Nairobi, Kampala, Gulu

My first few days in Africa went a bit like this:

Flew into Nairobi, got picked up by my friends driver, had a long sleep in their guest house, ate breakfast overlooking a lovely garden, went to the mall, had some samosa's, took some pizza home, watched Anchorman until we fell asleep. Sounds pretty mundane eh?

To fill in the blanks:

When i flew into Nairobi the driver was an hour late becasue Kofi Annan was in town so they had shut down many of the main roads. So I sat at the "Nai-robbery" airport attempting to look like i owned the place until he showed. Another girl from my program (AJ) was coming in about an hour so the drever and i hung around in his car. Little sketched out but all was fine! I went to look for AJ and Francis dissapeared. AJ and i wandered to find him and he was back at his car trying to unlock it with a coathanger. He had locked the keys in and had to bribe a guy with a very large gun to allow him to break in to his own car! Once we got on the road we were going at high speeds through nightime Nairobi. I was just thinking i was getting used to the crazy driving here when we set out on the road from Kampala to Gulu. That's a story for later.

Andrea's sister works for the UN so they have to have armed guards and walls around their property. Was a beautiful place. Your car is inspected before you go into the mall as well. People are walking everywhere which coming from a Canada (a canadian winter especially) I am still gettign used to.

Flying into Uganda was a gift. Entebbe is so lush and green (it is the rainy season) and the people there were soooo friendly! Max, our new driver, picked us up and guess what? He had a flat tire. so we hung around there for about an hour. the UPDF guys had smaller guns and were much more friendly/helpful than the Kenyan military/police (?) who were at the Nairobi airport.
My time in Kampala was a whirlwind as I was still finishing a project from my last class and our new classes began almost immediately.

The food around here is pretty good, tons of indian restaurants in
kampala and most everything takes forever! The service in most places
hovers on the edge of friendly but is mostly indifferent.
haha! i am actually in Gulu which is in northern uganda (were there
has been an armed conflict going on for nearly 20 years but they are in
peace talks now) and the Acholi ppl (that is their tribe) are soooo
friendly. We are going to an Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp on monday to work with War Child International so I think that will be the first real test of my ability to hold it together in the face of abject poverty while attempting to remember that there is hope for all of us in the world. Even if we do treat each other like, well, garbage, at times.

I really like Uganda, it is so beautiful. We travelled for 8 hours
yesterday from Kampala to Gulu. Travelling = Pothole avoidance
training. It is only around 300km. 8 hours. You do the math. haha!
saw baboons! but that is is for wildlife so far. and monkeys scare me
so i wasn't too impressed. we went over the nile and took lots of
pictures. The Ugandan People's Defense Force (UPDF) pulled us over on
the other side and tried to take our cameras because the bridge is
where the rebels once came as far as so it is a matter of national
security. This matter of national security was resolved with us
keeping our cameras AND pictures and the UPDF getting a couple smokes
and 10000 shillings (around 5 bucks).

I have a group meeting under a mango tree now. Will post more later!

Much love, Leah

Kelly: I am meeting with Invisible Children on wednesday. Anything you want me to ask them?