Kampala-I haven't blogged in ages. I wonder if that means I'm not a real blogger? I don’t really have one specific reason, but it has been a lot of things: I got tonsillitis last week and still haven't quite recovered; I'm in Uganda doing another week of refugee interviews; Scott and I went camping to Lake Naivasha and Lake Nakuru; and I am trying to finish up my life in Nairobi as I leave in just 3 days.
Camping was very fun. I took the bus up to Naivasha, which is horrible town, then a matatu out to the lake where I met Scott. We stayed at Fisherman's Camp, which has bandas right on the lake and hippos roam at night behind electric fences. It was beautiful. Then we drove up to Lake Nakuru, which is a National Park. On the way we stopped at Menengai Crater, a dormant volcano now it is a big lava-filled crater covered in lush greenery. You can see steam rising from cracks. There is a lot of geothermal activity in this area and the geothermal companies are all over it.
We arrived in the park in time for an evening game drive to get to the campsite near Makalia Falls. We saw rhinos and flamingos right away, which was what we came for. We set up camp in our 1-person tent and Scott made dinner. He is very handy and outdoorsy, which is good because I haven't camped since I was 11. He is also a huge nerd with GPS in hand and headlamp on his forehead. Truthfully, the headlamp is so key and my flashlight was so lame in comparison.
We woke up at 6am which was a miracle for us and the ground was covered in dew, it looked like frost. We were up in time to see over a hundred baboons run through the campsite and up a rock towards the waterfall. It was awesome.
We drove around and found giraffes that we got within 3 metres of and more rhinos and flamingos, and even hyenas humping. I also saw my first warthogs and lots of pretty coloured birds. We had late breakfast up on a viewpoint overlooking the whole lake, it was breathtaking and totally deserted. As we looked out across the entire park we couldn’t see sign of another human being.
We came home via a winding, bumpy, mostly dirt road along the Rift Valley. It was fun for the first 4 hours, but I got tired and grumpy during the last 2 as the novelty of driving in a safari truck from the 80s with no suspension wore off. Scott finally saw my bad side, luckily he thinks it is funny.
If cranky Nikki wasn't enough to turn him away, I decided to get tonsillitis. Fortunately, Scott was in the field so he wasn't there to see me curled up in a ball whimpering in my bed. My friends, Jess and Rich, who live at my second home Upperhill Campsite took me to the hospital. The first time, after waiting 2 hours, the doctor was convinced I had malaria and wouldn't even look at my throat, which according to Jess who is a trauma nurse, had pus on it. At 3am when my throat almost closed up, I went back and finally was given injectable antibiotics. I feel almost human.
Before heading to Uganda, my housemates, Scott and I, had our last supper at one of the top restaurants in Nairobi, Tamarind. It is a delicious seafood place, and although the atmosphere was slightly old school, the food was amazing. The swimming twist is that the executive chairman of Tamarind and its more famous sister, Carnivore, is none other than the father of swim-stars Jason and David Dunford who now swim for Stanford. Jason was 5th in the 100 fly in Beijing for Kenya. I had dined with all of them early on in my trip at their other restaurant Tamambo, which is also fantastic.
Kampala is a beautiful city, or at least the 10 block radius I have seen since arriving. Our hotel and the NGO where we are doing the interviews is on the top of one of 7 hills that make up the city and there are flowering gardens and perfectly manicured lawns. Mansions loom behind huge gates and hedges. We could be anywhere in the world, but we are in Uganda.
I feel like I have come full circle being here. My human rights law professor who further inspired my dream of being a human rights lawyer was from Uganda. He fled during Idi Amin's reign of terror and became a refugee in Australia before relocating to the US and teaching me Property and Human Rights at Brooklyn Law School. Now I am here, interviewing refugees, mostly from Congo and Somalia, to resettle them in Australia. In the 3 months I have worked for the Aussies here in Africa I have sent over 200 refugees on the path towards new lives in Australia. There might not be a Professor Murumbu among them, but when I get to talk about democracy and the rule of law and playing sports in their adopted country, the smiles and relief I see, is the best gift I could ever receive.
