Free The Bizarre Truth by Andrew Zimmern

first place. Trust me, I had plenty of those thoughts myself, and it seemed anytime I researched this trip, I stumbled upon words like “insurgent activity,” “armed banditry,” and “roadside ambushes” each time I opened up my computer. We were staying in the city of Kampala, located on the northern edge of Africa’s largest body of water, Lake Victoria, for the first few days and last night of our stay, but for the majority of our trip we lived in an isolated village well outside the city. I always felt very safe in Uganda, but that’s a relative term. Flying in to Entebbe Airport, you can see the decades-old hull of the famous Lufthansa jet, hijacked in 1972 and left as a “training tool” on the runway where it finally came to rest. Not the most charming of welcome mats inthe Kmart catalog. Armed guards watched over us in Lwanika, hired to keep us safe. Frankly, I wondered how one old guy with a rusty AK-47 would fare against a jeep- or truckload of rebels intending to do us harm or steal our equipment. I bet my producer a hundred bucks that it couldn’t fire if he pulled the trigger a dozen times, which was a bet he wouldn’t take. Thankfully, it didn’t come to that.
    Kampala isn’t exactly a hotbed of international tourism, but three minutes after leaving the airport, I saw traffic lights, an ambulance driving on another road, and a speeding police car, sirens blaring. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Infrastructure like that means someone, or something, is at least nominally in charge. Having just come from Ethiopia, where I never saw an ambulance or police car during our entire eight days in-country, I can safely say that I was relieved to be in Kampala and not Addis Ababa or Harrar. Walking down the streets of Anytown, Uganda, from the biggest to the smallest, has the same challenges as walking down Mainstreet, USA. Look like a fish out of water, get treated like one.
    Arranging a stay with an isolated African tribe is no easy feat. You can’t exactly call or e-mail in your reservations. Our “in” with the Embegge tribe was through our local fixer, Haruna, a member of the tribe and a legendary local Ugandan musician in his own right. We wound up visiting and staying with his tribe in the village of Lwanika, located about six hours east of Kampala. It just so happened that our arrival coincided with the anniversary of his grandfather’s death. Haruna’s family, and his late grandfather in particular, are highly regarded in the community. In honor of him, they had prepared a huge celebration for the second night of our proposed stay, complete with a big, festive meal for the entire extended village. It was exactly what we were looking for.
    We headed out to Lwanika by Range Rover, where we would stay with the tribe for four days. The drive was pretty much what you’d expect in eastern Africa. We started off on a main, paved highwayheading out from the city of Kampala, snagged up for a good half hour in the early-morning traffic of the congested city. Eventually, that road morphs into a simple, paved road, then to a dirt road, and finally you’re actually going all-terrain, driving over rutted grass byways to get to the heart of the village. In and around the village itself, we encountered a system of primitive dirt roads that connect the isolated villages of the region to each other. Villagers from one cluster of simple mud and straw homes would walk or bike from one to another to visit family or friends, or to help with work. While it’s extremely rare for most villagers to venture into the big city, modern civilization has touched their lives just enough that they have the occasional need to go into another village or a bigger town. The most traveled members of the tribes always seemed to be those involved with dance or music, and most of these villagers spent a lot of time traveling throughout eastern Africa performing in regional festivals and contests.
    This explains why we were greeted