Uganda

Hello.

We're almost at the end of our time in Uganda, so here is our tale of the 'Pearl of Africa'.

It took a long time to get here, not sure how long exactly. We had a night in Dubai where we dined on purple sausage rolls and stayed in an air conditioned hotel, thanks to our airline. The very same airline upgraded us to business class for the last leg of our journey. I didn't believe the free upgrade existed before then, but we flew over war-torn and famine-ridden North-East Africa while sipping champagne. 

My first impression of Uganda was that it's a lot like Indonesia. Our first experience was arriving at the airport to find no sign of the organised landing party. Turns out they'd come the day before and then, I think, written us off as no shows, no big deal. But we got onto them in the end and they came and got us from Kampala.

There are a lot of similarities between Uganda and Indonesia, but the longer I've been here the more differences I notice too. The equator passes through both countries. Mobile phones are very popular and cheap to run. Whole shops and buildings are painted with advertising like they are in Indo. But no cigarette ads, barely anyone smokes here. Soccer is popular. Although Uganda is poor, living is not cheap. Petrol is the same price here as it is in Aus. Police wear blue camouflage uniforms, traffic police wear white. Road rules are more like guidelines. ATMs are in little booths, but they don't have AC turned up to the max like Indonesia's. And instead of beggars outside like the ones in Malang, they have guards who carry some pretty high-powered firearms. Almost everyone here favours Jesus over Mohammad, it's the other way around in Indo. There doesn't seem to be the same respect for elders here as there is in Indo. Family is a very strong concept. Uganda is very landlocked. We haven't found that prick Kony, but we ran into an Invisible Children employee. 'Taxis' here are more like Malang's Angkot system; a small van with about 20 seats and a fixed route. Whereas a car with a driver that will take you where you want for an agreed upon price is called 'special hire'. White people are called muzungu, and you can be addressed as muzungu by a stranger in the street. Cows have huge horns. The countryside is very green. They grown tea and sugar cane next to dairy farms, which is very convenient. If someone wants a bribe they will ask for ‘fuel money’.

The food here is generally quite good (we've only had one bad meal), not spicy hot, but lots of flavour. Usually some kind of beef, chicken, goat or bean dish served with rice, potatoes or matoke (made with maize flour). Breakfast is bread or toast with eggs or omelettes wrapped in a chapatti. Chapattis are everywhere and delicious. Tea comes weak, with about 90% milk and 4 heaped teaspoons of sugar, unless you ask for it differently. There's lots of fresh fruit too.

The Salvation Army looked after us for the first five days of our stay. They provided us with transport (we payed for fuel) and gave us cheap accommodation. we stayed in a guest house that they have in their home for physically disabled children; 'Home of Joy'. The main attraction of Uganda is that Monique sponsors two children here. We got to meet one of them, but the other is presently MIA. Lonah, the sponsored child we met, lives near Mt. Elgon, near the town of Mbale (as dramatised in one of the opening scenes of Casino Rayale) and the Kenyan border, and around six hours from Kampala. She was incredibly shy, but we got a smile out of her before we left. She's had such a tough life, and she is struggling a bit, but she must be pretty tough.

Captain Christine, who runs Home of Joy, and her family, had us for three meals a day while we were staying there. We were transported by their driver, in their car, and got to hang out with the kids in the home. But I sort of felt a bit hemmed in, like they were protecting us a bit too much, and we both wanted to get out of the city. So we got a bus ticket to the town of Kabale, with the plan of visiting the nearby Lake Bunyonyi. We bought the tickets on Saturday, the bus left on Monday. So we had Sunday to spend with the Salvationists.

The second church service I have ever attended was at the Home of Joy. It was in English and the local Luganda, and parts in Swahili. It went for around two hours and everyone seemed pretty happy about what the lord had blessed them with. Lots of praise the lord and hallelujah went down, a bit of singing and dancing. No worries, it's all new to me, like everything in this country, part of the experience. That afternoon we were invited to attend the album launch of a famous gospel singer.

Until that afternoon we were unaware that the bass driven, loud, loud music played all night throughout our Kampala neighbourhood was considered gospel. We showed up at 3pm and were seated near the front of a large amphitheatre full of empty seats. The performance started promptly and we were enlightened about the style of African gospel; upbeat with lots of computer generated drum beats and a generous helping of auto tune. The performance was not at all what we expected. It consisted of a very big sound system plugged in to a laptop from which a guy played songs. A guest singer would grab a mic and belt out the tune. Kind of like Karaoke, except the singing track was left in the song, so the singer was basically singing along with a cd. And it was really loud. And the music wasn't that great. A couple of guest singers in and we were about ready for the main act and to head home to pack for the following day. People were still setting up chairs and stuff, me and Mon were laughing, thinking they might not get it set up by the time the performance ended. There were around 20 people in attendance and a few hundred seats. An hour in, and several guest performances later and we were starting to wonder how many support acts this singer was going to have. Two hours in and we were pretty over it, still no sign of the star, and the plastic seats were starting to get uncomfortable. People were starting to flow into the hall in fairly significant numbers.. so maybe the show was reaching the end. The performance was mostly in Luganda, a little in Swahili and, worst of all, English. Three hours of foreign language ear-bleed-inducing karaoke later and we decided we'd put a stop to this and just leave after half an hour more. When half an hour had passed the place was rocking; our hosts were loving it, we couldn't make them leave. And besides, how much longer could it take?

We were there for around five and a half hours. The headline act performed two songs. In the same style as all the others; iTunes and a mic. Then the mc insisted, in front of everyone, that the two Americans (me and Mon), buy a cd. We didn't.

The bus out of Kampala left at 9am, we were told to be there by 8. When we got there the bus was already packed, but we managed to find two seats together at the back of the bus. There were three seats together; Mon and I had the aisle and centre seats and the window seat was taken by a born again preacher with fantastic English and something like ADD. Before the bus left the station I had found my saviour in my trusty set of noise-cancelling headphones. Neither of us were feeling particularly tolerant of his insistence that we should have kids and be born again, or of his mission to go and pray for the terminally ill.

It was the longest bus trip I've been on I reckon, and not because of that guy. It was seven hours, I think, and we found out that the back of the bus is the worst place to sit because the drivers tend not to slow down for Uganda's over-sized speed bumps and people in the back row are routinely thrown into the baggage racks.

We were out from under the wing of the Salvos and really didn't know what to expect when we arrived in Kabale. So as keen as we were to get off the bus we were nervous to arrive. we needn't have worried. A driver must have spotted two muzungu on the bus and fought his way on to offer us a lift to Lake Bunyonyi. We were keen to avoid the hassle of bargaining with every nitwit on the side of the road so we agreed to his price (which turned out to be the going rate) and jumped in his beaten up old car.

The hills around Bunyonyi are amazingly similar to the Otways. Eucalyptus trees cover the parts of the hills which aren't farms, some even in blue-gum-like plantations, everything is green and it rains a lot. And even though we were super close to the equator the air was quite cool, because of the altitude.

Lake Bunyonyi is a really peaceful, beautiful place located in the South West of Uganda, right near where the borders of Rwanda and Uganda meet the DRC. We stayed on an island (one of 29) about an hour canoe paddle from where the main road meets the lake. The place we stayed was community run, solar powered and covered with birds and spiders. It was good to be in such a quiet, clean place after the city. We tried our hand at paddling a dugout canoe one day and, despite some initial, unintentional, 360s, we managed to circumnavigate a few islands. We also went for a trip to see the Batwa Pygmies. We wondered a bit at the sensitivity of going to see them; whether we'd be stalking them through the forest or something, could've been a bit weird. But it was fully set up for tourists; Batwa elders dressed in tattered t-shirts and gumboots danced and sang for us. It felt kind of forced but the songs were great, and everyone seemed happy with the situation. Besides, the walk was really nice, and a look on Google maps revealed that we crossed briefly into Rwanda, stoked.

Staying at the same place we were was a lady who works with Invisible Children, the organisation behind the Kony 2012 video. She didn't stick around so we didn't get to talk to her much and she didn't get a chance to respond to the following story. Another person we met at Bunyonyi was a guy doing his PhD in the north of Uganda looking at the recovery and redevelopment in the area post Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). He's found that, among locals, Invisible Children is quite unpopular. They drive nice cars and live in nice apartments but there's not a lot of actual help getting through to locals in need. It seems to reflect the feelings of Invisible Children's many internet detractors. Something they did do was set up a big screen to show their Kony 2012 video to locals affected by Kony's delusional war. They set up some cameras to film the elated reactions of the crowd. Apparently it nearly caused a riot. If you haven't seen the Kony video, it lobbies for more support to be given to the Ugandan Army to find Kony. According to our PhD-ing friend's research the Ugandan Army are responsible for over one third of the war crimes and abuse of civilians committed during the conflict with the LRA. As you can imagine, the gathered crowd weren't too stoked with the video. Of course, the story may be a bit exaggerated, and Invisible Children are doing more for Uganda than I am, even if they're not doing it the way I would.

From what we read before we came over, Africa at night is the most dangerous thing in the world. It's not really, most of the time, but I think it still pays to be extra vigilant once the sun goes down. Taxi fares double after nightfall because it's supposed to be a lot more dangerous. After Lake Bunyonyi we spent a night in Kabale to organise our onward journey. Our PhD-ing friend and his girlfriend were in town too so we went out for a few beers. We played pool with some locals and got stuck by the rain so by the time we started heading home it was quite late. Our guest house was a few hundred metres up a small lane, and the power was out so there were no street lights. We were a little worried, but confident in our abilities to avoid trouble. Then a set of headlights started following us. A light jog ensued, until Mon stubbed her toe. The headlights kept coming. We picked up the pace a bit, some adrenaline from the toe-stubbing incident kicking in. We reached the guest house with a comfortable distance between us and our pursuers. But the gate was locked and impenetrable. Four metres high and topped with metal spikes. The headlights stopped about 10 metres from us. A figure emerged from the vehicle and started to approach us, silhouetted against the headlights. A friendly voice called out to us "Hello, do you want to stay here?", unconvinced that our assailants were actually friends I told the man that we already had a room here (not sure what that was meant to achieve). "But that gate is locked", he said, "you must enter through this gate here". Well, he sounded friendly, and he seemed to know the guest house well, and we were stuck on the street anyway. So I pulled Mon out of her hiding place and followed the man tentatively. He opened the back gate for us with a friendly smile and let us in, we said many thankyous, ran to our room and locked the door behind us. Too easy.

From Kabale we travelled to Queen Elizabeth National Park. The only available bus didn't leave until 6pm, meaning we would arrive at our destination sometime around midnight. Luckily we were in contact with a guide from the area who organised accommodation for us and agreed to meet us at the bus. The journey was terrible; driving flat out along bad roads in a broken bus, at night, with people and animals wandering everywhere, trucks coming straight at the bus, overtaking on blind corners and our destination was a tiny village in the middle of nowhere and the middle of the night. We got there around 11.30 and were met by the guide who showed us straight to our room and organised to meet us for a game-drive early the following morning. Top bloke. Things were looking good. Our room was plain and square with a blue light and a bed right in the middle, it was a bit nightmarish, but we were keen for sleep. Turns out the tiny village of Katunguru likes to party, there was some kind of rave going on until 6.30am, we left at 6.45, having barely slept a wink. Stoked.

The national park was awesome and incredibly expensive. Our guide knew about everything in the park and had a super set of eyes on him and spotted some very cool stuff. Among other animals we saw lions, elephants, warthogs, heaps of hippos and buffalos, crocodiles, shitloads of birds, chimps and a variety of monkeys. Plus we saw a classic African sunrise over the savannah.

From there we travelled to Fort Portal on another dodgy bus. Fort Portal is surrounded by very nice places, but we were pretty keen for a rest day for our bodies and wallets so we just cruised in town.

We're back at the Home of Joy now, tomorrow we fly to Kenya.

Pat