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I joined the CouchSurfing (CS) website a while back after being sent there by one of the travel blogs I read. I found it an interesting concept and promptly added it on my bucket list. Basically, you have people all over the world opening their homes up to strangers who are looking for a friend in a new country or area. I won't go into the nitty-gritty of how it works because I am here to share my own experience not educate. You can always visit the CouchSurfing website if you need more information. A few weeks later, I was travelling to Jinja for the annual Agricultural Trade Show and decided to see if there were any willing hosts from Jinja on the CS website and maybe get the chance to cross that off my bucket list. 6 CS’ers seemed legit enough so I sent a request to all of them to see if they could host me. Upon reaching Jinja, I checked and found only James Gyagenda had replied to say he would be glad to host me for the duration of my stay. I proceeded to call him on the number he left and he gave me directions to his place. Now, CS’ing has its risks and I am sure there have been a few horror stories of people taking advantage of the system to commit crimes. One of the ways the creators put in place for reducing the probability of users ending up in the homes of or hosting ill-intentioned people are recommendations. The more recommendations you have from people who have hosted you or have hosted you, the easier it is for people to trust you as a legit person. Considering this was my first activity on CS and my profile was devoid of any recommendations, I was not exactly a potentially great guest. Factor in the fact that this was also James’ first time to host anyone and a lot of trust issues were bound to arise. If it was any help, James had posted a bunch of photos of his place and some links to his noble projects while I would like to assume the profile picture of me being goofy with my nephew must have been reassuring for him. His place also happened to be a few minutes from Jinja town and a bit off the main road so things weren’t exactly looking rosy. I reached Jinja in the morning, spent the day at the agriculture show and finally set off for James’ when the sun was setting. I had my laptop, a professional camera, my phone and wallet containing all the money I had budgeted for that week. By the time I got off the bus, it was dark and I was utterly exhausted. I figure any sensible human at this would have abandoned ship at this point, headed to the nearest hotel and forgotten about the entire venture altogether. But my overdeveloped sense of adventure instead led me to call up James and tell him to find me at the stage. Since I am writing this, we can safely conclude nothing bad happened. James and his family were very welcoming and they were not put off by my unshaven face. They showed me my comfy self contained room once we were done with the introductions. James is an IT man, social worker and a family man with strong Christian values. He and his wife Lillian are recent parents of a baby girl. The other members of the household where Bridget, the house help, and James’ cousin, Susan, who was helping him expand his briquettes business. They made me feel at home and I felt like I was part of the family from day one and really warmed me up to the idea of CouchSurfing. All in all, it was a pleasant experience and I am glad to have made the acquaintance of James, his family and the people in his community. I recommend CouchSurfing for those who consider themselves flexible and love to meet new people. I will end this with a quote from the CS website: “You have friends all over the world, you just haven’t met them yet.”