Little Vid also made it up the mountain and into Rwanda without a visa:
Little Vid resting on a rock in Rwanda. She can see Kenny and our mountain guides across the lake in Uganda.
More Little Vid here.
Author Archive for lauren
We are headed out on yet another weekend trip, this time all the way to the southwestern corner of Uganda, and Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, best known for its population of 340 gorillas. We had debated amongst ourselves for a while about whether or not we would go gorilla tracking during our time in East Africa. On the one hand, it’s an extremely expensive activity, and the maximum time spent with the gorillas is only one hour. On the other, you get to see gorillas! We’ve heard several accounts from people who have been, and count it among the best experiences of their lives. I also hope that the large sum of money we’ve paid in advance to the UWA will help with gorilla preservation efforts.
This trip will also include a one-day volcano hiking excursion near Bwindi, which will hopefully be good training for our Mt. Meru climb next month.
When we return to Kampala, we’ll only have one evening here before our office is sending us out to the field for a CKW training in Kapchorwa, near the Kenyan border. I am extremely excited to get out and meet some of the CKWs we’ve been hearing about all summer. It should certainly make the project feel more personal.
I’m not necessarily looking forward to so much time in a car over the coming week, but Ira Glass’s storytelling should help make it bearable.
Before we left the office on Friday afternoon, our AppLab co-worker and friend, Jill, informed us about the Maisha African Film Festival, which was on all weekend at the National Theatre, just a 20-minute walk from our apartment. The opening night feature film was entitled iMANi, and set here in Kampala. It had won several awards and looked like it would be worth seeing.
Kenny and I have certainly been a bit reclusive on the weekends we actually stay in Kampala, so we decided the film was a good excuse to get out and about on a Friday evening, and to hang out with Jill, of course. Unfortunately we realized that we had the wrong phone number for her, but we left the apartment at 6:45 for the 7:30 showing, and figured we’d grab a quick bite across the street at Masala Chaat House and hopefully bump into Jill in the theatre. Dinner was quick, fortunately, and we made it over to the theatre with a few minutes to spare… except when we arrived we learned that the theatre was full. Oops. Apparently the tickets were free and the line started forming two hours in advance.
So it turned into yet another anti-social night for us in Kampala. We stopped at the Nakumatt for a few groceries, and then returned home and fired off a quick apologetic email to Jill.
This morning, Kenny received an SMS from Jill asking whether we’d like to join her for the film showing at 10:30. Which film showing, we asked? Apparently the projector had malfunctioned after 30 minutes of the iMANi screening on Friday evening, and it had been rescheduled for Sunday morning. Sweet. It turned out that our poor timing on Friday evening hadn’t been so unfortunate after all.
The film shows a day in the life of three characters, with their stories interleaved: a housekeeper from Entebbe who works in the home of a well-to-do Kampala family; a rehabilitated child soldier in Gulu; and a member of Break Dance Project Uganda who works with street kids. Each character faces a difficult situation with which he/she must cope before the day is over. The dialogue is an amalgam of Luganda, Kiswahili, and English, with English subtitles throughout, and the soundtrack is fantastic. Some of the script seemed a bit cheesy, but it’s highly possible that the dialogue suffered in the translation to English. And while the plot itself wasn’t entirely unpredictable, it was genuine, and for the most part, uplifting.
After the showing, Philip Buyi, who plays Armstrong, the break dancer, answered a few questions from the audience. One audience member started a very unexpected line of questioning, asking Philip why his character wasn’t tougher, more aggressive. And then he seemed to follow up with a criticism of Philip’s own personality, asking why he spoke so softly on stage and did not project a more “manly” presence. It was uncomfortable for many of us in the audience, who are perhaps more familiar with the film festival scene and more conventional audience questions. But Philip handled the heckler well, and did not seem to take offense. It was a reminder that the arts scene here in Kampala is quite nascent, and perhaps its connoisseurs are still a bit uninitiated. On the other hand, I hope that even as the arts scene grows more sophisticated, the honesty and lack of pretension can remain.
Interestingly, Charles Mudede of The Stranger reviewed the film in June (perhaps it was at SIFF?), and the review is currently featured on the front page of the iMANi website. Ah, Seattle. We’ll be there in five weeks.
Little Vid enjoyed our 10-day beach holiday almost as much as Kenny and I did, especially because we got to celebrate her namesake’s birthday in Kenya.
Little Vid enjoying the beach at Kenyaways
A little French girl on the beach tried to steal Little Vid when she saw her perched on the camel’s head
Enjoying a glass of the house red for Vidya’s birthday
Lounging on our rooftop deck in Stone Town
Enjoying a vegetarian lunch thali in Stone Town
Somewhere over the rainbow is Nungwi Beach, Zanzibar
Checking out the strange environs at Matemwe Beach, Zanzibar
As always, you can follow Little Vid’s adventures here.
For our final day in Zanzibar, we struck a deal with Langi Langi’s driver to combine a morning outing to Matemwe Beach, on the east coast, with our airport transfer. The LP had described Matemwe as a peaceful, secluded stretch of sand with beautiful water. Based on our Zanzibar experience thus far, we also assumed that the beach itself would change drastically with the tides, and we were not mistaken. We arrived at low tide, when a vast stretch of tidal flat was exposed and the water was between knee and waist deep. Behind the tidal flat, about 500m away from the beach, was a long skinny sandbar, where the waves were breaking at low tide.
We decided to wade out to the sandbar, which looked like a nice spot to sit and have a game of Scrabble. It turned out to be a slightly difficult slog, as the ocean floor was littered with obstacles such as rocks and sea urchins, but it was also surprisingly rewarding. Along the way, we observed women harvesting seaweed and tending their seaweed farms, and saw a beautiful red starfish below the water’s surface. The locals seemed impressed that we expended the effort to cross, and on a few occasions attempted to communicate with us, albeit with very limited success. Unfortunately my Kiswahili is a bit rusty.
On the other side, we saw locals collecting sea creatures, and experienced a dramatic other-worldly landscape, with exposed rocks, coral, and spongy seaweed growing on the surface. We shot a few photos, relaxed, and played Scrabble until we feared that the rising tide might strand us. Besides, our stomachs were starting to rumble in anticipation of lunch. So we commenced our trudge back across the shallow water to the main part of the beach, where we sat down for lunch at the posh Sunshine Hotel, as recommended by our driver. While we lunched, the tide came in quickly, and the entire tidal flat, seaweed farms and all, was completely submerged before we finished.
After lunch, it was onward to the airport, and goodbye to Zanzibar. But we’ll be back in Tanzania in exactly one month.
Harvesting seaweed
Wading out to the sand bar at low tide
The sand bar at low tide
The sand bar at low tide
Pretty red starfish
Typical Zanzibari wooden dhow, seen from lunch at high tide
For the final segment of our East African beach vacation, we’re camped out at Langi Langi Beach Resort, at Nungwi, on the northern tip of Zanzibar. Langi Langi came highly recommended by our good friends Brian and Kara, who spent a few days here during honeymoon #2.
There isn’t much “beach” to speak of around our hotel, except for a small stretch that disappears after low tide. However, at high tide, the ocean is like a vast swimming pool, accessible from our hotel’s deck. If only we had a diving board. And the views from our hotel, especially the balcony of our sea-view room – apparently the best room in the house – are absolutely stunning.
For more traditional beach lounging, we’ve been taking walks to nearby beaches, like Kendwa to the south, and East Nungwi, around the island’s northernmost point from here. Kendwa is a long, beautiful stretch of sand (Kenny wrote a few thoughts about it here). East Nungwi is a bit easier to reach, although the beach itself all but disappears at high tide. We had a nice walk there yesterday, a wonderful swim in the jewel blue water, and a delicious lunch at the Tanzanite Beach Resort.
Dining options here at Nungwi are a bit limited and service seems to be universally slow. However, the food at our hotel’s restaurant is good, and we had one good meal at the Armaan Bungalows restaurant next door (although our repeat visit was a disappointment). The village of Nungwi is a stark contrast to the posh resorts on the beach, with a small school house, and a cluster of tiny shops and residences along a muddy road. We’ve taken a few strolls through the village to purchase water and bread, and use the internet cafe, and we enjoyed watching the local kids play football at dusk.
Tomorrow is our last day on Zanzibar, and we are hoping to check out Matemwe Beach in the morning before we begin our journey back to Kampala.
Morning rainbow, viewed from the breakfast area at our hotel
The view from our balcony
Sunset from our balcony
Catching fish in a trap
Nungwi Beach at low tide, before it disappeared completely
Rating: 
While in Diani, we ate our best non-Olive Branch meal at a cute little Italian place called Aniello’s, recommended by Hassan from Kenyaways. The place has a romantic atmosphere, and seems to be a popular hangout for visiting Italians. Unfortunately the mood lighting made photography with our point-and-shoot difficult. But we shared a good pizza, crab ravioli, and a scoop of tiramisu gelato. I don’t remember the name of the pizza we tried, but it was the best pizza we’ve had in East Africa and featured two types of cheese, basil, and tomato sauce. The crust was thin and flaky, with the right amount of crunchiness. The crab ravioli were extremely fresh, although one needed to be a bit careful of the stray bits of crab shell hidden inside a few of them (oops!)
It’s a great little spot, and I’d certainly recommend it over most other options in Diani – for one thing, the pizzas are much better than those at Forty Thieves.
Aniello’s apparently has two locations in Diani – the one we chose was further north, across from the Barclay’s bank and just past the Nakumatt. There is another one in the Diani Shopping Center, although Hassan told us that the one we chose has the better menu of the two, most notably for the inclusion of the pizzas.
The pizza looked better in person than this photo attests
Fresh crab ravioli
Aniello’s
Diani, Kenya
Rating:
The stretch of sand occupied by Kenyaways, where we spent most of our time over the past four days, is a bit isolated from the action of Diani, to the north. Even beach resorts and hotels are quite spread out on that part of the coast. As such, it is extremely convenient that Kenyaways has a fantastic and reasonably-priced restaurant, the Olive Branch. We consumed all of our lunches there, and we wished that we had opted to stay for dinner on two of the three occasions that we ventured up to Diani for mediocre food.
During our four day stay, we sampled many different dishes, including the ceviche and smoked sailfish salad, falafel burger, Thai fish cake, prawn and avocado salad, grilled prawns, butternut-lentil-coconut curry, big garden salad, and the hamburger (Kenny, not me). The ceviche, served with toast, was quite tasty, although its consistency was more like a tuna fish salad than most ceviches I have tried. The falafel burger was certainly a standout, a delicious chickpea patty on a homemade bun, served with a fresh salad. I also loved the butternut-lentil-coconut curry, which tasted like Thai-Indian fusion, and was served with rice and chapattis. The Thai fish cakes were two juicy fish patties, pan fried but not greasy, served with a large helping of salad. They were delicious, and could also have been great on a bun as a fish burger. The big garden salad was extremely fresh, and featured greens heaped with a big spoonful of feta-like cheese, tomatoes, avocado, capers, and several types of nuts. Yum.
The restaurant staff, Alex, Hassan, and David, were always helpful and amazingly friendly. Hassan told us that the Olive Branch was the best restaurant in the area, and we believed him. He also recommended Aniello’s in Diani, where we had a very nice Italian meal.
If you find yourself at Galu Beach, definitely stay at Kenyaways for the laid-back kite surfing vibe (even if you don’t kite surf!), excellent balcony views, and perfect beach. And while you’re there, you could do much worse (trust us, we did!) than eating all your meals at the Olive Branch.
Big garden salad
Falafel burger
Tuna ceviche and sailfish salad
Prawn and avocado salad
Thai fish cakes
The Olive Branch, Kenyaways
Galu Beach, Kenya
+254 (0) 728 886 821