Adventures in Africa

Next day we walk all the way down. Around noon rain starts to fall, and continues till the afternoon, when we arrive to the end point, the village of Kapwata. We set our tent, buy some milk which when boiled do not overflow (a sign that it was diluted with water) and are attacked by fire ants. These ants have workers (big) and soldiers (huge). The soldiers are very devoted to their role and their jaws function only in one way. In the moment they close on you, they will never open again, even if you try to chase the soldiers away. The only way to get yourself out of the jaws is to kill the ants...

We are ready to leave Sipi falls area in favor of the capital city Kampala. Kampala is not a pretty town but we enjoy it very much because of the motorcycle taxis that we use a lot. In the evening the people go out to drink beer in beer gardens (pubs under the sky) where they watch (illegal) videos on TV. The hotels look much better than they really are. I was so impressed by our modest hotel that I asked in the reception "What facilities do you have here?". I was hoping for a swimming pool. The clerk showed us a room and said with pride: "We have a bad, and we have a chair, and we have 2 glasses"...

In the hotel's restaurant we tried not to react to the sight of running mice and agreed that the place to eat was the market where they sell fresh fish (especially Nile perch) from lake Victoria for less than a 0.5 US$ per kilo. By the way, the market is open 24 hours and during the night is lit by candles, which we found nice. We also gave our boots to be fixed in the market, and I must say that they did an excellent job (maybe because we paid them so much (2$)?).

The hotel's laundry service didn't let us down. I mean, it was not better than the other services. They washed all our laundry together and thus colored all our cloths blue... Only the manger himself (a government stomach type) was ready to compensate us (a free night) and that was only after we argued with him fiercely.

As Israelis we were curious to see Entebbe's airport. In our handbook it's written: "Entebbe became famous in 1976 when an Air France plane from Israel was hijacked and was forced to land there. The Jewish passengers were held hostage as demands were made for the release of prisoners in Israeli jails. All but one of the prisoners were rescued when Israeli paratroopers stormed the airport building. You can see the control tower of this building even nowadays...". What they don't write, is that from this control tower was shot the commander of this operation, officer Yoni Netanyahu, the brother of Israel's current prime minister, Benjamin.

After visiting both Kampala and Entebbe, we took off to Jinja, where the American missionary invited us. On the bus a woman was selling all kinds of homemade medicaments. It was written on the etiquette "expiration date is 2 years after manufacturing date". Guess what was the manufacturing date? 1/1/99 (then it was 5 months in the future...).

Jinja is a small town that escaped the destruction of Idi Amin's era. All the houses are one floor high, and several neighborhoods look a bit like rich residential areas in the US. As the town is small, the common vehicles are bicycles including the taxis. The market is small and the pineapples are sweeter than honey (and only for 0.25$ per kilo including the peeling service).

Our host Brent lives in a nice house equipped with all western furniture and electrical equipment. He and his family, as well as the 5 more American missionary families, decided not to renounce on these luxuries since they will live here for many more years, and life in Uganda is tough enough at any rate. Here we were invited to eat good American food, most ingredients are imported from the US. We ate Pizzas, M&M and delicious homemade cookies and brownies. It tastes so well after 3 weeks away from home... These missionary families try to keep as much as American culture as possible. After all, one day their kids will come to the states and will have to integrate there. Once the American "bathing" girls and also the boys in their group were invited for an evening. We told them that we are from Israel. They thought a bit, and then one of them said triumphally, ah, Israel is where all the bombs explode! When we told one of the girls about Mt. Elgon, that we had to pay in Ugandan Shillings and that we didnÆt have enough local currency, she exclaimed "Oh, Nooooooooooo!!!" and looked at us sadly. Then we said "but Michael was willing to change money for us" and she hoorayed "Oh, Yeeeeeeees!!!" looking happily at us. It's amazing to see these (nice looking) girls and think that they will become nuns in the future...

The following day is the rafting day. The guide, Pascal, a French playboy, is very funny. When he hears that weÆre from Israel he asks immediately whether it's true that the orthodox Jews make love through the bed sheets. When we tell him that we sleep in Brent's place he exclaimed: "You stay with Jesus!". The rafting itself is very enjoyable. In the difficult sections we fight not to fall of the raft and in the easy parts we jump out of the raft and swim in the warm water of the Nile.

One more day is over and we are on our last day in Jinja. We go with "Jesus" to a village in order to see how he is working with the locals. It's interesting to see how the people live and behave in their natural environment, and also to hear the story of Brent about how he made the connection with them. We sleep tonight for the last time in our tent in Jesus' courtyard.