The first few days

After arriving to Africa, and getting off of the plane, we headed to Ugandan customs. Customs was a small man with a crooked tie who looked at us, smiled, and gave us a good ol' American thumbs up, (as in - welcome to my country). From here, we took a special hire cab into the large city of Kampala. I can only describe Kampala as one of the most chaotic cities on earth. perhaps the population of maybe NY, NY crammed into an area the size of a small city in the south somewhere. The roads have no speed limit, or specific side you have to drive on. Just some suggestions to maybe stay on the left side of the road, (unless you feel like you need to be on the right for some reason, haha). Pedestrians everywhere, crossing and walking on the same roads they drive on. Here, cars have the right away so if you get hit, it was your fault not the driver. If there was an accident, you would just put the car in reverse, and drive away if your vehicle still could. There were chickens and kids and shacks made out of bamboo and other random material on the side of the road. Since Uganda has absolutely no trash or sanitation system, there were trash fires where they would burn unlimited amounts of plastic and rubber which put a constant black cloud into the air like a thick blanket. The air constantly smells of sewage and smoke combined. Our first night we stayed at a cool place called Backpackers (a hostel for travelers) and it was 12,000 chillings per person per night. (about $12) We would later find out that this was one of the nicest places in the entire city. We stayed here for only one night, but the outside of this hostel kept us entertained as there were monkeys outside all over the trees and grass playing, which we watched for hours. The travelers here consisted of mostly European aid workers and backpackers. Consistently the hostel had electricity for 3 days on, and then for 4 days off. It was the norm for them. Fortunately we were there when they did have it so we got our last opportunity to take a warm shower before we would wake up early the next morning to travel 8 hours into Gulu.