The way they seem to load up the plates throughout Africa, it's surprising people aren't a lot fatter.

WRT the Ahnuld bike, what is the significance of "Boxer"? Sure didn't look like a BMW.

That plate of food doesn't look very fattening. Also I would assume a lot of people would cook at home. I couldn't imagine there would be the same rate of eating out as the US.

p4b - That's a Bajaj Boxer:
Rexx - Ugandan home cooking photos are coming soon.

One of the iconic Ugandan foods is pork from what they call "pork joints". They are exactly what you think they are. Small places that sell fried or roasted pork, with a few sides, and lots of beer.

They usually look something like:




Here's one I went to with the guys I met on the bus:




and here we are crushing the goods:




in Uganda, you eat pretty much everything with your hands, which is why you don't see any forks in that photo. Yes, that includes eating stuff like the little pile of chopped tomato/onion by pinching it up with your fingers.

Kampala is right on the north edge of Lake Victoria, so fish (mostly tilapia) is very popular as well. Usually it's served as fried whole:




with similar sides to what you find in the pork joint:




and again, you eat it with your fingers and nothing else.

One of the cool side effects of eating everything with your fingers is that before and after your meal, someone usually shows up at the table with a kettle of hot water and a little basin with a piece of soap in it. You wash your hands right then and there at the table, but usually don't dry them. Here's another friend demonstrating after we took down the fish from the photo above:

She and I also took a minibus:




and visited the Ugandan Wildlife Education Centre which is kinda like a zoo but not quite:




they've got most of the usual African animals:




but it was kinda weird for me to be seeing them in cages:




after all the time I had spent in the large parks in the previous countries where they walk around doing what they want wherever they want. There were a few that weren't caged:




and just did their own thing:

For the most part I got around Kampala on Uber motorbikes:



which usually cost somewhere around $0.50-$0.80 per ride, most rides being 2-4km. Every so often I'd just hop on a regular motorbike taxi when I didn't feel like waiting for an Uber version and it was a little less but not much different other than they never had a spare helmet.

One day, one of the guys from the bus invited me out to his house which was in the highlands. He showed me some land he had bought where he was mining sand:




which he then sold to the construction companies as a building material. Once he mines out all the sand, his plan is to fill the holes with water and start an aquaculture farm, raising tilapia. He also plans to put some lodges there and use it as a resort hotel. Dude has some serious vision and drive.

We then went over to his house for lunch:




which included one of the very few fork sightings I made while in the country:




after lunch, he surprised me with a laundry basket overflowing with the guacamole ingredients I had mentioned to him on the bus ride:




and when they asked me to make the guacamole (none of them having ever had it before), I suggested we all participate, so about six of us sat in a big circle, and everyone had some kind of job, mostly chopping up something or other. Guacamole is of course like chili in that it is a very personal thing when it comes to the recipe and so I had a bit of a struggle deciding on whether or not to make them the usual kind that I make, or a version that is more USA#1 typical. I ended up deciding on the latter, despite it of course being subpar compared to chopamole. That meant the usage of lolonions, but it still ended up pretty decent despite that pollutant:




and everyone was pleased with the result:




with lots of vows to make it many more times long after I left. They weren't kidding, either. The bowl was all but licked clean, and I was asked a lot of questions on proper preparation. I tried to convey how guac is more of an art than a science, and that they shouldn't be afraid to experiment and make it their own, and they liked that and started brainstorming other ingredient possibilities, which was wonderful to listen to.


It might sound kinda stupid saying what I'm about to say, considering the variety of experiences I had during the year making my way across the continent, but that afternoon just chilling out joking around and making guacamole with my new friends was one of the absolute highlights of the entire trip. Cross cultural exchange is one of my favorite things, and of course so is guacamole. Being able to introduce it to people who have never had it before while they welcomed me into their home and treated me like a family member was an experience I will always remember and cherish. That kind of thing is what travel is all about for me.

Not stupid at all, chop. While seeing the things is an important part of travel, seeing the people and culture is at least as good.

Very nice story. Safe travels across Atlantic.

Great guacamole story, chopstick! Excellent pictures as always.

what an absolutely epic adventure

They really do it up for lunch. I usually just grab two pieces of bread, a piece of baloney, and some mustard.

Africans generally push the hospitality boat out when they invite you around to their house to an extent you never see in the West.

We spent all day hanging out at the house. After lunch and guacamole making, we continued to hang out and made roasted pork using a tiny little grill/pot thing:





which is a very Ugandan food. Interesting contrast to the roasted pork from the pork joints.

On the way to the house, we had stopped at a roadside plot where some dudes were selling saplings of various fruit trees, and my friend got an orange tree and a mango tree. I figured he just needed some trees, but later on we went out to the yard together and he told me that they were friendship trees and that we would plant them together and they would symbolize our friendship growing over the years. I got the mango tree and one of his co-workers who had never been to his house got the orange tree. We dug our holes, dropped in the trees:






and now I've got a my own mango tree in Uganda. The other guy and I agreed to have joint custody over each other's trees, so I kinda got an orange tree, too. How lucky!


How's that for hospitality?

Given the new friends, the presence of lemonade, and the overall vibe of the country, I didn't really want to leave Uganda, but a chop gotta do what a chop gotta do, and this chop looked at the calendar and saw that the Atlantic crossing season was fast approaching, so:






on the Volcano bus I went. As usual, I was the only mzungu. Kampala to Kigali is about 10 hours, and ours was more like 12 or so. The ride thru this part of the Ugandan countryside was much more interesting than the east side, mostly because it was daylight and I could actually see stuff.

Lots of signs like this:




but also some lighter fare:




Most of the towns looked the same:




and I was a little sad we didn't stop at the marker for the equator when we crossed it:




(it's that thing in the center) but I think I was the only person who cared or found it interesting, so I understand.

The border crossing was completely standard:




long lines, hot, currency traders, the usual. I was pretty used to it at this point. Not many mzungu take the bus into Rwanda (I was the only one that I saw) so people were curious and asked some questions, mostly where I was from and where I was going and why.

These signs are common at most of the border crossings:




especially the one about child trafficking. Note the reference to ritual murders. No, they aren't joking. That's a real thing. Especially albino children, who are coveted for the "magical" properties of their body parts. There was/is a real problem in SE Malawi regarding this.

Exit from Uganda was easy. Entry into Rwanda was mostly easy, but required a bag search:




which I was a little nervous about, as I had hidden a bunch of ziploc bags in various places. I love my ziploc bags and use them all the time for everything, they are supremely useful travel tools. Rwanda has a blanket ban on ALL plastic bags, so I did things like hide them in the leg of my pair of unused pants, etc.

Turned out to be a non-issue, as they opened my bags just enough to peer inside, and then sent me on my way. The girl in that bag search photo ratted me out to the police for taking it and I was forced to delete it. I did so, then promptly undeleted it later once I was on the bus again.

For anyone confused about the timeline, this was 3 months ago btw:




we pulled into Kigali in the early evening, and I was not really happy to arrive in the dark, as I hate doing that:




but not much to do but roll with it. This is Africa, as they say.

<3 Africans

I remember arriving home after a long road trip in Nigeria to some wild flowers that had been ingeniously attached to the wooden front door frame, as a sign that someone had visited and was thinking of us.

I love that dress and the whole posture of the lady.

lapka - she was fantastic, we sat around waiting for the pork to cook and she told jokes and riddles nonstop, she was very sharp.



I had booked a pretty decent hotel in downtown Kigali, which I made it to without incident. Unfortunately it was a Chinese hotel that primarily catered to Chinese businessmen, so while the restaurant had things like ipads to order on:




the actual quality of pretty much everything was shoddy:




as is fairly common in most Chinese-run hotels that I've stayed at. Glitzy is the best descriptor, I think. Or maybe gilded. Lots of flash and marketing crap, but the quality generally substandard with poor materials.

As an example, my room had a robe and slippers:




but lots of bugs, and the shower leaked out into the hall, while the curtain rod semi-broken and halfway out of the wall.

Had a pretty decent view of Kigali, tho:




and while the hotel wifi was pretty crappy, I was still able to get online:




without issue.

It was also very nice to see that the currency had animals:




and I think that's the first banknote I've ever gotten that has a dairy cow prominently pictured on it. That one in the upper right is coffee beans. Note that the security mark for the note with the gorilla on it is... another gorilla!

Managed to find some better food at a nearby indian restaurant:




but lost the gamble with the ice in my smoothie and spent a day in my hotel room as penance.

A bit like the reverse of my drinking days when a bout of the shlits the next day was inevitably blamed on something I ate, never on the gallons of ale.

In any new country, I generally ignore most of the default attractions and places like museums, but Kigali had an exception. The Kigali Genocide Memorial is somewhere I've always wanted to visit. I have been to other memorials that recognize atrocities, including the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, the USA Holocaust Memorial, and a few others. The Kigali Genocide Memorial was different for me as I was alive during the genocide and old enough to remember watching the news reports and wondering why the world wasn't helping them. I've always been fascinated by the psychology behind what happened, so the Memorial was a must visit for me.

The outside of the memorial is somber. It's mostly composed of some gardens and a few very large slabs:




under which the remains of the victims are buried. A few of the slabs are still open, as they continue to add to them as they still find remains every now and then, as it has not yet been 25 years since the genocide.

Because it happened so recently, families still come and mourn their lost loved ones. There are room like this one:




where people still add photos of their friends and families.

There is also an absolutely heart-breaking room dedicated to some of the child victims, where they have photos of children and little plaques memorializing them:





sorry for the reflection of my phone, I tried for a while to take the photo without the reflection but the lighting and the material made it impossible.

While there are certainly specific humans I like, my opinion of humans in general is quite low. It is absolutely insane to me that we still do things like hack children to death with machetes. When AI takes over and wipes us out, or the next plague comes, or giant meteor finally shows up to give us what for, we totally deserve it and I will not complain.

The Rwandan attitude toward the genocide and its aftermath is inspiring, and gives me hope for humanity. The focus is on forgiveness, reconciliation, and unity. The goal is to heal and not carry the conflict onward. The war crimes tribunal was located in Arusha, Tanzania, and only wrapped up a couple of years ago. I almost went when I was in Arusha but didn't make it.

As part of the healing process, there is a compulsory day of service held every month. It is called Umuganda, and what happens is that everyone comes together to work on some kind of community project, like building a school, digging an irrigation ditch, etc. It is mandatory to attend.

This article gives a look at the amazing level of reconciliation that has already occurred and continues to occur. If you are at all interested in this topic, it's a great read.

The rest of the world could learn a great deal from Rwanda.

There's an interesting thing in Rwanda called a milk bar. Due to lack of refrigeration, central storage for milk was a thing for a while, and what happened was that people would take their containers to these locations and fill them up with milk for the day. They became kind of a cultural institution, and while they still exist for this purpose, it's also totally standard to just show up to one for a glass of milk and hang out. Some of them now serve varieties of milk and small snacks. Think of it like a bar, except instead of alcohol, the attraction is milk.

Here's one I found in a parking garage:




where I ordered a glass, despite not being a milk drinker at all. The woman at the counter took a mug, filled it up:




and I drank the only glass of milk I've drank in probably 20+ years:




it was frothy.


Also made it out one evening with a local for the Rwandan version of the pork joint:






where they have something called akabenz, which is a combo sweet/savory pork dish. Nobody really knows why it is called that, and there are a bunch of competing stories, including that the Mercedes logo looks like a pig's nose. Yes, really.

I don't care what the name is, that stuff is delicious.

My wife has crossed the equator in Uganda. In the town (village?) where she was there were some guys trying to get her to pay money for a demonstration of how water swirled one way on the north side and the other way on the south side. I'm not exactly how they were trying to make money because they gave her a demonstration.

If you'll permit me the luxury of old man bloviating, I submit that this isn't just what travel is about, its what life is about. You seem to be living your life pretty damn well to me.

We will know who to credit for the thriving guacamole trade throughout Africa in 10 years or so.

You know you can't mention something like chopamole without giving some details or a recipe, right? I always use the Jack White rider recipe, lol. (onions are great).

That friend tree thing seems like a pretty good gimmick. I wonder if I can get some guys to come over and help me clean out my "friend flowerbeds" that are full of weeds? Maybe help me mow my "friend lawn"? Seriously though, sounds like an awesome time was had by all (especially the guy who got the mzungu to dig the holes for his new trees).

Thread keeps on delivering better than your average postal service. What countries/places that you haven't been to yet are at the top of your list? What were the biggest disappointments so far?

Have you been to any of the more remote / less visited Pacific Ocean islands between Australia and Hawaii (say Tonga, Tuvalu, Samoa, the Cook Islands, French Polynesia, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, etc)? Any recommendations? I noticed there's an island hopper flight where you can visit nearly all the islands between Hawaii and Fiji, seems like people always pretty much just go to those and maybe Tahiti or something, but so many of these islands look ridiculously awesome. I've always wanted to go to Rarotonga for some reason.

(edit: regarding that last question, I'm sure some of those islands were even documented in this thread during your Pacific crossing, it's been forever since I've read this from the start although I plan on re-doing that at some point.)

Chop what were some of the suggestions made regarding ingredients for guacamole?