To Kampala and Beyond

Leaving The Hairy Lemon was sad, but all good things must come to an end, and I really needed to see a little more of Uganda than one tiny island. When I first arrived in Uganda in early December, I had planned on travelling around most of the country and even maybe dipping into Rwanda (if I could get a visa; Rwanda hates Canada now, for good reason too). I ended up spending nearly three weeks in the Jinja area though, and while I definitely missed out on seeing some amazing things, I don’t regret a second of it.  I met some incredible people and had some of the best times I’ve ever had.  I was admittedly worried about my first Christmas and New Year’s Eve away from home, but they were both absolutely magical.  In the end, I did what I wanted to do, and that’s what this year-long stint of random travelling is meant to be. 

I had booked a flight from Entebbe (Uganda) to Cape Town (South Africa) for January the 11^th to meet my sister and Bree (her friend) to do a month of volunteering there, so I had about a week to kill when I finally dragged my ass away from the Hairy Lemon on the 5^th. I was meant to leave on the evening of the 4^th actually, but I got incredibly sick on the night of the 3^rd and so rested a day; I didn’t want to attempt travel in Uganda while incredibly sick.  I was actually worried for a bit that I had come down with malaria.  In my time on the island I had witnessed a few people getting malaria and even though it’s easily curable, it takes you out for a good week.  I don’t know what I actually had, but I got probably the worst headache I’ve ever had for a solid 36-hour period.  It was terrible. 

Hollie’s job at The Hairy Lemon had come to an end with 2011, and she was looking for other jobs (I went into a bit more detail about this in my last post).  She had talked to the owners of place called “Banda Island,” which is a part of the Sessee Islands in Lake Victoria.  There was a job opportunity for her there and she was planning on checking out what they had going on and if it was worth her time.  She asked me if I wanted to join her, and seeing as I never had any solid plans, I said yes.  So on the morning of the 5^th, we left with Nick for Kampala.  It was really handy actually, because usually backpackers like myself that travel from Jinja to Kampala have to either put up with public transport, which is a huge pain in the ass, or else try to sneak their way onto the rafting shuttle, which only leaves at certain times and only drops off at one hostel in Kampala, which isn’t very central at all.  Nick had to pick a friend up from the airport at about 9:00AM though, and he offered us a ride to Kampala (on the way to Entebbe), so we of course accepted.  This meant being up insanely early and getting on the road by 5:30AM, but it was worth it.  For the first time in two weeks, I packed my entire life into my backpack, and I was off to the controlled chaos of Kampala.

We got there at about 8:30 and the legendarily bad traffic of Uganda’s capital was already starting to reveal itself to me. Hollie and I were to be staying with her friends Phil and Andrea, but her phone was lost (stolen) on New Year’s Eve at the Lemon, so she had not contacted them at all.  I felt really weird about just showing up at their house unannounced, but she assured me that is was ok; she does this all the time apparently.  So before 9:00, after a scary boda ride (much more on them later), we were knocking on some stranger’s door (to me, at least), expecting to be put up in their spare room, no problem.  Andrea, who I had never met, opened the door groggily after much knocking by Hollie, and I don’t think she was too impressed with the random backpacker that she had in tow.  Of course, being the polite, accommodating people that they were, and having a couple rooms to spare, Andrea and Phil let us stay.  Phil was actually away at work for the day when we arrived, so when he showed up late in the evening, tired from a long day, I imagine that my presence may have upset him.  He was actually in South Sudan for the day, as he runs a company that teaches people to fly planes.  He is currently working for the Ugandan government, teaching their pilots to fly jets (intense, right?) and was on a day trip to the incredibly dangerous South Sudan, no big deal.  Hollie is close friends with Phil, and I was repeatedly assured that showing up randomly was ok, but I still felt a little rude.  They were of course nice about the whole situation, as you would expect normal people to be, but I think you can understand my awkwardness.

Phil is from England, and Andrea, the United States.  They are a recently married couple who have been living in Uganda for a couple years now (Phil for longer I believe).  They live in an area of Kampala called Makindye, and their property is ridiculously nice.  I guess the pilot-training business is good, because Phil’s house is amazing.  Most backpackers that travel through Kampala have to deal with a hostel called Red-Chili’s which is cheap, but sketchy and not pleasant to stay at.  Somehow though, I ended up in an amazing house with a huge yard and access to a wireless network.  They had two proper guestrooms and hot showers (holy shit yes, I hadn’t had one in three months) and I didn’t have to pay a penny to stay there.  I mean I bought a bottle of wine for dinner one night to thank them for their hospitality, but still: score.

We stayed in Kampala for a couple of days before heading off to see what Banda Island had to offer Hollie. I didn’t do much except for exploring the area that I was in.  Seeing the heart of Kampala was put off until we returned, and I’ll get to that later. To get to Banda Island was quite a mission and involved several classic forms of Ugandan travel.  First, there was the boda ride to the main taxi-park.  I had taken bodas several times before, but riding one through the centre of Kampala is an experience that cannot be given justice by words.  It was twenty minutes of weaving through stop-start traffic on whichever side of the road had room to squeeze through. (And I do mean squeeze, I scraped my right knee against the side of a matatu at one point while the driver’s left elbow nailed a car’s side mirror and sent it flying. The driver was pissed, rightly so, and starting yelling at us, but he was stuck in traffic and we were off through yet another gap that was way too small for a motorbike carrying two passengers).  I’m not saying this to build myself up or anything, but seriously, most of you wouldn’t have been able to handle it. I have a “I don’t give a fuck” attitude when it comes to stuff like that, so I didn’t mind that I seriously thought I was going to die one or two times, but any normal person would have gotten off the boda and walked after about thirty seconds.    Let’s just say that I could understand why Hollie always carried her own helmet with her whenever there was a chance of taking a boda somewhere. All the guidebooks in existence advice against taking a boda unless it’s absolutely unavoidable, but it’s the only way to get anywhere in Kampala when gridlock sets in, which is about 18 hours a day on every fucking road, even away from the city centre. When we finally arrived at our destination, I shook of the trauma and paid my driver (he of course tried to rip me off, but Hollie was there to tell me what the proper rate was). We were now in the centre of Kampala, in a garden of literally hundreds of matatus, and smack dab in the middle of the busiest city I have ever seen.  I absolutely loved it; everywhere you looked something completely bizarre was happening. People and vehicles were moving in every direction, various different vendors were selling anything you could imagine and more, and the noise was completely disorienting.  Some people probably hate places like these, but to me, this was Uganda. I was observing the people of Kampala carrying out their day-to-day lives and embracing the madness of a noisy, dirty city, and in some weird way, that’s part of their culture. Kampala is unlike anywhere I have ever been, and despite all the characteristics of the city that would by most as negatives, I thought it was incredible. I guess I’m weird like that, but that’s usually what gets to me about the places I travel to.  I don’t gawk at the amazing sites or natural phenomena that get the most coverage in guide books or anything like that.  I love seeing people of cultures I’ve never experienced before in their element, dealing with their lives in small mundane ways, and observing the controlled chaos of a completely foreign land.

But anyway, we needed to find one to take us to the little fishing village near Entebbe where we would catch a boat to Banda Island. After lots of asking random locals and lots of following bad directions, we arrived at the proper matatu and got on. It took us about an hour to arrive at said fishing village, and in that time Hollie and I had a good long talk about what I was doing with my life. I didn’t really have many answers for her other than “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing in life at all, that’s why I’m here.”  By this time in our friendship, we knew a bit about each other, and she mentioned to me that her friend Elspeth had been teaching music at an international school in Kampala for the past two years and that she would be going back home, England, in June. She asked if I had ever considered the possibility of working in Africa and I honestly replied that I had not, not even a little bit. I hadn’t realized that there were so many people from (god I feel like a prick for using this terminology but I don’t know what else to say) the first world that were making a living in Africa.  I always just thought of this as a trip, a temporary thing, but Hollie definitely got me thinking. More on that later.

At the fishing village, we were meant to find Isaac’s boat.  We walked down from where the matatu dropped us off to a ‘beach’ (in technicality only) which was buzzing with people moving materials from dozens of huge dugout canoes.  The shore was absolutely covered in garbage, everything smelled like fish, and we must have been the first white people to show our faces there in months because we were jeered and gawked at the entire time. It was definitely not a pleasant place.  Our ride to the island was a 10 metre long dug-out canoe, and it was absolutely packed to the brim with random supplies for the island and probably thirty people. Just when I was thinking that there was no more room in it for anything else, the crew proved me wrong (the ‘crew’ being one jacked guy who kept wading out to the boat in the disgusting waters which came up to his waist, I did not envy him).  I was wondering how we would get on the boat and came to the assumption that I would have to wade through the cesspool as well, and I was not looking forward to it.  When we approached the water though, a man picked me up and put me on his shoulders with no hesitation.  It was then that I remembered that Hollie had told me that this was how the passengers were transported from the shore to the boat. We each had to pay him 500Ush ($0.20) and it was definitely worth it.  I had a pretty nasty wound on my right calf from my boda burn, and I was legitimately worried about it getting infected in the water. We stayed dry though thanks to our knight in shining armour, and we tried to find somewhere spacious to spend the next three and a half hours.  After plenty of shuffling, we finally settled on the front of the boat, where we only had to compete with the anchor for space.  This meant that the approximately thirty other passengers of the boat were staring at us for the whole trip, but we definitely scored the best spot on the boat.  After another twenty tonnes of cargo was loaded onto the boat, we were ready to go, and set off towards the middle of Lake Victoria.  The next three and a half hours were spent baking in the sun and trying in vain to find some comfort.  I never realized how great the BC ferries were until then.  I’ll put up with the annoying announcements and overpriced food a lot easier when I get home having experienced the pure bliss of Isaac’s boat.

Banda Island itself is an interesting place.  It is a large island, probably an hour’s walk from side to side. Technically, it is meant to be owned entirely by the people that run the resort we were headed to, but there is a group of squatters living where the boat eventually landed.  It is a village maybe a couple hundred Ugandans who survive off the fishing of Lake Victoria.  However, as the lake becomes more and more polluted and more and more abused by the locals on all sides of it, the fishing is getting worse.  Lake Victoria is the biggest in all of Africa and should be an impressive sight, but in reality it is a gigantic letdown.  The people that live on or near the lake treat it like a trash dump and, ecologically, it is a disaster.  The nile perch is a gigantic fish that, despite its name, is not endemic to the Lake Victoria/Nile River area, but it has somehow been introduced to the system and is destroying it. Apparently, Lake Victoria is often used as a case study in university classes on nature and the environment seeing as it is a perfect example of everything that could possibly go wrong in a given ecosystem.  What this all amounted to for me was being surrounded by water that I had no intention of swimming in.  Back to the squatters though: legally, they aren’t even allowed to be there (hence ‘squatters’) but the owners of the island have decided that it’s in their best interest to not push their luck, and so they’re allowed to stay.  The population of their village is steadily decreasing though due to the decline of tilapia in the area. We had two options to get to the resort on the other side of the island: we could pay 5000Ush each for a boat to take us around to the other side, or we could attempt to bushwack and walk (there’s a path in theory, but it basically just leads into dense bush).  Being that Hollie grew up in the bush in Kenya and fancied herself as some sort of expert bushwacker, we decided (she decided) to choose the walking option.  As we told this to the owner of the boat that usually takes tourists to the other side, he smiled lightly and said ok; he knew we’d be back soon. The next thirty minutes were spent walking through deep bush in random directions, through spider webs (of easily the biggest spiders I have ever seen) and scores of colonies of ants that got everywhere and bit unrelentingly. I hadn’t prepared for this sort of bullshit and so was wearing my flip-flops, which quickly broke in the knee deep foliage, somewhere near the middle of buttfuck nowhere. Much to my appreciation, Hollie gave up on this ridiculous expedition shortly as we both feared getting trapped in the middle of an uninhabitable forest when the sun went down, and so we returned to the village, our heads held in shame. Our boat driver was waiting for us, and we followed him to our new ride, which was completely covered in bird shit. On our way to the resort, we stopped to chat to two separate fisherman’s boats, and at first we had no idea why this was happening.  It had been a very long day and we were near the end of our journey, and all of a sudden our driver stopped for seemingly no reason.  After a while we realized that he was trying to buy our dinner to deliver to the staff at the resort, but he was not having much luck (the fisherman had been out there all day and had nothing to show for it).  He eventually tracked down one fish for us and bought it from the fisherman. It was a little weird to be honest: the two white people just arriving on the island apparently had automatic dibs on whatever happened to have been caught that day even though there wasn’t much of it. Anyway, after that we shot off to the other side of the island and the travelling for the day was over.  Hallelujah, we had finally arrived at our home for the next two days.

And my oh my, what a shithole.  The reason for our visit was for Hollie to assess if the place was worth her time.  She had been told by the owners that the resort was hers to run if she wanted to, but she would not be paid; only the money that she was able to make from attracting guests would be hers.  We realized in less than an hour that she would not be taking the job.  The place definitely had potential, but it was so ridiculously run down that it needed someone to sink quite a substantial amount of money into it for there to be any chance of profit.  We were the only guests staying there at the time, and convincing people to take Isaac’s boat from the mainland to stay at a place as underwhelming as this would be quite a challenge in itself.  The bandas were in terrible shape, the “bar” was basically a room with crates of beer and more broken windows than intact ones, and the two or three staff members were so unmotivated to keep the place tidy that the paths were overgrown with bushes and weeds and none of the buildings were in even decent shape.  There was a pretty nice beach right out front of our banda, but like I said, the water wasn’t exactly ideal for swimming. We spent our two days reading and re-reading our books, and looking for any way we could find to kill time. There was a backgammon board, which Hollie taught me how to use (great game, I can’t believe I hadn’t learned it before), but little else to do. It was just us on the island though, and it was actually pretty nice to have the time to get to know each other pretty well. (I’ll just nip this in the butt now: we were just friends, get your minds out of the gutter.) With nothing else to do, we had some good conversations about life, the universe, and everything. So while the island was a total waste of space in every way possible, I still enjoyed my time there, though admittedly less than my time in Kampala or at The Hairy Lemon.

Disappointed but not entirely surprised about the lack of a tangible job opportunity on the island, Hollie and I set off back to Kampala two days after we had arrived. The trip back was essentially the exact same as the way there other than the looming rainclouds that threatened to seriously ruin our 3-hour boat trip, so no details are necessary here.  Oh, one thing though: when we were carried from the boat to the shore (just like on the way there) the guy tried to convince us that the cost was 5000Ush each, not 500. Now it definitely wasn’t the first time that someone in Africa had tried to rip me off, far from it, but where was this guy’s logic in trying to convince us of the proper rate?  We clearly had to have been carried to the boat on the way there seeing as we were returning from the island, so it was obvious that we already knew how much it was. It wasn’t a half-assed attempt either. This guy was refusing our 1000Ush and stubbornly held out for 10,000.  Eventually we basically threw the note at him because we were done messing about and needed to catch our matatu back.  He wasn’t happy about that.

Back in Kampala, Hollie and I returned to Phil and Andrea’s place to get our stuff.  Hollie had another friend in the area, Elspeth, and we had planned to stay with her my remaining two nights in Uganda.  It was just down the road from Phil’s mansion and definitely not as nice, but I don’t think any place in all of Uganda is (save for maybe some of Idi Amin’s old palaces). Elspeth was really nice, and I’m not just saying that because she too let me stay at her place without any complaints, she was just pleasant to be around.  She is from England and has been living in Uganda for something like two years teaching music at an international school.  In June, she’ll be going back home. After settling into her place and having a cup of tea, we started to arrange our dinner plans for that night.  Doc and Henke (two kayakers from The Hairy Lemon, refer to the last post for details if you must) were in town, each running separate errands. Henke needed a fishing rod and had tried to find one in Jinja several times, and Doc was after a whole slew of random items. We met up at an Ethiopian restaurant (obviously, we were in Uganda) and had a really nice meal.  I’ve had Ethiopian food a few times now and I’ve got to say, it’s got to be up there with some of my favourite types of food.  The name of it eludes me right now, but the standard way of serving Ethiopian food is over a gigantic piece of spongy, vinegar-y, bread-like substance. I have no hope of doing it justice, but it’s amazing and must be experienced.

The next day I got up bright and early so that I could go with Elspeth to the international school where she worked.  She and Hollie had been convincing me over the previous few days to go and meet the principal seeing as Elspeth would be leaving her job at the end of June and he (the principal) hadn’t filled the slot yet.  At first I was very reluctant, but I wasn’t committing to anything at all; I was just meeting the guy because, well, why not. I’m sure that by now most of you realize that I have absolutely no clue where my life is headed, and I’m open to pretty much anything.  I never gave an iota of consideration to the thought of living in Africa, but Elspeth has actually got a pretty sweet set up.  She’s getting paid something like $1100 a month, which isn’t all that much by Canadian standards I suppose, but it’s nearly 100% savings because living in Uganda is so cheap. Furthermore, she’s getting experience that people taking teaching qualifications back home could only dream of, and she has no degree at all. When she goes back home and does her teaching qualifications, the experience that she’s gained in Uganda will no doubt put her ahead of her peers, which is actually really valuable in a career path where experience is everything to potential employers. Plus, she gets control over a huge room filled with every musical instrument you could imagine, and she spends her time passing on knowledge to kids from all different backgrounds. Elspeth arranged a meeting for me with Tony, the principal.  It wasn’t exactly an interview, which is good because I’m backpacking and have literally nothing even remotely presentable to wear; it was more of just a casual talk.  He asked he what teaching experience I had, at which point I exaggerated what I had done in Kenya to a criminal level.  All the other normal topics were covered, and after about fifteen minutes we shook hands and called it a day. I’m almost 100% sure that I won’t be following this up.  The job would start sometime in late June (I’m not even planning on still being in Africa then) and it would be at least a one-year commitment, probably more. Plus, I think the chances of Tony actually selecting me for the job when he starts properly interviewing people are somewhere in the vicinity of zero. Still, it’s nice to open up that avenue, and it definitely got me re-considering what I imagine the next period of my life to be about.  I never realized that someone like me could conceivably make a living working abroad in a place such as Africa, but it’s definitely doable and something to think about.

After that, Hollie and I headed into central Kampala to meet Doc and Henke and get some shopping done.  I had nothing on my list, so I spent the day following them around and soaking up Uganda for probably the last time (my flight to Cape Town was to leave the next day, very early in the morning). Doc and Henke were staying at the less than pristine hostel, Red Chilli’s, and so Hollie invited them to stay with us at Elspeth’s.  I’m pretty sure that this wasn’t cleared with Elspeth ahead of time, but I think that Hollie’s friends are used to this sort of behaviour from her, so she didn’t mind (or at least didn’t show it when she got back from work and found a Russian and a Fin lounging around). Henke and I finished our errands pretty quickly and so were back at Elspeth’s to enjoy a late-afternoon relaxation (Henke style) but Doc stayed in Kampala for a long, long time, buying way too much shit. His English is really bad and we had to explain to his boda driver how to find the place over the phone, and it was a huge task.  After much confusion, we eventually had him headed in the right direction. As he pulled up to the driveway, Henke and I nearly pissed our pants.  Imagine if you will the following image: A 38-year old Russian man was sitting on the back of a tiny motorbike being driven by a Ugandan guy, the two of them somehow carrying the Russian’s approximately ten overloaded shopping bags, and the boda slowly inching its way up a small, winding dirt road as every local around gawked in confusion.  They don’t see white people that often, let alone a 38 year-old Russian man with hoards of crap on an awkwardly lurching boda. It was too much: I felt bad but I couldn’t help but laugh, even as Doc’s broken English was doing a sub-par job of negotiating the rate with the boda driver.

Doc was late and we headed out to meet Hollie for dinner pretty much right away.  She had been downtown meeting with the owners of Banda Island, breaking their poor little hearts.  I had gotten used to going places in Uganda with the help of Hollie, who was born and raised in Eastern Africa and has way more street smarts than me in that regard, but for this trip, it was on me.  Henke and Doc didn’t speak English well, and the directions that we needed to give to our boda drivers were somewhat complicated.  This meant that I had to haggle the fare (which I absolutely loathe) and somehow communicate that we wanted to take as few bodas as possible.  We briefly considered all trying to fit on one, which is definitely doable in Uganda (I’ve seen one with 6 people, terribly unsafe) but I’m glad that we took two.  Doc got on one, while Henke and I shared the other.  What followed was quite possibly the scariest forty minutes of my life. Doc’s driver got lost and we thought he was being kidnapped and or robbed for a good twenty minutes until we met up again, and the traffic in Kampala was absolutely horrendous. I had had several sketchy boda trips in Uganda in my month there, but this one, this very last one before I left, definitely took the cake. The traffic was at a standstill near to the city centre, and this meant an insane amount of reckless driving by the thousands of boda drivers of Kampala. Henke and I didn’t dare try to communicate during this flirtation with death, but I could feel our combined anxiety as we tore down a crowded pothole-filled road at 75 km/h, narrowly avoiding being nailed by a different vehicle ten times a minute. My phone buzzed in my pocket twice and the second time, I can’t believe it, I actually answered it and attempted to have a conversation with Hollie as I clung on with my other arm for dear life.  We eventually arrived, all in one piece, but it was probably the single most dangerous thing that I have ever done, and I’ve gone skydiving. Just another day in Kampala.

We had a beer while Hollie finished her meeting with the owners of Banda Island, and after she told us that she felt she had perhaps been too harsh.  She not only rejected the job, but told them that they might as well just give up on the property altogether as it was never going to make money without someone who was willing to spend considerable time and money getting it running.  We met Dan and Anna (again, refer to the last post if necessary) for dinner as they had just returned from their sightseeing trip around Southern Uganda and were to start their teaching jobs the following morning.  They weren’t looking forward to their early starts the next day, but I think I had them beat.  My flight to Cape Town was to leave at 7:15AM, which meant getting up at 3:30 to catch the car that I had arranged for 4:00.  It was already pretty late by the time we sat down, and I gave serious consideration to just not sleeping, but I did eventually grab a couple hours.  Anyway, we jumped around to a few different places as the group was being very indecisive, but we eventually, for some reason, settled on a pretty pricey but unbelievably nice Indian place.  It was definitely out of my price range, but it was my last night in Uganda, and I’m not one to say no to Indian food. After dinner, we tried for probably a half-hour to find a ride back to our place (Dan and Anna lived near there as well) at a reasonable rate.  This proved more difficult than we first thought, but we eventually prevailed and avoided taking a convoy of bodas. I said my farewells to Dan and Anna, and we crashed at Elspeth’s place. 

Something like three hours later, my alarm rudely woke me from my light sleep and I grabbed my backpack.  I slung all by belongings over my shoulder, tried not to wake anyone up, and I was off. At 4:45 in the morning I rolled up to the airport in Entebbe and I said goodbye to one of the most magnificent places that I have ever been.  I didn’t really explore that much of Uganda, but what I saw was marvellous and unique in every way. This trip was intended to, among other things, teach me about myself (if that makes any sense) and I definitely made massive progress with that in Uganda. Without the restraints of volunteering or travelling with someone else, I did entirely what I wanted to, and for me it was perfect. I’ve been in South Africa for about two and a half weeks, and I think that I left a piece of my heart in Uganda. It’s intimidating for sure: corruption and crime are prevalent wherever you go, but that’s to be expected in any African country, especially one with such a tumultuous recent history. If you can get past that, and past the terribly frightening public transportation, a wonderfully unique culture and warm-hearted people await you.  I’m not sure how many of you are keen to travel around Africa, but if it’s in your future plans, don’t miss Uganda.  Everyone that’s been there agrees that it is one of the highlights of their travelling careers, and at this point I definitely agree.

That’s it for now, I’m nearly caught up.  Next up will be my experience so far volunteering in Muizenberg, near Cape Town, and what an experience it has been.  Stay tuned, and keep it classy.

Pandamonium

Well, it’s been nearly a month since my last update.  That’s mainly because I’ve been without internet for quite some time, but it’s also because I really have no idea how to put into words how much I have enjoyed my time in Uganda.   I spent two weeks relaxing on the Hairy Lemon and had an absolutely wonderful Christmas and New Years. I’m incredibly sad to have left it behind, but life goes on and a new adventure awaits me in Cape Town (where I am now).  But for this post, I’ll just try to explain to you why I spent two weeks on an island in the Nile River doing essentially nothing, but having the time of my life.  Nothing I can say here will do it justice, but I’ll try to communicate the gist of it.  Instead of doing a day-by-day account of what I did (that would be so boring), I’m going to cut this up into sections and hope that I don’t forget anything too major.

The People

I’m going to start by introducing you to the reason that I stayed in one place so long: the amazing people.

-Hollie (aka M’gog): Hollie worked for The Hairy Lemon.  She was born in Kenya and has been living in East Africa for nearly her entire life.  She ran the bar and got day-to-day tasks on the island done while the rest of us lazed around doing approximately nothing all day.  She went to school for a botany degree and knows way too much about the various plants and animals of Uganda.  She would hush us all up when we heard a bird call to attempt to identify it (very specifically), and 99% of the time she knew exactly what species it was.  Hollie is an awesome person and one of the main reasons that I had such a fantastic time in Uganda. Her job at The Hairy Lemon ended (rather unceremoniously) at the end of 2011, and much drama surrounded that whole debacle. 

-James: A kayaker from Australia.  James is the man.  He’s an absolute party animal.  Most drinking nights on the island were fuelled by his unrelenting desire for Bujagali sunsets (a drink I explained in the previous blog post involving the lighting on fire of body parts).  He and I spent lots of time just hanging around the island having debriefings with special agent Bob.  He’s a very good freestyle kayaker and has travelled to many different areas of the world to surf waves and run rapids.  One night, while we were both quite inebriated, we had a heart-to-heart and it turns out that we’re actually quite similar.  We’re both halfway through degrees that we’re really unsure of and are both travelling around the world in vain, hoping to find our true purposes in life.

-Chris: A kayaker from England, Chris is also the man.  I met him in Jinja and we travelled down to the Hairy Lemon together where he has since set up camp to stay for something like two months.  Most people brought a reasonable sized personal tent for their stay on the island, but Chris brought a house.  He has a massive tent complete with three separate “rooms” and a proper bed. Chris didn’t join James and me in our briefings with special agent Bob, but we hung out pretty much all day every day, except when he went kayaking.

-Jan: A kayaker from Germany who, again, is the man. Jan works as an engineer in Germany and was just in Uganda for a month vacation (I think that he is back home now).  He has travelled basically everywhere one could for kayaking, including BC and Northern Alberta. Jan is 30 years old, but kept up with the disgustingly indulgent party attitudes of us 20-somethings.  On Christmas Eve (I think), during a rather substantial piss-up, he injured his ankle pretty badly while attempting to either limbo or dance (I can’t remember which, possibly both).  He didn’t let that kill his buzz though, and he still spent the rest of the night dancing on one leg.  He even fashioned himself a homemade brace for his ankle (he’s so German) and never missed a single day of kayaking.

-Dananna: Dan and Anna are two Brits who are currently living in Kampala working as teachers.  They just came to the island for some vacation time but got sucked in to our clique very quickly.  They originally were just going to stay for Christmas, but as they were leaving, they said they would return for New Years and did they ever.  Dan and Anna are kayakers as well but are in Uganda to work for something like two years, which is pretty admirable.  I’ll be attempting to explain all our inside jokes from the island, and I’m sure I will fail, but let it be known that the epicness that was “Pandamonium” is largely accredited to Dan and Anna’s love for panda.  Man oh man, do they ever heart panda.

-Henke: I honestly don’t even know where to start with this guy.  Henke is from Finland, a kayaker, and is staying in Uganda for a total of something like six months.  He doesn’t live on The Hairy Lemon but he came to visit us very often.  He is living with Chaga (a Ugandan employed by the Lemon, more on him later) on an island a little ways upstream.  Henke doesn’t say much, but when he does, it’s worth every word.  He’s almost always smoking a joint; most of us can’t even imagine what he looks like without one in his mouth.  He would even sometimes roll joints in his kayak while sitting in the calm waters before heading down the rapids.  He had a dry-sack for his marijuana supplies, and I don’t think I ever saw him without that dry-sack.  He also kayaks like an absolute boss.  One day, the group of kayakers drove up to a rapid known as Itanda (means “danger” in either Swahili or Luganda, I forget which), and that rapid is straight up one of the scariest things I have ever seen.  It’s a class 6 rapid, meaning it’s legally unrunnable with a group of rafters. (If any of you remember my pictures of when I went rafting, Itanda is the rapid that we got out and walked around.) Of the whole group, only Henke and James even attempted to run it, and Henke nailed the line perfectly.  It was very impressive.  One time, James wanted Henke to teach him something “badass” in Finnish.  Henke obliged and taught him a phrase.  After James had it nailed down, he asked what it meant.  Henke responded in his classic slow, Finnish accent: “It means: money, women, to get.”  Brilliant, that’s Henke in a nutshell.

-Nick: Known as “stoner Nick,” he did justice to his nickname.  Nick is a British guy but grew up in Zimbabwe I believe, and is currently working for his friend at his ranch in southwest Uganda, in Lake Mburo National Park.  He comes up to The Hairy Lemon for his holidays.  I first met him during my original two days there and thought I would never see him again, but he returned to the island frequently; I think he loved it nearly as much as I did.  Nick is a very relaxed, soft-spoken guy and he was always passing joints around.  He had a car as well which was really convenient.  He drove a group of us into town once (town being Jinja) and when I left for Kampala I hitched a ride with him.  I avoided a lot of stressful matatu and boda-boda rides because of his generosity.  The day he was meant to leave to pick his friend up from the airport, he did so reluctantly and we all said our goodbyes.  However, he returned less than a couple of hours after he had left and had a gigantic sack of weed with him.  Apparently he had gotten a text from his friend saying that he would be flying in the next day instead, so he slammed on his brakes, tracked down what we estimated as 1 kg of shitty Ugandan bush weed (at about $24CDN, holy shit) and returned to our little island paradise for more frolf and good times.

-Staz: One of many Russian kayakers on the island.  Staz took a while to warm up to me, but when he did, we had some amazing conversations.  He is trained as a battle engineer in Russia and has some of the craziest stories that I have ever heard.  He used to not even be allowed out of Russia due to his knowledge of state secrets, but that phase of his life has apparently passed and he is now on a three month kayak vacation. His English was not very good, but he always found a colourful way of explaining what he was trying to say.  Staz and Henke were very good friends.

-Doc: Another Russian Kayaker.  His real name is Constantine but he goes by ‘Doc’ (I have no idea why).  He’s 38 years old and is the current Russian National Champion of freestyle kayaking (Staz is #2).  Doc is a great guy.  His English is even worse than Staz’s, but that made his stories all the more entertaining.  He is a fun-loving guy who really opened up to our group after a week or so of being kind of reclusive. To be fair, we were a rowdy drunken bunch and I imagine quite intimidating to some of the other guests on the island.  He had a couple briefings with special agent Bob and my word it was hilarious.

-Johanna and Sana: Two Swedish girls who had been doing a paper in Kenya for their medical degrees and, having finished them, were travelling around East Africa before heading home.  They were only at the Lemon for something like three days, but were there during Pandamonium (New Years) and I got to know them pretty well. Oh and just for the record, yes they were both knock-outs.  I love Scandinavia.

-Abdel: Abdel is French/Algerian/Rwandese and is currently volunteering as a teacher trainer in Rwanda.  He was on holiday in Uganda and was at the Hairy Lemon for kayaking.  Abdel is an incredibly intelligent guy and we had many conversations about pretty serious topics, like whether or not globalization is a good thing (mainly concerning African growth), the American attitude towards the rest of the world, and Rwanda’s growing distaste for Canada. I learnt a lot talking to this guy and I will miss him dearly.  He sometimes joined James and me in our briefings with special agent Bob.

-Chaga: Chaga is a Ugandan who works for The Hairy Lemon.  He lives just upstream from the island. He was usually doing some form of work while he was on the island so I didn’t interact with him very much.  He kayaks but knows nothing of the sport outside of Uganda.  He grew up right next to Nile Special (the world-famous wave that attracted all the kayakers I’ve listed so far) and is incredibly good on it.  He’s one of the most jacked people I’ve ever met and doesn’t even use a paddle while kayaking because he’s sick of breaking them.  Instead, he uses one hand paddle and, sorry James, Jan, Chris, and Henke, is easily better than anyone else on the wave, and they all use paddles.

-Asid and Anita: These two are the main staff members on the island.  They live together but aren’t married (very scandalous for a Ugandan couple).  Asid is the main cook while Anita runs most of the administrative tasks.  After a while of not really having much to do with them, I began talking to them more often and it turns out that they are incredible people.  It must be weird for them to constantly be dealing with such party-happy mzungus, but they let their guard down eventually and I actually got to know them pretty well.  Every once in a while they would actually join in our dance parties (ok well we kind of dragged them in, but they didn’t exactly resist).

-Grace: Like Asid and Anita, Grace is one of the staff members, she cooks, and didn’t immediately interact with us very often.  After enough times of me popping my head in the kitchen after meals to thank her for cooking though, we started talking a little bit.

-Paul: The owner of the Hairy Lemon, Paul is a 48-year old South African who is absolutely obsessed with frolf.  He’s an odd guy, but he loves his island and chatting with him was always interesting. I’ll just leave Paul’s description like this: Paul is somewhat of a hippie, but at the same time he’s an ambitious South African businessman, and he fucking loves to play Frisbee.

-Trina: I’ve mentioned Trina in my last post.  She is a volunteer currently living in Arusha, Tanzania and is from New York City.  I met her in Jinja and spent a lot of quality time with her.  I miss her but I’m totally gonna abuse her hospitality the next time I go to NYC.

-Bhupi: (Not ‘Boobie’) I’ve mentioned Bhupi in my last post as well.  He is a raft guide for Nile River Explorers from India and is funny as shit in all the wrong ways.  He and Trina were only on the island for a few days, hence me not going into great detail about them.  I also explained some of my shenanigans with them in my last post.

(Christ, four pages just talking about the people, this is going to be a long post.)

The Activities – A Day in the Life on The Hairy Lemon

I don’t think I’ve ever been more relaxed in my life than I was during my two weeks on the lemon.  Breakfast was served at somewhere around 9:00, meaning there was time in the mornings to have a slow start: I usually grabbed a cup of tea, admired the scenery for a while, and sometimes found a hammock to snooze or read in until everybody was up and the quality banter began.  After breakfast, a big group of us usually just hung out. There were two “chill out” areas on the island: The Yak Shack and The Bern Cave, and most of my mornings were spent just lazing around one of the two areas while reading a book or chatting with the various awesome people on the island.  I preferred the Bern Cave because it was more comfortable and social, but also because of the monkeys that passed by.  The island was home to a pretty large population of red-tailed monkeys who lived exclusively in the treetops.  At the same times every day, we would notice the trees start to shake, and then would spend the next ten minutes watching families of monkeys soar from tree to tree, about twenty metres away; it was totally surreal. The other animals of note on the island were Frank the tortoise and his wifey (I forget her name).  Hey here’s a fun fact: did you know that the way to tell male and female tortoises apart is by the indents on their shells?  The female has an indent so that the male can mount it properly while performing the nasty, meaning they fit together like two erotic puzzle pieces.  Aww, how nice. And then there was Senior Guebes, fucking Guebes.  There were a few families (or whatever the correct phrase is) of chickens on the island, but the biggest cockerel was named Senior Guebes and was annoying as shit (James had a particularly strong distaste for him and often joked about eating him, which drew cries of protest from Hollie).  He sat outside the dorm as early as 4:30 and cockle-doodle-doo’d nonstop for hours, and we also saw him attempting to rape the other chickens on several occasions.  We all hated Guebes, except for Hollie, who defined him as “the man in her life.” Guebes inspired such distaste amongst the kayakers (actually, mainly just James and Chris) that they even named the shoulder of Nile Special “Senior Guebes” because it was such a pain in the ass to paddle over, a real cock.

But back to the activities: I swam a bit of course; I was in the middle of the Nile River after all.  There was a natural jacuzzi about a five minute wade from the south end of the island, but the water level of the river was good for it only in the mornings.  It was basically a tiny little rapid with a small, shallow pool to relax in. The kayakers would often go for a morning session on the wave when the water level got high enough, usually around 11:00, which left me a couple of hours to, um, relax some more.  (I read a lot of my book and made a bunch of senseless music lists in my notebook during my two weeks there). 

Lunch was served at around 1:30, which was coincidentally usually around beer-o’clock. Before the kayakers headed out for an afternoon session, usually something like 4:00, we would often indulge in a game of frolf.  For those who don’t know what this is, first of all: shame on you, but second of all, it’s so much fun.  It’s frisbee golf, which is exactly what it sounds like. There were nine “holes” on the island consisting of a starting point, the tee box, and the “hole” or target. The par was 34, but Paul’s course record (he was the only one to ever break it, like I said, he’s obsessed) was down to 22 by the time I left.  My best round ended up being a respectable 28.  I honestly loved frolf and would sometimes play three times a day.  The island was just the perfect size for it, and the course took us on a nice walk around the entire island.  We would usually have a beer in hand and take our time playing around the course, often stopping to observe the wildlife or just gawk at the beautiful scenery.  When I settle down and have my own property (ewwww settling down) I am going to have a frolf course on it.  We played so much frolf that if we were trying to describe where something on the island was, it was easier to just say “oh you know, just to the left of the third pin” or something like that.  The kayakers often joked that when their time in Uganda was winding down, they would be sadder about their last round of frolf than about their last surf on the wave.  I miss it already; I still play through the course in my dreams. 

Dinner was served when it got dark, which was usually something like 8:00 and it was always an amazing feast.  The food on the lemon was out of this world and it was included as part of the price.  Let me tell you, I got my money’s worth.  I don’t think I’ve ever eaten more in my life, possibly when I was volunteering in Ecuador actually, but that was because I was doing physical labour all the time whereas on the lemon I was doing dick all the entire day yet still eating like Oprah.  After dinner we would either get embarrassingly drunk or just chill in the yak shack until bed time. And there you have it: a day on the lemon.  I realize it sounds kind of boring, but honestly it was anything but.  It was perfect.  I had just come from three months in busy, fast-moving Nairobi, so doing nothing for two weeks was much welcomed.

About once a week, some of us went into Jinja to get on the internet and run errands.  It was a serious pain in the dick and none of us enjoyed it, but it needed to be done sometimes.  To get to Jinja from the lemon was a nightmare because we had to take sketchy public transport (except for when Nick drove us into town, which was awesome).  After taking the boat over from the island, we usually had boda-boda drivers waiting for us to take us to Nazigo, which was about a twenty minute ride away.  The roads were terrible and the boda drivers all drive like donkeys on crystal meth (ie: way too fast and dangerously).  Most people that stay in Uganda for more than a little while actually buy helmets for boda rides, the kayakers all wore their kayaking helmets, because boda accidents are actually very common.  There were a few times where it went through my head: “holy shit if he hits a bump at the wrong angle right now I am completely fucked.”  But luckily, the only bad thing that ever happened was that I burnt my leg on the exhaust pipe once because I got off on the wrong side.  It hurt like hell and I now have a huge heart-shaped scab on my right calf, but at least I didn’t get thrown off the bike at 70 km/h. The drivers always try to screw you on the prices too even though the fares are standard and I knew that. From the lemon to Nazigo was always 4000 Ush ($1.60) but they would sometimes try to tell you that it was 10,000.  Pricks.  After getting dropped off in Nazigo, we would have to wait on the side of the road for a while to catch a matatu, drawing jeers and shouts of “mzungu! mzungu!” from the locals.  I’d had experience with matatus in Kenya of course, but they’re far crazier in Uganda.  The volunteers in Kenya would always brag about how many people they’d gotten into a matatu, I think the record was like 22, but I was never on one in Uganda with less than 24 people. It’s actually written on the side of each one “maximum capacity: 14 passengers” but of course they just shove as many people as possible into one (not to mention livestock). Now, Uganda is an insanely corrupt country, and on the 45 minute matatu ride into Jinja, we were always stopped at least once by a police officer for a routine bribe.  I bet that even if they kept the capacity to 14, they would still have to bribe the cops.  It was just the way things went. After we finally arrived in Jinja, we would rush to get all our errands done and, if they let us, catch the shuttle that the rafting company runs back to Nazigo (they run a Jinja-Kampala shuttle which passes by Nazigo every day and sometimes they let us on).  Otherwise, it was back onto the matatus.  Going into town was never fun and it was always a massive relief when we arrived back on our peaceful little island. 

The Kayaking

I’ve mentioned a lot of stuff relating to kayaking and so I’m going to explain why it’s such a big part of staying near Jinja, specifically on the Hairy Lemon. I’ve white-water rafted a few times now, but never really knew much about kayaking.  Well basically, anywhere that there is white-water, there is a kayaking scene.  I had no idea that this world existed when I arrived, but I quickly became very well acquainted with it.  The White Nile is seen by freestyle kayakers around the globe as one if, if not the best, kayaking spots in the world.  There are eight sets of rapids (used to be 16 I think, more on that in a bit) the last of which is just upstream from the Hairy Lemon.  The last rapid contains a wave which is called Nile Special, and it is world famous in kayaking circles. All of these kayakers that I have mentioned so far had come from wherever (England, Australia, Germany, Finland, Russia, USA etc.) all the way to the middle of Africa to spend literally months surfing this one wave. Now of course I’ve been in a kayak before, but these guys all had small playboats designed for throwing tricks on waves such as this. I borrowed a two person sit-on-top kayak a couple times to paddle across the river so that I could watch these guys play on the wave and it was incredible.  These guys were throwing all sorts of tricks on this wave as huge amounts of water rushed passed them.  It was so interesting, so much so that I am going to look into kayaking when I get back.  BC apparently is a world-class destination for it, and the only river wave anywhere in the world that can rival Nile Special is a wave called Bus Eater on the Ottawa River.

These guys of course would sometimes also run the rapids (I mentioned Itanda earlier) but that was probably once or twice every couple of weeks, whereas they spent hours each day surfing Nile Special.  I got so into the kayaking, as much as a spectator could be I suppose, during my time there.  When new people arrived on the island they just assumed that I was a kayaker too, and the kayakers often joked that I was, I just didn’t kayak.  I knew all the lingo and different tricks, I knew what the water level needed to be for certain features on the river to be good, I even know most of the big names in the kayaking world now.  Also, I, um, I embraced the kayaker lifestyle, let’s just say that. One time, on our way back from town (this was when Nick drove ten of us in his land rover, so we had the luxury of stopping), we made a detour to Kalagala falls, which is the rapid on the opposite side of the river from the much more intimidating Itanda.  At this point in the river, it splits into three channels, meaning kayakers must pick one to run (or else get out and walk because they’re all fucking scary).  Kalagala falls is the most popular choice, seeing as it is relatively “easy” when compared to the other two, but it’s still scary as hell.  It is a thundering waterfall which the kayakers must shoot off and then drop 15 metres into a bubbly mess of white water, where they will get tossed around a bit, before they roll upright (a difficult task in itself, but a necessary skill for anyone attempting to tackle this sort of white water).  On the opposite side is Itanda, which is occasionally run by the more skilled kayakers like Henke and James.  This rapid is much more complicated compared to Kalagala which is just one waterfall.  Itanda is a whole mess of features and deadly places, and you have to hit the proper line perfectly to avoid getting chucked around by the dangerous areas.  The middle channel, which is unfortunately only viewable from the middle of the river (meaning I never got to see it) is called Hypoxia and is apparently the scariest of the three channels.  I’m told that it doesn’t look that intimidating compared to Itanda, but the line that you must hit takes you directly into a hole (a big nasty chunk of water that keeps you under for ages), and there’s no way around it.  Apparently people have run it before, but it’s very rare and insanely dangerous.  Hitting the proper line is a 50-50 crapshoot, and even when you nail it perfectly, you’re still likely to get seriously destroyed by the rapid.

The more that I talked to these kayakers and learnt about the specific dynamics of the White Nile, the more I realized what an awesome sport it would be to get involved in.  There is world class kayaking virtually everywhere in the world: anywhere there is a river, there are bound to be some interesting rapids to run.  So these guys travel around to all corners of the world, exploring rivers and just embracing a completely natural phenomenon.  It must be a great life.  I’m definitely going to check out the kayaking scene on the Fraser River (which is apparently quite a good one) when I get back to BC.

A big issue in the kayaking world is the damming of rivers, and Uganda is the currently the perfect example of that.  I mentioned earlier that there are eight rapids to run on this section of the White Nile, but there used to be many more, the most famous being Bujagali Falls.  A few months ago, construction of the Bujagali dam was completed and half of the runnable rapids were completely destroyed.  It’s a weird issue really because on the one hand, surely using hydro power is a good alternative (environmentally speaking) to burning coal or nuclear power, but on the other, it’s actually quite damaging to the local environment (because certain areas get flooded, obliterating the natural habitats of birds and various other animals, not to mention displacing thousands of people that live off the river and have their homes right near the shoreline) and destroys beautiful, naturally flowing rivers.  It wouldn’t be so much of an issue if the dam benefitted the local people, as they were led to believe it would, but it doesn’t at all.  Like I said, Uganda is insanely corrupt, and it’s becoming more clear that the only reason for the construction of the dam was so that a few powerful people could sell the electricity produced to neighbouring Kenya, Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), and South Sudan.  This means that the local people do not receive more access to electricity, but rather a small handful of already rich people just get even wealthier.  It’s disgusting really.

The Pandamonium

And on that rather upsetting note, let’s get to the partying!  My main reason for staying so long at The Hairy Lemon was that I was actually quite nervous about spending my first Christmas away from home in some unknown place.  It’s kind of stupid really; Christmas is just a day.  But at the same time, I just really wanted to be somewhere that I knew people and would be able to have a fun time.  I quickly made some amazing friends at the lemon and decided that it would be the place to be.  So, instead of being on some random bus travelling through some random sector of Uganda during Christmas, I opted to stay put, and I’m incredibly happy with the decision.  Sure, it would have been nice to have seen some more of Uganda and maybe even to have checked out Rwanda (even though it’s expensive there and hard for Canadians to travel to), but this trip for me is about finding myself, or something, and I learnt a lot about what’s important to me by staying on the island. 

But anyway, the pandamonium.  We had some pretty crazy nights of drinking and dancing on the lemon, the biggest and craziest being centered around Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and Hollie’s birthday/last night on the island (January 3^rd). Most normal people just party the day of the celebration, but we aren’t normal people and we turned each of these events into 48-hour extravaganzas.  Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and Hollie’s birthday were all proceeded by parties that were arguably bigger and better than the actual occasions themselves.  On Christmas Eve, we made a half assed attempt at a “bar crawl.”  It was meant to start at the bar (naturally) and then move to Chris’s tent/house before moving to the dormitory (where James, Jan, and I were staying) for shots of James’ Bacardi.  We made it to Chris’s tent.  Well, they all made it.  I rolled my ankle pretty badly in the dark, drunken stumble up the hill to his tent and told them to carry on without me (I’m just such a nice guy, you know?). I eventually hobbled to his tent and passed out just outside of it, where I overheard the conversation.  People were saying that they should go look for me, you know, make sure I was ok, but Hollie said “NO it’s his own damn fault.”  At that point I blurted out “I’m right here you pricks!” and much hilarity followed.  

Besides that laughable attempt at a “bar crawl,” our drinking nights consisted of an insane amount of dancing and singing in the bar.  I’ve actually been given the task of compiling the playlist of our shenanigans and uploading it to a dropbox.com account that Chris is going to create to share our pictures and videos.  Our songs of choice were “Tribute” by Tenacious D (“He asked us *snort* ‘Be you angels?’ And we said ‘Nay, we are but men!’ ROCK!”), “Hey There Fancy Pants” by Ween (“Hey there fancy pants, play the songs that make us dance”), the Kenyan smash-hit “Sawa Sawa” (shhhhhh), and several other ridiculous songs. Also of note is James’ biting insult of Johanna. James was somewhat keen on Johanna I think and attempted to lay the moves on her on several occasions.  Once though, while he was quite drunk, he blasted her for being boring (she had just refused a Bujagali sunset, the nerve) and eventually ended up calling her a dementor (fellow Harry Potter fans should hopefully realize that this is probably the worst insult imaginable).  She was, rightly so, incredibly offended, but James did not relent.  He even followed her around for a while shouting “EXPECTO PATRONUM” and thrusting an imaginary wand at her. It was probably one of the funniest/meanest things that I have ever seen in my life.

Now here is where I attempt to explain “pandamonium” (spelt p-a-n-d-a etc. and not the proper p-a-n-d-e etc.).  For Christmas, we all put some money into a fund and, a few days before, James and Chris went into town to buy as many silly hats as they could find.  They returned with a variety of twenty amazing hats, and our silly hat Christmas was underway.  We hung them all on our makeshift Christmas tree, and on Christmas Day, we all picked one to wear.  The rule was supposed to be that it was a free-for-all once the sun rose on Christmas morning, but some people cheated (Jannnnnnn!) and picked theirs the night before, meaning that my first choice was gone by Christmas morning. No matter, we still spent the entire day feeling sorry for our hungover selves in ridiculous hats, staff included.  One of the hats was a small baseball cap that, for some reason, said “I <3 Panda” with a picture of two pandas.  (Not “I Love Pandas” but “I <3 Panda,” singular). For whatever reason, we thought this was the funniest thing ever, and a massive inside joke began to grow.  After Dan and Anna left the island, they signed their texts “I Heart Panda.” Serious conversations would often be derailed by a simple “hmmm, true, however, I do heart panda…” Which would be responded to with a “hmm yes, quite” followed by vigorous beard stroking. I realize that this all sounds pretty fucking stupid, and it kind of is, but so are all inside jokes to people who weren’t present for their inception, so deal with it. We thought it was fucking hilarious. Sometime after the dust had settled after Christmas, we decided that our New Year’s Eve party was to be panda themed, and James coined the now infamous term “pandamonium.”  We immediately started making decorations for the bar, and the guests on the island that had no idea what they hell we were on about must have been seriously weirded out.  Imagine it: you’re arriving on a nice little family retreat with your normal, respectable family, and you are greeted on the shore by a bunch of drunken kayakers (plus me) wearing ridiculous hats, all shouting “I FUCKING LOVE PANDA.”  For the New Year’s Eve party, we had made twenty panda masks (more like hats) and had each personalized our own. The best hat belonged to either Doc, who had fashioned something of a battle helmet, or Henke, who had had his hat equipped with a joint coming from the panda’s mouth, which was done by Hollie while Henke was busy kayaking (or smoking weed, I don’t remember which, probably both).

Christmas Day was actually quite nice.  Some of us went up to Chris’s tent first thing in the morning so that we could watch him open the presents that his mum had given him for Christmas morning (awwwwwwwwwwww).  Easily the most interesting thing he got was a one-piece red spandex full-body suit, a la the Vancouver Canucks’ “Green Men” and also the classic shenanigans of the characters from the TV show “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”  His eyes lit up with excitement when he unwrapped it and within ten minutes he was wearing it. We were relaxing in the Bern Cave, Chris wearing his spandex suit, as Margaret walked by (she was an older Ugandan woman that did the washing on the island, probably 55 years old).  We thought, rightly so, that it would be hilarious for Chris, to chase her around the island, and so he did.  She screamed and began running away, terrified, but Chris persisted while the whole group of us rolled on the floor in fits of hysterical laughter.  It was definitely one of the funniest things I’ve witnessed in a while. Oh and what made it better was that she had picked a silly hat from the tree that morning as well (most of the staff joined our silly hat shenanigans), which just happened to be the “I <3 Panda” hat.  It was perfect.

 As the big group of us lazed around the island, feeling sorry for our hungover selves in our silly hats, we tried to decide what to do to pass the time until beer-o’clock. I hadn’t had my hair cut in something like three and a half months and its length was starting to be a pain in the ass.  I like having long hair, but not when I’m travelling. It’s just so inconvenient and, sorry but this is gross, it gets greasy so quickly.  This is kind of annoying when you don’t necessarily have access to a shower every day, so I decided it was time for a haircut. I’m a pretty low maintenance guy when it comes to my hair, and I wasn’t about to go into town to get it done.  Plus, most barbers or hairdressers in Uganda don’t really do anything besides buzz cuts; western-style haircuts are hard to find.  It turned out that Hollie knew how to cut hair (or she said she did) so I had a Christmas morning haircut. All the kayakers and I gathered on the top of the hill for my haircut, but let me tell you, those guys are pricks.  The whole time that I was having it done, they were all shouting at Hollie to leave the back long so that I would have a mullet.  Hollie, being the asshole that she is, obliged and refused to cut the back of my hair.  It was left long while the rest was cut very short and, against my protests, she left me with a mullet.  So for half of Christmas Day (she declined my demands to cut the rest until about 2:30 that afternoon) I had a disgusting mullet.  I ran with it though and tucked it behind my ears in creepy pedophile fashion; if only I had a revolting moustache to match.  

More shenanigans were of course had during our New Years/pre-New Years 48-hour piss-up. This included bringing in the new year with some space cake (courtesy of Henke, of course). It tasted like ass but did the trick.  Most of us spent the first day and a half of 2012 still feeling the effects of said cake. I’m not going to go into the specifics of each night of partying, but I’m sure that by now you can do an adequate job of imagining the stupid shit that we got up to. One thing that I will mention though is the German tradition that we partook in.  Apparently, there is this ten-minute black and white British film from the 1960s called “Dinner For One” that every German person watches at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve.  I had never heard of it before, but it’s supposedly huge in Germany, and every German knows the film like the back of their hand. It’s broadcast nationally at 12:00 in Germany.  I went into Jinja a few days before the new year and downloaded the movie.  We didn’t watch it right at midnight (we would have been far to messed up by that point) but we put it on after dinner, and every single guest on the island crowded around my tiny laptop to watch it. The film itself was pretty funny, but it’s quite possibly the most British thing that I have ever seen in my life and I have no idea why watching it on New Year’s Eve is a German tradition. Regardless, it was really nice to indulge in this tradition, and I plan on repeating it next year, wherever I am (same procedure as every year James). The best part though was that there was a group of Germans on the island at the time, three families I think, and the kids were right up front, laughing hysterically the whole time.

Well, that’s about it I suppose.  I’ve written well over 7000 words (fucking hell I wish I had this sort of dedication to writing essays for university) and I think I’ve done as good a job as I’m ever going to do explaining the wonderful time that I had on The Hairy Lemon.  Some of you are still probably scratching your head, wondering why I a) spent so much time there and b) wrote so much nonsensical bullshit about it, but I guess you just had to have been there.  I think I will always look back at those two weeks as some of the best times of my life.  It was definitely different from the style of Christmas celebration that I became so accustomed to at home, but I wouldn’t change a single thing about it.  I made some amazing lifelong friends and memories and in the end, that’s all that matters. I hope that you all had a great Christmas and New Year’s Eve.  That’s it for now; next up will be an account of my last few days in Uganda, including the controlled mayhem of Kampala, and my trip to the run down Banda Island in Lake Victoria. Keep it real party people, until next time.