Welcome Home

I arranged to stay with a couple named Herb and Ellen, who owned a Bed and Breakfast in Kampala. I was referred to them by a couple of people who had stayed here previously and just could not say enough wonderful things about them. When we finally arrived at Herb and Ellen’s on Saturday morning, I was instantly greeted by Papa Herb and Mama Ellen, as I’ve been instructed to call them. They wasted no time doing what Mamas and Papas do—they fed me a huge breakfast then sent me upstairs to have a shower and a nap. (Ellen woke me up from said nap about 2 hours later…she has a whole game plan for helping me to deal with the jet-lag. Thank goodness someone does because my game plan, or lack thereof, would find me sleeping all day and staying up all night).

Papa Herb and Mama Ellen’s Place!

View from the balcony to the right

View from the balcony to the left

For everyone worried about my safety, this is what is surrounding the house.  NOBODY is getting in. 

After lunch, Herb and Ellen took me into town to exchange my money and to set up my phone and internet. Here’s a little rundown of the currency in Uganda—
Ugandan currency is the shilling. 
1 US Dollar= about 2,500 shillings. 
shortcut to figuring out how much something costs in US dollars: divide the first number of the cost in shillings by 2(for example, 30,000 sillings = appox. $15 US Dollars) this is not an exact science, but it works for me. 
Like many things, I was aware of the exchange rate before arriving in Uganda and I happily exchanged $200 of my US Dollars for 500,000 shillings. However, when the cashier at the internet place said "that will be 130,000 shillings", I almost lost my lunch.
*sidenote: that was the cost for 4 months of internet and it comes out to around $50 US dollars…not a bad deal.

Shillings


We then went to a store to get my cell phone turned on, where I also learned the meaning of my name here in Uganda. I introduced myself the the sales associate and he told me, “In Uganda, Bliss means the ultimate, or maximum of something”. He then went on to give me examples like, the maximum of happiness you would say, ‘happiness bliss’ or the maximum of love you would say ‘love bliss’ or the maximum of pain would be ‘pain bliss’….(I chose to ignore his last example and focus on the first two, more positive ones). 

My new saaweeeet cellular device. yes, it has the game ’Snake’…be jealous.

We left the store and went down to a little cafe, where we had delicious African coffee--which is basically just coffee with hot milk mixed in it. By this time, I was going on my it had been 72 hours since my trip first commenced, and I had slept for about 6 of those. I was running on PURE adrenaline and that coffee wasn’t going to work to keep me awake if I had paid it to. We got home around 6 and I ate my first home-cooked meal in Africa…I couldn’t tell you what it was, but I can tell you it was wonderful. I wish that I had a story about how I lay in bed that first night, unable to sleep because of my excitement over finally being in Africa, but that just wasn’t the case. I crashed, and I crashed HARD. I slept for 12 hours and it was upon waking up in the morning that I had my overly excited “holy sh**, I’m in Africa!!!” moment. That sentiment was very quickly followed by a slightly less enthusiastic “holy sh**….I’m in Africa” moment. I’m not going to lie and say that my emotions weren’t engaged in an epic battle for the first couple of days, because they were. However, I’m writing this on my 5th day in Uganda, and I can safely say that the battle is finally over….and excitement has won :)

all of my love and happiness,
Bliss xxxx