the Ssese Islands...

Wow! What an amazing weekend! We ventured off to the Ssese Islands in middle of Lake Victoria to a quaint little beach “resort.” After a 2 hour van ride through the cities and a 3 hour ferry ride to the island, we finally arrived. Tired and gross, the staff eagerly greeted us with tea already served! (tea breaks are VERY important here) We then got taken to the Tahitian-looking huts where we stayed for the weekend.

Now about the island… words can hardly express the beauty these eyes have seen. The view from our huts into the lake was breathtaking, with the mountains in the background, perpetually covered by a foggy haze, making for an AMAZING sunset. The birdlife was so diverse and fascinating, along with some other creatures I will talk about in a second entry J .

The main source of survival on the Ssese Islands is fishing. So all around the shores are these small fishing villages. On Saturday, a village native called Thompson took us on a nature hike all over the islands, including through these villages. Brown, homemade huts made of branches and mud scattered the area, filled in by cloth lines, animal pens, and of course TONS of children. The excitement seen in these children’s eyes at the sight of us Mzungos is one that neither words nor pictures could capture. The men communed around a bamboo container filled with homemade alcohol made of millet. The all sipped out of the same container with these long bamboo shoots they used as straws. It was fairly comical by American standards.

We continued on our hike through the grassy fields and into the dense jungle in the middle of the island. Pretty much every time I looked up, I expected to see Tarzan swinging through the trees! Vivid green plants and trees surrounded us as we trekked through. Taking pictures of these the things I saw can barely capture the beauty. I think it is going to be difficult to express to you all what I’ve seen when I finally get home.

It stormed that first part of each day, but I think it may have been the first time I actually found rain beautiful. We spent our mornings in meetings and playing cards on our porches as the rain came down all around us. Saturday evening, the resort has traditional African dancers come in to give us quite a show!

Sunday we had our own church, and spent the afternoon laying out in the sun and reading our books for class. My roommate had us pause for a second as she joyfully reminded us that THIS is our semester! While our fellow college students are in class, freezing to death, and depressed b/c of gray stupid winter… WE are laying out on the beach! How fortunate we are!

We got up early this morning to start are trip back to school and finally got to exchange our money in Kampala. The Ugandans use “shillings” instead of dollars, and most of the money is in terms of thousands. One of our dollars is about 2000 shillings. A coke is 500 shillings, which costs us about 25 cents. So now we are all excited to go into town and buy chocolate and peanut butter b/c the cravings are nearly uncontrollable. (rice and beans just doesn’t cut it sometimes)

This week we finally start a regular schedule of classes and can begin some sort of routine here. I think we are all ready for this to happen. I’m proud to say that I survived my first week in Africa!