Blog 4: Safari and farmvisits

Last weekend (8-10 march) was great, Hilleke and I went for a safari trip! We had gotten the car from a very kind colleague and a driver from office. Our colleague made a nice program for us for morning, afternoon, evening, so we didn’t have to take care of that at all! He had given the driver the same schedule and also told him to stop at the beautiful places, so we had a great private tour! On our way to the park we already saw monkeys, baboons, elephants. One elephant crossed the road just behind the car!

We did safaris by car and boat and saw many hippos, buffaloes, elephants, and all from not more than 3-5 meters away from us! We also saw warthogs, different kinds of deers, and from a distance we even saw 3 lions! Another nice experience was a tour to a salt lake, here they showed us how they mine salt. It was very interesting!

Before we went for the boat trip we had lunch in a very luxury hotel. It looked amazing: luxury mixed with African style. And the view was beautiful, it was on top of a hill in a lake and you could see the buffaloes, elephants and hippos from a distance. Also, they were feeding the birds close to the terrace, so in the same time you could see beautiful birds. We had a luxury buffet and the food was soooo good! Haha, we almost couldn’t imagine we were sitting in such a place and we were smiling from ear to ear (if that is possible in English). We enjoyed it so much that we kept on eating and the waitresses were laughing, because it looked like we hadn’t eaten for a week. I did not know good food could make me so happy, haha! We were glad that we had chosen to stay for lunch there, because when we arrived and heard the price (75.000 Shillings), we thought: maybe we go to a local place. But then I said (yes, surprisingly I was the one that said it) “Let’s do it, it is a nice experience and it is 17 euro’s, which is very expensive for Uganda, but cheap for NL, and we will just eat bread for dinner”. So, decision made. It sounds stupid to even doubt when it is only 17 euro’s, but normally I have lunch for 0.50 cents (in that shed kind of thing) and it is a really full meal. So it does make you think twice about what you spend. By the way, a funny fact was that after the lunch I found out that my leg was completely covered with mud at the backside, so I walked around like that in such a luxury place, haha.

One thing I learned here is that you should always treat others with humour. For example, I was making a picture of a beautiful landscape. A woman came to me screaming: “Give me money! It is my land that is in your picture!” Normally I feel a bit offended/attacked when something like that happens and I don’t directly know what to do. But now I reacted very different. I put my hand on her shoulder and I said laughing and sarcastic: hahaha, of course that is your land! You own it all! Then she was laughing too and we just had some fun. That’s the way to do it here. People here are very direct, but often they mean it as a joke, or if not, you make it a joke yourself.

On our way back home we passed by a place where people come to eat pork. We went to one of the many little huts were pieces of pork carcasses hang outside and they prepared some for Hilleke, the driver (Syrus), and me. What I liked is that they don’t give everybody a plate. The food is just there on the table and together we ate from it and enjoyed it.

This week started good with a very interesting discussion about how to do business here in Uganda. There are really a lot of opportunities here, you can really earn good money here. The only thing is that it requires good investigation work on how to enter the market, and most Ugandans are too lazy for that. So who knows.. I might come up with something!

I had a good and successful week at work. I have visited a lot of farmers and I have given my first real feeding advice! Also I explained the first results of my research (about milk quality) to a dairy cooperative, and the manager was impressed! Wednesday evening we had a dinner with all the people that are working in the development of the dairy sector in South-Western Uganda. People from government, a research institute, Agriterra and SNV (I work for both). It was a really nice and inspiring evening wherein people gave very motivating speeches about the possibilities of the dairy sector here! But in the time that we were having fun ten people in town died because of the storm.. When we were inside the hotel we all didn’t realize the storm was that heavy! Rain season has begun and as you see it can be quite heavy. Not all roads and buildings are made for this weather..