I got onto a motorcycle taxi (boda boda) and went 15km down a tiny dirt road that is more like a dry riverbed than a road due to erosion and heavy rain. It took me down to the Sky Blue hotel where I had the luxuries of fish and chips and CNN on the tv. I stayed the night for 15,000 shillings and got up in the morning for Kampala. I was supposed to go to Lake Bunyoni, the only lake in Uganda that I know of that you can swim in, because it’s so high in the mountains that there are no bilhartsia snails. The phone networks were down so everyone meeting there couldn’t contact eachother and so I decided on an Easter weekend at the Backpakers hostel in Kampala. I know the staff there and they have the best hamburgers that’s I’ve had in Uganda. I ate goat on a stick (muchomo) and drank Stoney (ginger beer) while I finally read the Heart of Darkness – about a search mission on the rivers of the Congo. A 4 year old boy sat beside me and fell asleep on me for several hours. His mother didn’t seem to mind but I felt the need to reassure her that I’m not a bad person.

I got off in the rain, it had been raining for several days, and got into the hostel where I had a hot shower and western food. Eating plantains (matoke) and beans everyday gets pretty boring. That night some of the guests, 3 ex-military guys from Europe who are doing very private security work in the Congo, cut open some glowsticks (glowing chemical tubes used for emergency lighting) and drank the solution inside. They then smeared the glowing liquid on their hands, arms and faces so that they looked like something from the ghostbusters. They ran out into the streets and scared a little batwa (pigmy) man into the trees. I can’t imagine how scared a superstitious group of people like Ugandans are when dealing with glowing white people who run around screaming. I walked off and went to bed feeling pretty good that the stuff doesn’t kill you. I remember one time in Korea putting that stuff into my mouth and spitting it everywhere and I always worried that it was slowly killing me or something like that.