Meghan on a Terrible Bus Ride

Here is Meghan's latest tale:

We were in Kampala until the end of July working at a TB clinic and then an AIDS Support Organization. It was a lot of fun and we met lots of really nice people and saw some amazing things. We got to go out on a food distribution drive which was pretty amazing. The organization (with the help of WFP) distributes oil and corn-soy-blend (CSB - some kind of gross flour staple) to its clients once a month. So we go to this huge community center/school/shelter in a tiny little slum community and distribute a months worth of food to all the people in the area...every client (they must be HIV positive) receives 9kg of CSB per person in their family (up to 5 people only) and 4 L of vitamin A enriched oil. Its pretty minimal and its crazy because each person has to lug all this food back to their house and on the day we went it was pouring rain...and they only get this once a month. It was pretty sad.

After Kampala we took a bus to Kigali for four days. Rwanda is a beautiful country and from what we could tell one of the least corrupt places that we've been to so far. We toured around the city and went to a few genocide memorial sites which were really interesting. There were buildings where you could still see the bullet holes and the grenade markings of where the Hutu rebels killed 6 UN peacekeepers....intense. And the saddest thing was going to the main memorial site for the city where they have mass graves for the victims that were slaughtered and there are families still bringing in more bodies to be buried there...12 years later. And there were also some pretty horrific accounts from families of victims. But its pretty impressive how far Kigali has grown and developed in the last little while. It was one of the nicest cities we've been to.

After Kigali we took a 24 hour bus trip back to Nairobi...well it was suppose to be 24 hours but ended up being more like 36 hours. It was insane. We almost got arrested at the Ugandan border for being supposed craft smugglers...ridiculous. All they wanted was money it was crazy. And then halfway through Uganda someone had dug a ditch in the middle of the road and traffic was stopped for about 4 or 5 hours...its pretty amazing the 4x4 power of a huge rundown bus. It was terrifying trying to get around the ditch and through the backed up traffic. And then to top it off they almost wouldn't let us back into Kenya. It was pretty much the worse bus trip of my entire life!

We spent one night in Nairobi and the immediately hopped on another bus to Mombassa. We got some much needed rest and relaxation by the beach and then headed back to Nairobi only to have the bus breakdown in the middle of no where and we were stranded for 4 hours waiting for a replacement bus! Got back into Nairobi and then left again to go on a safari in the Masai Mara.

The Mara was amazing. So many animals and such beautiful scenery. There were over a million wildebeasts that were migrating into the Mara and we even got to see some lions eating their breakfast. And there is nothing quite like watching a lion suck a wildebeast's entrails out of its ass first thing in the morning! All in all though the safari was amazing, we got to see everything!