Travel Diary: Trip to Norway

Huh! Where do I start? I think it all began on a Tuesday afternoon when I set out to go winter shopping in Kampala (where it’s summer all year long!) That is say was the hardest this for me because I had never really experienced winter 🥶! I tried imagining how cold it would be but the clothing I got wasn’t as warm as it ought to have been. I then strolled into a Ugandan crafts gift shop and the reception o got there was overwhelming!! They literally thought I was a foreigner getting some souvenirs of my trip and guess what I played along 😅😅 and probably got them for a higher price but it was fun playing foreigner in my own country! The love you get is overwhelming I’d say 😂😂😂

Anyway so Wednesday afternoon I set off on a flight to my first stop at Dubai where I was lucky to have a visa and slept at a good hotel for the night before my morning flight to Oslo, Norway! That morning a my Dubai International Airport, I met some two beautiful Kenyan girls and it turned out they were going to attend the International Student Festival in Trondheim ( the festival I was also attending for my trip) and we hit it off! Probably not in the way you’re thinking. Anyway so arriving at Oslo and stepping out of the plan from the back entrance meant I felt a good -8 degrees Celsius that I had never felt before! Sh*t!! My jacket (that I thought was warm) wasn’t of any help 😱😱 at this point I couldn’t imagine spending two weeks in such cold!!! When I got off the domestic flight from Oslo to Trondheim, it was cold but not like Oslo. About -2 degrees. And well the rest was a good time after that.

With this festival, I got to meet amazing people from different countries in the world. It was amazing and extremely diverse! The workshop group that I was attached to “Big City Life” honestly turned to be The Absolute Most!! It was such a great Norge-family to wake up to see, play with, chat with, debate with, and PARTY HARD with! I feel so honored to have met each and everyone of them. One of the memories I’ll never forget was the last Saturday night together at Sophie’s (our workshop leader’s) house. It was the most! By now you’re wondering what the most is but in quick translation ‘it’s just the best feeling you could get out of the moment you’re in’ basically ceasing the moment. We took so many shots (or atleast Ana and I did😅) and we danced sooo much!!! Plus i loved how we danced to music from each country we were representing.

This festival taught me a lot about the current issues going on concerning migration and the refugee crisis in the world today. Through the discussions and the few plenary sessions that I attended, I was able to grow in knowledge and this opened my eyes to play which ever part I can to make a change. Humanitarian. That’s the word I was looking for. It was a life changing experience! I wish I could write up everything that happened but that would be an extremely long post. Thanks Trondheim and ISFiT!

To all the new friends I met and the old ones I re-met in Trondheim, you’ll always have a special place in my heart. I know we’ll meet soon somewhere around the World!

<Photo Credit: @julydragan on instagram

This post also appears on my personal blog at derrickmuheki.wordpress.com