A place to live in Uganda

When you move to another country, the first thing you need is a place to live. But from Spain, maybe it is not so easy to find the right one. I was trying to find something before arriving but anything I could find could be classified into two options: You know it is good, but it is too expensive (around 1200$ + VAT), or it has a reasonable price, but then... how do you know it is good enough?

So we decided that, for the beginning, we could find a backpackers' place for a couple of days and search for a place once we were in Uganda. We checked a little bit on the Internet and we thought that a hostel in Kampala called Red Chilli Hideaway could be a good option. And it was.

It is clean, nice, and the staff is really helpful. It's a good budget accommodation. And on top of that, it is a funny place. You can enjoy sitting under a tree reading your book while you enjoy all the nature around you, including the monkeys that can come from time to time, the goats that are around, or even that big pig which is sleeping most of the time.

Photograph: © Zuzana Kazdová

Photograph: © Zuzana Kazdová

Photograph: © Zuzana Kazdová

This is fine for some days, but you can not stay there forever, which is why from the very beginning we started to look for a place to rent. We were checking notice boards, asking everybody we are meeting here, looking for through Internet, and then, visiting different houses and rooms.

I think we were quite lucky, in less than one week we decided that one of the places we saw was nice and we decided to take it.

So here we are, sharing a house in a local estate in Kampala. It is nice, clean, safe and relatively close to the centre. We are living with young Ugandans; they are very nice, and it is always very interesting living with local people: you get to know better the local customs, it is easier to know where you can have your shoes repaired if you need it, you can know the right price for the public transport no to pay the muzungu price (we are muzungus, that's how we foreigners are called in Luganda, the local language) and it is definitely the best way of knowing the local food, especially if you live with Brendah, our housemate, who really likes cooking, and you bet, she can cook.

This is Brendah.


This is Brendah cooking.


And these are some of Brendah creations:

Pilao with vegetables

Chapati with beans

Liver and vegetables with chapati

Photograph: © Zuzana Kazdová

Chicken in two peppers sauce

She cooks almost everyday for all of us, and from time to time her fiends and she cooks for everybody. For example, her fiends came to spend the elections day at home, so Brendah cooked for all of us. And don't think she did precooked pasta; she prepared five different things which put together in the plate made a typical Ugandan meal. So we all had a nice lunch in the backyard.



That's the backyard. Do you want to see where we live?

Welcome to our home, please come in....

Photograph: © Zuzana Kazdová

Photograph: © Zuzana Kazdová

This is the living room:

Photograph: © Zuzana Kazdová

Photograph: © Zuzana Kazdová

This is our room. Now we have a mosquito net on the bed:

Photograph: © Zuzana Kazdová

And this is the kitchen:

Photograph: © Zuzana Kazdová

Do you like it?


You are welcome to visit us whenever you want!


28 February 2013 - If you reached here because you are thinking about living in Uganda, I hope you enjoyed the post, but don't stay just here, go a bit further and read the coments. ;-)