Tonight is our last night staying at the NUFU house at the university since our plane leaves at 2am on sunday morning. Today we had our last breakfast from margaret which consisted of this all-star lineup: omelette with green peppers, red peppers, and onions, mango juice, toast, and pineapple (the pineapple here is the best in the world. Also, i learned on this trip that pineapples don't grow in trees but on little bushes! go figure).
Today was a free day for us so we went to the craft market by taking a "mutatu", a type of mini-bus that are everywhere in the city. we got one private hire for us, but usually they just pick up random people on the street and have routes to go on. They can cram about 15 people in them, have roll bars on the windows, and their seats are covered in a gross velvety-like cloth. Needless to say I tried not to touch much of the interior haha.The market had a lot of really neat things, so I ended up spending most of my remaining shillings. I got a bag made from various patches of fabric and several pairs of earrings...at least 6 haha. Each pair of earrings cost 2000 shillings, which is equivalent to just under one US dollar. Prices here in Uganda are generally significantly higher for foreigners, so a fair amount of bartering needs to be done when buying services such as taxi rides and buying things at markets. For example, a taxi ride from Kampala to a suburb would cost a local person approximately 500 shillings, but for a foreigner it would be about 15,0000shillings. ANother thing I have found strange here is that bribes are not uncommon. FOr example last night when our taxi brought us back to the front gate of the university, the guard at the entrance asked for money before he would let us in. We handed over 1000 shillings which is only about 50 cents, but is a fair amount of money here.
After the market we walked back towards a coffee shop that we found the other day that served very good food (ie it was american-like!). I had an amazing grilled ham and cheese sandwich and passionfruit juice. THe meal came with a free cup of coffee which was to die for, especially since it was the first brewed cup of coffee I have had since leaving the US. Most coffee here is instant coffee, which if you've ever tried it, tastes nothing like brewed coffee!! We ended up catching a taxi home for a decent price, thanks to Ryan's bartering skills. Initially the cab driver wnted to charge us 15000 shilllings for the short trip back, but he refused to pay more than 8000, so that's what we ended up doing!
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