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I was a girl that grew up in one area, the city (Kampala). It was until my undergraduate internship that I had a chance to travel. The journey to Mbarara (the land of milk and honey) in western Uganda, is about 250 km from the city center. The nights there are generally freezing cold where one can barely sleep with just a single bed cover. The locals are too proud to greet those who don’t look like them or don’t speak their language. The general feature is that cow milk is the cheapest thing you can find, and if you need someone to attend to you, carry along someone familiar with their language. On the east end of the country, the journey to Moroto (Karamoja land) is about 500 km from the center, classified with dense traffic jam in Nakawa, a city suburb. Luckily the road leading to Moroto had been recently worked on by the roads’ authority. The locals said it would take almost 20 hours to get to the area but it then took us about 8 hours. They always said the Moroto sun was hotter than that of the city. I never believed it. It was only three days into the place that my African skin started to literally peel off. The sun would burn so hard you would think the land was plunged into an oven. The only things I owned were black jeans that worsened my oven-filled experience. I was unable to bare a single bed sheet on top of me every night. It’s like I was taken to two different continents as compared to Mbarara. We later went out to do a little survey on the locals over the weekend. The degree of language barrier was so extreme I just opted for a wave. Here, we were the center of attention because we wore modern clothes and moved around in our Ford classic car. Everyone trying to communicate but all in vain. In Karamoja land, all food at local restaurants was at the same price, about 3 dollars, something you don’t see everywhere. Whether it was a chicken meal or vegetables. The locals are curious about random strangers on their land, usually the assumption is that you have plans of taking it away. “The people from the city are here to take our land” they said. On one of the days as we toured, I was leading the team when I happened to leave them a few meters behind. I sort of lost sight of them for a while. I reached one of the streams and tried my best not to get into the water but fatefully slipped on one of the rocks and landed head first. Didn’t want my colleagues to witness my “fall of shame” and be the talk of the year so I got up and proceeded uphill. It was there that I landed on a kingdom of long grass on which I managed to trip bringing me back to ground. It just wasn’t my day. Moroto is rich with vast land with only a few hotels available meaning one would have to move a great distance to find a decent washroom. Because of the heat I found myself taking a lot of water which eventually caught up with me. I needed to use the bathroom and there were no hotels in sight. It was against my will that I had to make use of the bushes. I had to look around to make sure no one was seeing me proceed with my business. First time making use of the bushes, “not such a bad idea after all” I thought to myself. After my zip up, I was ready to get back to my friends. On turning around, I realized a Karamojong (a local in Moroto) was watching me do my business a few meters away. Never have I been so embarrassed in my life. But what could I say at that time? “Hello?”, “Sorry?”. Language barrier it was, the barrier between us. And that was it, I just let him watch me walk away shamelessly. Karamoja left me with such a fiery desire to travel like never before.