And not because we didn’t want to leave… we were ready to move on, but we quickly learned that leaving The Hairy Lemon Isn’t Easy. At. All. Getting a ride to “mainland” was fine, but then we felt slightly stranded with no boda bodas to be found and a giant angry pig chasing after us. We walked to an intersection of sorts where two huts sat by the side of the road. One friendly man smiled and I asked him where we could find a boda boda. He pointed in the direction back towards the river, and we walked back in what felt like the opposite direction we were supposed to go in. Luckily, there were a few men by the riverside and one got on his phone to call some friends to come give us a ride. They (as expected) charged us more than the fare we paid to get there, but we didn’t exactly have room to negotiate, and we climbed on our respective boda boda for another bumpy ride back to Nazingo to catch the first matatu of the day.
I wanted to photograph everything. Desperately. But, I didn’t feel comfortable at all on the super poor road we were on to whip out my dslr. Babies sans underpants sat in front of their houses. School children waved as we rode past. Women gathered at wells to fill their jerrycans up with water. Despite clinging to my backpack and back of the boda boda for dear life, it was a beautiful ride.
Apologies that the video above isn’t as entertaining – it was taken instead on the main road we took from Jinja back to Kampala.
Back in Kampala, we went back to the noisy downtown guesthouse, and were granted what we were told would be a quieter room. Regardless of the noise, I have never been so grateful for a white porcelain toilet in all my life. At the Hairy Lemon, there were eco toilets, think: plastic box with a hole straight down to the ground below. It’s a really great idea. Truly. There are even buckets of ash to cover any solid waste that you might leave behind. (Unfortunately, our bucket in our dorm bathroom was without ash until the last afternoon we were there.) There was also a resident gecko that I’m pretty sure enjoyed the shade between the toilet seat and lid. He liked to scare me every time I went into the bathroom. Thinking I was one step ahead of the little guy, I prepared myself to meet his acquaintance and gingerly lifted the lid, shining my light around the toilet to scare him off, so I could sit down in peace.
Only instead of one feisty little gecko under the lid, a writhing pile of maggots below caught my light and terrified me even more than a little lizard ever could. Holy. Cow. (only I didn’t scream out ‘cow’) I practically dumped the now full bucket of ash into the hole and contemplated yet again peeing off the cabin front-porch… That is, until Andrew came around to see what the fuss was about and assured me the maggots couldn’t ‘get me’ while I sat down to do my business. (Worst case of stage-fright yet, FYI.)
Needless to say, back in the city, I enjoyed a truly western style bathroom, and a bed that didn’t require a ladder to get into. Andrew magically figured out where and how to order pizza to be delivered to us. That, and the latest Walking Dead episode cures all terrifying bathroom experiences. (at least, for the short-term)
