Pictures (Periodically Updated)

I am by no means a photographer. However, even blind pigs find acorns once in awhile, so here are some good pictures I've taken on my travels:





Taken in a national park outside of Bandung, Indonesia (Oct. 2008).




Outside of Jakarta, Indonesia, on an auxiliary highway (Oct. 2008).



Possibly the best picture I've ever taken. In the desert, in Morocco, on our way to a Bedouin camp. I am proud to say that it was taken from the back of a moving camel (September, 2008).



On the flight home, at the end of my round-the-world trip (November, 2008).

The Things People Say (Periodically Updated)

I've had a few gems recently, in terms of customer service experiences, so I thought I'd post them. As a disclaimer: I used to work in the service industry, and I know how thankless it can be. That being said, I was never stupid in the service industry.

Sept. 30, 2009
I'm new to this city and looking for the best way to get to work in the mornings from the hotel I'm staying at. The hotel is in the downtown core. I go to the front desk for advice:

Me: What's the best way to get to [my work address]?
Girl at Desk: Hmm... (She goes to the computer to bring up google).
Me: Oh, if you're just going to google it then don't bother.
Her: Are you sure?
Me: Yeah, I have a map. I just thought you might have some suggestions about quicker ways or areas that don't have construction.
Her: Oh, yeah. No. I don't pay attention when I drive.

Nov. 20, 2009
I stopped at Safeway's snack bar for lunch. I bought a sub, a container of soup and a small tray of fruit. The cashier put the sub in the bag, then tried to fit the tray in beside it, then realized everything was crooked, then tried to put the soup in, then asked if I wanted the soup in a different bag so it wouldn't spill.

Me: That's okay, I'll do it.
I took everything out, put the tray in first, then stacked everything else neatly on top.
Her (completely seriously): Yeah, sometimes putting stuff in bags is hard.

Foot In Mouth

It happened to me again yesterday. It was inevitable. I knew something like this would happen, and will probably happen again in the not-too-distant future. I dread it every time I expose myself to the possibility, but I can’t seem to stop putting myself in these situations. I got stuck walking with the Horrible Conversationalist.

You’ve met them before. Often times, they are from somewhere in Saskatchewan. However, this is not a hard and fast rule. They are the people who drive you crazy and won’t go away or shut up. I’m not suggesting they’re stupid, or offensive, or rude. No. They’re just terrible at holding down an interesting conversation and it’s almost assured that THIS person is the one that will be walking with you for the entire duration of your time.

We met at the dog park. Having dogs is what I assume having children will be like: you don’t get to pick the parents you hang out with. Your kids do. Or rather, my dogs do. If your dogs get along well together, you’re walkin’ with that person. Even if ‘that person’ couldn’t talk their way out of a wet paper bag.

I’ve noticed several common traits that the Horrible Conversationalists (HC) all possess:

Including Boring, Mundane Details

My HC yesterday was a lady. She had recently broken her ankle after she was thrown from her horse. Also, she owned a Rhodesian ridgeback who was a Canadian champion. All the makings for lots of interesting stuff to talk about, right?

Wrong. She went into great detail about the type of saddle she owned for her mare, and why it was difficult to fit her mare because although she’s a quarterhorse she has whithers like a standardbred so the knob on the saddle has to be 7”1/2 not 6” but she usually rides bareback because her saddle doesn’t fit and it pinches and blah blah blah. How uninteresting can you get? Do I give a shit about what type of saddle you own? I don’t know a quarterhorse from an Arabian, so giving me details of their measurements without giving me context is like yelling baseball statistics at me.

HCs do this regularly. They either provide too much detail and the story gets boring, or not enough detail so it makes no sense.

Referring to People You’ve Never Met

My HC did this constantly. “Paul said that he’d pay the entrance fee for the dog, so when I called Jenny to confirm that we were showing on Saturday….” Um, who is Paul? And why are we suddenly talking about Jenny? Some introduction to these strangers would help my understanding of what it is we’re talking about. HCs also tend to offer you suggestions that involve these mysterious people without providing any sort of explanation as to who they are.

“Oh! If you’re looking for a Rottweiler then you should call Dave because he spends a ton of time making sure the match between the owner and the dog is right and he’ll always take a dog back…” So, does Dave own a kennel? Does he breed Rottweilers? Is he hiding in a white van by a playground somewhere? Who the hell is Dave, and why would I call him? HCs never bother with silly things like ‘introductions.’

Come Across as Condescending

I don’t think HCs ever mean any harm…I just think they have no inner monologue that tells them when they’re being offensive.

My HC and I got to talking about dog food. She feeds her (purebred! He’s a purebred!) only raw, real meat. I feed mine a mix of high and middle quality dry food, sprinkled with some fresh, cooked meat.

“Oh, you should never mix dry and fresh. It upsets their digestive system. Their bowels stress to try and digest two totally different types of food and it can upset the bacteria and enzymes in their system. I switched to raw food and I never looked back. Instantly better.” And on, and on.

What I wanted to say was, “Well, Abraham ate a shoe yesterday and Finli always enjoys goose poop when he can find it, so if anything was going to upset the balance of their bacteria and enzymes I think that would have.” Like I’m going to be so super militant about their diet. That kind of diligence would involve running through fields to pull dead birds’ wings out of their mouths, and that ain’t happening.

What I actually said was, “Well, it’s different for each dog.” I’d like to feed my dogs the perfect food, but I’m stuck feeding them what they’re willing to eat.

There was a level of pretention about her dog, as well. I have two rescue dogs from the Humane Society. They are purebred Heinz 57’s. They cost me a $25 donation plus vet fees. Her dog, she informed me, was Oscar from the States (see “Referring to People You’ve Never Met”). His mother was a Canadian champion, so he was registered with both the American Kennel Club and the Canadian Kennel club. She listed his achievements, none of which involved actually doing anything besides just being a Rhodesian ridgeback.

To each his own, and Lord knows I love certain breeds…but c’mon. A dog is, first and foremost, a member of the family. If he knows the five basic commands, doesn’t hurt anybody and loves you with that unconditional dog love then who cares if he’s got a fancy pedigree? Isn’t it enough that he’s there and he loves you? What are these people trying to prove? Like I said, I understand the attraction to purebreds…it’s the bragging and the showing I don’t get. HCs seem to be oblivious to this and feel that through their fancy ‘possessions’ they obtain a higher status.

Expressing No Interest Whatsoever in What the Other Person Has To Say

This, my friends, is the hallmark of all Horrible Conversationalists. They do not actually have a conversation with you; they wait until you stop talking so that they may continue.

My HC was EXCEPTIONAL at this. Not only did she never once inquire about anything to do with me or my dogs, but if I so much as paused to take a breath she would jump in and natter on and on about whatever the topic of conversation had been. This is the most frustrating part about trying to speak with an HC, because the lack of empathy is simply exhausting.

It takes so much energy to try and stay engaged in a conversation when you know the other person doesn’t give a shit about who or what you are…you are simply an animated figure that they can spew whatever is on their mind at and, because of decorum, you must endure the experience.

My walk with my HC ended, mercifully, after about an hour. I can assure you, there were no long goodbyes. As we were winding down, we talked about our holiday plans (she talked, I walked faster). It turns out she and her mom are going to visit her grandfather in his retirement home, and she was worried her dog wouldn’t get enough exercise.

Still being polite, I asked, “Oh? Where is the retirement home?”

“Saskatchewan,” she replied.

Cool Heads Take A Dive

Three young women from Manitoba were recently killed.

The accident was freakish and tragic; they were in North Dakota for a softball tournament. All three girls were avid players. They took a night off and went for a drive in the countryside. Being unfamiliar with the area, they took a wrong turn somewhere and suddenly found themselves sinking into a river. They had accidentally driven their car into a slough.

The girls panicked, and one of them frantically dug for her cell phone. She called her friend (who was in Canada at the time). The friend was unable to make out what she was saying, and the connection was lost. The girl in the car tried again, and this time her Canadian friend was able to make out something about ‘water’ before the line cut out again.

All three girls ultimately drowned, in the car, with the windows up and the doors closed.

My sympathy goes out to the families of these women; there is nothing harder to endure than the tragic, unnecessary death of a loved one with unlimited potential.

The accident got me thinking, though, about how people respond under stress. It would seem that the ability to keep a cool head in a crisis is getting to be in shorter and shorter supply, just like common sense.

I think this is due to the example people see when they are growing up. I was blessed with a family of strong, intelligent women who do not suffer bullshit and will turn into fire-breathing dragons when it comes time to protect their own.

For example: my mother. Many years ago, before 9/11, she was flying home after an extended visit with my grandmother. She was flying on my ticket. (I had used hers earlier in the month). Naturally, on the first flight of the journey, the landing gear failed to lock on the plane. The pilots were unable to determine if the gear itself was faulty or if it was just a bad indicator light in the cockpit. The tower couldn’t figure it out, either, so the plane spent two hours flying in circles to expend excess fuel. EMS lined the auxiliary runway, and everyone had to land in the ‘brace’ position you see illustrated on the airplane magazines that no one reads.

In this circumstance, legitimately thinking that she was approaching her own death, what did my mother do? She put her passport into her front pocket, so that when the police identified her body and called my father they would know that it was her, and not me, who was dead.

Another example: my aunt. Much like the families of the girls I mentioned at the beginning, my aunt has endured a tragedy. Her beautiful, talented, 18-year-old daughter collapsed and died from a previously undiagnosed illness in her dorm room two years ago. Our family at the time was scattered all over – people were flying in from the four corners of the globe and it was a chaotic mess of pain and hellish reality.

What did my aunt do, when faced with the sudden death of her only daughter? She immediately started writing lists of things for people to do, contacting funeral services and delegating work. She was clearly in more mental anguish than should be possible for a person to endure, but she never once lost her composure, even when those around her did.

I’m not writing this to brag. Nor am I writing it to suggest the proper way to deal with the death of a loved one. I’m writing this to lament that more positive examples aren’t being set for young women when it comes to thinking clearly and acting decisively.

Think about those girls; they were in the water long enough to realize what had happened, fish around for their cell phone, and make not one but TWO calls. Now, I’ve never found myself in a car suddenly submerged to the windshield in water, but I’d like to think that my first response would be to GET THE FUCK OUT IMMEDIATELY. Not dig for my purse. Not call some random asshole in another country.

People might read this and think, Oh, sure…easy to think clearly when you’re in the comfort of your own home. Well, yes it is. But I still think I’d act more appropriately. Not because I have nerves of steel, but because the women who raised me taught me that panicking and losing control is never going to solve a thing.

So for all of you reading this, for Christ’s sake, don’t make a phone call from a sinking ship hoping to bring someone to your rescue…rescue yourself and then call your insurance agent.

Road Trip B: North American Style

I’ve recently moved from southern Ontario to Winnipeg, Manitoba. When my friend Z and I were driving out, it got me thinking about the differences between road trips in North America versus road trips in Africa.

The trip from Ontario began relatively smoothly. I own a pickup truck, so instead of hiring movers (which you can bet I’ll do next time), I decided to rent a trailer and haul all my earthly possessions out myself, with Z and my two dogs for travelling companions. Now, I’ve never driven with a trailer before, so I was a little bit nervous. I asked my father, who was a bona fide farm kid growing up and has driven every kind of equipment from golf carts to airplanes, if he would come with me to pick it up and then show me how to drive it. He agreed.

U-Haul hooked the trailer up for us, and our first stop was an hour away at my mom’s house, to pick up some stuff I had stored. Now, like I said, I’ve never driven with a trailer but watching my father try to back my truck into my mother’s driveway (it’s at a funny angle to the road) made me think that even I could do better than that. The old man’s skills were rusty. He stalled it no less than seven times and alternated between calling the trailer “sweetheart” and “you cocksucker” as he painfully inched it up the lane. I tried my best not to laugh, since he doesn’t really have that kind of sense of humour, and because I knew I’d likely make a bigger fool of myself when my turn came.

Days passed, the trailer got loaded, Z flew in and we were suddenly ready to leave. “Did you check the tire pressures?” my dad asked. I told him what the pressures were, and he decided they were too high. “Give me a pen or something pointed,” he said, and proceeded to let some air out.

Our first hurdle was the American border. Z has a ding on his record due to some time misspending his youth, and we were worried the U.S. customs would deny us entry. This was a big deal, since driving through Canada would add an extra day.

We crossed on a ferry, and the customs officer started interviewing us. Halfway through he stopped and said, “I’m sorry to inform you but your passport is invalid.” I looked at Z, horrified, with a million thoughts flashing through my head. Z looked at me like a deer caught in the headlights. He managed to squeak at the officer, “Uhh…what’s wrong?”

“If you read page three, paragraph 2 you’ll see that this document is not valid until you sign it.” We both burst into nervous laughter, and Z was shaking so badly the customs officer had to offer him his own pen, since Z couldn’t find ours. And just like that, we were in Michigan.

Z is a travel bug, and he insisted on seeing Detroit. I tried explaining that Detroit is a cesspool of urban decay, but some people just can’t be reason with. I capitulated, and we agreed to take the I-75 so that the downtown skyline would be visible from the road.

Sure as shit, the first thing that happened once we saw the skyline was traffic grinding to a halt for construction. Z sighed and turned around to open the sliding rear window into the back of my truck, where the cooler full of goodies was. It was also where the two dogs were riding.

Did you know that it’s possible for an 85lb lab/newfie mix to squeeze through two half-opened windows into the crowded cab of a truck? Well it certainly is. Abraham (the lab) decided that he’d had enough of riding in the back and, to out horror, decided to crowd into the front. Z started laughing and tried, unsuccessfully, to hold Abe back. I started swearing and tried, unsuccessfully, to yell commands trying to get him to stop. Finli, my terrier, knew a good deal when he saw it and followed in on Abraham’s tail. Now there were two adults, one big dog, one little dog, pillows, food, and all the other junk that accompanies a three-day road trip packed into the small cab of my F-150.

Did you know that an 85lb lab/newfie mix will only fit through two half-opened windows if he wants to? That passage was only one-way, evidentially. No amount of pushing or swearing was getting Abraham to pass back through the hole. Thank God traffic was stopped; I pulled into the breakdown lane, shoved Finli back through the hole and got out of the truck, with Abraham by his scruff. He wasn’t too interested in getting back into the bed of the truck via the tailgate, either, but I had adrenaline on my side and picked him up and threw him in the vehicle. I didn’t find the situation as funny as Z did.

The trip itself was relatively uneventful. Z was remarkable; I’m never excited about moving, but his enthusiasm was infectious. The only time his spirit lagged was somewhere in Podunk, North Dakota, when we were trying to get the phone number of the hotel in Winnipeg.

He had to dial 411 no less than three times, and each time the conversation went like this:

"I’m looking for Hotel X in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Winnipeg. It’s in Manitoba. No, Manitoba is in Canada. No, Canada is not in the United States. Yes, I’ll hold. [Pause] Winnipeg. Hotel X. Okay, 204-6...shit!”

Because I kept entering valleys just as he’d finally get the number and he’d lose the connection. Eventually, we were on a flat stretch of road and he was able to hear the whole number.

“Okay, go ahead. 204-69...shit! This pen just exploded all over me!” It turns out that letting your dad use your truck pen to let the air out of tires isn’t the best idea for the long-run.

We arrived in the ‘Peg three days after leaving Ontario. We were hungry, tired and the dogs badly needed to be walked. It was at this point I started having some doubts about the fine people of Winnipeg.

I was storing all my furniture with U-Haul, so we had to do paperwork for the trailer return as well as for a storage locker. It took some time, but we got the trailer stuff done. The U-Haul guy moved on to the storage locker info. I gave him my name, and he paused, thoughtfully. “Now, why does that sound so familiar?” I stared at him blankly.

“Um, because we just five seconds ago returned a trailer?” I asked.
”Oh, yes! That’s right!” Jesus.

The hotel wasn’t any better. “Is your vehicle oversized?” the girl at the desk asked.

“Well, I’m not sure how big you consider oversized,” I said, “It’s a Ford F-150.”

“Oh, I don’t know what that is,” she replied.

[pause] “You’ve never seen an F-150? You live in the prairies!”

“Yeah I don’t cars.”

Or this exchange with the bellhop. We’d brought the dogs in and they’d run up to everybody, jumping on people and licking faces (including the bellhop’s). We needed help loading the kennel onto the elevator. “Wow!” he exclaimed, “You must have a big dog!”

[pause] “It’s the one that just jumped on your chest and licked your face.” Maybe we were tired, but this was getting ridiculous.

The only other incident involved a hornet’s nest and the back of my neck, but after such a long day I’m willing to write that off as bad luck.

There were no water buffalo, crocodiles, giraffes, or pretty pictures of sunsets on our North American road trip. However, there was also no malaria or red dirt, so I consider it a job well done.

Road Trip A: African Style

Note: I've changed the names in this story. Everything else is true.

Don’t ever complain to me that you’re dirty. I don’t care if you’ve just rolled in mud with hogs; NO ONE has ever been as filthy as the people in Van B on the Great Ugandan Road Trip, 2008.

It began as a desire to see some of the country. There were eighteen of us volunteering in Uganda, some teaching sexual reproductive health, some teaching organic farming and small business management. We had a long weekend coming up for Easter, and everybody was eager to make plans.

We were based out of a town called Jinja. Ten hours away, to the north and west, was the famous Murchison National Park. There were waterfalls, campgrounds and all manner of African wildlife for us to explore, and eventually thirteen volunteers agreed to go.

God bless the volunteer who organized it, whom I’ll call Rex. Have you ever tried to rent a car in Africa? How about rent some tents? Lemme tell you…it ain’t as easy as it sounds. Rex managed to find two cars and seven tents. Two cars for fourteen people? Well, whatever. We’d sit packed shoulder-to-shoulder with the tents strapped to the roof and our backpacks on our laps. You only live once!

The weekend came around, and to our great surprise the cars were actually spacious. Large van-like vehicles that had seating for eight, plus room for storage. Perfect! One of the vans even came with a driver, Moses, which was for the best since none of us had a real clear idea where we were going. The only setback: only I and Rex could drive the cars. All the other volunteers either had no drivers’ licences or were uncomfortable driving on the left-hand side of the road (Uganda is like England for how the cars and roads are set up). I’m not crazy about driving on the left, either, but we didn’t have a whole lot of options.

The first seven hours were spent in typical road trip style. Arguing about i-pod playlists, playing I-spy, eating junk food. Then we hit the Road to Hoima. That’s in capitals for a reason. Imagine taking your guts, putting them in a blender, and then putting that blender into a centrifuge, and you might have some approximation of what riding on the Road to Hoima was like. It’s a dirt path that’s been carved down during the rainy season by the treads of heavy machines, which are the only vehicles that can travel the roads when it’s raining heavy. Holy shit. A rutted, bumpy disaster of a surface sprinkled generously with giant chunks of gravel, so the ride was both horribly rough AND terribly slippery. Rex drove the whole ten hours to the park, and at one point he had the van in a skid. I was in mid-sentence, facing Rex (I was in the front passenger seat), and I distinctly remember looking out the side window and seeing the other van, which we were following.

Silence in the car.

“What’s wrong?” Rex asked.
“Nothing,” I said, “Is it normal to throw up in your mouth?” I asked.
“Too close for comfort?” he asked.

Silence in the car.

Sun had set by the time we reached the entrance to the campsite. Here is one instance where Africa differs from North America: when you enter a campsite in North America, you presume that where you will be camping is close by. Not so in Uganda. It was a further two hours of driving (on a road that was slightly worse than the Road to Hoima) until we arrived at the campgrounds. An hour into this journey, some of the girls needed to pee. We pulled our van over. Moses also stopped. He got out of his car and ran back to us. We explained why we had stopped, and he shook his head.

“Be very careful. Make sure you stay in the headlights,” he said. None of the girls were thrilled to hear this. Someone asked him why. “Lions,” he replied. Enough said. I was thankful I have a bladder made of steel.

We finally arrived at the campsite, and began the shitty work of pitching tents. There is nothing more unpleasant after a ten hour, washboard-like road trip than arriving at your destination and not having a bed to lie down in.

I walked back to the car to grab my bag, and saw a shape moving in the darkness. I froze. I waited. Eventually, my eyes adjusted to the lanterns and moonlight enough to make out a large hippopotamus walking through the tents. Two of the other volunteers came walking up behind me, giggling and chatting.

Most people mistakenly think that hippos are just African water cows. They are not. They can run something like 50km/hr, and they kill more people every year than lions or snakes put together. They’re really, really dangerous and can be quite grumpy.

“DON’T MOVE.” I said. The girls froze. “There’s a hippopotamus over there.” They immediately started to gasp and ask, “What? Where?” and fanned out to look. They couldn’t see it, and eventually dismissed me as being out of my mind. A woman whom we didn’t know came up to us just then and exclaimed, “Wow! Did you guys see that hippo?” At least I was vindicated, but I still wasn’t crazy about hippos just wandering around our tents.

We got the tents set up and crashed for the night. I slept, but some others didn’t. Evidently, while I was passed out, wild boar had come nosing around the tents and kept some of the other volunteers awake. Thank God I was so exhausted.

The next day we had a game drive planned. This is another circumstance where Africa differs from North America. In North America you’d be given a laundry list of safety instructions, rules, and things you could not do before you were allowed anywhere near wild animals. In fact, you’d probably be kept behind a fence most of the time.

In Uganda, you paid 100,000USH, parked your vehicle on the ferry, crossed the Nile, and drove on your merry way. Since Rex had driven all day yesterday, it was my turn to pilot the car. It did turn some African heads, watching the two guys in our group stand aside while one of the women backed the truck onto the boat. Girls rock!

We drove through the game reserve in Murchison Park, and we saw everything: giraffes, elephants, wild boar, gazelles, even a lioness. The only hiccup was my ability to judge the boundaries of the vehicle. The road was quite rutted (it was more like a trail, really), and I couldn’t seem to avoid hitting the potholes. I’d see one, and move to straddle the tires over it. Instead, I’d wind up hitting it dead on. There was a particularly bad one that smashed the vehicle so violently it caused everyone in the rear to smack their heads on the roof of the car. Hard. I screeched to a stop and turned around to four pairs of eyes, rimmed with tears and staring at me accusingly. “Well,” I said, “Put your freakin’ seatbelts on, then!” Stupid British cars.

The rest of the trip was fantastic. The only thing left to do was drive the ten hours back to Jinja.

A problem. One of the girls in our group had come down with malaria. Malaria is never something to make light of, but it is particularly bad when you are eight hours away from a hospital. We decided to drive straight to Kampala (Uganda’s capital) so that she could see a real doctor immediately. Rex drove.

I didn’t appreciate it then, but I certainly do now…how she managed eight hours, with full-blown malaria, in one of those trucks is entirely beyond me. It was all I could do to tolerate twenty minutes in a car on a freshly paved road. God bless that volunteer.

So now we come to the “filthy” part of the story. It never rained once over the weekend. Great, right? Well…not so much. No rain meant one thing: dust.

Since our vehicle was always following Moses,’ we gradually began to realize that our car was filling up with dirt. Fine, gritty, red African soil. Moses was kicking it up and we were driving straight through the cloud. At one point during the weekend, when I was driving, Moses pulled over. I stopped, too. He walked over to our car and informed us to roll up the windows right away. We were flying through a swarm of tse tse flies. We rolled up the windows and instantly became boiling hot.

“Blimey!” said the other male volunteer, John. (He’s British, and yes, he said that). “Does this air conditioning work?” We were on a windy, rutty road and I was having enough trouble trying to keep up with Moses.

“I don’t know,” I said, “Fiddle with these buttons here,” I gestured to the dash. I was looking out the windshield when John hit the magic button. Suddenly, a violent cloud of read dirt exploded out of every vent in the front of the car. I yelled, “Shit!” and stomped on the brakes, since I could no longer see. John started to gag and tried to flip the switch off through the haze. Everyone in the back seat assumed we’d just hit something and started to scream. Once the dust settled (literally), I looked around. All of us had red faces with white rings around our eyes and mouths.

"I think we’re just going to have to suffer the heat for awhile,” I said. The car erupted into semi-hysterical laughter. I think they were just glad we hadn’t hit anything.

Anyway, back to the malaria. We drove for eight hours to the hospital. Once there, the doctor admitted our sick volunteer. Rex stayed with her, which meant I’d have to drive the two hours back to Jinja. On the main highway. The main African highway. After dark. Fuck me.

I can honestly say I will never, ever do that again. I’ve driven through blizzards, through driving rain, through Los Angeles, on prairie backroads after dark, you name it. Nothing came as close to being as stressful as that trip back to Jinja.

There are no streetlights, so it’s pitch black. Pedestrians line the roads everywhere, and are constantly darting in and out of traffic. No one stays in their lane; it’s accepted practice to drive in the centre of the road wherever possible. There is also a system to using your blinkers in Uganda that is decidedly un-Canadian. You use your blinker to signal that the other vehicle is allowed to pass you – not to signal that you are passing. Also, oncoming traffic flash their highbeams at you just as they pass, temporarily blinding you each time. Sometimes traffic is three cars wide on a one-lane road. Nowhere is it safe to stop. Oh, and this all happens at highway speed.

About a half hour away from Jinja I heard a soft thunk. It took a second to register, and what finally clued me in was the silence in the car. “Did we just hit somebody?” I asked.

“Yeah,” said Jess, “But don’t worry – it wasn’t very hard and it was TOTALLY his fault.” I’m not sure that assigning blame in Ugandan car accidents works quite the same as it does in Canadian ones, so we kept on driving and I crossed my fingers.

When we finally got back to the hostel, we were the filthiest, motliest bunch of road warriors you’d ever seen. Those in the first vehicle were tired, a bit scruffy and in need of a shower.

Then there were the people in Van B. Ho-lee-shiiit. All of us looked like we had been sprayed with an airbrush machine full of terra cotta ink. Dirt was everywhere; under our nails, in the folds of our eyelids, over every inch of our clothes. It covered the entire inside of the car, filled up all the vents and completely obscured the tents, the luggage and the bags of food. It was so bad that none of us could run our fingers through our hair. The girls in Van A were aghast; they had no idea that following behind them had caused such filth.

However, such an awesome weekend was worth the layers of dirt. And, for the rest of my life, no matter what goes wrong I will always be able to say, “Well, at least it isn’t the filthy mess that Uganda was.”

Things You Learn When You Share Your Life With Dogs

You learn where all the good places to access the river are.

You learn exactly how many toads there are per square foot in your yard. (You know this because your terrier knows it, and it bothers him.)

You learn you have neighbours named Nicole and Blaine and they live two houses down and one over, and if you ever need anything you can just go and ask. (You know this because your Newfie decided to leave the yard and go visitin' when you were inside.)

You learn how to judge people - and like or dislike them instantly - by their reaction to see you walking towards them with two dogs who are happy to see anybody. Do their eyes light up? Do they pretend that you don't exist? Or, the worst, do they get a look on their face like they just bit into a lemon and slide over as far as possible? Those people are clearly NOT the kind you want in your life, so it saves a lot of time getting to know them.

You learn to keep the house clean, even during construction, because apparently drywall and insulation are far preferable to whatever chew toys you have invested in.

You learn that whatever chew toy you invest in it will never be as good as a stick.

You learn what it's like to have nightmares about finding one of them dead. You wake up and make sure they're okay, but secretly you know that day will eventually come no matter what you do.

You learn that the best way to get rid of a sore back or writer's block is to lay on the floor of your office and let your dogs lick your face until you can't breath.

You learn that lavishing affection on your cousin's seven week old St. Bernard puppy is tantamount to 'cheating' on your own dogs.

You learn how to restrain a terrier who despises having his nails clipped and not to touch a Newfie when he's truly tired, because honestly...he wants to be left alone.

You learn what -25 degrees feels like, because your dogs love the cold.

You learn that no matter what goes wrong or how bad the situation is, it is infinitely better with dogs around.