Kampala Adventures

This past weekend was a long one in Rwanda – parliamentary elections on Monday meant that our offices were closed – so Katie and I decided to take the opportunity to do a little travelling. Destination, Kampala… a 10 hour bus ride away. We set off at 5am by taxi to Nyabugogo bus park, which managed to be busy even at 530 in the morning. The bus set off promptly at 6am (I’ll admit some surprise that something ran on time here…) and off we went. I napped most of the way up to the Ugandan border, which is okay as I’ve come to the conclusion that the vast majority of Rwanda looks the same. So it’s 730 and border-crossing time. To get into Uganda, you must queue up (in the longest, slowest lines of life, really) to have your departure card looked at and your passport stamped with an exit stamp to sign you out of the country. You then have to walk a short distance through ‘no-man’s land’ until you reach a post where a fairly unofficial-looking guy will have a brief look at your passport and send you on your way to the Uganda Immigration office, where you fill out a form, pay your $50 US for a single entry visa (if you’re not from the Great Lakes region, anyway) and get a Ugandan visa. The guy who stamped mine gave me a visa for up to seven days, because as he said “Kampala is great fun and you just never know what might happen.”

Cue getting back on the bus (more passport checking) and off you go through the Ugandan countryside… Which at first seemed just like Rwanda, only less people and a lot of pigs. We also saw a goat being gutted at the roadside, lovely. The scenery changed quickly though- Ugandan hills are beautiful, green, rolling things topped with such beautiful trees. I wished we’d had the chance to stop once in awhile to take pictures; it was beautiful. But really, so many less people- Uganda has a much bigger population than Rwanda, but it’s also about 4 times the size. You haven’t seen population density until you’ve driven through rural Rwanda, let me tell you, and Uganda was quite different- definitely people around but not as much overall movement, fewer people working the fields and not nearly as many walking along the road. Lots of neat things to see out the windows though, like the roadside market stands where Ugandan women pile their fruit and vegetables up in the exact same formations, all over the south-western part of the country…. It was neat to see little red tomato pyramids in each town we passed through all the way up to Kampala. The bus ride was full of entertaining Swahili-dubbed action movies and the Boney M Christmas album (which happens to be a favourite of both Katie and I, so we enjoyed it regardless of the odd season). We arrived in Kampala around 430pm, a long nine and a half hours after we set out (Uganda is an hour ahead of Rwanda), with no Ugandan shillings, a very small map of Kampala printed from Lonely Planet’s chapter on Uganda, and only the vaguest ideas of where we ought to go. Such is travelling in Africa when you really only decided to go somewhere a day or two before.

So we set off on a walk and wound up nearly where we wanted to be- at a branch of Barclay’s bank which, charmingly, gave me shillings without charging me any service fees (thanks to a partnership with Scotiabank… nice change from the bank fees from hell that I’m charged in Kigali). From there, we wandered through a mall (supposedly Kampala’s first and still best, ha) and up to Kampala Rd, where we had supper (vegetarian pizza), investigated our surroundings a bit and wound up catching a bus toward our hostel (the Red Chilli Hideaway, recommended by the way) with the help of a nice boda-boda driver (a moto driver). So we’re on the bus and we see what we think is the right place for us to get off; this notion is supported by others on the bus when we tell them where the directions to the hostel say to go. So off we get… and wander around the area for half an hour to no avail. We call the hostel- turns out we’re not even close to being in the right place and it’s another 30 minute walk away. So we get brave and hop onto a boda-boda, without helmets (!!!) as they just hardly use them here. A big deal, even for me, the self-professed moto lover here in Kigali. Luckily it was a short ride and he drove pretty carefully; we arrived in one piece (well, two pieces, because Katie and I were on the same one… which is so illegal in Rwanda).

The guard at the hostel gate opened it, greeted us and asked us (and I quote) “Are you here to see some whites?” Took all the self-restraint we possessed to stop from cracking up on the spot. We checked in, had a berry Fanta (doesn’t exist in Rwanda and turns out that’s okay, as it wasn’t the best I’ve ever had) and dropped our things off. It was by now after 9pm, so we got ourselves looking clean and pretty and stopped in the hostel bar for a beer. When it closed, the bartender recommended we check out a club he knew called Rouge (just like one at home) so off we went. The bouncer at the club was telling us the differences between his club and the one right next door- he said the cover was cheaper there, so we thought we’d check it out. Turned out is the same price, but the bouncer there let us in for free. Thank goodness, because it wasn’t worth paying; we watched a few minutes of Big Brother Africa, checked to make sure the unconscious guy sitting across from us was still breathing, and headed over to the other club. Definitely more upscale, busy but not packed and filled with well-dressed Ugandans… and a whole lot of young white men on the prowl. I’ll save my thoughts on that for another occasion. We spent the night avoiding being chatted up by creeps (one who just wouldn’t let up for the life of him… awful) and dancing a bit. Headed home around 2am, which is, of course, closing time for clubs at home… but African clubs go strong until dawn.

Sunday morning saw us getting up and heading downtown on a few shopping missions… This shopping trip increased in necessity when Katie’s sandal broke just as we left the hostel – the only shoes she had with her. We caught a bus downtown, walked to this crazy shopping mall (just like at home, really) and took a look around. Being Sunday, a lot of places were closed… Still interesting to see I guess! More walking around in search for a used bookshop someone at the hostel told us about (closed, naturally) and a long, long walk downtown to find the bus office to buy tickets home… Of course, the office was not at all where the map thought it should be, so we ended up wandering through some… interesting… parts of Kampala.

Good to have a look around, though, and no harm done as we soon figured out where we were and where we needed to be. Tickets bought, we headed back downtown, still on foot despite Katie’s sandal, because the traffic was moving so slowly we figured we’d get there before a bus would. Had some tasty veggie burgers at a fast food restaurant on Kampala Rd and had a bit more of a wander before heading back to the hostel. Our plans to sit around the bar with a drink and a book were foiled as we met an Australian woman who we ended up hanging out with through the night; she’s applying to all sorts of primatologist/conservationist jobs in the region using Kampala as a base for now. Quite a neat woman; it never ceases to amaze me the things people do for a living! Later on, I headed out to an area called Kabalagala with some friends I’d made; this was clearly the place to be on a Sunday night. Jam-packed with people, loud music all over, tons of bars. Had a great time and good conversation, and fell into bed around 2am despite needing to be up around 6 to get ready for the bus. Monday morning was about as eventful as Sunday, as we caught a bus going generally in the direction we needed but not quite there… We ended up walking through yet another odd part of the city until we recognized the street we needed to be on and soon enough we were boarding the bus to make it back to Kigali. The ride was much more comfortable this time – we paid 5000 Ugandan shillings more but that couple of dollars was worth the extra space and comfort. Much easier getting back across the border and we now have a new 90 day visa for Rwanda… but of course our Christmas plans start on the 95th day, so we’ll need to take another trip somewhere to renew our visas again.

So Kampala was great fun, although I wish I’d had more time there to really enjoy. It was so lovely to get a break from Kigali, as I’d really been having a bit of a bad time of it lately and wasn’t feeling so great about being here. Funny though… I realized while in Kampala that I absolutely think of Kigali as ‘home’ now. I’d catch myself talking to someone or thinking to myself “Oh, at home it’s like this…” and was thinking completely of Kigali and not at all of Canada. Odd how a place becomes so much a part of you without you even realizing it.