UGANDA: 7 Months Abroad & Life/Travel Lessons From a Pandemic

Well it’s taken me 3 and a half months to sit down and reflect on 7 months locked down in Uganda, so close yet so far from home. I eventually got back to Kenya at just the right time, light in the wallet (shoutout $100 COVID testing) and ready for a month-long nap.

ICYMI between March (still ordinary-ish life in most of Africa) and early October (a complete alternate universe) I accidentally took residence in Jinja, Uganda.

ICYMI I wrote about being stranded at a hostel in Jinja for Fodor’s, you can read that little time capsule here.

It was totally by choice.

I had travelled there as a first stop on a longer trip South to Tanzania, Malawi and maybe Zambia (could you imagine? HA!) and when in late March it was announced that Uganda’s borders would close to all passenger movement, I decided I was fine where I was and would stick it out.

I’m not mad about that decision at all. It was a safe little bubble of lovely weather, peace, just a handful of recorded COVID cases and the best dogs. After (some of) a pandemic together and in spite of my spotty Luganda, Jinja is absolutely on the growing list of places I call home.

I was living for free at a cottage in a hostel –

that is, the place I was volunteering at which was now closed keeping with government orders for all tourist accommodation. Watching that all transpire with the last few guests scramble to get back to mostly Europe – and even a few try and find a place to hide out to avoid going home, if they even had such a place.

I was somewhere in the middle.

It was not a bad deal at all. I had the time and space to pitch articles and make videos to my heart's content, and even present at 3 different online conferences.

Great people around - the true local community minus tourists. But more than that all the alone time and space I could ask for.

Even when a little life started to come back and I was on bar/reception duty, the pace was still slow and alternate universe-y.

After a while there were the inevitable bumps.

A little bicycle crash and following recovery. Watch that hilarious and disastrous vlog here.

Then the being mugged by two men armed with a machete who snatched my bag – which had the hostel’s iPod that I should not have taken out on my evening walk with me.

And the kicker – my grandmother taking her last breath just when I was making arrangements to finally head home and go see her as the borders had just been opened at last.

Ultimately my leaving was hectic and rushed, with worries of money and getting tested for COVID on time and a slightly new set-up at the border, which I arrived to at 7pm and ended up staying the night instead of carrying on to my grandma’s. Which meant I made it to the house on the morning of the funeral.

But I was home.

And all those afternoon photo-walks by the Nile, vegan adventures from Amber Court market to the kitchen, solitary swims in the pool that slowly came back to life with new guests were in a way the living meditation and mental preparation I needed to get through losing both my grandmothers and a lot of other personal upheaval in between.

Ultimately I’m glad for the giant hurricane of lessons that was 2020. This video is a little ode to that.

J.

xx

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