Africa Day 1 Part 3

Wow - part 3 just for day 1, I didn't think I'd have this much to write about, but I guess it was a very eventful day.

Finally, I want to make some final notes about Kampala, this is exactly what I wrote down in my diary on the night of day 1:
- Uganda is very dirty, rubbish everywhere, shacks
- Uncivilised!? Goats and Chickens in the street.

I want to draw your attention to these points as I don't feel that I have made clear what my impression was. The 'city' was a dump. Rubbis WAS everywhere, and even 1-2k from the city centre, it would be common to see a goat eating grass on the side of the dirt road, or chickens just walking around in the street. It really was a third world country, in hindsight, for a 'capital' it was one of the worst I came across..

I finally arrived back at the Red Chilli Hideaway - where my 70 day tour of Africa would start.

By the time I got there the bus had already arrived and the hostel was quite busy. The way the tour works is that there are several main areas that you can hop on and off e.g Nairobi, Kampala, Victoria falls, Dar Es Salaam and Capetown being the ones on our tour. The bus basically does continuous laps and people start and stop wherever they wish. At this point in Kampala, everyone on the tour had joined in Nairobi, except for Jaime who joined at Victoria falls and had come north.

I met Tanya our tour leader, an Aussie from northern Queensland who had been on the job for about a year. She had been a customer on a tucan tour herself and loved it so much that she decided to stay in Africa and be a tour leader.

Tanya was friendly and approachable, and the first few minutes were spent on logistics, handing over kitty money, filling our forms etc. Let me quickly talk about the people on the tour and my first impressions/thoughts - i'm sure you'll see how these perceptions evolve (or not!) throughout the next 70 days...

The people joining in Kampala:

David and Mary - an older couple from Australia, David was ex Telstra and retired, with adult children back in Australia - they told me about the need for a Rwandan visa

Katie Stirling - first impressions: tall, ranga, easy with a laugh, friendly. I didn't actually talk to katie much on the first night, I seem to remember her doing a lot of drinking with other people in the hostel...

James - Canadian, customs officer, middle aged. Seems quite conservative and a bit quiet. Stayed in a room (as opposed to a tent) on the first night

Bahn - at this point still MIA (Ruban is my mate from highschool who would be on the tour with me)

Me - What more do I have to say!?

The people who joined in Nairobi (about 5 days before):

Deb - Italian, but living in England. Slim, pretty, friendly. Honestly, on the first night I thought there might be something going on between here and....

Rich - from Liverpool, really nice, funny guy. I may have thought there was something going on between him and Deb.

Sangee - Aussie Indian from Canberra. Doctor. Hair in braids, pretty, ready with a laugh, popular with the african boys :)

Kelly and Judy - Couple from New Zealand. (Kelly is an asian guy, Judy is white - i'm not racial i just want to paint the right picture..) A bit older as well, probably in their 50s, have adult children

Chris and Ange - Couple from UK/Australia respectively. Really friendly, clearly very nice people. Really seemed to suit each other, even from the start.

From Vic Falls - Jaime, from Adelaide, also from customs. As the longest serving member of the bus, she seemed to be in charge, running the cooking, and packing up as she knew where everything went. A little bit more serious than the others but still friendly and helpful.

Our Driver was Joash, a Kenyan who had been driving tour groups for many years - first impressions was that he was very quiet, and kept mostly to himself, not really talking to many people on the tour. Joash almost always sleeps in the truck...

A lot of the future posts will be about these people so I won't go into them any more at this point.

The first task after admin, was to pitch our tent. This was the first time in my entire life that I had to put up a tent and suprisingly, it wasn't that hard. It works best if two people do it together and I think James helped me put mine up.

The tents basically look like this:


This is a photo I took the next day.

After setting up tents I helped a little to make dinner - it seemed very confusing at the time, I had no idea where anything was, cooking facilities were outdoor campsite style and our equipment was basic - just various sized pots and two pans, one large and one regular size...

Dinner tonight was Spaghetti Bolognaise with Garlic bread which was well underway by the time I wandered down to meet the guys who were already on the tour. Spag Bol was made in the expected way, sauce separate to the pasta, and garlic bread was bread rolls with butter and garlic seasoning, placed on a hand held grilling rack and held over a gas flame and regularly turned..

The meal was good, as you would expect spag bol and garlic bread to be. The pasta, that Deb was in charge of was 'al dente' of course, and there was plenty to go around. Afterdinner, everything is packed away - something that seemed amazingly complex, with Jaime the only person who seemed to go which boxes things went into and howthey were to be placed into the truck. There were about 7 large boxes that the kitchen equipment and ingredients were packed into, and they all had to be placed into the truck in a certain way - it was hard to remember... and there was a lot of 'where does this go' being asked of Jaime and Tanya

At some point after dinner, Bahn arrives and we make small talk with the rest the group, asking where everyone was from, what they'd seen so far (Rhinos - which us Kampala joiners wouldnt see for a while...). We catch up as I hadn't seen him in about a months as I was in Japan. Not realising that a tent actually does not do ANYTHING to block sound, you might as well all be sleepingin a large room in sleeping bags.

Mid conversation, we get a 'Can you guys keep it down!' from Kelly I think... and we learn our first lesson about tent and group sleeping etiquette....

We shut up and I lay in my tent, marveling at the fact that I actually was in Africa. I was in a tent, sleeping on bed roll n UGANDA, thousands of kilometers from home, from Nancy and about to start off on a great adventure. I think it was the first time all day that I had time to reflect , and it was at that point that it all really hit me. I had 70 days to experience a continent that was a whole differnt world. I had made it through the city and I was hoping to have a life changing experience. I was really looking forward to the weeks to come.. i was hoping the our slogan was true - that this would be the adventure of a lifetime..