Eric's haircuts around the world: Uganda

This is the first part in a multipart series where Eric will share his impressions of various barber shops around the world. The first foray into the world of international hair salons was in the town of Jinja in Uganda.

It was getting close to four weeks since my last hair cut/shave. We ventured into a men-only barber shop run by an Indian man. There were a few of his friends also in the little shop and they were all watching a cricket match between England and India while also listening to songs on their cell phones.

The cut went well. The surprising twist was the use of a straight razor blade to trim my neck and around the ears. I felt a little nervous having an open razor blade scraping my skin, but it went well. I felt confident enough to also invite him to trim my new beard. Simple enough but a new experience for me. I highly recommend the professional beard trim and cleaning. The best part, and what needs to be introduced to the States, was the head and face massage that followed. He did some elaborate hand thumping on my head, stretched my skin, rubbed lotion on it, and applied some after shave. Overall, I would give it an 8 out of 10. It's the best yet, but it's also the first and only thus far. Stay tuned.

Things we ate on the street: Uganda

Bujagali Chapati Company, how we love you. Your simple roadside shanty lit by kerosence, where day and night you fill our bellys with freshly fried dough stuffed with egg and cheese (lunch), avocado and tomato (dinner), and bananas and honey (breakfast). The best 50-cent meal we've ever consumed. Thank you. Thank you.

Uganda: Rapids and paint fumes

Rafting the Nile River was an experience to be reckoned with: thirty kilometers and twelve rapids, four of which were Class Five. Mamma mia! The raft flipped completely over three times, and the whole thing seemed to be set to a testosterone pumping soundtrack of battle cries, war whoops, thundering beats and swirling water with rapids named things like the g spot, total madness, and the bad place. Holy cow, it was fun! Kathleen admits that twice she was under water a bit longer than she felt entirely comfortable with. She had to remind herself to relax and that she would float up, what with all the life jackets and helmets and such. But still, it felt like an awfully long time for the water color to lighten up as she neared the surface. The whole thing was an exhilerating ride over mammoth waves, swells, and bumps at the source of the Nile River. And the stories became more and more exaggerated over beers and bbq. By the time we get home, we'll undoubtedly be claiming to have done it blindfolded, naked, and without a guide.

The next day we helped paint a schoolroom with Soft Power, an organization that has done some amazing work in Uganda building schools for orphaned children (a sadly common plight due to AIDS and other disease), setting up a medical clinic, and developing advanced education opportunities. While we have nothing but great things to say about the progress of the organization, we did get a taste of some of the roadblocks of volunteering.

There were far too many people assembled for the work they needed done. In fact, we had wanted to volunteer for three days, but they only had work for us for one. And we met several other people who had the time and energy to pitch in, but there simply wasn't the infrastructure in place to make use of their time. Unfortunately this left some volunteers feeling frustrated. Two schoolteachers that were doing our painting project with us had organized their volunteer time months in advance....only to find that we finished the project within a few hours with lots of idle time to sit around. Not exactly what they flew to Uganda for...and they had had a similar experience during their volunteer stint in Kampala. Indeed, we have met lots of people eager to share their time and energy, but a bit stalled by the opportunities that exist. Not that this is unique to Uganda....coordinating volunteers anywhere in the world can be a lesson in patience and tolerance. And we applaud the organizations that try, and we have a huge amount of respect for everyone involved.

What is really striking about our time in Africa thus far is how virtually everyone we meet is involved in some sort of interesting and socially redeeming project....be it UNICEF in Kampala, aiding a hospital or health clinic, studying HIV in women, or building schools. We have really been inspired and encouraged by other travelers we have met.

And while we understood some of the volunteers annoyance at being underutilized, we had such a fun time playing with the kids, that we didn't mind. They even let Eric join their hack (soccer ball) circle while Kathleen answered endless questions about her name, her dad's name, her mom's name, her sister's name, etc., etc. The kids were dumbfounded that she only had one sister. Families of eight or more are the norm in Uganda(and a complicated problem of financial responsibilty, poverty, and education). At the school for orphans and the desperately poor, kids tumble from every corner to grab your hand. They all want to be picked up and held, a heartbreaking reality that they don't get to experience often enough. We could have held them forever.

The digital revolution also is a big hit with the kids. They love having their picture taken and then seeing it afterward. The moment you whip out your camera, everyone's clamoring over each other to get in the shot, elbowing our their friends and hamming it up. Very fun! See if you can find the muzungu in the shot in front of the African mural...

After our project, we returned to our Nileside backpackers dorm, where Jack Johnson has oficially joined the ranks of Bob Marley as the official voice of the chilled-out bohemian traveler set. Rock on.

Uganda: hippos in the moonlight

Uganda is all about bananas, bananas, animals, and bananas. That, and the amazing things that women can carry on their heads (potato sacks, water jugs, umbrellas, machetes...it's incredible!) Equally impressive is what what people carry on their bikes (loads and loads of bananas, charcoal, firewood, their entire family, etc.). All the children run after you yelling 'muzungu!' They are heart-breakingly darling. And sometimes they follow it up with demands for money, sweets, pens or water. You can hardly blame them, when you see how little people survive on.

We've had an amazing time exploring the National Parks of Uganda. What a jawdroppingly beautiful country. With such friendly and warm and gregarious people. We would love to return. In Queen Elizabeth National Park, we saw tree-climbing lions, elephants (they weren't climbing trees), buffaloes, and chimpanzees (who really do jump up and down and hoot and holler---just like in cartoons!). Our favorites, however, were the hungry hungry hippos. They look so fat and friendly and cute, even though they kill more people in Africa than any other animal. Kule told us that sometimes locals are stumbling home drunk and walk into them, and that's why the death count is fairly high. Man! We had one right outside our hotel room one night during a thunder storm: every time the sky was illuminated by a crack of lightning, we could see the hippo munching grass on the hotel lawn. Classic. Luckily we weren't drunk, and we stayed put behind our window.

A few beers did, however, help Eric hold his own in pool games across Uganda. Eric and Kule made a formidable duo and swept many a table.....which are found in the oddest of outdoor roadside places. Kathleen played it safe by playing the dutiful and supportive wife. We feared that they would have had to burn the table if a lady muzungu wanted to enter. No need to cause an international incident just yet. Plus, Kathleen's really really bad at pool, beer or no.


Animal factoid: warthogs are cuter than cute, and they walk with a real swagger to their step.


Cultural factoid: pay phones in Uganda consist of a regular push-button phone on a stand with someone there ready to dial for you. They list the rates for all the various cell phone companies and local and international calls. It's pretty cool to see business folks standing talking on them.

Kathleen read The Last King of Scotland while traveling through Uganda, which put a surreal spin on the experience. It's hard to believe the Idi Amin years were so recent. And even more incredible to see how open and trusting Ugandans are despite the horrors that have wracked their country. We had hoped to be able to pick up a few words of the local language, but as there are over 50 local languages, this proved to be a tad outside our reach. Ugandans by and large don't speak Swahili---particularly since Amin had wanted to make Swahili the official unifying language and anything Amin wanted is now considered an incredibly bad idea. So we were spoiled by using English all the time. But this seems to be the norm for Ugandans traveling in their own country as well.

We were sorry to leave Kule, as we liked him so much, so we asked someone to take our picture together. It appears that digital cameras were new to him, but it just might be our favorite shot to date!

Uganda: gorillas and muzungu in the mist

Hello Eastern Africa! Landing on the Nairobi tarmac in a light drizzle, we rejoiced. It’s the first time in weeks that we aren’t sweaty! All of a sudden everything looks completely different: the people, the clothes, the streets, the cars. Perhaps most striking is that all of a sudden women are everywhere, unveiled, and participating in commerce. In Egypt, we rarely got to speak to women, which took a bit of getting used to.

We had just a few hours in Nairobi….enough to spend three hours mailing our backgammon board back home. It was quite the cultural experience. We had to buy all of own packing material, then stand in line once to have our unwrapped board inspected. A second time in line to get the paperwork. And a third time to get the now-wrapped board mailed. All in all, it probably wasn’t all that much longer than mailing something from the Elmwood post office!

Despite the countless warnings and billboards and posters discussing muggings, HIV, theft, etc., we felt remarkably safe in Nairobi. But it was still a little unreal to see so many armed security guards and multiple locked doors to go through. We hightailed it out of there anyway, as we had a 14-hour night bus to catch to Uganda.

The bus was bumpier than the best rollercoaster you’ve ever been on. It was rather unbelievable. On several occasions, we were literally rocketed entirely out of our seats (feet off the floor, bum off the seat, hovering in space!). It was quite surreal at 3am. But once daylight broke, and we passed through Uganda customs, it was a fabulous panorama of thatched roofs, uniformed schoolchildren, women in brightly colored dresses toting babies on their backs and baskets on their heads, fruit-stands, butchered animals for sale, and hand-painted advertisements on all the buildings. Life’s rich pageantry along a red dirt road.

Upon arriving, we joined a safari, only to realize it was just the two of us participating. A little decadently odd, but fun nonetheless. We spent the next 7 days in the company of Kule, a warm and genuine Ugandan who taught us tons about life, love, and local fauna. Things got off to a rather inauspicious start when we realized that Kule had no idea how to get to our first night’s lodging. After over 11 hours of driving, and stopping at every corner to ask directions (from everyone from schoolkids to banana merchants), and a big rain storm, we finally arrived at Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. A destination as awe-inspiring and intriguing as the name suggests.

And penetrate we did! We spent an hour and a half slogging uphill through the forest to join a family of ten mountain gorillas. It was a truly indescribable experience. After crashing our way through jungle so thick that your feet wouldn't really ever hit the ground, but would simple land on a springy bed of foliage and undergrowth, we came upon them. Never before have we seen animals that seemed to be contemplating us as much as were were contemplating them. The eyes were so resplendent and humanlike. And the hands and feet so dextrous. And they were HUGE. We spent an hour that felt like minutes watching them roll around, stretch, sleep, carry their babies, beat their chest and snack away. We wondered if when we left, they gossipped about us.....'geez, those muzungu were really klutzy. and did you see how much that one girl was sweating?!'
It was an interesting time to see the mountain gorillas (which you can see in Uganda, Rwanda, and the DRC), because sadly a gorilla had just been killed in the Congo a few days prior. And we also saw the area where several American tourists were killed by guerrillas a few years ago. The animals are so beautiful and rare, and yet you can also see how impoverished the villages surrounding the forest are and how it must be frustrating to see wallets shelling out hundreds of dollars to see the animals, while their own kids go without shoes. While there is no excuse for poachers, we recognize the importance of prioritizing people in the delicate balance of nature. There are certainly conflicting theories on what's best for the gorillas and the local people. Dian Fossey took the deep ecology approach to save the gorillas at all cost. She definitely wouldn't have approved of the 'gorilla tourism' mentality. While others who followed her sought to incorporate a way to preserve the gorillas while also striving to integrate locals into the equation. It is people like Amy Vedder and Bill Weber who persuaded local governments to preserve the animals by proving the economic viability of tourism to struggling nations, and we enjoyed reading their philsophy. That being said, instability in the area (most notably in the DRC right now) still attests to the fragility of the area. We were encouraged to see the dollars making a difference in Bwindi, though.

We couldn't help but buy a carved gorilla from the cute (and marketing savvy) kids crafting them as we emerged from the forest. Later we learned that we shouldn't have done this as it encourages kids to sell their wares instead of going to school. Ack! Sometimes it seems you can't win, even when you're trying to help. But we're certainly learning as much as we can.