Jinja: "Guys, we're drinking tea and having bread and jam on the Nile. Now we just need to make a colony."

First day in Uganda! We had an orientation for safety and security and culture shock and had lunch at a local restuarant, where I had matooke and goat meat. The goat meat was in this awesome broth; matooke is mashed plaintains, and apparently a Ugandan staple. It basically tastes like unsalted, unbuttered potatoes. Very bland, but very thick and heavy. It isn't bad, though. I stared at it for a minute before I ate it, because I was scared of it, since it just looks like a giant yellow mush with black seeds in it. Also, I hate bananas, so I was scared that would transfer over, since plaintains and bananas are sort of related. Anyway, I'm glad I like it, since I'll probably eat that 80% of the time I live with my host family.

Then we had language lessons--I will actually be speaking Luganda and not Lusoga, the language I originally thought I was speaking. The two are similar, but still different languages. Then we got our phones and had dinner at a different local place. In Uganda, there are a lot of different local languages. It's about the size of Oregon, but you can go to one part of the country and they will not understand the language from another region. So communication can be pretty difficult. In the capital, Kampala, Luganda is the main language (though Uganda has no official language). Lusoga is spoken in the Basoga region east of Kampala, which is in central Uganda. I'll be halfway between Jinja, which is southeast of Kampala, and Mayuge, the rural area where some of my colleagues are going. Anyway, I'm speaking Luganda. Sorry to digress. (If anyone wants to know anything more about Ugandan history, tell me in a comment and I will say more in my next post!)

I also rode my first boda-boda today. Boda-bodas are bicycles and motorbikes that you can flag down to get around. They told us in our pre-departure stuff never to ride on a motorcycle boda-boda, but we walked out of our safety orientation this morning and took them to lunch. We were a caravan of mzungus, or foreigners/white people (the term can mean either). The good thing about the fact that the 14 of us who came here together (we're all working at different places--the people I mentioned in my first post are living/working with me) is that we will be less of a spectacle in small groups. 14 white kids is a strange sight in Uganda.

Anyway, a boda-boda is everything your mother was ever worried about--getting on a rickety motorbike with a strange man who probably doesn't have a license and driving into Ugandan traffic, where there are basically no road rules and lots of potholes. (To my mother: Don't worry about me, I walk to work every day, so I won't need bodas that often.) It was actually not that scary, but when they start to go fast on the dirt roads it can get pretty bumpy--hitting a pothole could flip you off if you are going fast enough.

But that was mostly my day. And, as my title suggests, I did in fact sit on the Nile River and drink tea this morning with two of my compadres, which was really cool. The Nile is beautiful and majestic and all that jazz. I really want to go sail on Lake Victoria before I leave.

So I have another day of orientation tomorrow and then on Thursday I go to live with my host family, who I'm really excited to meet. Then work begins at St. Eliza's.