My crazy holiday plans

In my master plan to avoid Christmas in whatever way possible, I thought Uganda at Christmas time would be a nice escape. Unfortunately, not so much. Uganda is a very Christian country and essentially shuts down for the two to four weeks around Christmas. Many Ugandans travel home to their villages for the holiday. Many ex-pats use this time to either travel home (a surprising number do this) or to go on long in-continent adventures. My roommates have fled for a beach getaway in Tanzania and Zanzibar so it has been quite quiet and lonely around here as of late.

My original idea was to use this time to travel to South Africa. While I haven’t given up on a trip to South Africa during my stay here, it just was not possible to pull together in such a short time frame. Still, I have managed to arrange other Christmas/New Year’s plans which I’m quite excited about and because they are so sort of off the wall I thought it may make a nice blog post.

Christmas Eve I will be spending with a couple (a guy from Texas and an Irish woman) — two of the four white ex-pats I spin with. I know, crazy to have found spinning in Uganda but somehow I lucked out. Three quarters of the bikes don’t work and electricity often goes out killing the music in the middle of class but minus the nasty sunburn I got this past weekend, it is fun and a good workout.

Then on Christmas Day I’m going to travel to the bus station and board a bus to Mbale. Mbale is in Eastern Uganda, near the Kenya border. Here I will be spending Shabbat with the lone tribe of Ugandan Jews. I met the rabbi in the states, we became Facebook friends and the rest is history. On Sunday, I’m meeting up with a Ugandan I’ve met and we are traveling about an hour away to visit Sipi Falls and Mount Elgon – a waterfall and extinct volcano. While some may think I’m brave for going to Africa, my true courage will come in going to a volcano. For whatever reason, I seem to have determined that volcanoes are the natural disaster I most fear so this adventure is will be a true test of my strength!

On Monday I will take a bus back to Kampala. Traveling anywhere in this country is a challenge. You don’t buy tickets in advance and the buses and shared taxis don’t operate on a set schedule or at least I have yet to be able to find one. Instead, they leave when they are full. There is no air conditioning, your seat mate may be a chicken and the roads are their own version of a bumpy roller coaster ride. This is all hearsay at this point but it definitely sounds like it could be all true and quite the adventure. I guess it is Uganda’s version of its own snowstorm to make holiday travel as unpleasant as possible (sorry to all those who are affected by the snow!)

Ridiculously early on Tuesday I will be meeting up with a bus of other internationals for a five day trip to Rwanda. I have yet to meet the organizer of the trip but as it happens in Kampala – he knows three of my friends so therefore I think he is legit. He is a Ugandan who went to the UK for education and returned to Uganda to run his father’s bus company. He apparently knows every ex-pat in Uganda and fancies hanging out with us as much as possible.

We will spend all day traveling and will arrive in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda in the early evening. The next morning we will explore the city. I’ve heard there is an impressive genocide museum there which I’m planning to check out. Rwanda is known to be safe now – that is as safe as East Africa – and is actually developing at a quicker rate than Uganda. Fear is part of everyday life here – something I’ll definitely have to post on in the future. We will travel to Lake Kivu for lunch and sunset and return to Kigali for the evening. On New Year’s Eve we will leave Kigali early and spend the day mountain biking and hiking. We’ll bring in the new year with a party at Lake Bunyonyi. New Year’s Day we will wake up early and head to Lake Mburo for a boat trip and safari. January 2nd we will make the drive back to Kampala with a stop at the sign marking the equator in Uganda. All of the hyperlinks should work so feel free to click above to learn more about any of those places.

I never in my wildest imagination thought a near Kenya Christmas experience with Ugandan Jews (who will serve the Chinese food and what movie are we going to be able to watch?) and New Year’s festivities in Rwanda (do they have a ball drop with Dick Clark as the host too?) would be part of my story but it just proves life itself is an adventure.

To all those celebrating the season, happy holidays! (screw what Garrison Keillor says – I still will always choose the more inclusive Christmas/New Year’s greeting :))