On beautiful islands and handwashing towels

On Saturday Zoë and I stepped off the streets of Kampala into a quiet beach camp on Lake Victoria. Or, more accurately, we took two matatus, a boda, and a three-hour ferry to a quiet beach camp on Lake Victoria.

Hornbill beach camp is in the Ssese islands, a scattering of islands in Lake Victoria that are reachable from Entebbe only by a once-a-day ferry. The islands have beautiful forests and white beaches and Hornbill is situated right on the beach. For Shs15,000 (about $7.50) a night, we stayed in a little banda with two beds and mosquito nets.

The scattered bandas were painted in colorful designs and small tents were pitched haphazardly around the camp. The long drop, sink, and showers-without-doors stood on one side of the camp and the tiny kitchen stood on the other. Hammocks were slung in trees down near the beach and a large campfire burned nearby each night.

As Zoë described it, the camp had character. :)

On Sunday we walked into the tiny village of Kalangala for chai and chapattis and then spent the day reading and relaxing on the beach and in the hammocks. Both nights, we watched the glorious sunset over Lake Victoria and then ate dinner by lamplight with some fellow campers – a French family the first night and two British Uni students backpacking through East Africa the second.

Monday morning we took the 8AM ferry back to Entebbe and made our way back to work. The weekend was relaxing and beautiful, it was a nice change from bustling Kampala and I enjoyed the time away a lot.

Work continues to be busy. Last week I did a story about health workers who survived Ebola and were supposed to have been compensated by the Ministry of Labor, but haven’t been…, attended the launch of new HIV/AIDS publications, and wrote a story about a radio journalist being pressured by the police after broadcasting an episode on unresolved murder cases in Uganda. The last couple of pieces I’ve written have only been published as briefs, though, which has been a little frustrating.

Melanie returned home yesterday (they are finalizing their plans to head to the US for surgery later this week) and Penny is back with us now too. She was admitted to Makare University and will be beginning there in a couple weeks.

Here are two discoveries I’ve made about myself lately:

1. I hate washing clothes by hand. Especially towels.

2. Shillings make me stingy. I think it’s the fact that everything is in thousands.

“The camp makes all its money on food,” I complained to Jason on the phone yesterday. “Dinner cost – I did a quick calculation in my head – three dollars!”

“Three dollars?” Jason said.

“Oh,” I said, “yeah.”