert but I insisted, and at the last minute we reached them by phone and found out they were in Kampala first by Taxi and then afoot.\u00a0 Robert’s family lives in rural outskirts of Kampala.<\/p>\n
Another very odd thing happened today.\u00a0 I called another driver to take me home and Katie and Robert to their home.\u00a0\u00a0 We were waiting on Farouk the driver and suddenly a SUV pulled up and I asked if he was Farouk, there was some confusion and Robert talked to him in Lugandan.\u00a0 Robert informed me this was Farouk and then when I got into the car I said “Are you Farouk?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 Nice to meet you finally” (we had been in email contact).\u00a0\u00a0 After driving for a bit the driving fees went up and Farouk wanted me to put gas in his car too.\u00a0\u00a0 There was a little negotiation and loud talking and then he finally agreed to $30 instead of the $20 he had originally said on the phone.\u00a0\u00a0 We have now figured out this was not Farouk and we don’t even know if he ever even knew Farouk.\u00a0\u00a0 Farouk txt messaged me that he was in Kenya and would return on Saturday.\u00a0\u00a0 Crazy!\u00a0\u00a0 We got into the car with an unknown person I guess.\u00a0 Someone wanting to make a buck.\u00a0\u00a0 I did think it was odd that he had no clue where we were staying etc.<\/p>\n
This place has a feel, a soulful feel about it.\u00a0 Something that feels good and painful all at the same time. Something that rips at your heartstrings.\u00a0\u00a0 Something that is going to be hard to shake, that is if you would even want to ever.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The people are beautiful.\u00a0\u00a0 They are friendly, and smiling and kind.\u00a0\u00a0 I’m not afraid here and it is quite lovely and so peaceful on the grounds at the guest house.\u00a0 The vegetation is gorgeous, palms, bananas, beautiful flowers and I have a breathtaking hillside view of Lake Victoria and the city.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I sat this morning under the outdoor gazebo hut and drank my coffee and meditated.\u00a0\u00a0 I realized that I could live without so much.\u00a0 I could even easily live in Africa.<\/p>\n
The biggest issue I see here is transportation.\u00a0 The fact I’m alone makes my transportation quite limited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At 6 am I was delightfully woken up by the largest Magpie on this continent.\u00a0 He obviously cared little for the beauty sleep I needed and was making a huge fuss right under my window.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Another odd very large bird and I’ll have to find out the names of these things for now I’ll call […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespicytexan.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespicytexan.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespicytexan.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespicytexan.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespicytexan.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thespicytexan.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":354,"href":"https:\/\/thespicytexan.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions\/354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespicytexan.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespicytexan.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespicytexan.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}