Europe

OK, so now we’ve arrived in Ireland and basically finished the full-on backpacking part of our journey, but I’ll fill you in on what we have been up to in Europe (briefly).

Pre Uganda

Amsterdam We have now been in and out of Amsterdam a few times, by bus and plane, and we spent about 5 days there at different times. I didn’t really like it in winter because it was freezing and got dark at four o’clock…. But I can see how it would be lovely in summer or spring. The highlight was definitely Ann Frank’s house, no questions asked. It was strange to see the place that so much has been written about.

BerlinWe got an overnight bus to Berlin which at the time felt gruelling, but Ugandan buses were in a different league altogether (the benefit of hindsight I suppose). We stayed in a really nice hostel and met a few people, plus did a mammoth amount of walking and looking at museums. We also did a walking tour that was very interesting.
Probably the ‘best’ thing we did was go to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp half an hour outside Berlin. It was certainly the thing that will stick in my mind the most. It was especially good because it was the middle of winter and there were not many tourists, and although the air was cold it was a brilliantly sunny day. It was actually quite a beautiful place despite the appalling history.

Post Uganda

Hamburg

The biggest highlight for me was the smell of our clean clothes after the Laundromat… wonderful! The dock area was quite nice and various old buildings, churches etc.

Dusseldorf

Our first sight of the Rhine – it was a lot bigger and faster flowing than I was expecting, definitely puts the snowy to shame. There were lots of parties going on along the river banks, the German equivalent of beach parties I suppose.

Cologne Cologne is dominated by Germanys largest cathedral smack bang in the middle of the city. It was very impressive. Mostly just spent our time wandering around looking at various sites. (Sorry to be so vague about the last few places…. It feels like a very long time ago now)

Bonn I went on a pilgrimage to Beethoven’s birthplace on my own because Jemma was sick. It was really cool – but I did feel like the biggest fool taking photos of myself outside it (we have this ingenious gadget for taking photos of ourselves – it’s just a long stick that attaches to the camera like a tripod does)

Bruges We ended up here quite by accident, as Brussels was too expensive. Neither of us had heard of it or knew how to pronounce it, but it turned out to be the most beautiful city in my opinion (even beating Prague). Having said this, it was at it’s best on the Thursday night we first got there, before all the hoards of tourists arrived. Apparently there had just been a movie released (In Bruges, with Colin Farrel) which we knew nothing about having lived under a rock called Africa for the previous 2 months J Actually, I found this movie hilariously funny. I’m not sure if it was a combination of the Irish humour and the fact that we’d just been to Bruges, or if we were starved of movies. I’ll be interested to hear some Australian opinions. Lets just say, it was NOT what I was expecting.

Flanders Part of our visit to Bruges included a day trip to Flanders fields. I probably don’t need to say that this was an amazing experience. I know pretty much nothing about the First World War, and so the snippets of info we were given were very sobering. I did not know that farmers still fin tons and tons (literally) of metal in their fields each year from unexploded shells and every year at least one or two farmers actually die when they plough over unexploded shells. Unbelievable.
Blegium is also not compensated for help in removing all the debris and they have many years work of work lined up in dismantling bombs stockpiled in a nearby forest.

Nice We spent about 40 stressful minutes in Paris sprinting through train stations To catch our overnight train to Nice (which we made by less than a minute), and then about 4 days relaxing! The beach was weird, as in rocky (!) but the water was soooo blue. It was also strange to be sitting on a beach with zillions of people sunbathing but practically no one swimming. Like the good Australians we are we got in. Yes, the water was freezing, but not that bad!
While in Nice we went on a day trip to Monaco, Canne and other surrounding parts of the French Riviera. The wealth of Monaco was fairly disgusting, as was the tourists’ fascination with it (I suppose we can’t talk, we were on a bus tour of all these areas too…). For anyone who is a petrol head, we drove around the Monte-Carlo Grand Prix circuit. I got a very strange feeling as we went through the tunnel and realised that I had been on this road before…. Thanks to our cousins’ playstation!
I’m sure there is a name for the phenomenon that happens when you go to the cinema and watch a movie simply because it is the next one on, not because you particularly want to see it…. This happened to us with the Rolling Stones movie. It was on and it was in English, so we saw it, and I enjoyed it immensely. It might have been because we hadn’t seen a movie in months, but it really was enjoyable!

Basel This lovely little City is in Switzerland very close to the border of France and Germany. We had been sampling a fair bit of chocolate in various places and I have to report that the best stuff is Swiss. We also caught our first bit of Australian news for a while – Australia culling 200 kangaroos made it to the front page and pensioners stripping off in fed square made it to page 3.

Basel also had the best set of church stairs we have seen. As you can imagine, we have seen quite a few... but these were the most cramped, steepest by far. Fantastic.

Heidelberg Heidelberg is a really cool old city, the highlight certainly being the castle on the hill. It was mostly a ruin, but very very old. I love the (generally old) people who look after castles and run the tours – they are so enthusiastic about their jobs…. So entertaining.

Spardorf

The village of Spardorf is where Jemma lived for 10 weeks on exchange with Coti and her family. I really like her family and we had a fantastic week with them. The last night of the Erlangen beer festival was on our first night there – it’s the biggest festival after Oktoberfest in Munich, and accordingly was mad. We also went for a day trip to Nuremberg, walked in procession through the streets for Corpus Christi, cooked dinner for the family one night and went to Coti’s 4-way joint 18th party on our last night. It was great to stay in one place and with a family for a week, and everyone was so nice and welcoming.

Prague

Our last full-on backpacking city was Prague. We caught up with Louie from Uganda and his mate John, which was great…. Checked out the castle, went to an opera, lots of walking, got lost a couple of times… The streets in Prague are not straight, and they all converge on themselves and go around in circles. Plus they all have funny names. So it was quite difficult to navigate. That’s my excuse anyway. I quite enjoyed the changing of the guard at the castle; I don't know how they could be so serious.

I must say that both of us had almost had enough of sight seeing by the end of Prague, and were ready to see some familiar people in Ireland. So far everything has been wonderful, and it’s great to see all our family again! Thanks all for wading through the tirade of information!

Ugandan pick-up lines

Before I launch into this, I must say, Ugandan men are quite rediculously attracted to white women. It's because of the status and money that we have in their community, but still! We couldn't walk down the street without getting at least one marriage proposal (well, maybe that's a slight exggeration). There were some lines that were quite memorable:


Location: Match and Mix bar

Ugandan (to Jemma): How much do you weigh?
Jemma: What?
Ugandan: How much do you weigh? I want to pick you up...


Location: Outside Edirisa

Streetkid 1: Give me a kiss
Me: no
Streetkid 1: Why not?
Me: You're far too young (he was about 12)
Streetkid 2: I want our two souls to become one...


Location: Kampala secondhand clothes market

Ugandan (to Jemma): hello wife!
Ugandan (to me, having had no luck with Jemma): hello wife!


Location: Internet cafe

Ugandan: How old are you?
Us: 18 and 20
Ugandan: Oh! So young to be finished school! Are you married?
Us: No, we're too young
Ugandan: 18's not too young to be married... I really want a white wife (hint hint)


Bride price is still a fairly common practice in the rural villages of Uganda. One man offered to buy Jemma from the local guys she was with for 2 million shillings (about 1000 US dollars, a LOT of money in Uganda!)


This last one requires additional information. For those of you who don't know, Jemma and I do not look alike. Most backpackers are extremely surprised to learn we are sisters, except this one guy...

Location: Edirisa bar

Ugandan: I thought you two were twins. She's the tall one and you're the fat one.

Yes, that was an attempted pick up line. Fat is good in Kabale. (To read another article about this issue see a colleague's articles... http://www.edirisa.org/studio/?p=89 )

Rwanda - really a long time ago now!

The weekend after Easter, Jemma, myself and two fellow volunteers from the UK, Louie and Adam went to Rwanda. Where we were staying was very close to the border, so it was not as big a deal as it sounds, and Rwanda is very safe.... they even tend to drive on the side of the road they are supposed to! We got up at a ridiculously early hour to get there and it paid off, as it took only about half an hour to get across the border (sometimes you can stand in queues for hours). So eventually we arrived to find everything closed at 9 o'clock on a Saturday morning, as once a month all of Rwanda (or at least Kigali, the capital where we were) shuts down for the morning. So we just sort of wandered around and got a feel for the place.... traffic lights! shopping centres! lots of sealed roads! People speaking French!
By the time it got to lunchtime we were quite desperate for some food, and we ended up eating in a local cafe. This could have been a disaster (some local food is disgusting, like matooke - more later), but it was actually excellent. And so we discovered that the average Rwandan eats much nicer food than the average Ugandan. I think a huge plate of chips, rice, goat, greens and other stuff cost less than $1.
After our exotic lunch we headed to the main tourist destination in Kigali, the genocide memorial museum. This was, as you can imagine, both very interesting and very harrowing. The thing I found hard to deal with was the reactions of other Africans also seeing the museum.... there was a lot of grief and horror being openly expressed. And what can you think in a situation like that except please, never again.
The following day we headed out to a church site from the genocide that had been left as is.... only the bodies were removed and it was full of thousands of clothes. It is unbelievable to think that this only occurred just over 10 years ago. Which brings me to my next point. People have asked what Rwanda was like, if there is any evidence of the genocide.....
Kigali felt a bit too nice, like they have tried to cover up what happened with development and infrastructure. I suppose the money for that came from guilty-feeling countries who didn't do anything to help Rwanda at the time. I get the feeling that the genocide is never mentioned by local people, and everything is done to prevent differences between tribes of people being mentioned. For example, no one is ever referred to as a Hutu or Tutsi (even if they are.... and in Uganda people are identified by their tribe all the time). Another international that I met at one stage was telling me that it is easy to even inadvertently upset people about various things. For example, she offered a local that she know a biscuit, and he said 'no, those biscuits remind me of the genocide'. It turns out he hid in the back of a shop and had only this particular brand of biscuits to eat for a week. For course, I'm sure he was not offended by the question, but it seems that recent history is well and truly within memory for a lot of people.

Scouts at Bufuka

Taken from: http://www.edirisa.org/?language=1&blog_archive=2008-02


On Saturday morning the hill next to Bufuka Primary School was turned into some sort of circus when a group of scouts and acrobats from Nyabikoni Secondary School came to visit us for a couple of hours. The scouts, all nicely dressed in their uniforms, did some parading and performed a couple of small, funny skits which made the watching kids giggle. But the giggling got even louder when during the traditional Bakiga dance some of our internationals tried their best to imitate the locals.Then later, closely watched by a number of teachers' and children's eyes, the acrobats started their show by somersaulting down the hill and almost hitting the audience. After that they definitely had everybody’s attention for the next numbers which included the building of a scarily unstable-looking human pyramid.
27. Feb. 2008

Can Puppets Talk Rukiga?

Taken from: http://www.edirisa.org/?language=1&blog_archive=2008-03

Watch this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CENMpRQGiJo

Saturday 8 March 2008 was an exciting day for the children of Kyabahinga and Bufuka primary schools who got to see a week of hard work come together in a puppet show. The show, entitled "Moreen and her friends", was performed by Smiles volunteers using marionette puppets made by the children during the week. The children also creativily painted scenery including a lake, forest, meadow, village, sunset and starry night. Marionette puppets were made from materials like cotton, string, and paper and decorated very nicely with markers. Finger puppets were also made with paper and ingeniously designed butterflies made with toilet paper rolls. The story of "Moreen and her friends" is about a girl called Moreen who can talk to animals. Of course all her friends laugh at her... but when she can help a scary dog who only wants his leg fixed everybody realises that understanding animals is a good talent to have.The narrator and butterflies spoke in both English and Rukiga, which was cause for much amusement hearing Bazungu speak "fluent" Rukiga.

The Story About Grand Mother

I found this story really hilarious (for those of you who don't know, Mum's name is Esther), so i decided to write it down, word for word.

The Story About Grand Mother

My name is Turinawe Melon
P7
15 years old

Grandmother is called Esta
Every day Grandmother goes to dig
Everyday Grandmother go to party anywhere
Grandmother like party so much
She like party better than dog
But my Grandfather don't like party.
One day Grandmother go to party and Grandfather go to party
When my Grandfather gave meat
But my Grandmother don't gave meat
When my Grandmother start crying like baby all the people of that party is laughing.
My Grandmother very old she have 99 year old
But she like party like dogs
My Grandmother called Esta

Just brilliant. The aim of the exercise was for kids to write down a creative funny story... some of the stories were not funny at all, like people going to the market to buy food and losing the money and being really upset. But some were, like cows and insects and birds playing football.

Do some Yoga in the Water!

Taken from: http://www.edirisa.org/?language=1&blog_entry=517

Although we are rapidly approaching the rainy season*, the sun without fail comes out at twenty past three each day for swimming lessons at three thirty. Each day we have one class from Bufuka Primary School, one week girls, the next week boys. P6 and P7 are quite good swimmers already and most of them can even leave the swimming platform and swim in the lake. There is a an artificial island 100 m out in the lake which they can swim to and practice diving off. For the other , swimming lessons are an exercise in becoming confident in shallow water - this means lots of games and encouragement.

Our people live very near the lake and use canoes regularly, however, most locals cannot swim, and are excessively afraid of water. Therefore it is extremely important to familiarise children with water so they don't irrationally fear the lake.The main challenge in teaching Bufuka Primary School how to swim is the language barrier. It is difficult to tell a child "Don't panic! I won't drop you!" when you don't speak a word of Rukiga. So swimming teachers have learnt the essential Rukiga words for swimming ...

- teera amaguru - kick with your legs,

- kola bati emikono yawe - do like this with your arms,

- guruka - jump,

- yiruka - run,

- ija hanu - come here,

- gyenda kuri - go away,

- and yoga - swim, which is of course not very useful if they don't know how to swim! :-)

* It is amazing how everybody talks about a new rainy season approaching - we have never noticed the previous ones going away! ;-)

24. Mar. 2008