Doing Jewish in Uganda

Greetings from the brand new "Shalom Internet Cafe" in Nabugoye, Uganda.
Shabbat is approaching and with it, the sound of chickens being shechted (slaughterd in accordance with Jewish law) behind me.
This will be the second shabbat that we are with the Abayudaya and the site of Jews in rural Uganda is getting a little less strange.

For the past week, we've been hanging out here, (sleeping in our tent which is set up next to the synagogue)and being helpful in any way that we can.
We've managed to keep pretty busy so far.
The 3 of us taught a Hebrew class in the Haddasah Primary School (which was a little different than Associated Hebrew School where I went).
Since then I've been teaching evening math tutorials for the high school students (many of whom sleep in the classroom). Jon is teaching English at night and Hillary has found a student who she has been privately tutoring in Hebrew.
On Wednesdat we helped out at an HIV-AIDS testing clinic in a neighbouring village.

Most of my time in the past couple of days has been to help with this new internet cafe which will hopefully be open to the public on Sunday. I don't have a lot of technical expertise in this field, but they're pretty desperate for people.
Mostly I've been setting up excel spreadsheets and trying to develop the business plan (2 things that I'm decent at).

The cafe has 6 brand new computers that were donated by an organization in the States. The "cafe" is more of a small room with a concrete floor and lots of dust and flies. I really hope that it will be a successful initiative. I think that as of Sunday, I'll be the technical support guy until I leave.
After that, I don't really know what going to happen.

I still have lots more to say about the Abayudaya community, but I should have more time for that later.
Unfortunately, I have to go now because I promised that I would hold the chickens' feet during the schechting!

Shabbat Shalom

Toyota Prius, who needs it?

Hello from Uganda!

It's been a very exciting week.
On Sunday afternoon we boarded a bus in Moshi, Tanzania heading Northwest (through Kenya) to Jinja, Uganda.
The 20 + hour wasn't too horrible.
We were already familiar with the Kenya-Tanzania border crossing so that went through with little difficulty (even though it was getting pretty dark).
The ride through kenya was dark, bumpy and cold.
Hillary and I didn't sleep much because we were just too cold. (It's Africa! It shouldn't be cold here!).
Jon, who's sleeping bag was too large to place under the bus slept like a baby. His sleep talking was slightly more embarrasing this time, as it was in front of about 50 very tired African people.

We think that we crossed the equator at around 3AM or so

We arrived at the Kenyan-Ugandan border after the sun had come up. The two immigration posts are further apart than the Kenyan-Tanzanian, but still very walkable.

We narrowly avoided getting sent back to Kenya (and not allowed into Uganda). This was due to very stupid signage on the Ugandan side.
At one point, (I guess as we were walking onto the "Ugandan side" we walked through a large gate with it's door wide open and nobody standing in front of it.
Being the logical people that we are, we started walking through, on the way to the immigration office.
Just as we were crossing, Jon noticed that 2 other tourists were being yelled at by police who were sitting to the side of the gate (not in clear view at all).
The police were threatening to send them back to kenya for not stopping at the very open gate.
Apparently we needed to stop at the gate to show our passports, although there was absolutely no indication that we needed to do so, nor anyone telling this.
So, we showed our passports and proceeded with little problem.

The Ugandan Visa went up in price by $30 on July 1. That was a sucky thing to find out.

Our first stop in Uganda was Jinja, the supposed source of the Nile river.
We spent a day doing some pretty insane white water rafting.
We also visited the site where the Nile starts (they claim).
Its a very weird tourist site.
There is a statue of Ghandi there because some of his ashes were scattered there.

From Jinja, we made our way to Mbale.
Our ride was interesting as we were in a car with a goat and witnessed a pretty serious fist fight along the way.

After a night in Mbale, we headed north to Sipi Falls, which, in my opinion is the most beautiful thing we have seen there.

Our driver to Sipi used a very interesting technique to conserve fuel (which is a BIG thing here - people fill up with about 2-5 litres at a time).
We noticed that our driver would bring the car up to about 70km/h and then put the car into neutral and turn off the ignition until we almost came to a stop, then turned the ignition back on, acclerated again, and then back to neutral etc.
Needless to say, it took a long time to get there, but definitely good for mileage (I guess).

We spent a day and a night at Sipi.
Lots of beautiful hiking.

Now we're back in Mbale after in the middle of a visit with the Abayudaya.

The Abayudaya will have to wait for another post.

Last post from Tanzania

Shabbat Shalom from Moshi, Tanzania - The foothills of Mt. Kilimanjaro (sort of).

Next stop: Uganda!

My cousins are cooler than your cousins

Jambo!

I'm writing from my cousins' house in Arusha, Tanzania.
Our visit with them has been excellent.

We arrive after travelling for almost 24 hours from zanzibar (overnight ferry and a 9 hour bus ride).
right now they live in "the city", but they purchased land on the base of mt. meru and have begun construction on a new home.

"Construction' here looks a lot different than home.
Most notably, there were no machines.

Just lots of people with shovels, wheelbarrows and no shoes.

After hanging with the fam for a couple of days, we headed to a 2 day safari in Lake Manyara national park and the ngorogoro crater. Both were pretty amazing.
Today we saw a pride of lions eating a wildebeast (don't worry, it deserved it).

Tomorrow we'll head a little east to Moshi for shabbat before we make our way back through kenya on route to Uganda.

Everyone in the house is sleeping and the keyboard makes lots of noise, so I think that I"ll sign off here.

Kwa Heri

Mzungus hit the beach

We are now back in Stone town after a few days on the East Coast of Zanzibar in a town called Jambiani.
I use the term "town" VERY loosely.
There is really nothing there other than a beach, some guest houses, a school and some houses.
We spent most of yesterday looking for a fruit stand (which didn't really exist).
Luckily, at some point in our search, we found a nice Canadian couple who are running an NGO in Jambiani.
We chatted with them for almost 2 hours and then they told us where to find some fruit.

I ended my last post with some negative sentiments about the beach (which I still hold).
I'm happy to report that I survived my time in Jambiani (I even enjoyed it).
My camera, unfortunately, did not fair as well.
I kinda jumped in the pool with the camera in my pocket.
Now it doesn't turn on.
I hope it just needs time to dry off (its been 2 days already...)

Thankfully, the memory card still works and Hillary has a camera so all is not lost.
Hopefully it will magically start to work. If not, maybe I can get it fixed (that will probably have to wait until I get home...)

I've been looking for an excuse to buy a new SLR.
This might just be the ticket.

At this point, I'd like to thank my parents for buying me the camera (that is now very sick).
Its had a good run and hopefully it will recover.
refuah shleima camera ben chaim.

Anyway, besides the camera incident jambiani was fun.
we snorkeled, which was pretty cool and we got to go sailing on a dhow (look it up).
Our accomodation was also pretty fun.

Now we're in stonetown for shabbat (kind of like the old city) and then we head back to the mainland on our way to visit my cousins in Arusha.

Love from Africa
Shabbat Shalom

Zanzibar (a place with lots of other white tourists)

Sorry for the quick last post.
I have a whole 22 minutes for this one so it should be a little bit longer.

Right now we're in Zanzibar, which is an island off the mainland of Tanzania.
But, before I describe the scene here I'll backtrack a little bit to give more details about the end of our experience in Kenya.

The last major thing that Hillary and I did in Kenya was a 3 day safari in Maasai Mara national park (probably the most famous park in Kenya).
We were booked to go with a company called Planet Safari (and, in fact, we were booked to go with someone named "Avi"), but when we arrived in the morning, the nice people at Planet told there there is "a problem".
Avi and his friend did not show up, and Planet certainly was not going take only the 2 of us, so they decided to book us with a different company (that we hadn't heard of).
We weren't so pleased with the prospect, but we went along with it (what choice did we have?)

We were scurried off to a gas station about 20 minutes out of Nairobi where a van of 5 people who were on a safari with "Jocky Tours" awaited our arrival.

Safari is difficult to describe. It basically looks like all those pictures that you see (except this time, you're in the pictures).

We saw a ton of wildlife (duh). I think that my favourite were the lions and elephants.
Seeing lions in Africa was a little bit different than seeing them at African Lion Safari near Niagara Falls. (As a note, I really liked Africa Lion Safari when I went when I was around 7. The coolest part was when the monkeys jumped on our van and ripped off the weather stripping).

Anyway, I took about 500 pictures and it will take me forever to sort through them.
perhaps a project for when I get home.

As I think I already wrote, after Nairobi we took a VERY long bus ride to Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania.

The border was funny.

When we got there, the "conductor" of the bus just yelled "BORDER!" and everybody filed off.
No instructions were given and it was somewhat of a zoo.
We had to first find the Kenya immigration office and get stamped to leave and then walk about a half kilometre to the Tanzania office (neither of which were particularly well marked).
We asked the nice lady at the Tanzania office where we could exchange money (we weren't fond of the idea of exchanging with all the people on the street who were offering) and she said "back on the Kenyan side".
So I ran back to kenya, found an exchange office and ran back to Tanzania in time to catch the bus.

We spent a night in Dar (with Jon!) and then headed about an hour and a half away for our third shabbat which we spent in Pugu Hills.
We decided to camp again, which was a huge success.
We are now 3 for 3.
Pugu was an amazing place (getting there was insane, but I'll have to describe that later).

Sunday was dedicated to getting to Zanzibar. We took the "slow" ferry which was 3 hours (of nausea).
It wasn't too bad.
I followed the locals and laid down on the floor to try and sleep a little.

This is now our second night on Zanzibar.
We're staying in stone town which is the main town here.
Its old and amazing.
Lots of dark alleys.
I really really like it here.

Today we took a spice tour.
I learned the cinamon comes from the bark of a tree (who knew? - If you knew, then don't think that I'm stupid).

We're planning to head to the beaches tomorrow.
Apparently they're beautiful here.

I personally can't really stand sitting on a beach.
In fact, its one of my least favourite activities. I'll have to figure out something to keep my occupied (something that doesn't involved baking in the hot sun).

There is also the International Zanzibar Film festival going on now.
We saw a couple of cool movies and heard some pretty good live music.

I want to come back next year.

More stories later