Follow the Journey

OLYOTYA! Greetings from Kampala!Uganda is da bomb– since everyone else explained today’s scavenger hunt, we’ll fill you in a little about what life’s been like the past couple days.Our hostel is sweet, one of the rooms is open-air with bunkbeds and moaquito nets. last night was our first african rainstorm, that was an experience. lets just say no one was kidding when they said it rains hard in Africa! it… Read More

Whats up?! Its Miriam and Emily and we are posting from Kool city internet cafe in Kampala, Uganda. Besides checking this off our list, we want to shout out to the carpe diem office as well as friends and family for all their help and support. Kampala is nuts- in a good way. People are all over the place selling things, calling us mzungos, helping me (Emily) when I almost… Read More

We arrived in Uganda two days ago..we think. It has been very warm and quite the cultural shock. The streets are bustling with thousands of people, jammed pack in cars and vendors lining the streets. Yesterday we got our first taste of Kampala, gathering our barrings. We are staying at Kampala’s Backpackers, where the natives are much more patient with the many white guests. We have been able to enjoy… Read More

The Africa group has landed in Uganda, safe & sound! The internet in the internet cafe where they are staying is down….again….(one of the many challenges of traveling in the developing world); but our leaders managed to borrow someone else’s laptop connection long enough to touch base with HQ. As I write this, they have been in Kampala approximately 10 hours, and no doubt hitting the wall of jetlag. They… Read More

After an exasperating time not locating the final four Africa groupmates in Heathrow (until 15 minutes prior to boarding), it is with a collective and deep sigh of relief I can announce the completion of the group. All 7 students and both leaders (albeit with a few years shaved from their lives, no doubt) are boarding their fight to Entebbe as I type this. Whew! You’ll next hear from them… Read More

It’s official: the SFO contingent of the Africa team is all together, accounted for, and ready to board their flight to London in about an hour! They’ll meet the rest of their group in Heathrow tomorrow morning our time back here-so stay tuned! For now, this is Nannette at Carpe HQ wishing all a good night…… Read More

So we originally were going to “Paradise” this run-down little two-bit joint complete with brownish water, tents and millipedes. We did that for a night and decided that free-travel or no, lazy time on the beach or no, sometimes it’s better to be proactive. Thus, Camille, Jessie, Aura, David and some other investigatory types walked a total of 50 yards to the left and found what we were looking for.… Read More

So we arrived in Moshi last Friday, which was pretty exciting. We took a bus and it was only like an hour from Arusha, which was pretty nice. We got a spectacular view of Mt. Kilimanjaro on the way. We settled into Kilimanjaro Backpackers Hotel, which has ceiling fans that the man room thoroughly enjoyed (Don’t ask why). David also celebrated our arrival by shaving his “facial hair.” Everyone was… Read More

soo before we start talking about UAACC(united African alliance community centre), the place we are staying at right now we have a couple of things to add to Camilles and Auras last post,regarding last night and day at Bangata. we could start describing the last 48 hours at the village as pretty “eventful”. We wake up the morning of the 4th, with Curry and Zik having to tell just a… Read More

Hey guys its Camille and Aura and we have some great stuff to tell you about. The Serengeti and the Ngorongoro crater were amazing. We started heading to The Serengeti from Mwanza it was a long jeep ride but we got to the front gate and ate lunch. During lunch monkeys came so close to us that we could almost touch them we got loads of pictures and it made… Read More

Hello! David and Clairen are here this time, writing about our fun and relaxing weekend in Kampala before heading to Tanzania! We spent our last few days in Uganda tucked away in our now very familiar Backpackers Hostel. It was definitely very nice to have down time to sleep, read, and mentally prepare ourselves for the next leg of our amazing journey. Our days were mostly filled with downtown excursions… Read More

Hey all. Rachel and Jessie here to tell you all about our SECOND week in Jinja. We worked for a NGO based in Britain called (we told you earlier!) Soft Power Education which concentrates in “beautifying” educational facilities and providing extra curricular activites not often available in the Ugandan public education system. As the debriefer/coordinator, Shaz, that led us through it called it…they’re brilliant. We were based in a small… Read More

Hello everyone Kate and Lihi here… The past week has been full of adventure, hard work, and mzungus. Early sunday morning we left Kampala and traveled to Jinja by bus. We arrived at Adrift Hostel surprised to see so many mzungus (white people). We were split into two different groups for rafting on the White Nile River. Kate was with Curry, Kevin, Matt, Aura, Jessie, Clairen and a South African… Read More

Zik here one last time, happy to report that Kevin DIDN’T tell me a bold faced lie about having posted to the blog when we were back in Kampala. As it turned out, he saw a “Posted Successfully” message and thought he was done. I didn’t actually believed he would have intentionally deceived me anyway, so when several of his teammates vouched for him, the “honesty” part of the meeting… Read More

Hey all! I get to be the first one to post about our white water rafting day. I loved it. Honest and truly. Zik kept on laughing on me…because I just had this grin plastered to my face for the first three hours. I dunno how they’re gonna top this adventure…but it was just gloriously awesome to swim and raft and (foreshadowing here!) get washed away in rapids in the… Read More

Hi everyone! We arived in Kampala about two weeks ago eager to start working on a project. We moved to Fort Portal and worked at a orphanage through YES! organization building a cow pen and a chicken coop. It was so amazing to see how much they appreciated our work. We stayed in quiet Fort Portal for about ten days. I’m pretty sure everyone will agree that we liked Fort… Read More

Got back from Fort Portal working with Youth Encouragement Services. Built a chicken coop. Excited to go rafting. Having a good time.… Read More

Hey y’all everyone has basically said everything, I just have a few things to add. Every one’s great and this is a wonderful experience, and everyone is safe. Working in Fort Portal was a growing experience and we hope to grow even more!!! I miss you mom and dad and the fam. times up and i got to go. goodbye everyone!!… Read More

Hey everyone!I have no idea what I can say that everyone else hasn’t already said. We got back to Kampala yesterday and since that is where we began it kinda felt like coming home. Then I realized we still have a couple more months here. I know I speak for everyone when I say that we’re excited for those months. We had a great time building and actually getting to… Read More

hello everyone i am sorry that my last post for some reason did not post. i logged on and clicked publish post and it said successfully posted. i tried to update you on the projects that we were doing and that we were alright. again i am very sorry for the inconvenience. Dear parents i’m sorry you had to hear that we are all lazy irresponsible children from our leaders… Read More