Kampala - Sat & Sun - Feb 15/16

Saturday was a busy day preparing for the meetings that start on Monday. I spent most of the day working on my PowerPoint slides, although one interesting event took place at breakfast.  I met Gene and Wolf at the buffet and saw that Wolf had taken some odd looking fruit on his plate.  When I asked what it was, he said he had no idea, but it tasted very good. I went back, took an adventure bite, and loaded up on what I can only describe as a thick, succulent, pale yellow leafy thing that had a very sweet taste, reminding me a bit of kumquat.  I asked one of the attendants what it was and he said "jack fruit".  I'ld never heard of it, but both Gene and Wolf had, but had never seen it.  The buffet attendant went into the kitchen and brought back an opened jack fruit with some of the pulp still inside.  That is what is eaten, and the pulp is comprised of these leafy parts that are scraped out with a fork.

For dinner we ate once more in the hotel's grill restaurant, this time with several more of the Harvest Plus staff that arrived today.  Service is almost unbearably slow, taking nearly two hours to eat and get our bill.  I had a sirloin steak, side of fries and a beer.  The total came to under $13 US.  Not a great steak, but not bad,



Sunday -- we all left the hotel by charter bus for transfer to the Kabira Country Club, a 15 minute ride away.  Neither of my credit cards worked at checkout, and ended up paying them in Ugandan Shillings.  I called my credit card company and they said they did not deny service, in fact had no record of an attempt. Seems that the local clearing house is wary of Sunday card activity and often simply denies use. Several others were denied use as well. Hopefully, this was a one day glitch in the system.

We just returned this evening from a cultural theater where a dance troupe, Ndere Troupe, puts on a regular Sunday performance of Ugandan African dance, drumming, singing and music.  It was a spectacular event running over four hours. I have no idea how they were able to maintain the level of energy over such an extended period of time.  I took over 200 pictures and will be posting several when time permits. In the meantime, it's after mid-night and I need to go to sleep. /Tomorrow is a busy day.