Newfoundland bound

Ok, I know that I said that Israel was my last stop.
I lied a little.

I got back to Toronto last night and tomorrow morning I'm off to Newfoundland with my friend Peter for a couple of weeks.
We're bringing our bikes.

The plan is to fly into St. John's and fly out of Deer Lake (look on a map).

If all goes well, we'll be back in time for some delicious Rosh Hashana apples and honey.

Work starts Sept 24.

The countdown begins.

Israel - the last stop?

As planned, I'm back in Israel for a few days before I fly to Toronto. I have very little planned for myself while I'm here so I'll try to use the time to add some missing details and thoughts to this blog.
Shira, a friend of mine asked me questions about the trip like "what was the scariest moment" or "what was your most powerful experience". I've been thinking about these questions and more and hopefully I'll answer them on this the blog.
If you have any questions for me, just post them!

In the mean time, if you'd like to read an account of Rwanda from Adam and Maital's blog, it can be found here

winding down

It's been a little while since my last post, but I guess that's because I've been so busy.
After an excellent week in Rwanda with Adam and Maital, I'm back to being alone.
I'm in Kampala until I leave on Wednesday back to Israel.

Just trying to do a little bit of last minute shopping now that I don't have to lug around everything that I buy.

I'll write an account of my last few days likely when I get back to Israel.

I'm going to miss Africa.

Goodbye Hillary and Jon :-( Hello Kampala :-)

Greetings from the National Library of Uganda in Kampala.
It is a very unimpressive building, but I thought that I would take a look inside, and behold, I found free internet!!

I split off from Jon and Hillary a couple of days ago. They left back to Israel today and I'm staying in Africa for another two weeks. Yesterday I arrived in Kampala and was slightly culture shocked.
After spending 2 weeks in a village, Kampala seems huge and uber cosmopolitan.

Last night I decided to venture out to the Cineplex to see a movie.
The theatre is in a very large, very modern and very fancy mall. Definitely the "nicest" place that I've seen on my trip.
It was really really weird.
I totally forgot where I was. It was the first time in about 7 weeks that I didn't stand out as a white person.
It caters to lots of expats, and to wealthy locals. It has a sushi place and cosmic bowling.
Very confusing.

Anyway, I saw Die Hard 4.0 which was a good way to pass some time.

Today I'm just wandering the city, getting lost and then finding my way again.

The plan for now is to spend a couple more days in Kampala and then head off to Rwanda for about a week.

My 40 minute time limit is almost up, so I have to end here.

PS Happy Belated birthday to my sister Naomi and cousin Ira!

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!