Hookers, animals, and a photograph of a man carrying many matresses

Al's Bar, Kampala, Uganda. Saturday, 3:30am. Hotdogs.

It happened when she sat down beside me and kissed me on the cheek. I had been saying it for a few weeks but this was a watershed moment.

I need to get out of this city.

She was slurring and reeked of booze and I just wanted her hands off of me. She promptly informed me that I had never experienced a sex machine like her. I promptly informed her that she needed fuck off immediately.

I have no patience for Kampala hookers.

Al's Bar is a dive. It's also teeming with prostitutes. For some reason Lonely Planet lists it as a place to go. I've never been there earlier than 3am and by that time the atmosphere has usually begun to evolve from mild lewdness to no-holds-barred, crotch-grabbing crassness.

We go for the hotdogs.

This is the end of week five in Africa, a benchmark in that my trip is half over. Although the primary reason of me coming here was to volunteer with Uganda Hands for Hope, I know that if I don't get out and travel the region some I'll be leaving shortchanged.

The things I've seen and the people I've met in Kampala have been both fabulous and disheartening. It's a different kind of travel experience than what I'm accustomed to. Usually I don't stay in one place for very long, a week at the most, never mind living and working in one city for more than a month. It's refreshing to really get to know a place but at the same time it wrecks the traveller's soul to know that there's so much more within reach that is being left untouched.

Some of my most dear travel life experiences have involved animals. Living with sled dogs and snorkelling with beluga whales in Churchill. Scuba diving with reef sharks, trigger fish, and barracuda in the Gulf of Thailand. Coming face to face wild moose and black bears in northern Saskatchewan backcountry.

This is Africa, man. I think it's time to see some animals.

Of course it need't take a hooker to have me realize that. And of course you can be assaulted by a hooker anywhere. But there was something irreverently repulsive about this one that knocked the dominos over.

Although I'm here on a voluntary basis, I feel a great deal of obligation to Hands for Hope. It's tough not to get attached to some of the stories that come into our office every day. But a volunteer is a volunteer and truthfully I might not last the week.

I'm looking forward to a cramped, sweaty busride to somewhere - preferably in the direction of these guys.

T.I.A.

James.