Friday & Saturday in Kampala

We got back into Kampala and checked into our hotel, Triangle Hotel, on Thursday night.  We had a nice dinner at Piato (Marc finally got his chicken wings) and said goodbye to Dr. Farmer who was heading to Entebbe for a 4:30AM flight.  We were looking forward to a few days of luxury and relaxation in the Kampala city center but are finding ourselves missing The Edge House and the Friary in Kakooge!  Our hotel is safe and nice, but the intertnet connection is SLOW, our bed (yes, one bed) is smaller than we expected, the shower is leaky, and we have a "pool view" room which turned out to be really loud!  The hotel is right in the middle of downtown Kampala, which is a very fast paced and kind of hectic area, we had gotten used to our little corner of Kampala and had a hard time navigating this section at first.  After spending two and a half nights here, we have learned to negotiate taxis really well and have learned to identify things by landmarks...so we are enjoying it much more now!

On Friday morning we went to the US Embassy to meet some of the staff and discuss US-Ugandan relations and meet with USAIDS staff to talk about Ugandan healthcare and the programs the US is active in.  We found out that the United States gives about $700,000,000 to Ugandan programs each year and that most of this is delegated for health needs and/or education initiatives - both of which we saw a great need for and are happy that the US is providing aid where it is needed.  Unfortunately we could not take any pictures inside the embassy, but it was gorgeous! 

Making baskets at the market!

Afterwards we met with Fred, a friend of our classmate Zach's close friend Erin.  Fred works for a charity organization that Erin is organizing that works to empower Ugandan women through buying and selling their handcrafted (BEAUTIFUL) baskets.  We saw a man wearing a UNC shirt and started to yell to/harass him and found out that it was Fred! He took us to the craft market, helped us negotiate for some amazing souveneirs, and filled up two of our suitcases with baskets to bring back to the US for Erin.  He was an awesome tour guide and we really enjoyed spending some time with him!  He even finally got us to ride a "matatu" which is a local taxi that is a van FULL of people, and showed us where to get on and off.

Katie & Marc's first matatu ride!

Dan & Fred in the matatu after the craft market

We then went back to "our side of town" to drop off some supplies to the dental school and return the sterilization equipment we had borrowed.  We met with Dr. Kutesa and the dental school's dean to discuss how we could change the project and grow to better suit our needs and the needs of the university.  Dr. Kutesa was eager to hear about our findings as the area we provided service in is not one that had previous outreaches set up;  the university is glad to be aware of the great need in that region and we look forward to working together to implement a positive change.  After leaving Makerere we headed to Fang Fang, a chinese restaurant for a delicious dinner and came home early to hang out before the opening ceremony for the olympic games! 

Dr. Farmer texted us to let us know he got home safe and to check on our flights home to make sure they hadn't been cancelled as his was. Sure enough, American Airlines & Egypt Air had somehow cancelled our flights home!  We ran out of international phone minutes trying to fix the problem and then had to pawn it off onto our amazing parents to fix it.  Luckily,  after about 20 hours on the phone, they have handled it and we atleast have an itinerary saying that we are heading home on August 3rd as planned!

We werent the only ones watching the games!

Today we ventured out into a new neighborhood, Kabalagala, and got some ice cream and groceries and stopped at a bar with a nice patio to have a Nile special and watch some Olympic swimming!  Since we finally figured out where Mediterraneo was - our favorite restaurant from the first night in Uganda - we decided to head back there for an early long last dinner!

Dan, Marc, Katie & a lot of gnocchi.

We lucked out and arranged to head out for our safari one day early - we will be heading out tomorrow morning at 7AM hopefully to see some awesome sights and really cool wildlife!  As promised - we finally posted the picture of the mandible....it is at the bottom of the blog about our luggage arriving if you dare to take a look :)