Between the Lines

Here in Africa no one blinks an eye at a 10-12 hour drive to get from one destination to another and that is what we have in front of us to get to the infamous Entebbe airport in Kampala, our departure point to our Safari in Kenya. 

We have to drive with the windows wide open as working AC is a long past memory for the Green Banana; my throat is starting to burn as we have been driving through air with what seems like the consistency of pea soup for the past 6 hours and I have a splitting headache and my left thigh is burning from sitting on the metal rod in the seat which lost its ability to cushion anything a long time ago.  

We have more than 5 hours to go to reach Entebbe airport, as I write this sentence flecks of black ash are landing on my knees and shorts having blown through the open windows.  Nancy’s covid mask has become an essential accessory.

But let’s get back to how the day started….

Departing at 7:15am TST (Terri standard time) which is 15 mins ahead of whatever local time we find ourselves in, we are treated to another 2 hour “African massage” as we have to travel the same bumpy dusty track we can in on.  We start making our way down the rutted path from the Gorilla Valley Lodge, passing groups of schoolkids in uniform walking and waving to the van as it passes in a cloud of dust.  The kids in this local area have to walk up to 20km each way to reach the local school which has a capacity of 800.

My eyes are soon burning from the dust which we can see is literally coming up through the floor and door seals of the green banana. After more than an hour we spot the beautiful sight of pavement, I’ve never been so happy to see asphalt in my life.

We stop for a tree that has just fallen or been cut and is blocking the road…a song comes into my head as I watch them clear the road….

On a dark dusty highway / cool wind in your hair / Warm smell of eucalyptus / Rising up in the air / Up ahead in the distance / I saw mountains through the smoky air / My head grew heavy and my eyes began to burn / I had to stop for the night / 

There she stood in the doorway / I heard the car horn blare / and I was thinking to myself / this could be heaven or it could be hell / then she lit a wood fire / and she showed me the way / there were loudspeakers blasting / I thought I heard them say / Welcome to the land of Uganda / such a lovely place / such a lovely place / plenty of room in the land of Uganda Any time of year / you can find it here 

2.5 hours in we pass through the Center of Kabale, the main road lined with shops, open air car impromptu repair shops, music blasting from large speakers in front of each shop, all in competition to out to each other and we get a short loud blast in sequence as we pass by.  We stop here for some gas and go try and find a bathroom that has more than a hole in the ground.  I hand Nancy the key to the toilet which is attached to an old dusty plastic water bottle and she remarks, “this is not giving me confidence”.  The toilets are again just a hole in the ground but much cleaner than the last one.  There is a shortage of diesel so we have to do some gas station hopping to find diesel. 

Police roadblocks appear seemingly out of nowhere, brutal looking home made spike belts fashioned out of logs with sharpened sticks placed at odd angles but we never stop and in fact Alain our driver appears to speed up on approaching these so it’s unclear what they are for.

Mbarara is definitely not on any tourists hit list although I spot a hotel on the hill with a lovely view of the local factory smokestack spewing black soot into the air. After a bathroom break we depart the shanty-town outskirts of Mbarara and we eventually get away from the piles of garbage, open cooking fires and trucks spewing black smoke and back into the countryside.  It takes me a while to figure out what these small conical dirt mounds interspersed between the trees are; and then I figure it out - termite mounds. The landscape is starting to look more savanna like with the appearance of our first acacia trees and low slung hills in the distance. I witness a man literally throwing mud at a wall doing the equivalent of stucco, I think to myself this is where the saying “throwing ideas against the wall to see what sticks” comes from…

 It’s started to rain now and the herds of Ankole cattle are sitting under the acacia trees for shelter.  The bulls sport a large set of distinctive white horns which appear completely out of scale for the animal.  They are unique to Uganda and owning these type of cattle are a sign of wealth. 

Different structures made of wood and with distinct triangular roofs made of woven grass now start to appear but every town starts to look the same, the same shops, the same hammering, grinding or cutting sounds emanating from behind yards with corrugated metal sheets for fences, a hardware store selling everything from mattresses to bed frames to satellite dishes, rough hewn lumber in piles stacked in the street, fruit and vegetable stands, stacks of freshly cut green bananas, food shacks of all shapes and sizes cooking chicken, pork and various other unidentifiable foods, cars in various states of disrepair, the same half finished buildings, dress shops with seemingly the same pair of mannequins, an Airtel or Mtn 4G cell store, a butcher shop with half a carcass of a cow hanging in the open air next to the road, piles of random broken and intact bricks, the same Plascon Colour your world store (how much paint do Ugandans actually need??) and a special “road sculpture” which consists of the latest wrecked car or truck left on the side of the road.  The only difference in the larger towns being that there are multiple stores of the same type. 

Alain is speeding down the hills as fast as he can to get enough speed to get the Green Banana over the next rise as we enter Marsala, the largest town before we get to Kampala where the airport is located.  I see my life flash in front of my eyes with cars in both lanes coming up the hill towards us as we pick up speed towards them.  At the last moment the white Toyota Tacoma pulls back into its own lane and we barely miss its side mirrors.  This is just the first of about 5 near misses that made my heart skip a beat during the rest of the drive.  Thankfully it’s really just Paul and I that notice and everyone else is blissfully unaware. Alain is an excellent driver and he doesn’t even give a hint of concern so that puts us at ease that this is just a normal part of driving in Africa. 

Fish in various sizes and states of freshness start to appear on small roadside stands as cross the bridge from Lukaya into Karizu over a part of Lake Victoria.  The lake is Africa's largest lake by area, the world's largest tropical lake, and the world's second-largest fresh water lake by surface area after Lake Superior in North America (source: Wikipedia).  The terrain is now very flat with rice paddies and tall wetland grasses  extending on both sides of the road as far as the eye can see.

It’s 4pm when we finally pull into our only major stop of the day, the Equator.  We take the obligatory picture at the monument and I pay for the “science experiment” so Jayson can see the water run clockwise on one side of the equator and counter clockwise on the other side.  After a quick meal we head out again on the road.  We enter the outskirts of Kampala and turn onto the “main road” to the airport.  It’s another dirt road, but this time in much better shape that the mountain road we spent so much time on this morning and the brilliant red soil makes an amazing contrast with the adjacent green fields.  

10 minutes from the airport we get pulled over by the police. We’re already late for the flight.  Andrew says “it’s the African way” and makes the symbol for a bribe…the procedure involved “dropping” his wallet in front of the police and then taking some cash out and giving it to the officer.  We got off the hook in less than 10 minutes but now we are now late for the plane.  Yet another strange procedure where we have to exit the van before the airport and walk through a metal detector before boarding the van again causes another delay and now the flight is 20 minutes from boarding. 

In the car, to prepare us for the hagglers in Kenya at the markets and the villages, Andrew had given us our first lesson in Swahili the common language spoken in Kenya, Tanzania and Zanzibar. 

Jambo - hello

Ndio - yes

Hapana - no 

Jina langu ni - my name is 

Asante sana - thank you

Niko Safaki - I don’t want it/need it 

Bei Gani - how much? 

Hakuna Matata(yes that word from the Lion King is actually a real word) - it means no worries, no problem.

Unfortunately no one is saying Hakuna  Matata right now……

We rush through security and then the trouble starts.  Immigration won’t let Paul, Terri and the kids through without the East African tourist visa that was put in Nancy and my passports when we entered Rwanda at the Kigali airport.  We had all applied for the same visas back in Canada and Nancy and mine were emailed to me but Terri and Paul’s and the kids didn’t so the plan was to sort it out at the airport when we landed.  

This has now come back to bite us in the ass as Nancy, I and Andrew have to head to the gate as the plane is boarding and we watch Terri, Paul and the kids head in the opposite direction to try and sort out the mess.  

Thanks be to God, Allah and Buddha and whoever else is looking out for us on this trip that the plane was delayed departing as they walked through to the gate as the flight was ready to board.  Rather than try to “sort out” the visas that they had already paid for, Paul just asked “how much to sort this out immediately” and the price was $200 US in cash to get “new” exit visas on the spot.  

The next flight was tommorrow at 8pm and they would have had to spend another day in Uganda at who knows what hotel in Kampala and they would have missed the activities tommorrow and have had to find a way to catch up to us the next day so disaster has been averted.

Ok so now we have the FULL story.  

Turns out it’s actually my fault for going to a scam website to buy our visas.  

Paul and Terri tried to sort out the visa mess when we landed in Kenya and were told that the receipts they had were real visa numbers but that they were already in use.  The “official” government website that I used to get all of our visas is apparently a scam that has been set up by someone in the government.  The visas that Nancy and I received were actually fake documents that fooled the customs officials in Rwanda and got them to issue the official documents for our passports. So we were all scammed but somehow 2 of us made it through.  

Andrew showed us the official government website for Rwanda and it’s not the one I went to!   He said this sort of thing happens all the time so we were scammed before we even left for Africa!  

Some Contrasts and reflections from our full day driving tour of Uganda:

At the gas station a truck is parked and it’s leaking gobs of oil directly into a storm drain and no one even blinks an eye.  In North America this one incident would have required pages and pages of paperwork, spill kits and probably $50,000 of remediation and consulting bills - we have paralyzed ourselves with overregulation.

In Uganda payment by mobile phone transfer is the norm. Even the smallest settlement we pass through with only 2 or 3 buildings has money transfer booths and a store selling SIM cards.  They are leapfrogging us in North America and becoming a cashless society.  

Climbing out of Kabale we see literally hundreds and hundreds of bags of raw coal still used for heating and cooking stacked by the side of the road, mountains of wood chopped from the local forests, piles of burning plastic waste and slash and burn agriculture while in Canada we argue over bike lanes and disallowing natural gas for heating homes. Our efforts mean very little as this is how most of Africa lives.