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Slumming it, Kampala style
Blog: Kampala Days (Diary of a Mzungu) - 28 January 2012
Rubbish collection is managed privately in Kampala: you pay through the nose for a private contractor to collect your rubbish once a week. Local people just burn their rubbish, and maybe that’s all the private contractors do? And so, a week after moving house, and reluctant to burn, I asked Alex how I could dispose [...]
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Vagobond Travel Museum Week of January 27th, 2012
Blog: Vagobond.com - 27 January 2012
The web is full of great travel blogs, travel stories, travel photos and travel videos - the hard part is finding them amidst all the garbage. [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more!
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Travel Photo of the Day – Uganda Beetles Mating
Blog: Two Backpackers - 20 January 2012
In this travel guest post for 2Backpackers.com, Andrea of the Butterflyist, shares a nature picture from Uganda in this travel photo of the day. It was quite incredible to spot these two beautiful beetles while doing a nature walk around the Bigodi Wetland Sanctuary, in Uganda’s Kibale National Park. Such an intimate look into the [...]
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Same Continent, Different Worlds: Part 2
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 2 January 2012
By Kiva Fellows in Africa, KF16 Compiled by Tejal Desai Ow de body! Are Sierra Leone and Rwanda still danger zones? What challenges do Ugandans most commonly face? Kiva Fellows from KF16 bring you another unique perspective from the diverse and vast continent of Africa! We patched together an overview of each of our placement countries that includes: basic socioeconomic stats, common stereotypes (and to what extent they are true or false), greatest challenges, most common loan products at our respective field partners, and the borrowers' most common use of their profits.
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Check out the Muzungu’s Best of 2011!
Blog: Kampala Days (Diary of a Mzungu) - 1 January 2012
If 2011 was busy, 2012 looks set to be busier still! Here are a few of 2011′s highlights (if you don’t hate me by now …) TRAVELLING – Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Ethiopia, Turkey – and of course, Uganda. Kenya - The Naivasha Relay (84km from Nairobi to Lake Naivasha) is one of the highlights of Nairobi [...]
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The Muzungu meets Wandering Trader in Kampala
Blog: Kampala Days (Diary of a Mzungu) - 3 December 2011
Wandering Trader Marcello wandered into Kampala last week. He’s a fellow travel blogger I saw he was in East Africa and made contact. Now that I work for a tour operator, we swapped e-mails about gorilla trekking in Uganda, what to do in Kampala, etc. I’d said he could stay for a couple of nights. [...]
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Politics, Morality and the Responsibility of Travel
Blog: Landlopers - 28 November 2011
I’ve written about this topic before, so I’m not going to rehash an old argument for new circumstances. Instead of just waxing philosophically about traveling to this country or that country, I want to propose something for anyone traveling, well, anywhere. The other day I...Copyright LandLopers All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized use prohibited.
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Lessons in parenting from Mweya’s Mongooses!
Blog: Kampala Days (Diary of a Mzungu) - 27 November 2011
I often forget when we go out into the Bush how, even on short distances, a vehicle is necessary. And so, armed not with a gun or a machete, but a long radio antenna, we jumped into the back of a pickup truck and headed off the main track and into the scrubby bush. The [...]
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Africa Hash 2011, Ethiopia – Shoulder shimmying in Gondar
Blog: Kampala Days (Diary of a Mzungu) - 20 November 2011
Secure in the knowledge that Ethiopia is one of the safest African countries for a woman to travel independently, I’d mentally prepared to spend the rest of the fortnight travelling on my own. But I’m glad I didn’t; I couldn’t have wished for better travelling companions and, to be honest, there was no escaping the [...]
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Update from the Field: New Products in Microfinance, Over-Indebtedness + Transparency
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 15 November 2011
Compiled by Kathrin Gerner, KF16, Rwanda This week on the Kiva fellows blog, start out by learning about three new microfinance products - microinsurance in Indonesia, higher education loans in the Philippines and green and water loans in Kenya. Continue on to Nepal to admire the handiwork of artisan borrowers. Make your way to Ecuador to find out more about the risk of indebtedness. Share the fellows' personal experiences with the recent elections in Nicaragua and rush hour traffic in Uganda.
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Lonely Planet votes Uganda No. 1 for 2012!
Blog: Kampala Days (Diary of a Mzungu) - 2 November 2011
This is my shortest post ever – the title says it all! I’m so delighted to be part of something that is helping promote this beautiful country, and her fabulously warm and welcoming people. I’ve been voting for Uganda every day since I arrived two and a half years ago. “We go, we go, Uganda [...]
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Update from the Field: Expanding the Reach of Microfinance, Downsizing Development + Why We Kiva
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 31 October 2011
Compiled by Kathrin Gerner, KF16, Rwanda This week, you have no fewer than 14 new articles to choose from on the Kiva fellows blog: Let the fellows take you along on borrower visits across the world. Learn how Kiva field partners expand the reach of microfinance in Rwanda, fill the microfinance donut hole in Sierra Leone and improve social performance in Uganda. Find out what poverty is like in urban Tajikistan and rural Burkina Faso. Get inspired by one of the creative ways to bring renewable energy to the developing world in the form of a soccer ball.
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A close encounter with Lions!
Blog: Kampala Days (Diary of a Mzungu) - 13 October 2011
One of the incredible benefits of working with UCF, the Uganda Conservation Foundation, has been work trips to the Bush – and free game drives. Friends and family back home may be under the impression that’s all I’ve been doing for the last two and half years! Unfortunately, once I’d got the hang of the [...]
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Orbital
Blog: Where the road goes - 1 October 2011
Two years and some some change ago, on a dark rooftop in Addis Ababa, I recall having my thousandth Ethiopian espresso with Jonathan, a friend and adventuresome soul who had come to join me for my days in the country on my slow road north to Cairo. I can’t recall much about the setting, besides [...]
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Kampala to Nairobi – 14 hours of speed bumps
Blog: Kampala Days (Diary of a Mzungu) - 30 September 2011
It was a terrible night’s sleep – a 14 hour bus journey from Kampala to Nairobi: I awoke cold, cold and achey. The speed bumps shuddered us awake every few minutes. I swear I woke a hundred times. A few glasses of Waragi (it was my birthday after all) would have knocked me out, but [...]
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The real ‘boda boda’ – Nagawa travels sidesaddle into Kenya
Blog: Kampala Days (Diary of a Mzungu) - 29 September 2011
There were plenty of seats on the bus – so why does the big man always have to sit next to me? Immediately, he reclined his seat and wedged two greasy paper bags between us. “Do you even have an apple to eat?” he asked me and then proceeded to eat fried chicken from one [...]
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Still counting myself lucky! 2 years on …
Blog: Kampala Days (Diary of a Mzungu) - 28 September 2011
As I stumble home through the craters of Tarmac, alternately blinded by oncoming motorbikes and plunged into darkness, thanks to yet another power cut (who knows how long for this time) I count myself lucky: for the last two and a half years as a volunteer, I’ve essentially worked from home in a quiet, controlled [...]
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Last days as a volunteer . . .
Blog: Kampala Days (Diary of a Mzungu) - 18 September 2011
“Watch that binge drinking!” warned Mum, on our last phone call. Fact is, I’m making up for the binge working I’ve been doing recently: trying to tie up my last projects with UCF, recruiting and training my replacement, and looking for a job. I’ve always felt there are lots of opportunities in Uganda, but when [...]
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How to be a Travel Writer
Blog: A Traveler's Library - 9 September 2011
Destination: Africa Book: One Day I Will Write About This Place (NEW August 2011) by Binyavanga Wainaina (NOTE: After I wrote and titled this review, I carefully read Binyavanga Wainaina’s sardonic instructions on “How to Write About Africa” in the magazine Granta.
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Dark And Light: Naked
Blog: Where the road goes - 7 September 2011
[Taken from the Ugandan Journals] Come morning, I sleep in until I can’t possibly anymore. Claw my pillow until every inch of tiredness has been attended to. Then brushing teeth in the damp, green cupboard of a communal bathroom, sitting on a top-loading washing machine that abuts the shower. Then breakfast. I’m surprised that there’s [...]
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Save Mabira Forest! we can live without sugar
Blog: Kampala Days (Diary of a Mzungu) - 3 September 2011
To everyone’s horror – but few people’s surprise – President Museveni has decreed that ‘the degraded part’ of this ancient and fabulous forest, protected under international law, should be cut down. And for what crucial development project? The president says the current scarcity of sugar warrants giving away the Forest. Ugandans aren’t silly (and they [...]
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The Gorilla Bands of Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, Uganda
Blog: WildJunket - 23 August 2011
This is a sponsored guest post by Kerry-Anne Smith. There are only a few places in the world to see mountain gorillas in the wild and one of the best countries for gorilla trekking is Uganda in East Africa.
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Bwindi – eye to eye with my totem
Blog: Kampala Days (Diary of a Mzungu) - 12 August 2011
THUMP! THUD! CRASH! If ever there was a rude awakening, this was definitely it. It’s early. It’s been one hell of a journey to get here, the house rat has kept us awake and I need my shut-eye. I turn over and try to get back to sleep. But it’s not to be. Above my [...]
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On the road again: Borrower visits throughout Southern Uganda
Blog: Kiva Stories from the Field - 1 August 2011
By Michele Wehle, KF15, Uganda Two weeks ago I set off bright and early to the bus park in Kampala to catch my six hour bus to Ibanda, Uganda. My objective was to meet five Kiva borrowers around Southern and Western Uganda in order to complete my Borrower Verification. I gave myself five days and several pep talks to complete the journey.
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Dark and Light: Words & Stories
Blog: Where the road goes - 26 July 2011
[Taken from the Ugandan Journals] It’s a hot morning in Kitgum, some three hours’ journey in a bus from Gulu, Uganda. I wake reluctantly under a clinging mosquito net inside the steel and painted-concrete guesthouse. It’s the final days of my trip here, and the arc of the journey is about to turn back on [...]
