Surrounded by storks

Our first morning in Kampala we awoke to the sounds of birds everywhere. I looked out the window to see a giant stork sitting atop a tree, pretty much dwarfing everything around him. I mean, these birds are huge! Bill says they are the size of toddlers; their bodies are about three feet tall, their wing span five or six feet. They have long pointy beaks, and scrawny necks covered with fuzzy hair.

We’ve seen storks before, but not this big. And they are ubiquitous, sort of the pigeons of Kampala, and you don’t want to walk under the trees where they are sitting or nesting! When one comes in for a landing it looks just like a plane heading for the runway. We learned it’s the mating season, which is why we find ourselves surrounded by them.

That’s our wildlife, for now. We have not been here long enough to have more than first impressions, such as:
The air smells of charcoal from the cooking fires and you see huge bags of coal carried on bicycles or in taxis..
There are “power cuts” where the power just shuts down for awhile; apparently the cuts are rotated by area (our hotel, where we are until we find an apartment, has a generator); even when there is electricity, the lights are pretty dim. And many, many people use kerosene lanterns.
The people are as happy and helpful as we’d been told. They are also extremely soft-spoken and shy. We are constantly saying, “What?” and sounding like rude mzungus (white people), but really we are just trying to hear. They have the most glorious smiles!
Apparently our accents are “funny”; when we say something, very often the person we’re talking to looks amused. I finally asked what was so entertaining, and was told, “Your English is funny.” They are more used to British accents, I guess.
The shopping areas are rows of stores that are actually more like booths. They are narrow and deep in a row of wooden one-or-two-story buildings. They are ramshackle structures, the true meaning of higgeldy-piggeldy. But you can buy anything you want, and there are also larger grocery stores (yes, they have olive oil!).

Today we were walking down the street to the store and we both spontaneously said how hard it is to describe what we are seeing just along this one street. So that’s the next post.

We are looking for a place to live, and spent the day visiting houses and apartments. They are relatively expensive, and it’s a landlord’s market, so we are going to keep looking at least tomorrow before we decide on a place. We met the people at the New Vision today, and Bill will start at some meetings there tomorrow. They are so excited to have him! He’s going to be one busy mzungu.

We are well. Our biggest ailment is itchy eyes from pollution. Ah, memories of Athens …