Mbarara

Greetings from Mbarara! This is a small town in the southwest of Uganda. It is pretty unremarkable except for being on the main road to this part of the country. The transport situation here was kind of hellish. I got to the chaotic old bus park in Kampala around 12:30 and was escorted by a bus tout to one of the Kabale buses (Mbarara is on the way).I sat there in the bus which smelled overwhelmingly of petrol for an hour and half while vendors walked through the aisles selling everything from sodas to watches to enormous sticks of soap. Finally we departed at 2. The first 3 hours to Masaka were alright, but after we arrived there we took on more passengers. As the bus was full already, they sat in the aisles where people had been dropping their garbage for the past 5 hours. I finally arrived at Mbarara at 8, expecting a big city like Kampala but finding a town of only a couple streets.

Mbarara does, however, contain several wonderful Harvard students who are letting me crash in their palace... er, house. Rumbi and Micheal are doing research/work for MGH Hospital here and are living in a fabulously huge and luxurious house on the outskirts of town. Yesterday we went to Lake Mburo National Park and I saw zebras! And lots of wonderfully beautiful water birds and tons of eagles and impalas EVERYWHERE. We started with a 6:30 am game drive and then took a 2 hour nature walk through the savannah. That was incredible. It was just the three of us plus our trainee guide and an armed park ranger. Walking through the tall grass and stopping 20 feet away from a mixed herd of topi, impala, and zebra is indescribable. It beats riding around in a car for a game drive in terms of the power of the experience, although you see fewer animals. At one point our ranger had to threaten a lone male buffalo by clapping and shaking his gun; apparently buffaloes that have been kicked out of their herds are so frustrated and angry that they'll charge humans without a second thought. But the gun rattling worked and we were left in peace. We also took a peaceful boat ride around the lake and saw a montage of crocodiles at different life stages (tiny baby, medium juvenile, huge adult).

Tomorrow I leave for Mweya Penisula in Queen Elizabeth National Park.