last hour in Uganda

After the long 6hr drive to Entebbe from mbarara, I stopped for lunch at the Imperial Hotel.  There I had lunch and gazed longingly at the beach on Lake Victoria before heading to the airport.  It took me 38 hours to get from mbarara to my cousins house near paris.  I am so glad that is over with.

final days in mbarara

So I am spending my last day in mbarara. I went and had a delicious lunch of matoke, posho and gnut sauce with peas. Yum!  I like the food here! Gnut sauce pretty much tastes like a peanutbutter sauce, it is so delicious.  I ate lunch at a restaurant called Organic.  While I was eating there, the owner started spraying bug spray on the placemats on the table, effectively counteracting the organic produce he was serving.  Mbarara is a place of milk and butter.  It has a large cattle culture and it is easy to find yogurt here (so happy!). They also have lots of mushrooms.  So I have often had mushrooms sautéed in butter which is delicious!

So the rest of the pictures in this post are of my walks around mbarara. The motorcycles are everywhere and are taxis that are called boda bodas.  You just yell boda boda and you can get a ride anywhere. I don’t use these because its just as easy to walk everywhere.  Apparently all drivers are addressed as boda.

Another interesting cultural tidbit I learned here was that in the culture in mbarara it is taboo for women to whistle or to ride bikes.  If you do this, they will yell at you “are you growing a penis!”. Very interesting.

On my walks around my neighborhood all of the streets are unpaved.  There are some day cares with adorable children, as well as houses, some really nice expat quarters, some that apparently belong to Musevini and some a 

Lake Mburu

I spent a day at a national park at Lake Mburu.  I saw lots of animals and took a boat ride.  It was so beautiful!

Impala

Zebras

More impala

Butterflies! They were everywhere!

Lake Mburu

Papyrus

Weaver birds..the men build the nest and the women choose to mate based on the quality of construction

Water buffalo. The old ones go off by themselves, leaving the herd to go sit in the water alone.

The boat ride! We saw so many hippos...they are pretty scary because you don't know how big they are.

Blue kingfisher

Crocodile...baby

More water buffalo

Lake

Hippos

Ankole Cattle

A typical village house

I wish I could see real gorillas, but the trip costs a lot of money $700

Nneka and I at the cultural center

A roasted pig from the pig roast.

more from uganda

Ugandan golf course

The guest house

The view

Nneka's birthday pineapple muffins...these were to throw her off track from the real surprise

A traditional ugandan passing off ceremony of the bride to the husband

It was about 20 minutes outside of mbarara and on a hill..so beautiful view. I spent most of the time staring at this since I don't understand Runyakole. 

You can see the tents for the ceremony

Nneka's second birthday and cake

Beautiful!

divonne les bains

Before my work trip to Uganda, I went to a WHO meeting for guideline development on health workforce education. Here are a few photos of the cute town it was in.  The hotel was right near the lake and there was a circus in town visiting.