Category: Uganda

While walking back to my guest house earlier this week, I passed the office for Zanzibar Parasailing, and decided to pick up a brochure. It turned out it wasn’t all that expensive ($70), and since I’ve been able to do so much on the island for very little money, I figured one last splurge before I spend the next couple of days on the ferry and in airports would be well worth the money. I arranged to go on their sunset tour, so on Saturday afternoon one of the drivers for the company met me at their offices in Stone Town, and drove me to the beach in Nungwi, about an hour up the coast. Like all the beaches I’ve seen here, Nungwi was beautiful. I boarded a little dingy that took us out to the motorboat they use for the parasailing, and as soon as we’d stepped aboard, the boat captain, Bacchu, and his assistant, Omari, started unpacking the parachute that I would be using on my tour. Once everything had been checked, and I’d been fitted with a lifejacket and harness, Omari attached me to the parachute and started letting out the line. That’s literally exactly how it happened – no discussion of what to do (or not do) while up in the air, and I had just enough time to shout down that I wanted to do the “freefall” effect they mentioned in the brochure before I was up in the air, floating above the Indian Ocean.

For all its marketing as “thrill-inducing”, parasailing was actually the most relaxing and laid-back of the big-ticket activities that I’ve done. The wind picked up the material of the parachute as soon as it was unpacked, so I was just naturally lifted off the floor of the boat once I’d been strapped in, and as the line was let out, I gradually moved further and further upwards. Being so high up afforded me some great views of Zanzibar and the surrounding ocean, and it was beautiful seeing the sunset from such a unique position. Sadly, Omari apparently didn’t catch my last-minute request about freefalling, so I can’t report on what that involved. Still, it was great to be able to try an activity that I’ve been wanting to do ever since I saw people coming in to land at Regina Beach, after parasailing on Last Mountain Lake, when we still lived in Saskatchewan.

As I write this, I’m just a few hours away from boarding the ferry. It’ll cross back to Dar es Salaam tonight, arriving at around 6am tomorrow morning. From there, I’ll catch a taxi to the airport and hang out while I wait for my flight to leave tomorrow night. Then a few (like 30) hours later, I’ll be meeting up with Kelly in Los Angeles, and Mom and Dad after that, when we arrive in Maui. Not long now!

Yesterday I headed off on the last of my organized tours. (Feels like that word is going to be in heavy rotation in the coming days – last tour, last day on the island, last day in Africa…) This one involved taking a boat (not unlike the hugely crowded motorboats we saw while on Lake Bunyonyi in Uganda, only these ones had roofs and far fewer people) across to Changuu, also known as Prison Island. The island is about 5km northwest of Zanzibar, and was originally used to detain ‘recalcitrant’ slaves, and later as a quarantine station. It’s now privately owned, but still permits visitors, who come to see the giant tortoises at the sanctuary there, and to snorkel at the nearby coral reefs.

The tortoises were a total trip. They’re huge, and, like the Colobus monkeys at Jozani, extremely used to having frequent visitors. It was fascinating to watch them lumber about – it definitely gave me a new appreciation for the feats of that tortoise from ‘Tortoise and the Hare’. We were each given some shoots to feed them, which was fun since it meant they made their way over to us, and would literally be eating out of the palm of our hands. There was a married couple on my tour from Boston, who could not have more aptly personified every cliche about well-to-do tourists in Africa. I took a video of one rebel tortoise who had left the main sanctuary area and was walking along the concrete pathway nearby, and on the video you can hear the husband asking “Can we keep one?” They were completely delighted by everything we saw, so it was difficult to feel much antipathy towards them – particularly when they were so entertaining to have around.

We stayed on the island a while longer, looking at the remains of the detention centre there, and then again boarded our boat, this time to head to the coral reefs offshore for snorkelling. After putting on our borrowed flippers and snorkel masks (which we’d shelled out a whopping $2 for), we jumped into the water. It was amazing the first time you put your head under – one second you’re looking out at turquoise water and the white sand beach in the distance, and the next you’ve entered a whole other world of reefs and schools of fish that swim within inches of you. We spent about an hour in the water, just floating with the current and watching all the activity taking place below us. Despite having put on sunscreen that morning, it didn’t even cross my mind that floating with my back and legs exposed would necessitate another application. Although I’m kicking myself for the resulting sunburn, the snorkelling was by far the coolest thing I’ve done on this trip.

Once we’d made it back to shore, and I’d been over to my guest house to change and grab more water, I headed to Mercury’s restaurant for dinner. It’s named in honour of Queen’s lead singer, Freddie Mercury, who was born on Zanzibar in 1946. He only lived on the island until he was eight years old, and there’s still dispute as to which house(s) he and his family actually occupied, but Mercury’s doesn’t let that deter them from capitalizing on his name. Regardless, I ate some delicious fajitas on their beachside patio, and watched local kids try to outdo one another with ever more daring flips and back handsprings into the water below where I was sitting. Not a bad way to spend the evening.

Just two more days left on the island, and then I’ll catch another ferry across to Dar, and head to the airport in time for my afternoon flight on Monday.

Another day, and so I headed off on another tour. I’ve found that the easiest way to get to interesting places outside of Stone Town is just to sign up for a tour that goes there. With that in mind, yesterday I decided to go to Jozani Forest, a national park about 25km from where I’m staying, whose big claim to fame is its population of Red Colobus monkeys, a species that is only found on Zanzibar. Before heading to the area of the park where the monkeys are found, our guide first took us along a nature trail through the park’s forest reserve, which was a veritable pharmacy of plants and roots that had medicinal uses for everything from childbirth to prostate health.

Once we’d finished our circuit through the forest, we walked out to the main road, where there was a huge mahogany tree filled with monkeys. The park has both Red and Blue Colobus monkeys, but the Red ones are the more social of the two, and so most of the photos I was able to get are of that variety. They were incredibly accommodating to us photo-taking tourists, climbing down the tree to the low branches to give us better views, and playing and jumping together from branch to branch for quite a while. That’s not to say that some of the other people there didn’t try to still push their luck, attempting to touch (!) some of the baby monkeys, despite the mothers being right there. Not the smartest of moves… Even though I was able to see monkeys at various spots in Kampala and Jinja, it was still completely cool to see them so close. These ones looked quite different from whatever species it was I saw in Uganda.

After the monkeys, our guide led us down another path to the Mangrove Boardwalk. They were in the process of raising the boardwalk, because at high tide, parts of it were being submerged. There is apparently quite a large demand for mangrove wood from locals, who use it for building and for fuel. Since mangroves are host to a number of endangered species, the forest in the park is protected. I did the walk with a couple from Sweden, only the wife of whom spoke English. Nevertheless, her husband was very enthusiastic about taking my picture by the mangroves, despite the fact it took him 3 or 4 tries before he was able to work my camera enough that I was actually in the frame…

My transport back to Stone Town arrived just as we were returning from the Mangrove walk, and they dropped me off right back at my hotel. Tomorrow I’ve signed up for one last tour, which will take me on a boat out to Prison Island to see giant tortoises at the sanctuary there, and to do some snorkelling around the nearby coral reefs. This is my life??

On my second full day in Stone Town, I decided to sign up for one of the many tours that were advertised at the reception desk of the guest house where I’m staying. The descriptions of each were definitely written by a person whose first language is something other than English, but I was able to decipher the jist of things, and thought the spice tour sounded like it’d be interesting. Specifically, the blurb told me that it:

“Comprise some historical monuments drive to the countryside where you can see variety of plantations and herbs, tasting all the fruits and spices and have lunch where all spice you see on the way you on experience them. Heading to Persian bath, Mangapwani Slave Cave and spend hour on the beach.”

After paying my $12 to the guest house manager, I waited for one of the employees of the company that ran the tour to come pick me up. They arrived shortly after 9am, and escorted me and two other people who were also staying at the Flamingo to the minibus that would be transporting us up island. I ended up sitting beside a fellow Victorian, who had just finished a few months of teaching English in Arusha, and was spending two weeks on Zanzibar with her parents. Small world! Before doing the spice tour itself, we stopped to look at a Persian bath that a sultan had had built for his wife, in 1914. Inside, it contained literally the world’s smallest “swimming” pool. It was basically a space large enough for a very thin person to submerge themselves up to about their waist in water. From there, we headed over to the spice gardens, which were great – fascinating to see what the various spices look in their “natural” form. I’ve been struck a number of times over the past few months when I’ve come across fields or plants here that grow food we eat in Canada, but would be hard pressed to identify when it’s not sitting in a grocery store. Everyone else in my group wasn’t much better than I was at correctly guessing the names of the various spices that our guide, Naaor, would show us.

Since looking at the photos of the spices is probably far more interesting than reading descriptions of all of them, I’ve posted a Flickr album with pictures of the various plants and trees we learned about. I’ve set it up so that you can test your own knowledge of which spice is which, if you’re so inclined. There’s also a few pictures of the Mangapwani slave cave that we visited after lunch, as well as the beach where we went swimming.

The slave cave has quite the interesting (and disturbing) backstory: it was originally built for storing slaves, and its construction has been attributed to a slave trader named Mohammed bin Nassor Al-Alwi. Boats from the mainland would unload their human cargo on the nearby beach, and the slaves would be kept in the cave before being taken to Zanzibar Town for resale, or to plantations on the island. In the late 1800s, after a treaty was signed that officially abolished slavery on Zanzibar, the cave was used as a place to hide slaves, since the slave trade continued illicitly on the island for many years. In a somewhat jarring change of scenery, we headed from the cave to a nearby beach to go swimming. The beaches in Zanzibar are all insane – white sand, turquoise water, and no seaweed to be found (at least at any of the places I’ve been). I was, however, used to swimming in lakes and rivers in Uganda, and completely forgot that it would be saltwater I was diving into. Needless to say, the mouthful of water I accidentally swallowed cleared up that mistaken assumption in a hurry…

We arrived back in Stone Town by mid-afternoon, and I spent a leisurely evening reading, and eating dinner from one of the many street vendors near my guest house. Pretty great way to spend the day.

After a tearful goodbye with Kristen, I carted all my things down the street from the hostel we were staying at in Kampala, to the bus depot where I would be departing for Dar es Salaam. Amazingly enough, the bus actually left on time, so by shortly after 3pm my bags were safely (I hoped) stowed underneath the bus and we were on our way. We were travelling to Tanzania via Nairobi, and the first 12 or so hours of the trip were glorious. Our bus was barely even half full, so I managed to finagle myself the entire back row of seats, and was able to spend most of the trip to Kenya stretched out quite comfortably. We crossed the border at around 8:30pm, and I had no troubles getting my transit visa. After a few more hours of driving along bumpy roads, we arrived in Nairobi shortly before 4am. Unfortunately, we had to switch buses there, and the bus we were boarding didn’t arrive until 6:30am, which meant sitting in a very crowded waiting room for a few hours. They had CNN turned up on the television set, so at least I was able to pass the time catching up on the news from Egypt.

Although I’m writing this from a windowless room in a hostel in downtown Kampala, it was mere hours ago that Kristen and I were lounging in the huge, ridiculously luxurious hotel room that she received as part of a conference she attended, put on by the Canadian Consulate. She was contacted last week and asked whether she would be willing to be a “warden” for Luweero, which basically entails forwarding on safety messages sent to her by the Consulate. Quite an easy job considering that most of the time the only other Canadians in the area are ones living in the volunteer house with her. Regardless, she happily signed on, and last night we checked in to her complimentary suite at the Serena Hotel in Kampala. The first thing we saw upon entering the lobby was a book on the reception desk called “Leading Hotels of the World”; certainly an indication of how far from our usual dorm room accommodations this was. After being led to our room, we spent quite a while just oohing and aahing over the furniture, guest services, and all the fancy touches. Eventually, we managed to sort ourselves out for dinner, and headed down to one of the many restaurants located in the hotel. Kristen received free buffets for all her meals, compliments of the Canadian government, so while she enjoyed the massive selection of food available to her, I ordered a delicious stir fry. Once we were sufficiently stuffed, we headed back to our room and took advantage of the abundant hot water and (for Kristen) first opportunity in many months to relax in a bathtub. We spent the rest of the evening catching up on news on one of the two flat screen televisions in our room, and eventually made our way to bed just before midnight.

Hard to believe, but this past weekend was my last one in Uganda. To commemorate the occasion, Kristen and I took a trip to Jinja that we had been talking about doing for months. We’d been interested in taking a boda trip somewhere, and once we found out that there was a “shortcut” to Jinja that avoided going through Kampala and involved travelling along backroads, we were sold. Yosam, one of our regular boda drivers, was a natural choice for who to call – he’s been one of the highlights of my time in Africa – always friendly and entertaining, and we trust him. After working out the departure and payment details, Yosam and his brother, Patrick, arrived outside our house, ready for the 100km trip to Jinja on Friday morning. Apart from one flat tire shortly into our adventure, we made it without any problems, and treated Yosam and Patrick to lunch at the Nile River Explorers Camp. Kristyn, the other Shanti volunteer, opted to take matatus to Jinja instead of joining us on the bodas, and so met up with us shortly after we arrived. It was a beautiful way to get to a beautiful spot in Uganda, and certainly only added to my desire to get my motorcycle license when I return to Canada.

Last weekend, since I was heading to Entebbe anyways to pick up a new Shanti volunteer, I decided it would be an opportune time to call up Kristen’s hairdresser, Richard, and have him put braids in my hair, similar to the ones that Kristen had when I first arrived in Uganda. After a few crossed wires as to where exactly the appointment was taking place, I managed to meet up with him, and we headed to a store near the taxi park to purchase the extensions that would be braided into my real hair. With many bags of hair in hand, we took a boda to a salon in town and started the incredibly time-consuming process of plaiting. Each braid was done using only a few strands of my own hair, which were then woven with the extensions to create a braid that goes nearly a foot past my shoulder – far longer than my hair has been for many years.

Despite the fact that we’ve been back from Rwanda for nearly two weeks, it’s only now that I’ve managed to get my head around writing about our visit to the Kigali Memorial Centre. Since Kristen had gone there during her first trip to Rwanda earlier in the year, and Sune had already boarded a bus to Tanzania, it was just Ido, Jessica, and I who took bodas to the genocide memorial on Monday morning. The three of us ended up purchasing the audio tour, which provided more information about each area and exhibit that we travelled through. The tour began with the memorial gardens outside the main building, each designed to represent particular elements of Rwandan society prior to, during, and following the genocide. It was quite jarring to be confronted by the contrast between the blooming flowers and greenery of the gardens and then the mass graves and wall of names located in the same area. All told, the gardens hold the remains of more than 250,000 victims. The scale of loss that the country suffered in 100 days is practically incomprehensible, especially considering that the bodies located at the Kigali site account for only a quarter of the total estimated Tutsis and moderate Hutus that were killed in 1994.

Although our plan originally had been to take a bus from Rwanda back to Kampala on Sunday, the delays with visas meant that there was no way for us to visit the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre before Monday. Since it was important to us to be able to go there during our time in Rwanda, we decided to take a night bus back to Kampala on Monday instead. The extra day allowed us the opportunity to take a day trip to Kabuye, another lakeside town about two and a half hours outside Kigali. Sune, a Danish traveller who was a few months into a year and a half of travel, had plans to head onto Tanzania and so wasn’t able to come, but the other four of us boarded a bus Sunday morning and endured a very windy trip through hilly countryside. As had happened to Kristen on previous bus trips on Rwandan roads, the person next to her wasn’t such a fan of the twists and turns and ended up vomiting on the floor of the bus. Needless to say, we were very happy to reach our destination shortly after that.