Day 161: Kampala

We arrived into Addis Ababa dead tired. The airport was so packed, anyone who was standing was practically circling around the occupied lounge chairs waiting for someone to depart so they could pounce and lay down until their boarding time. Luckily we scored two lounge chairs and were able to sleep for an hour or so before our next flight.

We arrived into Entebbe around one in the afternoon. It was gorgeous. After being wrapped up in a scarf and fleece for the past two weeks in Morocco, I immediately peeled off layers and dug out my flip-flops from the depths of my backpack. We grabbed a taxi and headed towards Kampala.

Entebbe is something of a UN hub for Africa, therefore, it didn’t feel like we were in Uganda at all. The first twenty minutes of the drive reminded me of Kentucky in the summer, green grass, manicured lawns, brick walls between western style buildings. On the outskirts of Entebbe, things began to change.

We were in Uganda.

Buildings weren’t nearly as ‘western’ looking. If they were made of solid brick or concrete, they were painted over like a giant billboard advertising everything from soap to phone carriers to Mountain Dew. People were everywhere. Walking to the markets with baskets on top of their heads. Sleeping on motorbikes. Dressed in immaculate uniforms walking home from school. Sometimes a child would see us and recognize how different we looked and would wave enthusiastically.

We arrived at Red Chili (our hostel/campgrounds du jour) in the afternoon and attempted to use the wifi before giving up and having dinner and climbing into bed around 8 o’clock.

Day 160: Casablanca – Cairo – Addis Ababa – Entebbe

Our 24 hours of airports and airplanes began in search for a grocery store. By 8 AM we were standing outside of a closed grocery store wondering where we were going to find an open store to buy Catherine and Brian some Thanks-sooo-much-for-letting-us-stay-at-your-place wine, and some eggs and bread (to make up for what we helped ourselves to the previous morning). We walked across their neighborhood to find another closed grocery store. We got some coffee while we waited until it opened at 9. Then we were crazy people running through the store in hopes we would be back to, and out of their apartment by 10 to make it to train on time.

This “day in a minute” is the only video we took for the day. It’s boring. As was the majority of our day traveling from one country to the next, only it didn’t start out so boring…

“I know you!” I heard as I tried to pick out candy for the school we planned to visit in Uganda. I rolled my eyes, thinking there was no way I could know someone in the grocery store in Casablanca at 9 AM. I glanced up in surprise. “Oh! Tara! Hi!” (Catherine and Brian’s colleague and friend who we had dinner with the week before, and who met us with their key two nights ago) I recounted our morning to her in a single breath. She looked at me like I was absolutely bananas and wished us luck catching our flight.

We made it with enough time for me to skim through an entire Marie Claire in the gift-shop.  Airports are good for two things: fancy perfume, and bored gift-shop clerks who don’t pay attention to me reading entire magazine articles in the back of the shop.

Our flight to Cairo was blissfully uneventful, and even showed a movie I enjoyed watching:

Cairo’s airport, on the other-hand, has to be in the running for worst airport in the world. First, we were told we had to purchase a visa to retrieve our bags and re-check them for our next flight. After we were able to avoid doing so, we had to hand over our passports for nearly 6 hours to airport security and carry both big backpacks around the airport with us while we waited for our next flight to check us in. The “free wi-fi” didn’t work. A bottle of water in the food-court cost nearly 4USD. And none of the six different bathrooms I went into in the six hours of waiting had tissue despite all of them having a bathroom attendant, for what purpose, I’m not so sure…

I could feel Andrew’s excitement as he surveyed those waiting at our gate thinking there were only going to be eight passengers on the flight. Unfortunately, we ended up boarding a flight that was nearly full and just stopping for more passengers after departing from Europe. The plane was packed except the one man sprawled across our two seats when we got on. It was 3 AM. He wasn’t pleased he had to sit up.