Hello everyone!
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Today I’m going to pamper myself a little! Kyoko and I just made an appointment for a massage (costs amazing 8 USD!), and we’ve also been invited for dinner. Furthermore we have a “man free” zone at our house at the moment because both men are on holidays. It’s very quiet and peaceful at the moment :-) !
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Tomorrow our blabbermouth Taro will be back :-( !
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The last weeks were quite eventful. We’re still spending a lot of time in the camp, and this can be very exhausting! It’s very difficult to get people to make changes or to get them to do anything at all that don’t suit them! They also love to discuss, and the meetings we have always go on infinitely!
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I finally managed to go into the community with the community health workers. It’s very impressive how these people manage to live on such little space! Basically the camp is one of the better examples here: it’s quite clean and not too crowded. Maybe you already had a look at the pictures? But there is still a lot of health education to do! There still are a lot of “witch doctors” in the camp and in the evening you often hear their drums, when they’re trying to get rid of the bad spirits. I would like to see that someday, but am not sure how the people would react!
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Last weekend my desire to go traveling around got revived. It got lost a bit from all this hard work and insecurity, but last weekend we took our car (5 Expats and 1 national staff) and drove the 3 hours to Murchison Falls National Park. Unfortunately, on the way we first had to assist a few wounded people after an accident. Luckily the seriously injured were already on their way to the hospital, so we only had to take care of some minor wounds.
After this, the holidays began (at least that’s what it felt like). The park is huge, it’s the biggest in the country and used to host one of the largest concentrations of animals in Africa. But unfortunately the poachers, rebels and soldiers killed most of them and they are only slowly recovering. Nonetheless we saw heaps of hippos, giraffes, elephants, crocs, birds, gazelles, buffalos and warthogs! In the old days this park must have been overcrowded ;-) !
But nowadays they are concentrated in one area of the park, and in the other areas you only see very few (Vegetarian safari as the lonely planet calls it).
The reason why this place actually became a national park is the Tse Tse Fly. It did spread the sleeping sickness in a large number. A very uncomfortable disease that, in the end, affects your brain. So the people all fled and left nature to itself. The fly is still there though but I don’t think the risk is very high anymore to get the disease.
The big attractions of the park are the Murchison Falls. The huge Nile with its source at Lake Victoria is squeezing itself through a 6 meter narrow gap in the rocks. It develops enormous power and you could just sit there for hours watching it!
We also were very lucky with our accommodation! Almost everything was booked out, but we found a very nice lodge with even a swimming pool. Usually I’m not fond of these things, but since it’s very hot again these days and we never get the opportunity to swim, it was like heaven!
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And when I heard that Geert is definitely coming to see me in September (Yippeeee!), my urge to travel was completely revived!
Now I’m often studying the lonely planet to find out what there is to see in this country, which I start to like more and more. There are a lot of nice places worth a visit here.
I’m already looking forward to December when I can really enjoy traveling before coming back home in January.
I still have some periods of homesickness and frustration, but ever since I’ve made my decision to leave in December it’s more bearable. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, and to know that I will see my boyfriend soon helps a lot.
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My first impression of my new “boss” seemed to be all right. She is very nice, understanding and gives a lot of support, so work is a bit easier for me now. But it’s still very demanding and at night I sometimes have problems to fall asleep because of my thoughts who are spinning around in my head. I guess it will slowly get better now.
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So now it’s time for my massage!
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Greetings from Uganda to the rest of the world!
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Anne