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Hi Guys!
Sorry this took so long to post, but a busy end of the semester and a finicky website are to blame.
Anyways, I ended off the past entry with Cate and I's horrible hotel experience. We were up and checked out by 8am the next morning so we could catch a bus up to Mbula and visit another friend of Cate's. The bus (yet another one) was another horrible experience. I was sitting next to a guy that kept dripping his food and drinks all over us. Finally a guy sitting behind us told the one sitting beside me to mind his manners. This started an argument, which included a lot of motherland insults, between them. Cate and I just hoped it wasn't going to escalate any further.
We finally got off the bus all disoriented several hours later. As I'm walking along, I hear someone say "Katie". I thought I was hearing things and kept walking. Finally, I see this guy shove a cellphone in Cate's face. Apparently, the friend that was supposed to meet us couldn't and send 2 other guys with motorbikes instead. It was funny because back in Kampala both Cate and I declared them deathtraps and said that people would have to be crazy to actually take them. So there we were, standing in mud (it was ranining) with big packs on our backs and little ones on our fronts staring at the mopeds. Cate starts laughing, I wanted to cry. Anyways, having no other choice, we each got on a bike and managed to balance out our attached luggage. Off we went. I spent the first half of the journey contemplating whether my health insurance would cover me, and then deciding that it probably wouldn't, tried to figure out how to flip myself so my pack could act as a helmet in case we bailed. The entire way along we kept hearing, "blah, blah, blah, mazumgu, blah, blah, blah." I'm sure this translates into, "there goes a mazumgu on a bike." Good times.
We got to the village and got the tour. The village is home to a tribe of Jewish Ugandans. They were nice enough to put us up for the night. Before going to bed, we managed to be creative in stringing a mosquito net. I woke up the next morning feeling horrible. We decided to take a trip to Sipi Falls anyways. We were way over charged by the cab driver (as we had been the previous day with the scooter drivers). The Falls were pretty, but I spent our time there curled up in the backside of the cab wanting to die. Anyways, we got back into town and killed a couple of hours before catching the bus back to Nairobi. I was dreading another bus ride, but we didn't really have many options. Of course when we had phoned the Kampala office of Ethiopean Airlines earlier that day we were told that our flight had been cancelled. So at that point we weren't really sure if there was any flight to catch, but nevertheless I wanted to be back in Nairobi rather than small town Uganda.
The bus ride started out okay. I managed to doze off until we reached the border a couple of hours into the 12 hour journey. When I woke up, I felt even worse than earlier. We still had to get off of the bus and go in to the building to clear customs. I remember standing in a line and feeling waves of nausea and lightheadedness. I remember saying to Cate, "I think I'm going to faint," and then coming to lying on the ground with tons of people standing around. Cate later told me that some of the Muslim men in line were more concerned with the fact that my stomach was showing a bit rather than the fact that I was lying passed out on the ground. Cate was like, "if I hadn't been more concerned about you..." No one would help her get me up either. Finally the bus driver came over and got me back onto the bus. It didn't help that everyone kept saying, "it's the malaria." Anyways, the entire bus got to make a detour to the town doctor. A visit to the town doctor, a blood test, the discovery of a malaria parasite, drugs and a perscription given, and an hour later the bus was on its way again. Everyone on the bus was really nice and didn't seem to mind too much that I had put us an hour behind schedule. The bus driver made up for it though by flying along the Kenyan highways. Again, good times.
Anyways, we got into Nairobi and headed back to our beds at Primetime Safari. I slept while Cate got things squared away with our flight. Apparently they weren't cancelled after all ("what else do you expect from Ugandans," stated the Kenyan travel agent). Many hours later we arrived in Cairo and I don't think that I've ever been so happy to see it before in my life. Overall it was a great Spring Break and an amazing experience, but I think that I needed a vacation after it.
Write more later,
Katie
previous travel blog entry
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