“In a way all explorers are journalists. Reporting from places others can’t go, speaking from experience and not fiction. Blessed with no special powers or skills, often simply able to make the sacrifices needed to live and experience things others cannot or will not.” Henri Coetzee
Sometimes I like to flatter myself and think that I’m an expert when it comes to a country just because I lived there a month. If I do that, pinch me. Hard. Because obviously, 1-3 months is just enough to skim the surface. I research the heck out of the places we go; I learn the recent history and the type of government and the language spoken and the population: and when we arrive I record my first impressions and the conversations we have with locals, and between the two I come to some kind of conclusion. If it’s about Uganda, it’s not going to be the conclusion a Ugandan would draw. It’s the conclusion of an American LDS girl who has traveled a fair bit, who tries to be unbiased but who may be very wrong about certain things, and who may change her mind from time to time.
I don’t intend to represent the situation of an entire country when we witness such a small part of it for such a short time, or at least understand if I do, the representation could very well be flawed.
However, we stay longer and more casually than most travellers have the opportunity to do, we travel independently as opposed to with a tour group or service organization, and for that I can offer a small glimpse into what it’s like for an American to live like a regular person would in the 20 or so countries we’ve spent time in so far. What it feels like, most of all, beyond the news reports with agendas and the fiction novels. How the people, food, sightseeing, and religions rate in comparison to other places. And how each country has changed my perspective on what I previously held to be true.
Murchison Falls, Uganda
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