3 (stupid) white people and some monkeys

Cliches are cliches for a reason... They're trite, but they usually express a popular or common thought or one that as lost it's originality.

So... Cindy, JT and I became a cliche in Uganda. In every scary movie from the 1990s, the stupid white people were the cliche. You know the scene - two couples pull up to a house in the woods. There is no power. Couple one sneaks off for a quick romp, boy two heads outside (alone) to get wood for a fire and the girl (always a blonde) heads up to take shower. And everyone is yelling at the screen - "NO white people... don't do it. You'll die!!!!" Well, we weren't THAT bad, but we were close.

Now, one of our hotels in Uganda was on the shores of Lake Victoria (we'll get to that later) and they have monkeys all over the grounds. The signs are large - red and white, albeit misspelled - and clearly state "Do Not Feed or Play With The Monkies." We saw the signs... we even photographed one. But they're MONKEYS!!! And how can you resist?

So we head for the bar, grab a beer and walk down to "watch" the monkeys. But we're not close enough. We have to get closer (cue the Stupid White People music). So we sit and watch the monkeys for a while and then walk through them to a get a better view of the lake. No problems. And then we head back, and have to walk straight through them to get back to the building. This is where the problems start... Monkeys on the left, monkeys on the right. And then they start to hiss and charge. Cindy and I run away from each other, cross back in front of each other, and then STOP and literally cling to each other (maybe if we're BIGGER, the monkeys will be scared!) and freeze. JT takes off in the other direction and gets surrounded. Now we're panicked and at least two of us (I'll let you guess which two) are screaming like little girls.

This is where the locals (who have been watching the Stupid White People from afar) come to our rescue. A janitor of sorts simply steps in, hollers one word at the monkeys and off they go. Seems they were much more scared of him than we were of them!

As we scurried off to our table for dinner, we turned around to see a group of hotel employees having quite a laugh at our expense. And that's when it hit me - we became their walking, talking white people cliche!

That's typical Kati - bringing smiles to people all around the world... even when it's at my own expense!

Oh oh... Lake Victoria. It's gorgeous! It's huge and looks like an ocean. It has small waves, an island - - - and it's toxic. We were warned by 100 different sources to stay off the shores. It seems that around 1972, Idi Amin launched a campaign of persecution, murdering between 100,000 and 500,000 (most sources say 300,000) people. He ordered their bodies dumped into Lake Victoria and the Nile. These bodies turned the underwater graveyard into a freshwater source of such yummy diseases as Hep C and the Marburgvirus. As depressing as this was to hear, it was still incredible to be at a place that has such a profound history for an entire continent.