First impression of Uganda

My adventure Uganda can start… Thuesday, 15. March at 7 o’clock in the evening I was at the Zurich airport with some familiar and friends and had a drink together. Then the time was come to say goodbye to Switzerland, family and friends. After a sleepless night in the flight I arrived at Dubai. There the next airplane took me from Dubai to Entebbe in Uganda. The hot weather was the first thing that I remarked. After passing the passport control I took my luggage and went to the arrival hall. There should be someone that pick me up and bring me to the guesthouse. This pick-up was organised and confirmed by the guesthouse two days before, but no one waited at the airport for me. After waiting a while, the women at the information phoned to the guesthouse and they organised quickly a taxi driver. On the way the guesthouse I was impressed by the green landscape and the orange roads of Uganda. After the check-in and a tour through the ICU guesthouse in Kampala (www.guesthouse-uganda.com) I eat with some other guests dinner and I went to bed because I was very tired.
The next morning (16. March 2011) I went with Johanna from Germany and Megan from the USA to a guided city trip through the capital of Uganda, Kampala. Our guide, Simon, a young guy from Kampala showed us the down- and the uptown of city, the public transports and his organization (www.kawempeyouthcentre.org) in Kawempe where is working as a computer teacher. First, we stood at the road next to our guesthouse and waited for a taxi (there are two types of taxis, the one is a normal car with place for 4 people the other is a small bus with place for 14 people). A small bus passed and we drove to the centre city of Kampala. We walked through the down town, which is full of people, shops and cars. The pollution from the cars/taxis is extremely high in the whole city. After passing the clothes market, which was very small due to the fact that on the right and on the left side were clothes everywhere, we went the down-town. This part is cleaner and less busy in terms of people and cars on the road. In a supermarket we bought a SIM card for my phone and an internet stick. Furthermore we went through the slum of Kampala where the people are very poor and the life under catastrophic life conditions. For lunch we had different African food, which is good but I need to get used to.
A friend of Megan, who lives in an beautiful apartment(!) in Kampala invited us to have dinner in the evening. So Megan, a friend of her and me went to the supermarket and bought some food for the dinner, which we cooked then at the apartment. Pasta with eggs, cheese and meat – it was very very good. With a normal taxi and an endless discussion for the price with the taxi driver we arrived at our guest house. The next morning Megan and the friend left the Uganda direction Ruanda for their projects.