Uganda

A pig in Kampala.

            So I went to Uganda the other day with a buddy of mine. Kampala, the capital city is very large and the buildings are painted with cell phone company advertisements much like Kenya.  The weather is more tropical then the parts of Kenya that we have come accustomed to and the areas near Lake Victoria are lush with green palms. From what I could tell Vervet monkeys are common all over the city. We stayed in Kampala for a couple of nights and then headed out to where the source of the Nile is located, near a small town called Jinja. The hostel we stayed at had a sweeping view of the White Nile that simply took your breath away as the sunsets over the hills to the west.

                                        Seven dollars US, per nights stay.

Most of our traveling around was done on the backs of motorcycles called “Boda bodas.”  On the dirt roads it was necessary to clutch onto the metal handrails behind your back in order to not fly off. They were very fun and inexpensive.

A town on Lake Victoria.

The highlights of the adventure included bungee jumping 145 feet over the Nile and also taking a cruise to the Nile source and around Lake Victoria. Other details of our trip I will not mention here in fear of horrifying my mother who reads this blog (hi mom).

The view from where we bungee jumped.

Some of the more interesting events occurred when I took the bus back home to Kenya. First off, the bus was two hours late and arrived with a flat tire that took another 45 minutes to fix. The local men that the bus company had fix the tire, worked really hard with terrible equipment that gored their hands in the process. After completing their task the rather large woman in charge of the bus, shortchanged them money and the men threw rocks at the bus as it left the station. Before getting to the border crossing the Ugandan police pulled us over and forced two passengers onto the bus after threatening the driver. There was much yelling on the side of the highway between the police and the bus crew. Around this time the sun went down as we drove into the middle of the night.

Then at the crossing there was almost a riot when the cops started kicking people out of line for seemingly no reason. The man who checked my visa reeked of booze. I was happy because they did not attempt to take any money off of me for an entrance stamp into the country. Past the crossing we drove for a bit before running into a police blockade that consisted of road spikes. After pulling us over, four very large cops with machine guns stepped onto the bus and checked all our visas. Three men got pulled off the bus and were handcuffed along the side of the road. There was a lot more yelling at this point. After a while the large bus woman went out to negotiate bribes for the bus passenger’s release. Figures were typed into cell phones and then shown to the cops. At first they were rejected. The cops shook their heads saying “hapana, hapana.” Then again a number was typed and the cops nodded in agreement. Money was very obviously exchanged along side the bus directly below where I was sitting and the men were released. We continued on our way for another twelve hours or so. The views of the Kenyan Rift Valley are unimaginably beautiful after the sun came up. Finally we reached Nairobi.

When exiting the bus a taxi driver approached me. I told him that I was not traveling far and I was going to the Kenya Comfort Hotel nearby. He lied about the distance and told me the price was roughly ten times what the actual fare should have been. Some local women laughed as they overheard the price offered. When I told him that I would rather go by foot and began to walk away he yelled at me “You are going to die.” I turned around in disbelief but he was already heading back to the bus to look for another fare. It’s good to be home. 

Bennett