Nicola vists Mum and Dad
on Sabrina and Geoff Slide in Kamwenge (Uganda), 23/Nov/2009 16:12, 34 days ago
We had a brilliant time with Nicola and managed to visit lots of places as well spend some time showing her some of the schools we work in.We visited Jinja which is the Source of The Nile. The river leaves Lake Victoria here, travels through Uganda, Sudan and Egypt and ends up in the Med, a journey that takes 3 months from beginning to end. Could make for a long game of Pooh Sticks!We showed her the sights of Kampala including the chaotic bus park, met some other volunteers and sampled after work drinks at an Ethiopian owned cocktail bar, stayed at a hostel overlooking rapids on the Nile and drove her back to Kamwenge along some very potholed roads. She agreed we do live in the middle of nowhere.During the week she went out to schools with both of us. Geoff claims he provided the most exciting visit as he took her on a motorbike, got a puncture which was repaired at the school for one pound, and were soaked by a massive thunderstorm on the way back.The middle weekend was at Queen Elizabeth Park, where we saw warthogs and mongoose wandering through our hostel grounds, elephants, Uganda kob and buffalo on a game drive, crocs and giant monitor lizards on a boat trip and a hippo outside the bar of the nearby lodge when we went there for a meal. Sounds like the start of a joke - a hippo wandered into a bar . . . - but that's what it was like.In Kamwenge she met lots of our Ugandan colleagues and was asked many times if she was going to buy a house here! In fact we think she was more popular than us as everyone still asks after her.The last weekend we went to Entebbe and got up close and personal with some very friendly vervet monkeys in the Botanical Gardens including a mother who carried her baby by walking along on her front legs only - difficult to explain but lovely to look at.And then she caught the flight home and we were very sad to see her go but glad that we had been able to show her our life out here.