Mityana-Mubende, Uganda

Two hours from Kampala, and two hours from the western city of Fort Portal, and in between the towns of Mityana (30 km away) and Mubende (over 40 km away), there’s an unmarked, narrow and bumpy dirt road off the main road. You’d never know it was there if you weren’t looking for it. If you followed it, chances are you would have lost interest before reaching the first house over 2 km down the road.

And I would have never found myself there if it wasn’t for Belinda, who was introduced to me remotely by my friend Carla (who I met in Antarctica four years ago!). She owns a farm here, and it happens to be next to a village. While she spends most of her life in Kampala, farming is a shared passion of her and her husband (who was out of the country while I was there), and they had to look far from Kampala for land.
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 Sipi Falls and Kampala, Uganda

Strangers are getting into heated discussions in the matatus (confusingly called taxis) here. All around, there are banners, flags, blaring horns from rallies, and of course, hundreds and hundreds of posters from competing parties pasted over each other and over “No Posters Here” signs: it’s election season, with the big day two weeks away. Given the way things go in Ethiopia and Kenya whenever there’s an election, I’m a little bit nervous to be here, and also a little ashamed that I only found out the moment I got to Uganda.

The tiny village of Sipi is magnificently situated across from its namesake falls, two of them clearly visible and the third somewhat hidden behind a hill. I spent practically an entire day sitting outside at my hillside accommodation, chatting with the family that owns the place, and staring at the first (and largest) waterfall, watching it as the light changed from afternoon to evening before heading up to a viewpoint for sunset. But even away from the city, it’s impossible to get away from it all, as we could see and hear rallies in the distance.
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 Thika to Nakuru, Kenya

Good, clean, and fair food for all. Little by little, this lesson is being taught in an increasing number of schools throughout Kenya, thanks to the initiatives of Slow Food International (also here) and their 10000 Gardens in Africa (also here) project. Food is a necessity, so why not also make it something accessible that enables people?

Again through my sister, I was connected to her friend and school colleague Samson, who happened to be working in the Thika area this past week, setting up new gardens. Since he was busy the first few days, he handed me off to his friend and slow food affiliate, Faith.
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 Mombasa and Nairobi, Kenya

Having had some amount of rain and clouds every day so far in Kenya, I made an unplanned detour east to get some sun on the coast. After two days doing nothing on the beaches south of Mombasa, I felt a bit antsy and returned to the city, Kenya’s second-largest. It’s the antithesis to Nairobi: laconic and laid-back, a great deal safer in terms of street crime, and hardly congested in the city center. But it’s also the biggest port city in East Africa, playing host to freighters and cruise ships, as well as a significant Kenyan Indian and Arab population. Most people are Muslim rather than Christian, and outwardly dressed as such. And forget nyama choma (barbecued meat) and fried chicken: the most common dishes around are biryani and pilau — sound familiar? — and coconut-based curries. In other words, it’s Kenya but it’s a world away from the rest of Kenya.
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 Maasai Mara NR and Hell’s Gate NP, Kenya

There’s one pretty obvious thing people come to Kenya for.

Nairobi’s not the safest place out there, which made wandering around difficult especially come evening time, and its suburban sprawl makes it even more difficult to get to know. Despite the sea of brightly-painted matatus (minivans plying a few hundred routes around Nairobi and beyond), the city feels like America in some ways. Outward religiosity (in the form of garish matatus and buses covered in Christian slogans) flying right in the face of an in-your-face sexualised pop culture (in the form of urban music with explicit lyrics being blared by those same buses, plus restaurants playing some pretty racy music videos) is one thing, along with big western shopping malls far from the city center, fast food restaurants (they love their fried chicken and fries), skyscrapers, businessmen in suits everywhere, and heavy traffic, but the biggest similarity I see is how everyone seems busy and has somewhere to go. Several Kenyans I talked to outside Nairobi mentioned that last sticking point, and some compared it to America as well. Few if any people paid any mind to me, which was a jarring but somewhat nice change from the constant attention in Ethiopia and Somaliland, but at the same time, it made them hard to get to know. While still developing and doing so quite rapidly, Nairobi is getting up there with the likes of other cosmopolitan multicultural world cities, for better or for worse.

So instead, I spent most of my time in Nairobi looking at animals, and prepping a trip to look at more animals. Naturally.
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 Hargeisa and Berbera, Somaliland

“Hi, where are you from?”
–“I’m from Canada.”
“Oh, I’ve always wanted to go to China!”
Mohammed pulled me into a juice shop and ordered two orange juices. “We’re new best friends! What is your phone number?”

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 Laas Geel and Berbera, Somaliland

Laas Geel is Somaliland’s one real tourist attraction, but getting there is not the easiest or cheapest thing. For one, it’s 50 km east of Hargeisa, which means you need to find a way to get there: hiring a driver being the most common. But the other thing, required by law for foreigners even though it’s perfectly safe, is that you need to hire an armed guard. Somaliland takes the security of foreigners seriously, especially after an incident some 13 years ago. At my hotel, I was lucky enough to find four Russian/Ukrainian travellers (one of whom is visiting her 150th country!), who flew into Somaliland for just a single day and hired a car and guard, so I joined them and split the costs.

In the midst of a rocky, shrub-filled landscape, we came into a turnoff pretty much in the middle of nowhere, with absolutely no one around. Our guard, Abdirahman, became our guide, but there was no information he could give us other than where to go! Up some stairs and around a rock face, we came to several rock shelters and caves, and found them covered in paintings in ochre, brown, orange, and white, of primarily cows and people and perhaps a few other animals, all in a stunningly excellent level of preservation.

No one’s exactly sure why they’re there! The site was only discovered by archaeologists in 2003, though I’m sure the locals have known about it for much much longer than that. But all we know, really, is that herders probably drew them, and that they’re at least 5000 years old, possibly up to 11000. Crazy! We spent well over an hour just taking it all in and exploring the surrounding landscape.
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 Hargeisa, Somaliland

Chaos. Guns. Lawlessness. Extremists. Al-Shabaab. Pirates.

None of these words describe Somaliland in any shape or form. On the other hand, those words do describe Somalia, the neighbouring country which Somaliland separated from in 1991 with zero official recognition from the rest of the world. With no one high up willing to differentiate between the two, Somaliland suffers from being grouped in with Somalia’s problems, and is blanketed by myriad travel advisories that really should just cover the latter. Also, many people simply don’t even realise this place exists.

4G. Fibre optic. Cashless society.

These buzzwords, on the other hand, do apply to Somaliland.
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 Harar, Ethiopia

Having now spent far more time in Ethiopia than any other country I haven’t lived in, it feels strange and sad to leave for the next country, but it’s the right time. After hanging out in Addis for the third time, enjoying the company of friends both local and traveller, and being quite accustomed to the culture and pace of life, there couldn’t be a more strange (but beguiling) place to end my Ethiopia travels in than Harar.
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 Omo Valley, Ethiopia

Ethiopia is home to approximately 83 languages — so there’s at least that many tribes. From Oromo (the majority) to Amhara to Tigray to Afar to Somali, these tribes all have regions specific to them. But Ethiopia’s also got the Southern Tribes Region, which is jam-packed with tribes that speak completely unrelated languages, practice wildly different customs, and choose to live traditionally with little taste for modern amenities. Most notoriously, many of these tribes practice various body modifications and adornments, ranging from body painting to scarification to lip plates, believe in animism rather than organised religion, and often wear little to no clothing — all the kind of stuff you see on documentaries, as if some uncontacted humans isolated from the rest of the world. (They’re not.)

Unfortunately, in recent years it’s become sort of a human zoo, with hordes of package tourists arriving in villages in their 4x4s and minibuses, picking photogenic villagers — who often go beyond traditional dress to be more eye-catching to tourists — from a lineup, snapping pictures, and leaving. The tribes themselves have turned it into an income source, which they should, but some tribes take it too far by demanding tourists take photos then demanding cash, often getting into altercations about payment.

With a bit of reluctance, I decided to go visit the Omo Valley anyway. I held out some hope that there would be something more rewarding than just pictures of “exotic looking” people, and I’m very glad to say that there was indeed so much more than that.

(Warning: some images below may be considered not safe for work.)
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