The long ride over

I'm posting this on Tuesday morning in Jinja, Uganda. I wrote it Sunday night but this is the first time I've had a good enough connection to get this on so ....

I'm sure there are worse ways to go to Africa than ethiopian airlines, but I haven't found it yet. I think the stewardress timed her food and drink distributions on my sleep schedule. Every time I was able to nod off in my my seat/cocoon she would come by and slam my seat tray down ask me if I want some thing to eat/drink. Emerging from five minute hibernation, I occasionaly got out a cohesive sentence that would result in a meager ration. Most of the time I didn't and she would move to the next row, forcing me to wait until she came back through with the scraps. this continued through three crew changes in four cities, until 24 hours later wheels touched down in Entebbe. But the journey wasn't over yet. We had a four hour ride over crappy roads to get to Jinja. But with leg room, fresh air, and space to spread out that ride was actually a lot of fun. The streets and roads reminded me a lot of Cote D'Ivoire, and after we got out of the city we were surronded on our skinny road by lush forests that cast scenic shadows across the road.

Jinja sits on the north easterly section of Lake Victoria. The headwaters of the Nile River come out of Lake Victoria and make some great rapids that I'm going to kyack and raft this coming weekend. It is also the seat of Ugnadan military officer training, where I'll be working for the next two weeks. The hotel isn't as nice as Club du Lac Tanganyika in Burundi. But my room does have a great view of Lake Victoria as it narrows down and eventually becomes the Nile river. And no bed bugs here! I had to spray half a bottle of inseticide on my matress there so I wouldn't get eaten alive. But the room is a little monastic. You have a bed, small desk, and a chair. That night some of the guys took me to a Muzunga(White) bar called Nile River Explorers where I met lots of people from New Zeland and Australia. I guess the Class V rapids brought most of them here. It's a real hole in the ground type of place( I can't say hole in the wall because it was in the middle of nowhere).