It is Thursday night, I am extremely exhausted and looking forward to a long weekend. This is my favourite weekend of the year, Easter weekend. Apart from celebrating the resurrection of our Saviour, it is a four day weekend.
My thoughts drift to Easter last year and how I spent this. A group of friends decided we would go to the beautiful source of the Nile, Jinja. We opted to stay on a little island called Samuka, famed for its bird species. Some bright spark, suspect it was my good friend Alex , suggested that rather than book rooms, we would go camping. Took some convincing but I finally figured it couldn't be that bad, in fact it may be an exciting experience. See, this was to be my first camping experience.
We left Kampala on Saturday, the road trip was good fun, quite uneventful. We arrived in Jinja, one very short boat ride later, we were in Samuka. We were shown to our respective humble abodes. I was horror stricken when I saw my piddly "cat" tent, I didn't think they made them that small. The other tents were fine. Mine was the smallest because I wasn't sharing. Once I got over the shock, we got changed and went for a swim followed by drinks and dinner. I excused myself early because I had a slight cold and really needed my sleep.
I crawled into my little tent and remember feeling quite forlorn. I lay silent listening to the sounds of the great outdoors. Something we hadn't taken into account when we decided to go camping was the fact that it was the middle of the rainy season. I think you know where we are heading.
The wind had picked up and was howling something chronic. It wasn't long before I heard the sound of rather heavy raindrops hit the tent. Two of my party came to get me, figured we were better off having a nightcap. I wasn't about to argue so we headed back to the bar which was lovely, warm and dry. By now, it was raining very heavily. We eventually retired an hour or so later. The rain continued to pelt down.I crawled into my tent to find the interior was wet, I knew I was going to get a thorough soaking. I attempted to brave this but soon realised I would end up catching pneumonia. That wasn't the plan.
I left the tent lagging my wet belongings with me and headed back to bar informing tne night manager I was setting up home in the now cold and wet bar area. Poor chap took pity on the clearly miserable sorry mess standing before him and advised there was a double room that was unoccupied. This was music to my ears. It was past 3am, I was finally able to check in for a few hours. The room wss lovely and warm, had four solid walls and a nice warm bed, utter bliss.
The next day, Easter Sunday, we checked out. We headed to 2 Friends Guest House for lunch which was delicious despite the fact that I could barely stay awake for longer than a few minutes. See by now, I was fairly drugged up. I had woken up feeling very unwell, relief had come in form of meds.We headed back to Kampala, picked up our cars, I drove straight home to my then cozy little one bedroom apartment. It was raining heavily again. I called the one person that will always lend a sympathetic ear, mother dearest and proceeded to black out for more than ten hours. I felt a bit better come Easter Monday.
Whenever I go on holiday, I opt to stay at hotel, in a room, I like my little comforts. I absolutely love Uganda and what our outdoors has to offer but I am quite happy to shut the door on this come night time. I am not good with being at nature's mercy and I can safely say I will not be camping again anytime soon. The title of this piece is therefore very much tongue in cheek.
This Easter I'm staying put, a friend was thinking of taking his family camping in Jinja, party pooper that I am I pointed out that it is raining almost every night, let's just say I think I managed to put him off. Have a lovely Easter whatever you do folks.
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