First Days, Again!

My first days in Uganda this time were very different from the first time. As a start, I drove from the airport to the volunteer house. It was pretty interesting and nice to be driving in an environment more fitting of my driving style, but only at first. Since then, I’m actually concerned about my safety anytime I take a taxi long-distance now. Today while driving, we saw two truck accidents. One had driven off the road and crashed into a mud-house. The other had driven off the road and flipped somehow.

Driving: No hands, No eyes

Poorly done roads but better than many nevertheless

Anyway, I spent the first day just unpacking and showing them what I brought such as the laptops, grater and kettle, all of which they love. I installed games on these laptops which have already shown some potential to become addictive so I feel a bit bad about brining that aspect of my culture but it will be alright.  

The next day, we went for a drive to pick-up a volunteer from an orphanage she is working at and I used my phone’s GPS to navigate which was pretty cool.  

The chocolate I brought the kids melted in the car so we cut it like a cake

We went to a big shopping center in Kampala on the way back and it was so weird. It was so much like home it made me all giddy. I never saw such a thing last time I was here so it was weird to see a huge range of foods, appliances and even insanely large LCD TVs.

Curiously, this charity box in an up-scale Ugandan shopping centre is for feeding chimps

That night we went out clubbing with the volunteer was great. It was nice to be out and about and the bouncer recognized me. We got pretty drunk on the absinthe I bought in Qatar. The 70% is awesome and it seems like the wormwood may even be doing something as it’s above what I can get in Australia and it’s the only way I can account for the large effect relative to the size.

Anyway, it’s strange as I haven’t done any true volunteering yet. I’ve just kind of been living it up and doing western things. The volunteering will start next week on Monday so I’m pretty excited about that. Probably good to ease into things as I have.