The bus to Kampala was one of the most uncomfortable nights
of the trip. Sitting in the front of the
bus has its advantages when traveling in Africa, but it also has a lot of
disadvantages. First off, the advantage to sitting to the front are that you are
closer to the door so exiting and entering the bus is very convenient, you
don’t get bothered by too many people, the random bumps on the road are not as
noticeable and there is a lot more leg room as well. However, the disadvantage is that there was a
light on during the beginning of the trip, the loud music that was blaring out
of the speakers to reach the back of the bus was 5 feet ahead of us and there
were boxes of things in the aisle right next to our seat.
Traveling at night has its advantages though. If everything goes right you can sleep
through most of the night and not waste time that you could be exploring. However if under the wrong conditions, such
as this, it leaves you sleep deprived and anxious to find a nice bed to curl up
on and sleep forever. The bus ride was
rather disappointing in that respect.
Africa at night gets very cold.
Even wearing a track jacket was not enough to keep me warm that
night. When you are backpacking, it is
always a good idea to bring a blanket (or take the blanket from the airline, as
I was thankful for many times during our trip) to use in such occasions. Eventually I was able to fall asleep with the
music and cold, but every so often I was awoken by one of the many “speed
bumps” in the road.
As we made the trek to Uganda, stopped at a gas station to
get out and stretch out legs. The rest
stop might have been one of the sketchiest places on our trip. The bathroom was in the back of the building
with a man sitting there waiting for you to come to pay him to use. It costs 5 shillings to use the bathroom
(84KS=1USD) and more if you’re “going to be there for a while” to pay for the
toilet paper. On top of that, the faucet
was not working so hygiene was thrown out the window. Many times we were not able to wash our
hands. Before meals, we had water poured
over our hands into a bucket, sometimes without soap, and to dry them we just
squeezed the water off. This didn’t
bother me too much though for some reason.
I was warned before that this was how it was going be and that might
have been why. Definitely grateful for the warning that I received before
heading out on this adventure.
Crossing the border in Uganda was trip in itself. Everyone on the bus must get off, and walk to
the other country. In between countries,
there is a “no man’s land”. In here
nothing happens, just people walking through.
No is one pestering you to help you fill out papers, no hawkers, no one
trying to get you to exchange your money with them so they get a profit,
nothing. It is very quiet, but not a
very long, maybe 100 yards if that though that walk is probably one of the most
peaceful walks that I had been on.
On Uganda’s side you must apply for another visa. Same deal, picture, fingerprints, give some
money, get the visa and on your way. One
of the problems with the border is that there are many people there trying to
scam you. Like above, there are people
trying to sell you things, some things at jacked up prices, people wanting to
scam you with money exchange, even people offering to help you out with your
paperwork and later saying you must pay them for their troubles (the paperwork
is super simple, most of the workers speak English and it only take about 5
minutes to fill out 15-20 minutes cued up and 5 minutes while speaking to them
and you’re done).
With visas in our hands, we boarded the bus again and
continued the rest of the 4 hours to Kampala.
During this time we crossed the Nile river (which we would cross a total
of 4 times during our stay) and many different villages. Along the side of the road you can see sugar
cane fields, the huts that you see on National Geographic videos, and a
beautiful lush green wilderness. The sky
was very clear and the air was so fresh the thought of returning to the coal,
dirty city smell, could make someone not want to return. On the way we saw our bus going over 90km/h
over take many vehicles, force pedestrians to the side of the road, and of
course, a random monkey on the side of the road.
In Kampala, we were to meet with one of Jordan’s mission
buddies. His name is Emmanuel Bandi,
though we called him Bandi or Mzee (Elder in Swahili) since that was how he was
referred to on their mission. Once we got close, we told the conductor where we
needed to be let off. This however was a
problem as we were let off a stage too early.
We called Bandi to figure out where we needed to meet him and found out
that we were in the wrong place. The
stage that we needed to be at was about a mile or so further. So in the spirit of real backpackers we
walked to the next stage. Luckily it was
not very far and we had a great view of Kampala. To our left was Mandela Stadium, the national
football (soccer) stadium that stuck out like a sore thumb next to the small
houses and green foliage.
After meeting up with Bandi, we walked to the place that we
were staying at. This one was not much
bigger than the place we were just at but the set was much more like that of
home. The rooms were smaller for sure,
but the living area was about twice as big making it seem like it was bigger
than the other house. We took a nice
cold shower since it had been a few days since we were last able to and it was
the greatest thing in the world at that point.
Nothing would have beaten that feeling.
Later that day we traveled into the city waiting for
Jordan’s friend Dianah to come. Looking
around at the shops we attempted to play a game. The game was how many numbers you can get
from the women in the shops (aka souls).
I didn’t really participate in the game because, well one, I didn’t
really care for it but also I’m not really that good at flirting with a random
person and asking for their number. However, with the help/influence of Bandi,
we ended up getting at least one number, which he said all the work was done by
me. Eventually we Dianah came and we
bought some food for dinner. We tried
eating in a cafe type place since we could eat in the park due to military
stuff going on in there and they were not too happy about it, making us buy
drinks from them to eat in there. Makes
sense but it was kind of annoying nonetheless.
For some reason time in Africa seem to extend. Back that the house, we decided to watch a
few movies. Being tired from all of the
travel I fell asleep pretty quickly. I
awoke some time later and found that it was still only around 9pm. This happened many times on the trip where
time seemed to be going a lot faster but wasn’t. This was due to how much we were putting into
our day.
The nights rest was well over due. It had been 3 days since we had a real bed to
sleep in and this one did the trick. We
sleep pretty soundly that night and into the mid-morning. After relaxing a little while around the
house, we met up with another one of Jordan’s Mission friends. Her name was Robinah Namutebi. We chatted
with her for a little while, some of it in Swahili. Eventually we needed to get going to Jinja to
purchase some paintings. As we were
leaving, Bandi and Jordan made some comments that struck my interest.
“Ah Mzee you seem happy” Bandi said.
“Ahh yes Mzee I am, I am happy for my friend” explained
Jordan.
“Wait what? Why are you happy for me?” confused at the
comment Jordan had made.
“Oh, I am happy for you because you are going on a date!”
Jordan informed me with a smile and a chuckle in his voice.
Yes I had a date with Robinah. I was very uncomfortable with this so we
ended up making the date a triple date.
Jordan would take Dianah, Bandi took another Sister missionary from
their mission and I would be taking Robinah. This date would not happen till
the next day though so I had time to get the idea into my head.
Later that day we arrived in Jinja to by our paintings. During the bus drive over we crossed the Nile
River for the second time and for the third time on the way back. Our paintings were very inexpensive. I purchased a few paintings for 70,000 USH
which translates into about $35USD. It
amazes me how filling the food in Africa can be. We had eaten chapatti that morning and hadn’t
eaten anything since that morning, and only had 2 sodas within the 12 hours
after that point. Jordan however was
getting hungry and purchased a few more chapatti, a few time without us
realizing he had done so. It was pretty
funny when we were just chatting and he would just say “you know what I say to
that?” pulling out a chapatti from nowhere.
On the way back, as we crossed the Nile we saw the most
beautiful scenery. The sun had pretty
much fully set; the foliage black against the dark blue sky and the water. I was an amazing sight. I wish I was able to get a picture of it but
it was too dark for my camera to get the full effect. If we saw nothing else, this would have made
it all worth it. The nights in Uganda
are beautiful and unless you have seen it for yourself it is impossible to
understand how beautiful it can be.
In the morning Bandi and I prepared for our date by buying
some ice cream, fruit and some other snacks.
We had planned on meeting Jordan and his date, and the other 2 women at
the Chapel. We had heard there was a
Relief Society birthday going on, but had no idea that there was going to be a
wedding as well. When we arrived we say
the tents and figured “Why not?”, and crashed the wedding.
Sitting down we received sodas for free and took some
pictures of the festivities. African wedding are very lively. As we were watching 3 men got up and danced
in a traditional tribal style with metal rings around their legs that made
noise at every step they made. The women
finished up their party and brought Jordan and I some of the treats that they
had at the party. We started our date
next to the wedding with eating the ice cream, chatting, and dancing. Robinah taught me how to move like an African
while listened to music on her phone. By
the time we were done with our snacks, the wedding was ready to serve
dinner. Naturally being the wedding
crashers we were, we entered in line for our free food. One of my favorite African dishes is a green
banana cooked with a peanut sauce. They call it Mtoke (sp?). It tasted much more like a potato than a
banana which I found very interesting.
The next morning we prepared for church. Hymns sound slightly different in
Africa. It is hard to explain but for
some reason when I was singing I felt like I was off on the notes, which does
not happen very often to me. It was on
this day thought that we were leaving to go to Tanzania. Once church was over we had lunch with the
man who we had been staying with, Andrew, because he enjoyed our company and
wanted to see us off. It had to be quick
since we were supposed to be leaving in 2 hours and it would take us at least
45 minutes to get to the stage that we were leaving, and rush hour was not too
far away. We packed our things, got
ourselves 2 motorcycles, and said goodbye to Bandi.
On our motorcyclists were passing each other as if it was a
race to get to the stage first. This is where things got interesting. My motorcyclist had passed Jordan’s right
before a hill. At the bottom of the hill
was a large intersection where multiple streets intersected. My vehicle was going pretty fast down the
hill and it seemed as though he was not going to stop. To my right was an Mtatu (party van),
blocking our view from the on-coming traffic.
As we reached the front of the Mtatu, out popped another
motorcycle. Our vehicles collided,
knocking both vehicles over and throwing me off. At this point I just had to just say to
myself “Really??? That seriously just happened???” The other driver seemed very angry, but my
driver paid no attention to this, we got back on and went on our way.
Arriving at the stage I looked at my knee, as it had been
stinging from the fall. When I had
fallen off the bike I had scrapped my knee up pretty bad against the street and
was bleeding pretty bad. Inside the
station I took my towel off and patted it down.
Jordan before had asked me if I was alright. I confirmed that I was, but
he had no idea that I was bleeding. Once
he found this out he left to get me the best band aid that he could find,
returning with peroxide, an ace wrap and Dianah. Apparently Africa doesn’t believe in band
aids since the ace wrap was all that Jordan could find. We took a walk with Dianah (Jordan and her
had ran into each other as he was looking for a band aid) down the street and
back. Finally the bus arrived (late once
again), saying good bye to Dianah we hopped onto the bus and were on our way to
Tanzania.
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