An epic battle with hills, children and wild beasts. Ride on!

Well this has been the most challenging stretch yet. I have gone over 300km from Gulu to Fort Portal through mountains with some pretty steep grades on mostly dirt road, which was both mentally and physically very challenging. After 6 days of not seeing another mzungu except for maybe two passing by tourist vehicles and being constantly harassed and chased by Ugandan children and adults who feel they are entitled to MY money, I have nestled into a place called the Dutchess in Fort Portal that serves, yet again, mzungu food. I am starving and want a friggin' pizza, or three. I'm not actually staying here as accommodations are through the roof, but the atmosphere is open to a lovely garden full of birds and I can stay here all day without any harassment from children and bodas. People in Fort Portal seem to be a bit more aggressive than in other parts of Uganda, they're more in your face. It's nice to hide sometimes when you are constantly sticking out like a sore thumb in a sea of dark skin and corn rows.

Leaving BAP in Gulu. Such a great organization.

Tower of bricks, this is how they fire their bricks for use later.

Throughout this ~350km journey I discovered some pretty unique places and met some interesting faces. Let me start with Kamdini, the Houdini of Uganda as far as I'm concerned. I had never heard of this place and had I been going at a normal pace and had started at my usual early morning time I would have passed right through Kamdini without thinking much about it. Kamdini looks like every other little shit hole of a town in Uganda, lots of shops, little restaurants (or "hotels), guest houses, people everywhere, bodas, schools, church, etc. The works. Even after having stopped there, found a school, pitched my tent, washed, eaten, etc I didn't think anything of this town. It was just a stop over for me. However, the headmaster of the school I was staying at happened to be an interesting person and I wanted a beer, so we went out to the town to grab a beer. He proceeded to educate me on the fact that Kamdini is a huge hub for truckers. Anyone bringing goods to or from the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Rwanda and throughout Uganda passes through here. Even those coming from Somalia and through Kenya come through Kamdini. All the drivers make a point of stopping at least for a meal because you can find all kinds of cuisine here as some of the travelers have settled here, so you have Somalians serving food Somali-style, Ethiopians serving Ethiopian food, Kenyas doing their thing, etc. It's fascinating. Who would have thought that this little shit hole of a town that looks like all the others is not like the others at all.

Baboon sitting outside a campsite.

From Kamdini I crossed the Nile river from east to west at Karuma where spectacular views of the rapids and surrounding jungle are provided, but apprently (and unbeknownst to me) prohibited to actually enjoy. I stopped on the bridge at Karuma stunned, naturally, by the beauty of the river. This was the first natural beauty I had seen in I think weeks! So I wanted to soak it in. But no, some dude dressed in camo with a gun came up to me and asked what I was doing? I said "Taking pictures." He replied saying I wasn't aloud to stay on the bridge and had to ask permission to take pictures here. "OK" I said, "But how I am supposed to know that? There aren't any signs or anything." An intelligent answer was not on the menu. So I huffed and moved on, only to stop a few meters up the road out of sight of the G.I. Joes. I watched some vervet monkeys cross the road, had a snack and snapped some more photos. I had been told enthusiastically by the teacher in Kamdini that a damn is to be built in Karuma. People need electricity, yes, but can't they invest in more solar panels? Or *better* solar panels not sold by the Chinese? (see my previous blog post describing the use and source of solar panels in Uganda: http://ecosystemsfornomads.blogspot.com/2014/03/shoes-stolen-fantastic-road-new-map-and.html).

The forbidden river I was not allowed to observe.

Think of the destruction that will occure once the damn is constructed.

The glorified plan for a "beautiful" damn...yay.

After staying in Kiranyandonga at another school with more watching, more whispering about the mzungu, more narrating my every move (both by school kids as well as teachers and even the headmaster), I said goodbye to tarmac for a while and found myself in a shrub land that reminded me a lot of the Otjiwarongo area of Namibia. It was beautiful! Rolling hills, great views, remote villages that don't have electricity. Tons of cattle with giant horns. There were even herding dogs! They are so cute! I hadn't seen dogs with a purpose in Uganda other than guard dogs. This was so nice to see humans working *together* with canines to get a job done. This is what dogs are for after all! I passed through Masindi, which pleasantly surprised me with it's infrastructure and nice hotels with lots of big trees, but teased me with maybe a kilometer of tarmac.

The bigginning of the end of tarmac

As you can see, quite arid and different from the luscious forest found around the Nile river.

Very cool landscape.

Vast views in the distant background.

Schools exist in random places.

Large herd of cattle with large horns! Dogs faithfully herding along side humans.

This is the kind of map I'm talking about! This one is on the *outside* of the school....we need more and on the *inside* of the classrooms to show kids where CANADA is! See my previous post.

First sign of hills!!!

I stayed in Bwijanga for a night. Oh Bwijanga, Bwijanga, Bwijanga. This place is a little bit fucked. I stopped to ask the police officers if they knew of a nearby school because this town was tiny, but I couldn't find any obvious school that was right off the main road. I was exhausted as I had traveled over 70km that day with what I thought at the time were pretty good hills, but will later realize that that was just a warm-up. The officers proceeded to interrogate me: where am I from (often meaning where did you travel from that day, rather than where my native place of residence lies)? What am I doing in uganda? Why am I looking for a school? After answering their pestering questions I expected them to kindly directly me to the nearest school, but they remained hesitant. This was confusing to me as I am used to the overly hospitible and helpful Ugandas who go out of their way to find me what I'm looking for. Turns out I fit the profile of a suicide bomber...yup, blond, blue-eyed Canadian traveling by bicycle in a tiny ass town is looking to bomb your school of maybe 100 children. Why, I asked, do you think I am going to bomb your school? I explained I had been staying in schools all over Uganda and no one had ever expressed such a concern to me. "The Ugandan government encourages us to be extra precautious as to avoid bombings madam." I asked them if they had ever received any bomb threats in Bwijanga. No of course they hadn't. "When was the last time Uganda was threatened with a bomb attack?" I asked. Back in the 2010 World Cup. I see, so the World Cup that is filled with millions of people and situated in a strategic and ecologically, politically, historically important place was threatened with a bomb and you're worried that Bwijanga, a town that has one road that stretches a total of 100m, is a target? "Yes." How logical, I think to myself. It took some convincing, but they eventually pointed me in the direction to their secondary school, where I was interogated with the same vigour. What the hell is going on, I thought. Did Uganda recently receive bomb threats? Should *I* be concerned about bomb threats in Uganda right now? I couldn't understand that if it was so "strongly encouraged" by the Ugandan government to carefully screen visitors to make sure they didn't bomb their schools, why had it taken 5 weeks of traveling throughout the country for me to first encounter such questioning? I was puzzled to say the least. I was quickly distracted, however, upon settling into the secondary school when the kids at this school gathered viciously and the people of authority quickly dissapeared. Great. I have to deal with 70 ridiculously curious teenagers on my own...A swarm of girls surrounded me as I started to set-up my stove. They asked me one million questions while I cooked and ate. They ended up giving me some free food -posho and beans, yumm!- and asked if they could have some of my instant noodles...I don't think one packet can serve 20 people unfortunately. They understood. I asked them some questions myself, like What do they want to be when they grow up? One said she wanted to be a magician, another said a prostitute. After a couple of "performances" by the prospective magician that consisted of terrible dancing and singing, I realized she meant "musician" and tried to explain what "magician" meant. Not easy when your audience doesn't have enough electricity to watch movies or TV, so have probably never even seen a magician and had never heard of Harry Potter. Luckily, the prospective prostitute was joking. Funny sense of humour. All of the 20 or so girls wanted me to take them with me to Canada. I explained that I would be happy to if they paid for the $1000 flight and got their visas in order. They laughed profusely (just as they did everything I said or did, including taking a bite of the food they gave me). People that ask me to take them with me to Canada do not realize that it's not as easy as just holding hands and walking over the Atlantic Ocean...there's a heavy price and burocraucy that is completely out of my control. And since I was speaking to all girls in this particular scenario and given the current laws in Uganda, marriage is out of the question. And then there's the fact that I don't want to marry a Ugandan, but that doesn't seem to matter EVER. I find it especially amusing when I refuse to marry a Ugandan to bring them with me and they assume it's because I only like white/western people! When the girls finally accepted that they were not coming with me to Canada I said I was going to bed and they had to leave me alone now (since for the last hour I was litterally trapped in a thick circle of screaming, screeching teenage girls and one old man in the background -the trusty nightwatchman), but they had just one last little request: that I look at each and every one of their photo albums. Uh, no. That would take days and, uh no thank you. Anyways, although I was tucked into a beautiful valley with luscious greenery all around me and a beautiful sunrise, I wasn't heartbroken when I had to leave crazy crazy Bwijanga the next morning.

Bwijanga in the morning.

Ready to head out with my Surly Troll.

A small hill coming up!

Moving through the last major town I would see for a couple of days before I reach Fort Portal, Hoima, I was teased again with a kilometer of tarmac and proceeded to wrench my quads up and down, up and down the tireless slopes in the foothills of the Rwenzories. The Rwenzories are Uganda's and Congo's tallest mountains. They're quite epic actually, strategically placed between the DRC and Uganda creating an overwhelming geographic barrier between the two countries. Mount Stanely shamelessly stands as the tallest of the Mountains of the Moon as they're often called at 5,109 meters, of course named after the famous explorer. This is the third tallest peak in Africa after Kilimanjaro and Mt. Kenya. I wish I could go climb this mountain range as it sounds and looks so tempting. Time and money, however, are not on my side and as long as I come back before the year 2025 I might be able to see the last remaining 2.5 glaciers of the once 6 well-established blocks of ice. Thank you climate change.

You would think that cycling through these foothills with gorgeous views at every ascent would be peaceful and fulfilling. It's hard to find peace when there are people EVERYWHERE! And most of them are YELLING at you at the top of their lungs "MZUNGU! MZUNGU! GIVE ME MONEY!" One guy actually stopped in his tracks when he saw my bike as I was sitting and having a snack, then when I told him to stop starring and to please move on, he did only to turn around again and demand I give him my food. Sure, I'll give you my food for free, then what am I supposed to do in these remote hills? Are you climbing up and down these hills for 60-80km a day on a bike? Why should I have to give you my food that I need to fuel my only means of transport? He actually felt entitled enough to my food that he wouldn't leave, so I did. I said in an earlier post that it's cute when kids call out "mzungu", but these kids in the hills are insane, they're screetching while running after you and seriously think a) they deserve free money and b) I'm going to give them free money. Yes, it's sad and I feel bad for these kids since they are extremely poor and I'll never fully understand the conditions they live in, some of them will die of AIDS, malaria, other diseases, hunger and will always be hungry and probably thirsty for perhaps the rest of their lives. What, as westerners, have we done? I wish we could go back in time and change our whole approach to "saving" Africa. The image we have portrayed has allowed local people and now their kids to equate white skin with dollar signs. Instead they should be encouraged to be innovative and work hard so they can earn money of their own. It's not impossible here in Uganda, there are opportunities. A large barrier of course is getting to the centres that offer such opportunities, but it's not impossible. It's really sad to see the same kind of shop over and over again and right next to each other with no variation what so ever. They even have the same colours and fonts on their signs. Why do all shops selling stationary have to be on the same block while all supermarkets on another block? Wouldn't it make sense to spread out a bit? What about selling something other people don't sell? What about not spending your money on extensions and intead saving that money to get to Kampala to make a real living? OK, I know, it's easy for me to say all of this and there are lots of factors that hinder the average village person here from making a descent wage. But don't expect free money. That doesn't help anyone. It's not sustainable, the money I gave would be gone in a flash and then what? You're back where you started because you went out and bought some sugar cane. Better yet, how can each child expect to get money from me? If I caved for every person that asked me, I would be in serious debt right now. Nothing about this strategy makes sense to me. Do I sound jaded? Annoyed? Bitter? Like I said, it was a tough stretch. Don't get me wrong, I love what I'm doing and hope to travel most of the world by bicycle, but not everything is butterflies and rainbows no matter how you're traveling and this is all part of the experience. Travel is the best kind of education there is. I would not be able to discern kids from these hillls from those in eastern and southern Uganda had I not traveled by bicycle through each area and seen the different attitudes towards mzungus myself. 

So after another tiresome day complete with screaming children and rollercoaster hills, I found a school that looked very nice, with lots of big trees and relatively peaceful. It was a Friday, so the kids are obviously excited. This, however, was not a boarding school, which are usually what I go to because they are used to having people stay overnight and are therefore more accommodating. But boarding schools are hard to come by in these hills. The woman in charge was very sweet and concerned for my safety, so she suggested I stay in the reverend's house where there is a night watchman and the reverend's family lives there. OK, let's go there. Turns out it's two buildings over, so I don't kow what the fuss was about haha. It was nice staying at a non-boarding school because all the kids WENT HOME at night! Amazing! I didn't have ANYONE stare at me while I was putting up my tent, setting up my stove, cooking or eating! Fantastic. I celebrated by making popcorn. Let me tell you, I am a friggin' professional when it comes to making popcorn, well turns out those skills transfer to camping stoves as well. I was so proud. Additionally, the evening was cool. Lovely, I fell asleep like a wee babe. And then I woke up in the middle of the night to an terrifying animal outside my tent, trapesing around the reverend's yard...I still have no idea what it was, but it sounded rabid and dog-like. It made scary drool-filled deep growls while it jutted back and forth in an insane manner, always moving quickly, but not as quickly as my heart was beating. I lay frozen stiff, hoping the animal is afraid of my tent and is not intrigued by my scent. I was hoping he wouldn't be interested in my bike or panniers that was leaning against the reverend's house. After what felt like an hour, I no longer heard the heavy breathing in the distance or neighbouring dogs barking at the unidentified crazed thing roaming around their territory. I fell asleep and awoke in the morning with no sign of the animal ever having made an appearance. The night watchman had no idea the animal was around, good thing he gets paid, so I was the only one to know that there was anything out there in the night. Not comforting, but nothing happened, so just another story to tell. I moved on to my last stop before reaching Fort Portal: Kyamutunz...or something like that. It's not on the map and there was one sign describing a shop that belonged to this town, but no sign for the town itself. 

My home at the reverend's house.

Perfect popcorn.

I stayed on church grounds in what I will call Kyamutunz. This was nice, because again, a serious lack of staring children and teachers. Just a small handful, which is manageable. I slept under jackfruit trees, well not directly under them because I didn't want one falling on me and my tent. I had nice views of hills across a big valley I had just descended into and crossed. The descent was huge, lasted for probably 5 minutes straight. That was fun, but meant exactly what I thought it was going to mean as I was going down: mostly uphill the next day. Good thing I was woken up by army ants in my tent, sleeping bag, everything so I could start the day right. I ended up having to litterally drag my tent while running to get away from the ants so I could take it down. It was hilarious.

The first 35km of the last day of this long stretch took me 4 and a half hours, because as I said, it was mostly uphill. You should have seen me when I reached the tarmac road that lead to Fort Portal. I've never been so happy to see tarmac. It was an amazing feeling on the bum and the everything. In fact the last 48km to Fort Portal was a dream. Yes, there were still huge hills, but it was a breeze on tarmac compared to the dirt roads and the views were incredible AND there was the least amount of traffic I've experienced in Uganda so far! THIS was the peace I had been longing for for the past 6 days. No yelling, no harassment, no asking for money. The tea plantations are beautiful and expansive, which is pleasant on the eyes, but you know there was a huge price to put those plantations there. I saw the contrast when I got to ride through a bit of Kibale National Park!!! This was incredible! Within just a couple of meters of enetering the park I saw two troops of red tail monkeys and one troop of baboons! And a squirrel!! I got a little too close to the baboons as I stupidly thought I could take a picture without them noticing, but people obviously feed the baboons here even though there are signs saying not to. Sounds like the bears in western Canada. As soon as I started rumaging for my ipad in my handlebar bag, the baboons started running for me from all directions, they obviously thought I was getting out food. I decided to abandon the idea of taking a picture and move on. Baboons are big and scary, I don't want to dissapoint them...

The last day was the most scenic day right from the start:

Kibale national Park jungle coming into view!

There's a monkey in this picture somewhere, if you can find it let me know!

Stopped every couple of meters to take a picture. Riding through a national park is awesome! But I would never get anywhere if the whole country actually looked like it's supposed to look -like this.

I've seen some interesting things on bicycles and motorcycles here in Uganda, plenty of bananas, pineapples, giant bags of rice/popcorn/cassava/sugarcane/etc. I've seen chairs and other furniture, but never a bed..until now. This crazy dude is carrying a bed by motorbike!

The Rwenzoris! And tea plantation in the foreground. Tea plants to Uganda seems to be like what grapes are to California....

Riding through Kibale NP was a serious highlight of the trip so far. It didn't last long enough as I just went through a tiny northern tip, but I will be going IN IT today! I'm very excited! It's such beautiful pristine jungle complete with tall trees, vines, mosses, river, teaming with birds. It's going to be an epic few days riding to Kyanawara research site, staying there fore a couple of nights, then checking out the crater lakes, heading to Queen Elizabether National Park, maybe Bwindi then Rwanda! Yes, I've decided not only do I have time to visit Rwanda, but it's actually a shorter route to get to Kigali than for me to loop all the way back to Entebbe.

Here is an update for my map and where I've been!

http://trackmytour.com/PjJ7r

Shoes stolen, fantastic road, new map and Gulu! The route north ends here.

First of all, I finally made a map of my tour using the Track My Tour app. Some people have been wondering where the heck these places are in Uganda and rightly so as many places I've been are hard to find on Google Maps. So here you go: http://trackmytour.com/PjJ7r. 

Jan 30th to Feb 19th

Feb 20th to March 1st.

It's a shame I can't post the complete map here and I have to post in two parts, or at least I can't figure out how to make it work. Perhaps something Track My Tour needs to work on? Or maybe it's one of many things Blogger needs to work on.

I caved and got a ride out of the terrible roads leading to Amudat and back to the tarmac in Mbale. This brought about both a very possitive and pretty negative experience as I was given the privaledge to see some of the deep villages of the Karamoja region, but then my cycling shoes were stolen out of the bed of the truck that evening while eating dinner. I'm over it now, but at the time it was slightly heartbreaking to loose what I thought was an essential ingredient to my success as a cycle tourist, my SPD compatible shoes. For those of you who are not familiar with these "fancy" words, these shoes allowed me to clip-in to my pedals giving me the advantage of the up stroke as well as the down, which is especially useful when going uphill, but is overall much more powerful than just pushing down on your pedals. No matter, I got up the next morning, bought some $12 used hot pink shoes on the side of the street in Mbale and pedaled on. After the first day was a sucess with the new shoes, (I need to thank Ben at To Wheels for convincing me to get those awesome flat pedals in addition to my SPDs) I was feeling very liberated that I in fact did NOT need fancy pantsy shoes to travel by bicycle in Africa and I will continue to embrace my shitty shoes as they get me to all kinds of places.

Riding in a truck seemed like a novel experience and reminded me how lucky I am to be traveling by bike. I mean, I couldn't even take a picture in that bumpy chunk of metal! Nor did I feel I could ask the driver to stop anytime I wanted to take a picture since he and the other passengers were members of ZOA and doing me a favour by giving me and my Surly Troll a ride to the tarmac. Nonetheless, they took me to a part of Uganda I would never be able to see by bicycle, the roads are absolutely horrendus. I got to see some Pocot people building a new school for their people, a collection of huts in the middle of the land of thorns far from any civilization -no hospital, no school, no water, no nothing, oh except a solar panel! What?! Yes, a SOLAR PANEL. They are EVERYWHERE in Uganda, in fact I see them more so in the more impovershed the area (i.e. more in the north). Apparently the Chinese provide a cheap product at least relative to the solar panels we might find in North America. Each solar panel has fewer cells, therefore produce less energy, but it's sufficient for what the people need (e.g. sometimes this is how we get cold beer!).

Land of thorns.

Vast wilderness around the village.

Solar panel in the middle of nowhere on a thatched-roofed mud-hut.

While driving to these rural areas, we traveled by the south face of Mt. Kadam, therefore I circumnavigated Mt. Kadam half by bike and half by pick-up. It was amazing to see Mt. Kadam up close! There are cliffs amongst the vegetation that look very climbable! I asked if anyone has ever ventured up the mountain for fun and the answer was "No, Ugandan's aren't very adventurous. But there are apparently people that live on top of Mt. Kadam that have never come down." OK. Wow. That's incredible. I mean the mountain is large, but not large enough that I could see a whole lot of people or resources up there. I'm curious as to what their genetics look like...sure enough we saw a kid hurding goats up top. Not sure if he dwells at that elevation or just brings his goats up there during the day, but at least I saw some "adventurousness" in a Ugandan.

The south side of Mt. Kadam.

I also got to see a subsurface damn! Adam, the male half of the dutch couple from ZOA (see previous post: http://ecosystemsfornomads.blogspot.com/2014/02/sipi-to-amudat-land-of-thorns.html), had told me about these projects. They're exactly how they sound, a damn below the ground's surface. They are much larger than I had pictured in my mind and seem like they do a lot of damage or at least change the river ecosystem quite a bit, but apparently ZOA has tested the effects of the damns down river and have found minimal effects. Always a challenge to find a balance between ecosystem needs and the needs of the people. These damns provide water to rural areas without access to water in the dry season. As you can see, the river is bone dry as we are at the height and end of the dry season. The only reason you see water in the dug-out area is because of one rain they had two days prior to this photo.

Subsurface damn organized by ZOA.

The bone-dry river, hence lack of water in the area.

At one point we had Mt Elgon to our left and Mt Kadam to our right.

Once back on the bike I ended up staying in Kumi, a cute little town that was much quieter than most towns/villages I've stayed in in Uganda. I tried staying in a school, but it was Sunday and the headmaster and all other members of authority were not there to give me permission to stay. One of the students then came forth and said I will likely be allowed to stay at her parents' house since they have many Canadians stay with them. "Really?" I asked. Apparently there are many many NGOs in Kumi, where the number of NGO's noticably starts to increase as you go north in Uganda. Sure enough, I'm welcomed whole heartedly, given tea and bread, a bed to sleep in, drinking water, water to bathe and dinner. Dinner was not served until 10pm, as is the norm it seems for many house holds. I ate only with the man of the house, which also seems to be the norm when a guest is invited into the home even though all the women in the house did all the cooking...It was very nice and I was very thankful for a free bed and free food. I was also very thankful for the company. The young girls, in their teens and maybe early twenties, were great to talk to and I found out a lot about their culture. For example, I asked why I don't see many women driving bicycles. The girls responded saying it's because women think it's too hard, that they don't want to put in that much effort to get somewhere and they would rather walk. hmmmm, that's interesting. You will see below when I talk to a girl in a village around Gulu about a bicycle she received from BAP, a bicycle promoting organization, that this is not a universal opinion in Uganda. I also asked the girls in Kumi why I don't see women driving the boda-bodas here (the motorcycle taxis) and they replied saying women would never get business because everyone thinks they're weak drivers, that they wouldn't be able to handle the motorcycle. I think I was more astonished by how uneffected the girls were by this sad truth (or is it the truth? I don't know, I have to investigate further as to whether people actually think this way about women driving bodas). I told them that the women here are obviously very strong, look at the weight they carry in their arms, on their heads and all the while carrying a baby on their back. They'll carry a baby on their back when working the land. Their pipes (biceps) are huge! I wouldn't want to get in a fight with these women. So how on Earth can anyone describe them as weak? The girls just shrug their shoulders and say this is how everyone thinks and there's no way to change it. That wouldn't fly where I come from. I hope this changes soon, but I have my doubts given Uganda's poor decision making based on sex, gender and sexuality. I'm sure you all read the news.

So the next morning I was served tea, bread and jam in the morning and escorted to the road that lead me to Soroti where one of the girls gave me a little parting gift: a keychain with the Ugandan flag. Such thoughtful people. They don't even have electricity, but they fed me, gave me water, a free bed and now a gift. Unbelievable.

Lots of these around with their male counterparts who have bright orange tails! I'll catch a photo of them one day...

Some kids I attracted as I snacked on dates and cashews on my way to Soroti.

The only kid in the group that actually spoke to me. Bike's a little big...

In Soroti I stayed at Amecet, an orphanage run by a dutch women over the last 17 years. Annemieke, the female half of the couple in ZOA, set me up with a bed to sleep in as she had volunteered in Amecet before. There must have been around 40 or 50 kids at this orphanage, most of them babies and some of them between the ages of 2 and 6 maybe. It was overwhelming. Many of the caretakers are local women, but there are quite a few dutch volunteers that come for a couple of months at a time as well. It was an interesting environment to live in temporarily, and again I was thankful for a bed. Soroti was a fairly nice town with nice shops and the largest market I've seen in Uganda so far! There were tons and tons of stands bursting with tomatoes, cabbage, onions, dodo (their spinach), bags and bags of spices, beans, avocados, bananas, etc. It was so colourful and maze-like all semi-contained in a kind of courtyard. I wished I could have taken a picture, but my camera has decided only to work in the mornings when it's not so hot...bummer. I met some great people at Amecet and went to dinner with them at Hotel Soroti where they go for dinner every Tuesday to have something other than the rice and meat they're served every single day in Amecet.

The road to Soroti from Kumi was pretty bad since it is mostly unconstruction, which makes it doubly terrible because the road itself is a bunch of dirt and bumps while the construction dudes are, well, stereotypical construction dudes. However, I'm always comparing the road I'm on to the road on the way to Amudat and nothing will ever be *that* bad, so I was content cycling to Soroti regardless of the dust and bumps and cat calls. Leaving Soroti toward Lira, however, was a different story. The road was a dream! Best road so far in Uganda! No pot holes, slight ups and downs, not very busy with traffic, and mostly vast swamp and trees with the occasional small village. Fantastic. Unfortunately this stretch of good road only lasted about 100km, and quite frankly I don't understand why that particular stretch is the best I've seen in Uganda. The general trend I've seen is the more north I go the worst the roads are because there is less infrastructure. Whatever, I'm not going to analyze the reason behind it beign so good, I'm just going to accept it and hope there's more in the west of Uganda. Although I hear the Chinese build some roads here...I'm not sure what their motive is exactly.

Good road complete with actual signs stating distances between towns...first I've seen in Uganda!

Lots of this along the awesome road.

Might be an invasive flower from the Amazon, yikes!

Passed a lot of rivers I can't pronounce as I skirted Lake Kyoga.

Planted trees for industry....monocultures, kind of like what we do in Canada.

Then there are lots of native trees with pretty flowers.

I occasionally found naked men bathing In waters like this right along side the road..interesting.

It took me three days to get to Gulu on the *main highway*. Yes, when you look at a map the highway looks very *main* indeed, but really it's a piece of crap dirt road that barely has two lanes! Again, not as bad as that to Amudat, but still, the difference between the north and south is like night and day. Althought the highway is shit, large transport trucks find a way to carry their heavy loads headed for South Sudan. Many of them carrying a freight container full of supplies like building materials and food. This was the only real evidence I saw that indicated something was going on in South Sudan. Otherwise, northern Uganda is safe from any of the conflict north of them.

 I stayed in Agwata and Icheme, two very small villages, along the way to Gulu. I set up my tent in a mud/brick "house" in a school in Agwata where they were so fascinated by my presence I received visitors every 10 minutes. It was difficult to get anything done. The headmaster and teachers just let the children crowd around my every move. They were, as usual, particularly fascinated with my stove. They watch the entire process of cooking my dinner from setting up the stove to boiling the water to finishing and eating the food. Apparently mzungus washing dishes is much more interesting than when they wash dishes as well. The next school I stayed in had headmasters and teachers that really GOT IT. They told the kids not to crowd me and follow me everywhere. I mean, it's fun to an extent, but it's really hard to get certain things done like go to the bathroom and wash when you have hundreds of curious children creeping closer and closer to you with your every move. I'm especially sensitive with them around my tent just because they're not familiar with tents and don't realise that if you run around tent pegs you're liable to trip and either rip the tent or take the peg out. Luckily no one has fallen and my tent hasn't ripped yet, but pegs have certainly been pulled out by running children. Makes me nervous. Perhaps the difference between the headmaster in Icheme and that in Agwata was the fact that a single dutch woman had cycled through Icheme in 2011 and stayed at the very school I stayed in in Icheme! What are the chances? Icheme is one of many tiny villages on the way to Gulu. It was especially funny because apparently us mzungus all look the same and the headmaster asumed I was the very same girl he had met in 2011!! hahaha. No, sir, never been here in my life and I'm from Canada, not the Netherlands. One of the teachers from Agwata actually thought Canada was a STATE in the US! What?!!! NO!!! We are a totally different country! Wow. Later he had me greet his grade 7 class and I made sure to ask the class where they think Canada is, since they clearly aren't going to learn that particular fact from their teacher. The teacher redeemed himself by scribbling a couple of blobs on the black board, the souther blob representing the USA and the northern blog representing Canada. Good, education served. I think I mentioned in a previous post that many people often think Canada and the USA are the same place or that Canada is in Europe. I think I also mentioned that I will be traveling with a world map next time round....

Market in Icheme. Only on a couple times a week.

Women always sell food goods, men maybe sell clothing or random things like soap and cigarettes. The vendors are mostly women.

Bags and bags of beans, lentils and spices -mainly curry.

Some must bare the brunt of the sun while others are privy to the shade.

Bad road, not as bad as Amudat

Villages in the middle of forests and surrounded by marsh.

Getting into Gulu the road became "paved" again. I say paved in quotations because half the road is paved and the other half is...well...broken, full of pot holes or just straight up dirt. The locals don't call out "mzungu" as much here, instead they call out "mono", which, if you know Spanish, is absolutely hilarious, "mono" means monkey! hahaha.

Gulu: This is where my direction North ends and I start cycling down the west side of Uganda next. A big landmark in my tour. Any further north and I'd be in South Sudan! I think my parents suffer from enough stress as it is...

One of the main reasons I wanted to make it all the way to Gulu was because of BAP, Bicycles Against Poverty, an organization that provides bicycles to those who need them for transport in the Gulu municipality and surrounding villages. I heard about them on National Geographic's 2013 Year in Review: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/year-in-review-2013/#/travel. You know that if an organization has caught NG's attention, they must be good. Check out BAP's website here: http://www.bicyclesagainstpoverty.org/. Also check out their interview from NG as they were chosen as NG's Travelers of the Year! http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/travelers-of-the-year-2013/muyambi-muyambi-and-molly-burke/. BAP distributes these bicycles in and around Gulu because this part of Uganda suffered a decade-long war and has always been underprivileged compared to the south of Uganda. This is a result of both British colonization as well as Ugandan government and the LRA (Lord's Resistance Army, known by many because of Kony 2000. Kony was the leader of the LRA). As mentioned in a previous post, http://ecosystemsfornomads.blogspot.com/2014/02/first-few-days.html, Uganda is, as is much of Eastern Africa, divited into two -the southern Bantus and the northern Nilotics (however, I've been told that Luo -sometimes calling themselves Acholis- are different from Nilotic people and are found in Gulu and further north) with Bantus having had the most resources and power historically. This is why I've seen increasingly more poverty, poorer infrastructure, including less pavement, the further north I've traveled. So I'm here in Gulu, spending too much money on non-local food like sandwiches and pizza because I have little self control when calories are being burned by the 1000's (cycle touring is ridiculously comparable to tree planting, minus the fact that I'm seeing new things and meeting new people by the kilometer and spending money rather than making it :) ). 

I had the privaledge of going into a neighbouring community to Gulu where a few of BAP's bike have been changing peoples' lives for the better. A local BAP staff member walked me from the city of Gulu through a maze of dirt paths that lead to what seemed like a secret magical place full of shade-providing trees, small agricultural patches, rivers complete with walking bridges made out of branches and peace and quite. You would never think a place like that existed just a walk away from the hustle and bustle of the bodas and large trucks honking and spewing dust everywhere. What a walk. We reached the village market where I got to ask (essentially interview) a BAP beneficiary as many questions I wanted. I found out the young lady's buisiness is now flurrishing because she is able to transport her goods from the fields to the market in large quantities by bicycle (in a long skirt no less, because all women wear skirts in Uganda, except for maybe Kampala area). She feels she is more fit because of the bicycle, which is great because many young people do not have time for excercise beyond working the fields in these areas. She tells all her friends, family, neighbours about BAP and that they should apply to get a bicycle of their own. There was not a negative aspect of the bicycle in her life that she could express. One downfall I found was that she did not know how to fix a flat tire or maintain the bike in any way despite the efforts put forth by BAP to teach their clients how to do simple bike maintenance including changing a tire. Confidence is most certainly lacking in the area of bicycle maintenance throughout Uganda. For instance, I am asked the same handful of questions everytime I stop to take a sip of water, eat a snack, catch my breath or take a picture and one of those questions is: "What do you do when you get a flat?" When I respond saying "I fix it" the gasps and awe coming from my interviewer suggest I've done something equivalent to saving 10 babies from a rabid elephant. It's unheard of for people to travel long distance by bicycle in Uganda, it's even less likely to see a mzungu travel by such means, less likely still to see a woman do it and next to no one in the country seems to know how to change a tire on a bike. They take the bike to a mechanic they say...well, the majority of riders I see are no where near a bike mechanic as I've only seen bike shops in large cities, which are few and far between -hence why these people are on a bike in the first place. It seems odd to me that the need for a bicycle mainly stems from the fact that people are living far away from basic ammenities like hospitals, markets, etc, yet they rely on city centres for bike maintenance...hmmmm. Logic is not the strongest of suites at times. Changing a flat on a bike could not be easier, especially when you compare it to the ulternative method of transporting goods around these parts: head loading. Why is it that most Ugandan women can lift an insanely heavy bundle of goods on to the TOP OF HER HEAD and balance it there for km's and km's, but men and women alike can't wrap their head around changing a flat? I'm blaming it on confidence. Something has shot it. I could name a few things that might have...

Anyways, point is: BAP is doing amazing things in the Gulu area and I commend them for it. If any of you young folk out there are looking for a place to do some good work inbetween uni and a career, as a break from uni or just because you're awesome, choose BAP, you will actually SEE the benefits of your work -a rare trait when it comes to a lot of volunteer work I've seen, heard of and participated in in Africa. 

One of a few markets in Gulu, complete with edible insects!! I can't seem to be able to ID them, but the locals call them some kind of fly...I'm guessing they're fireflies. I should try some.

 Learning about culture has been fun, and I value it hugely, but boy am I ready to see some wildlife! I can't wait to get to the southwest! I imagine it will take me about 4 days to get to Fort Portal. From there I will visit Kibale, Queen Elizabeth, Bwindi, Lake Mbura and maybe Lake Buniyonyi! We'll see if there's time for Rwanda. I might get sucked into the awesome wild rainforests!