Uganda Day 2

Checked in at Madison, Wisconsin. There was a young girl at the counter who didn’t seem much older than Carly. It took awhile to get everything checked in. We’ve never traveled this heavy before as we are carrying children’s books and games to Uganda. We’ve even brought flashlights due to the many power outages that occur in rural Uganda. I bought a soccer ball at Target on the way to the airport, deflated it, and stuffed it into one of the suitcases. We weighed each of the suitcases using our bathroom scale before we left home to make sure each was under the 50 lb limit. One was over so we did a bit of shuffling between suitcases to get it down.

Arrived this morning in Amsterdam, our third airport. We’ve crossed seven time zones, two Great Lakes, an ocean, and two seas. We still have a couple more time zones to cross, and the Equator. I’ve managed to watch The Exotic Marigold Hotel (very good) and The Hunger Games (ok).

Amsterdam is a major entranceway into Europe and a transfer point to places beyond; we can hear a plethora of languages as we move down to gate D3 for our flight to Kigali, Rwanda. At the hatchway of our Delta flight we could feel the cool Dutch weather. It’s cloudy and very humid.

Strange thing about this airport is that there are no seats at the gates; you can only stand. Not a good thing after a sleepless flight. We found a restaurant that is not yet open and with many other travelers occupied their seats. But the airport does offer a half hour of free WiFi, which is how I’m hoping to send this off.

We’ve taken our second round of malaria pills with the third scheduled when we arrive in Entebbe tonight. Ron, our driver, is picking us up at the airport in Entebbe and then driving us to the Makerere University in Kampala where we’ll spend the night in student housing before moving on to Lweeza where we’ll stay at James’ house for the week. James is Ugandan, but is on faculty of UW-Madison during the academic year. I think Maggie has plans for Ron to drive us to the headwaters of the Nile on Sunday. I’ve never met Ron or James. Maggie I know. She was Jim Gee’s significant other. She’s and ESL professor at UW.

Now, we have a rather short two-hour layover before boarding our KLM flight for another very long flight. Hope to be in Kampala before midnight tonight.

Too tired to write.

Todd