The Band's adventures!: November 2011

*It's a long one to finish off Africa, so feel free to skip to photos at the bottom!

Hard to make a claim in ‘no-mans land’

We’ve had some surprisingly good times at Customs this trip. From Jack in Malawi who stamped us in on the front of a boat to the double thumbs up we got leaving Tanzania from a man with an AK47. Uganda wasn’t as fun.

It kicked off with a 20-hour bus ride from Arusha in Tanzania to the Ugandan capital, Kampala that required two border crossings - firstly into Kenya and then onto Uganda. The problem probably started when we decided to spend our last Tanzanian shillings on the only beer we hadn’t yet sampled in the country – Serengeti, which we’d had visions of sipping with the wind in our hair out the top of our pop-top safari vehicle in the Serengeti, but the barren campgrounds we stayed in struggled to have grass, let alone a shop.

Only two hours into the trip the beers had us frantically searching for a toilet at the Kenyan border. On the Tanzanian side we raced into passport control and then quickly through no-mans land where we managed to find a drop pit for a few cents to relieve ourselves. It was by far the most chaotic no-mans land, aka between country border points, we’ve been in with no footpath for pedestrians so we hurriedly weaved between semi-trailers on the dirt road hoping our bus wouldn’t leave without us. With eyes on the Kenyan customs office we sped towards it, narrowly avoiding a moving bus before Pip suddenly found herself face down in a giant pot-hole. Blood pouring (well a few drops at least) from her finger and knees covered in dirt, Pip tried to put on a brave face, saying over and over again “I’m fine”. A few seconds later some tears welled up and by Ugandan immigration all focus was on avoiding an embarrassing break down and trying to figure our how to put through an insurance claim for an accident in no mans land!

To relieve the pain (which despite what Duncan was told at the time, was pretty minimal) and to try and sleep with the crazy speed bumps every few kilometres Pip dosed herself up on valium. We’ve since learnt to request a seat at the front of the bus, where the driver slows down for the speed bumps – once his front axel is over the bump he speeds up sending the passengers up the back flying when the back wheels hit it. Three good hours sleep, but awake at 1am, Pip decided to pop another valium, only to then be woken at the Uganda border half-an-hour later very dazed and confused, particularly during the finger printing which had to be explained several times.

An early than expected spiritual awakening

Monica addressing the crowd with
gospel sensation David King

India is the part of our trip we thought we’d get a bit spiritual, but unbeknown to us Uganda found us spending time reacquainting ourselves with Christianity. Kicking off our Ugandan Christian exchange program we went to stay with Monica, who was married to Duncan’s dad’s boss when he worked in Uganda in the early 1970’s before being tragically killed like hundreds of thousands by Edi Amin’s thugs. Monica kindly put us up in her guesthouse, where we enjoyed a few days of having a lounge room and a nice big clean room with its own bathroom! Monica was flat out opening a church for a local community just outside of Fort Portal that she had built on some of her land. Keen to spend more time with Monica, check out the church and meet some local villagers we headed off to the opening.

It was a tough call for Duncan, with Manly in the Grand Final, but with the amazing 3G coverage in Africa we were able to live stream commentary and listen to 70% of the game before arriving at what we though would be a small event. How wrong we were. Four huge marquees were set up, huge speakers were spread across the fields and over 600 people had turned out, including pastors from all around the region, local villagers, a pastor from Scotland and a member of parliament. It was a big deal and an even bigger day - seven hours later the festivities were still going and for the first time Duncan was celebrating a Manly GF win without a single beer.

People being touched...

Hallelujah!

African people sure can sing and dance and we both got swept up in the excitement, even yelling out a few ‘hallelujahs’! They started to lose us when people began being healed by the Scottish pastor from asthma, arthritis and other conditions. Perhaps because we are cynical and not religious we found it a little hard to believe… We also both felt pretty uncomfortable when people began to be ‘touched’ and convulse on the ground. No judgement, just not our thing.

Introducing moment

Our next religious experience was living at a guesthouse with people either adopting or working at an orphanage where we helped out for a week with our friends Seb and Tahnee.

Each night we said grace, which more than once, one of us messed up by digging in before everyone had got their food from the buffet. However the act of reflecting on the day, people you’d met and what you were grateful for was something that Seb, Tahnee, Duncan and Pip agreed had some merit. We’ve since invented ‘moment’ which is similar, but instead of one person leading grace everyone at the table quickly says something that they are grateful for – perhaps something good that happened that day or something they are looking forward to. We love it and have been doing it for the past few weeks, so watch out for it when you come over for dinner when we are back!

78 kids are exhausting!

Amazingly forming an orderly queue

Given we were in the area we decided to visit Seb and Tahnee at the orphanage in Jinjer, and hopefully help out for a few days. As it turned out we stayed a week and had a ball. We won’t tell you too much about the amazing stuff that happens at the ‘Welcome Home’ orphanage because Seb has written extensively about it on the blog on his inspirational website www.100things.com.au Check it out and also keep an eye out for his book coming out on 1st December. We are working on our bucket list, which we plan to add to his site soon and it’s something that everyone should think about doing - the power of positive thinking and articulating what you want to do in life, rather than just plodding along, yada yada.

What we will briefly say is that the kids were adorable, amazing, inspirational…. but far out they are exhausting. Days were spent with them jumping all over us either calling ‘mummy’ or ‘uncle’ and all wanting cuddles, to be lifted onto the trampoline, to play with your muzungo hair or just hang off your clothes.

Eco lights before installation

Despite Pip being the one pushing to see if we could help out at the orphanage, it ended up being Duncan that really shone. Previously Dunc was scarred of breaking babies, but by the end of it was nursing newborns, playing with toddlers and amazed the ‘mums’ (employees) from the orphanage that he was able to organise the older kids into a line for some ball drills. Meanwhile, introverted Pip was often spotted on the edge of the playground with just a few of the quieter kids playing with her hair or having cuddles.

As well as helping out at the orphanage we also went out to one of the villagers where some of the kids come from to install eco-lights, which are ingenious. It’s simply a water bottle stuck in a piece of metal roofing, that is filled with water and in the day provides light in an otherwise pitch black mud hut with no windows. Amazing! Once again see Seb’s website.

“Stop the bus”!!

Another jammed ride in a mini-van from Kampala - Pip squashed on the backseat beside a mother with two children and a giant big mumma in elaborate clothing (complete with shiny puffy sleeves) and Duncan a few rows up on a fold out seat. The van owner told Duncan we were at Jinjer and we’d need to get out, which surprised us given we thought we were on a bus going only to Jinjer. The next thing we knew Pip was screaming “our bags are on the road” and Duncan was faced with the question - do I leave my wife on a bus or get off and save our bags? Whilst Duncan’s cogs were ticking over, ‘wife or bags’ Pip made the decision for him “get off the bus and get the bags” while watching the man who’d unloaded them be chased by a group of police down the road. A quick glance at each other as the van speed away, before Pip began a campaign of screaming “stop the matatu…let me off” only to be given blank looks by the other passengers. “Can someone ask him to stop”. “Does anyone speak English?” “Stop the van!!” eventually worked and Pip pushed aside big mumma and her sleeves and crawled over the top of her fellow uninterested passengers and off the bus about a kilometre or so where Duncan had jumped ship.

Meanwhile Duncan had returned to the bags and to his surprise found a group of men just standing around them looking at them “like they were a meteorite that had just landed”. Reunited we took a few minutes to get ourselves together before jumping on the back of two motorbikes with our heavy packs to arrive at the orphanage and straight into hundreds of cuddles. We really have no idea what happened, but think that it was illegal for the van to stop on the highway so they just drove off halfway through us getting off.

U-Gan-Do-It

David King capturing the lyrics for the next gospel No. 1

Most of our friends would have heard that one of Duncan’s proudest moments was last time he was in Uganda and a man emerged from the shadows to ask “I make t-shirts do you have any ideas for slogans’, to which Duncan pipped up “U-Gan-Do-It would be an awesome t-shirt and is so versatile, U-Gan-Do-it: kayak the Nile, U-Gan-Do-It: Trek with Gorillas”. It’s a much talked about ‘moment of genius’. So when we found ourselves sharing a taxi home after the church opening with none other than David King wheels were set in motion (For those not familiar with Ugandan soul pop music you can check him out on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxKVXwlRrtE.

As soon as Pip heard the words, ‘David I’ve got a song idea for you’ she cringed, but it seemed she’d misjudged it. Soon we were all making up lines for a U-Gan-Do-It gospel song – “Uganda feel the love, U-Gan-Do-It, feel the love. Uganda raise your hands, U-Gan-Do-It, raise your hand… David King then got out some paper and captured the creative genius at work and soon had a basic melody down. Already there has been some email exchanges and Duncan is near bursting point with the promise of an MP3 being emailed in the near future. Keep an eye on the gospel charts!

Got to love Euro's - umbrellas in the jungle!

Our closest relatives are elusive

With not enough time or money to see the Gorillas, we decided to go chimp tracking. Just smaller versions we figured, but unlike when Duncan was lucky enough to see the Gorillas sitting still in a clearing in Uganda two years ago, we spent four hours chasing chimps through dense jungle, getting rained on and failing to ever get close enough for a good view. There are always positives though – we trekked with a group of Belgian seniors who to our delight put up golf umbrellas in the dense jungle at the first sign of rain. They slowed down our tracking efforts even more than having to machete our way through the vegetation, but the bright colours at least gave us something to easily spot compared to the tiny black shapes of the chimps 80 meters up in the canopy.

Is mumma still hungry?

‘Is mumma still hungry’ is the best quote to date hands down from the receptionist at our guesthouse in Kampala when Duncan ventured out to the toilet after a big night on the beer. With no idea what she was talking about he just said a croaky ‘no’. As Pip began to stir she discovered two chicken carcasses beside her bed, assuming they’d been devoured by her ‘hungry eyes’ husband. Not so it seems. A night on the beer had made ‘mumma’ quite hungry, with the two forgotten chickens being demolished on top of two serves of dinner in the downstairs restaurant. We never quite figured out what happened, but all of the hotel staff were concerned about our unusual hunger and we answered many questions on it over the next three days.

All out!

Birthday upgrade

Pips Birthday celebrations at the Black Lattern Restaurant

The orphanage was just half an hour from some of the best white water rafting in the world, so we took a leave day to see if Duncan’s stories of the giant rapids had been exaggerated on his previous trip. Already threatening the stories, was a dam that had been built up river removing several of the big rapids but as you can see in the photos it was still pretty intense and we had some nerve racking spills into the thunderous Nile rapids, that while some of the safest in the world, still hold you under for up to 30 seconds thrashing you like a pair of socks in the machine.

After a half-day of drenching we went to the Nile River camp for a beer and we all decided to come back for the

View over the Nile from our Honeymoon suite (score!)

weekend for some R&R in the safari tents on the banks of the Nile. Two competing events were on the 16^th of October, but the time difference from New Zealand meant that the RWC final could be watched with a pre- drink before Pip’s special birthday lunch at the much flasher resort next door.

They had wine and it was nice. They had European food with a house specialty of pork ribs, which we doubt we’ll ever be able to top and a fantastic view of the Nile, interrupted only by monkeys that played around our table. Life was good, but about to be even better when we got chatting to the owner and dropped it was Pip’s birthday and our honeymoon and found ourselves being given one of their $150 a night luxury tents for $25, so promptly fetched our bags from next door and ordered sangria to our villa before saying a temporary farewell to Seb and Tahnee who had another week at the orphanage before meeting up with us again in the Masai Mara for safari.

Liquid plans

The only catch of the day (catcher not featured in photo)
A dorado

After our recent potential kidnapping/ bag snatching heading to the orphanage at Jinjer we definitely didn’t want to take it up a notch, particularly involving Somali pirates. We had planned to go to Lamu up the north of Kenya, but after two kidnappings of western tourists from their hotels in the past few weeks we decided to hot tail it south to Diani beach, near Mombassa - an awesome stretch of white sand for our last beach in Africa. Also a fishing mecca where we tried our luck.

Our first nights accommodation in a campground that was actually just our tent set up in someone’s backyard left a little to be desired, but for the next few nights we found ourselves a tree house in the jungle canopy across the road from the beach and expensive hotels. A simple shack on stilts that was 100 times better than a tent in a backyard, but with a serious monkey problem. To be fair we were warned when we checked in with a written letter about the monkey problem, but we weren’t ready for the one that terrorised our tree house. The cheeky bugger watched us unpack and as instructed we’d removed all food, but as soon as we were down the path we saw him sneak through a whole in the bamboo wall! Racing back we somehow managed to scare off the snarling monkey and ‘monkey proof’ the room, but he continued to terrorise us sitting outside above our door looking down at us with grit teeth whenever we wanted to go out.

Floating above the Masai Mara

A lion trying to jump over another one in the
first ten minutes in the Masai Mara

After an eventful reunion with Seb and Tahnee in Kampala, where we arrived off the overnight bus from Mombassa at 5am and sat in a coffee shop until 7am reading the local paper to learn that two grenades had been thrown into a bar and at the bus stop across the road that night by Somalians. On edge ourselves, Seb and Tahnee were beside themselves to find us there and safe after having been worried about the bombings impacting our arrival and understandably nervous about waiting at the hotel we’d booked for them right around the corner from the bombings.

A seriously lucky escape...just

A six hour drive to the Masai Mara managed to put the increasingly bad situation with Somali terrorists in Kenya to the back of our minds and we enjoyed some more game spotting – within the first 10 minutes in the gates we saw lions, zebra and elephants. It was looking good. After 7 days of safari in Tanzania Duncan and I were most excited to be in the Masai Mara to see the animals waking up from a hot air balloon.

Looking across at the other balloon.

Getting picked up at 4:30am from our safari camp, conveniently located on the edge of a shanti town, we got escorted to a van by a Masai guard who confirmed that the purrs we’d been hearing for the last few hours were a lion in the camp! Definitely awake we drove through the park at night to two balloons being slowly filled with gas, lighting up the area.

A brief introduction from our pilot and some practice sitting in our take off and landing positions the four of us were beside ourselves with excitement and all hoping that we would have to implement the crash landing position we’d just learnt.

Floating above the African savannas is definitely a once in a lifetime experience, unless you’re Duncan who has now done it twice. It’s expensive, but worth every cent to see the animals begin their day and get a new perspective of just how huge the national parks are. Simply amazing, particularly with a champagne breakfast at the end of the ride with zebra grazing nearby and a lazy driver who picked the four of us up hours after all the other passengers, enabling us to reacquaint ourselves with the bubbly seductress.

A home cooked African farewell

Thankfully the planets aligned and Dave Rogers and his partner Sarah were in Nairobi when we were and we got to spend a great two nights with some locals showing us the town. Aside catching up with one of Duncan’s oldest family friends, Dave we were most excited about getting some clothes washed and having a home cooked meal. Dave on the cottage pie and Sarah with some magnificent vegetables. Yum!

Sarah also runs a number of shops that showcase African artists and we stocked up on some amazing last minute souvenirs before saying farewell to Africa, which has shown us an amazing three months.

Next stop Nepal and India.

p.s. we will never promise to deliver a blog in a few days again – that was a month ago and we are having too much fun to commit to deadlines!

More photos

Jinjer and rafting the Nile