Dave in Africa...

Man! Africa is something else! After living in an urban sprawl in the middle of a desert, this is quite a switch. Everything is so alive. Even in the city, birds and animals are screeching all over the place. Even the air seems alive... with insects mostly. I slept under a mosquito net for the first time, and I'll tell ya, it was strangely comforting. Like my own cocoon. It's like being back in the womb, except, from what I remember, slightly less damp. It feels like your own little world... Inside is Canadian Dave... Outside is Malaria.

Another thing about Africa, is that it's full of Africans. And plenty of them. But everyone I've met has been super, super friendly so far (except for this one guy Kurtz, he was a little wacky). My second day here, we took a mini-bus taxi to Jinja (a large town about an hour from Kampala, but also an aromatic root in Boston). The taxi van says "liscensed for 14 passengers" on the outside, but ours had about 22, if you counted all the kids... which they don't. My sister says we were lucky, because they've experienced far worse cramming. I was squeezed between a huge, black woman and a breast feeding mother. So it was kind of like no room, with a view.

For any short distances, we take a boda-boda, which is basically just a guy on a scooter or motorcycle. You climb on behind him and then hold on like your life depends on it, because basically it does. If you want the driver to take it easy you say "Mpora-pora" which means something like "slowly by slowly" because apparently boda-boda drivers need to hear everything twice-twice. So that's fun, and it kind of reminds me of taking rickshaws back home.

Wait.... did I just call Pakistan home?... I think I need to stop this post and evalutate.........