Leaving The Hairy Lemon was sad, but all good things must come to an end, and I really needed to see a little more of Uganda than one tiny island. When I first arrived in Uganda in early December, I had planned on travelling around most of the country and even maybe dipping into Rwanda (if I could get a visa; Rwanda hates Canada now, for good reason too). I ended up spending nearly three weeks in the Jinja area though, and while I definitely missed out on seeing some amazing things, I don’t regret a second of it. I met some incredible people and had some of the best times I’ve ever had. I was admittedly worried about my first Christmas and New Year’s Eve away from home, but they were both absolutely magical. In the end, I did what I wanted to do, and that’s what this year-long stint of random travelling is meant to be.
I had booked a flight from Entebbe (Uganda) to Cape Town (South Africa) for January the 11th to meet my sister and Bree (her friend) to do a month of volunteering there, so I had about a week to kill when I finally dragged my ass away from the Hairy Lemon on the 5th. I was meant to leave on the evening of the 4th actually, but I got incredibly sick on the night of the 3rd and so rested a day; I didn’t want to attempt travel in Uganda while incredibly sick. I was actually worried for a bit that I had come down with malaria. In my time on the island I had witnessed a few people getting malaria and even though it’s easily curable, it takes you out for a good week. I don’t know what I actually had, but I got probably the worst headache I’ve ever had for a solid 36-hour period. It was terrible.
Hollie’s job at The Hairy Lemon had come to an end with 2011, and she was looking for other jobs (I went into a bit more detail about this in my last post). She had talked to the owners of place called “Banda Island,” which is a part of the Sessee Islands in Lake Victoria. There was a job opportunity for her there and she was planning on checking out what they had going on and if it was worth her time. She asked me if I wanted to join her, and seeing as I never had any solid plans, I said yes. So on the morning of the 5th, we left with Nick for Kampala. It was really handy actually, because usually backpackers like myself that travel from Jinja to Kampala have to either put up with public transport, which is a huge pain in the ass, or else try to sneak their way onto the rafting shuttle, which only leaves at certain times and only drops off at one hostel in Kampala, which isn’t very central at all. Nick had to pick a friend up from the airport at about 9:00AM though, and he offered us a ride to Kampala (on the way to Entebbe), so we of course accepted. This meant being up insanely early and getting on the road by 5:30AM, but it was worth it. For the first time in two weeks, I packed my entire life into my backpack, and I was off to the controlled chaos of Kampala.
We got there at about 8:30 and the legendarily bad traffic of Uganda’s capital was already starting to reveal itself to me. Hollie and I were to be staying with her friends Phil and Andrea, but her phone was lost (stolen) on New Year’s Eve at the Lemon, so she had not contacted them at all. I felt really weird about just showing up at their house unannounced, but she assured me that is was ok; she does this all the time apparently. So before 9:00, after a scary boda ride (much more on them later), we were knocking on some stranger’s door (to me, at least), expecting to be put up in their spare room, no problem. Andrea, who I had never met, opened the door groggily after much knocking by Hollie, and I don’t think she was too impressed with the random backpacker that she had in tow. Of course, being the polite, accommodating people that they were, and having a couple rooms to spare, Andrea and Phil let us stay. Phil was actually away at work for the day when we arrived, so when he showed up late in the evening, tired from a long day, I imagine that my presence may have upset him. He was actually in South Sudan for the day, as he runs a company that teaches people to fly planes. He is currently working for the Ugandan government, teaching their pilots to fly jets (intense, right?) and was on a day trip to the incredibly dangerous South Sudan, no big deal. Hollie is close friends with Phil, and I was repeatedly assured that showing up randomly was ok, but I still felt a little rude. They were of course nice about the whole situation, as you would expect normal people to be, but I think you can understand my awkwardness.
Phil is from England, and Andrea, the United States. They are a recently married couple who have been living in Uganda for a couple years now (Phil for longer I believe). They live in an area of Kampala called Makindye, and their property is ridiculously nice. I guess the pilot-training business is good, because Phil’s house is amazing. Most backpackers that travel through Kampala have to deal with a hostel called Red-Chili’s which is cheap, but sketchy and not pleasant to stay at. Somehow though, I ended up in an amazing house with a huge yard and access to a wireless network. They had two proper guestrooms and hot showers (holy shit yes, I hadn’t had one in three months) and I didn’t have to pay a penny to stay there. I mean I bought a bottle of wine for dinner one night to thank them for their hospitality, but still: score.
We stayed in Kampala for a couple of days before heading off to see what Banda Island had to offer Hollie. I didn’t do much except for exploring the area that I was in. Seeing the heart of Kampala was put off until we returned, and I’ll get to that later. To get to Banda Island was quite a mission and involved several classic forms of Ugandan travel. First, there was the boda ride to the main taxi-park. I had taken bodas several times before, but riding one through the centre of Kampala is an experience that cannot be given justice by words. It was twenty minutes of weaving through stop-start traffic on whichever side of the road had room to squeeze through. (And I do mean squeeze, I scraped my right knee against the side of a matatu at one point while the driver’s left elbow nailed a car’s side mirror and sent it flying. The driver was pissed, rightly so, and starting yelling at us, but he was stuck in traffic and we were off through yet another gap that was way too small for a motorbike carrying two passengers). I’m not saying this to build myself up or anything, but seriously, most of you wouldn’t have been able to handle it. I have a “I don’t give a fuck” attitude when it comes to stuff like that, so I didn’t mind that I seriously thought I was going to die one or two times, but any normal person would have gotten off the boda and walked after about thirty seconds. Let’s just say that I could understand why Hollie always carried her own helmet with her whenever there was a chance of taking a boda somewhere. All the guidebooks in existence advice against taking a boda unless it’s absolutely unavoidable, but it’s the only way to get anywhere in Kampala when gridlock sets in, which is about 18 hours a day on every fucking road, even away from the city centre. When we finally arrived at our destination, I shook of the trauma and paid my driver (he of course tried to rip me off, but Hollie was there to tell me what the proper rate was). We were now in the centre of Kampala, in a garden of literally hundreds of matatus, and smack dab in the middle of the busiest city I have ever seen. I absolutely loved it; everywhere you looked something completely bizarre was happening. People and vehicles were moving in every direction, various different vendors were selling anything you could imagine and more, and the noise was completely disorienting. Some people probably hate places like these, but to me, this was Uganda. I was observing the people of Kampala carrying out their day-to-day lives and embracing the madness of a noisy, dirty city, and in some weird way, that’s part of their culture. Kampala is unlike anywhere I have ever been, and despite all the characteristics of the city that would by most as negatives, I thought it was incredible. I guess I’m weird like that, but that’s usually what gets to me about the places I travel to. I don’t gawk at the amazing sites or natural phenomena that get the most coverage in guide books or anything like that. I love seeing people of cultures I’ve never experienced before in their element, dealing with their lives in small mundane ways, and observing the controlled chaos of a completely foreign land.
But anyway, we needed to find one to take us to the little fishing village near Entebbe where we would catch a boat to Banda Island. After lots of asking random locals and lots of following bad directions, we arrived at the proper matatu and got on. It took us about an hour to arrive at said fishing village, and in that time Hollie and I had a good long talk about what I was doing with my life. I didn’t really have many answers for her other than “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing in life at all, that’s why I’m here.” By this time in our friendship, we knew a bit about each other, and she mentioned to me that her friend Elspeth had been teaching music at an international school in Kampala for the past two years and that she would be going back home, England, in June. She asked if I had ever considered the possibility of working in Africa and I honestly replied that I had not, not even a little bit. I hadn’t realized that there were so many people from (god I feel like a prick for using this terminology but I don’t know what else to say) the first world that were making a living in Africa. I always just thought of this as a trip, a temporary thing, but Hollie definitely got me thinking. More on that later.
At the fishing village, we were meant to find Isaac’s boat. We walked down from where the matatu dropped us off to a ‘beach’ (in technicality only) which was buzzing with people moving materials from dozens of huge dugout canoes. The shore was absolutely covered in garbage, everything smelled like fish, and we must have been the first white people to show our faces there in months because we were jeered and gawked at the entire time. It was definitely not a pleasant place. Our ride to the island was a 10 metre long dug-out canoe, and it was absolutely packed to the brim with random supplies for the island and probably thirty people. Just when I was thinking that there was no more room in it for anything else, the crew proved me wrong (the ‘crew’ being one jacked guy who kept wading out to the boat in the disgusting waters which came up to his waist, I did not envy him). I was wondering how we would get on the boat and came to the assumption that I would have to wade through the cesspool as well, and I was not looking forward to it. When we approached the water though, a man picked me up and put me on his shoulders with no hesitation. It was then that I remembered that Hollie had told me that this was how the passengers were transported from the shore to the boat. We each had to pay him 500Ush ($0.20) and it was definitely worth it. I had a pretty nasty wound on my right calf from my boda burn, and I was legitimately worried about it getting infected in the water. We stayed dry though thanks to our knight in shining armour, and we tried to find somewhere spacious to spend the next three and a half hours. After plenty of shuffling, we finally settled on the front of the boat, where we only had to compete with the anchor for space. This meant that the approximately thirty other passengers of the boat were staring at us for the whole trip, but we definitely scored the best spot on the boat. After another twenty tonnes of cargo was loaded onto the boat, we were ready to go, and set off towards the middle of Lake Victoria. The next three and a half hours were spent baking in the sun and trying in vain to find some comfort. I never realized how great the BC ferries were until then. I’ll put up with the annoying announcements and overpriced food a lot easier when I get home having experienced the pure bliss of Isaac’s boat.
Banda Island itself is an interesting place. It is a large island, probably an hour’s walk from side to side. Technically, it is meant to be owned entirely by the people that run the resort we were headed to, but there is a group of squatters living where the boat eventually landed. It is a village maybe a couple hundred Ugandans who survive off the fishing of Lake Victoria. However, as the lake becomes more and more polluted and more and more abused by the locals on all sides of it, the fishing is getting worse. Lake Victoria is the biggest in all of Africa and should be an impressive sight, but in reality it is a gigantic letdown. The people that live on or near the lake treat it like a trash dump and, ecologically, it is a disaster. The nile perch is a gigantic fish that, despite its name, is not endemic to the Lake Victoria/Nile River area, but it has somehow been introduced to the system and is destroying it. Apparently, Lake Victoria is often used as a case study in university classes on nature and the environment seeing as it is a perfect example of everything that could possibly go wrong in a given ecosystem. What this all amounted to for me was being surrounded by water that I had no intention of swimming in. Back to the squatters though: legally, they aren’t even allowed to be there (hence ‘squatters’) but the owners of the island have decided that it’s in their best interest to not push their luck, and so they’re allowed to stay. The population of their village is steadily decreasing though due to the decline of tilapia in the area. We had two options to get to the resort on the other side of the island: we could pay 5000Ush each for a boat to take us around to the other side, or we could attempt to bushwack and walk (there’s a path in theory, but it basically just leads into dense bush). Being that Hollie grew up in the bush in Kenya and fancied herself as some sort of expert bushwacker, we decided (she decided) to choose the walking option. As we told this to the owner of the boat that usually takes tourists to the other side, he smiled lightly and said ok; he knew we’d be back soon. The next thirty minutes were spent walking through deep bush in random directions, through spider webs (of easily the biggest spiders I have ever seen) and scores of colonies of ants that got everywhere and bit unrelentingly. I hadn’t prepared for this sort of bullshit and so was wearing my flip-flops, which quickly broke in the knee deep foliage, somewhere near the middle of buttfuck nowhere. Much to my appreciation, Hollie gave up on this ridiculous expedition shortly as we both feared getting trapped in the middle of an uninhabitable forest when the sun went down, and so we returned to the village, our heads held in shame. Our boat driver was waiting for us, and we followed him to our new ride, which was completely covered in bird shit. On our way to the resort, we stopped to chat to two separate fisherman’s boats, and at first we had no idea why this was happening. It had been a very long day and we were near the end of our journey, and all of a sudden our driver stopped for seemingly no reason. After a while we realized that he was trying to buy our dinner to deliver to the staff at the resort, but he was not having much luck (the fisherman had been out there all day and had nothing to show for it). He eventually tracked down one fish for us and bought it from the fisherman. It was a little weird to be honest: the two white people just arriving on the island apparently had automatic dibs on whatever happened to have been caught that day even though there wasn’t much of it. Anyway, after that we shot off to the other side of the island and the travelling for the day was over. Hallelujah, we had finally arrived at our home for the next two days.
And my oh my, what a shithole. The reason for our visit was for Hollie to assess if the place was worth her time. She had been told by the owners that the resort was hers to run if she wanted to, but she would not be paid; only the money that she was able to make from attracting guests would be hers. We realized in less than an hour that she would not be taking the job. The place definitely had potential, but it was so ridiculously run down that it needed someone to sink quite a substantial amount of money into it for there to be any chance of profit. We were the only guests staying there at the time, and convincing people to take Isaac’s boat from the mainland to stay at a place as underwhelming as this would be quite a challenge in itself. The bandas were in terrible shape, the “bar” was basically a room with crates of beer and more broken windows than intact ones, and the two or three staff members were so unmotivated to keep the place tidy that the paths were overgrown with bushes and weeds and none of the buildings were in even decent shape. There was a pretty nice beach right out front of our banda, but like I said, the water wasn’t exactly ideal for swimming. We spent our two days reading and re-reading our books, and looking for any way we could find to kill time. There was a backgammon board, which Hollie taught me how to use (great game, I can’t believe I hadn’t learned it before), but little else to do. It was just us on the island though, and it was actually pretty nice to have the time to get to know each other pretty well. (I’ll just nip this in the butt now: we were just friends, get your minds out of the gutter.) With nothing else to do, we had some good conversations about life, the universe, and everything. So while the island was a total waste of space in every way possible, I still enjoyed my time there, though admittedly less than my time in Kampala or at The Hairy Lemon.
Disappointed but not entirely surprised about the lack of a tangible job opportunity on the island, Hollie and I set off back to Kampala two days after we had arrived. The trip back was essentially the exact same as the way there other than the looming rainclouds that threatened to seriously ruin our 3-hour boat trip, so no details are necessary here. Oh, one thing though: when we were carried from the boat to the shore (just like on the way there) the guy tried to convince us that the cost was 5000Ush each, not 500. Now it definitely wasn’t the first time that someone in Africa had tried to rip me off, far from it, but where was this guy’s logic in trying to convince us of the proper rate? We clearly had to have been carried to the boat on the way there seeing as we were returning from the island, so it was obvious that we already knew how much it was. It wasn’t a half-assed attempt either. This guy was refusing our 1000Ush and stubbornly held out for 10,000. Eventually we basically threw the note at him because we were done messing about and needed to catch our matatu back. He wasn’t happy about that.
Back in Kampala, Hollie and I returned to Phil and Andrea’s place to get our stuff. Hollie had another friend in the area, Elspeth, and we had planned to stay with her my remaining two nights in Uganda. It was just down the road from Phil’s mansion and definitely not as nice, but I don’t think any place in all of Uganda is (save for maybe some of Idi Amin’s old palaces). Elspeth was really nice, and I’m not just saying that because she too let me stay at her place without any complaints, she was just pleasant to be around. She is from England and has been living in Uganda for something like two years teaching music at an international school. In June, she’ll be going back home. After settling into her place and having a cup of tea, we started to arrange our dinner plans for that night. Doc and Henke (two kayakers from The Hairy Lemon, refer to the last post for details if you must) were in town, each running separate errands. Henke needed a fishing rod and had tried to find one in Jinja several times, and Doc was after a whole slew of random items. We met up at an Ethiopian restaurant (obviously, we were in Uganda) and had a really nice meal. I’ve had Ethiopian food a few times now and I’ve got to say, it’s got to be up there with some of my favourite types of food. The name of it eludes me right now, but the standard way of serving Ethiopian food is over a gigantic piece of spongy, vinegar-y, bread-like substance. I have no hope of doing it justice, but it’s amazing and must be experienced.
The next day I got up bright and early so that I could go with Elspeth to the international school where she worked. She and Hollie had been convincing me over the previous few days to go and meet the principal seeing as Elspeth would be leaving her job at the end of June and he (the principal) hadn’t filled the slot yet. At first I was very reluctant, but I wasn’t committing to anything at all; I was just meeting the guy because, well, why not. I’m sure that by now most of you realize that I have absolutely no clue where my life is headed, and I’m open to pretty much anything. I never gave an iota of consideration to the thought of living in Africa, but Elspeth has actually got a pretty sweet set up. She’s getting paid something like $1100 a month, which isn’t all that much by Canadian standards I suppose, but it’s nearly 100% savings because living in Uganda is so cheap. Furthermore, she’s getting experience that people taking teaching qualifications back home could only dream of, and she has no degree at all. When she goes back home and does her teaching qualifications, the experience that she’s gained in Uganda will no doubt put her ahead of her peers, which is actually really valuable in a career path where experience is everything to potential employers. Plus, she gets control over a huge room filled with every musical instrument you could imagine, and she spends her time passing on knowledge to kids from all different backgrounds. Elspeth arranged a meeting for me with Tony, the principal. It wasn’t exactly an interview, which is good because I’m backpacking and have literally nothing even remotely presentable to wear; it was more of just a casual talk. He asked he what teaching experience I had, at which point I exaggerated what I had done in Kenya to a criminal level. All the other normal topics were covered, and after about fifteen minutes we shook hands and called it a day. I’m almost 100% sure that I won’t be following this up. The job would start sometime in late June (I’m not even planning on still being in Africa then) and it would be at least a one-year commitment, probably more. Plus, I think the chances of Tony actually selecting me for the job when he starts properly interviewing people are somewhere in the vicinity of zero. Still, it’s nice to open up that avenue, and it definitely got me re-considering what I imagine the next period of my life to be about. I never realized that someone like me could conceivably make a living working abroad in a place such as Africa, but it’s definitely doable and something to think about.
After that, Hollie and I headed into central Kampala to meet Doc and Henke and get some shopping done. I had nothing on my list, so I spent the day following them around and soaking up Uganda for probably the last time (my flight to Cape Town was to leave the next day, very early in the morning). Doc and Henke were staying at the less than pristine hostel, Red Chilli’s, and so Hollie invited them to stay with us at Elspeth’s. I’m pretty sure that this wasn’t cleared with Elspeth ahead of time, but I think that Hollie’s friends are used to this sort of behaviour from her, so she didn’t mind (or at least didn’t show it when she got back from work and found a Russian and a Fin lounging around). Henke and I finished our errands pretty quickly and so were back at Elspeth’s to enjoy a late-afternoon relaxation (Henke style) but Doc stayed in Kampala for a long, long time, buying way too much shit. His English is really bad and we had to explain to his boda driver how to find the place over the phone, and it was a huge task. After much confusion, we eventually had him headed in the right direction. As he pulled up to the driveway, Henke and I nearly pissed our pants. Imagine if you will the following image: A 38-year old Russian man was sitting on the back of a tiny motorbike being driven by a Ugandan guy, the two of them somehow carrying the Russian’s approximately ten overloaded shopping bags, and the boda slowly inching its way up a small, winding dirt road as every local around gawked in confusion. They don’t see white people that often, let alone a 38 year-old Russian man with hoards of crap on an awkwardly lurching boda. It was too much: I felt bad but I couldn’t help but laugh, even as Doc’s broken English was doing a sub-par job of negotiating the rate with the boda driver.
Doc was late and we headed out to meet Hollie for dinner pretty much right away. She had been downtown meeting with the owners of Banda Island, breaking their poor little hearts. I had gotten used to going places in Uganda with the help of Hollie, who was born and raised in Eastern Africa and has way more street smarts than me in that regard, but for this trip, it was on me. Henke and Doc didn’t speak English well, and the directions that we needed to give to our boda drivers were somewhat complicated. This meant that I had to haggle the fare (which I absolutely loathe) and somehow communicate that we wanted to take as few bodas as possible. We briefly considered all trying to fit on one, which is definitely doable in Uganda (I’ve seen one with 6 people, terribly unsafe) but I’m glad that we took two. Doc got on one, while Henke and I shared the other. What followed was quite possibly the scariest forty minutes of my life. Doc’s driver got lost and we thought he was being kidnapped and or robbed for a good twenty minutes until we met up again, and the traffic in Kampala was absolutely horrendous. I had had several sketchy boda trips in Uganda in my month there, but this one, this very last one before I left, definitely took the cake. The traffic was at a standstill near to the city centre, and this meant an insane amount of reckless driving by the thousands of boda drivers of Kampala. Henke and I didn’t dare try to communicate during this flirtation with death, but I could feel our combined anxiety as we tore down a crowded pothole-filled road at 75 km/h, narrowly avoiding being nailed by a different vehicle ten times a minute. My phone buzzed in my pocket twice and the second time, I can’t believe it, I actually answered it and attempted to have a conversation with Hollie as I clung on with my other arm for dear life. We eventually arrived, all in one piece, but it was probably the single most dangerous thing that I have ever done, and I’ve gone skydiving. Just another day in Kampala.
We had a beer while Hollie finished her meeting with the owners of Banda Island, and after she told us that she felt she had perhaps been too harsh. She not only rejected the job, but told them that they might as well just give up on the property altogether as it was never going to make money without someone who was willing to spend considerable time and money getting it running. We met Dan and Anna (again, refer to the last post if necessary) for dinner as they had just returned from their sightseeing trip around Southern Uganda and were to start their teaching jobs the following morning. They weren’t looking forward to their early starts the next day, but I think I had them beat. My flight to Cape Town was to leave at 7:15AM, which meant getting up at 3:30 to catch the car that I had arranged for 4:00. It was already pretty late by the time we sat down, and I gave serious consideration to just not sleeping, but I did eventually grab a couple hours. Anyway, we jumped around to a few different places as the group was being very indecisive, but we eventually, for some reason, settled on a pretty pricey but unbelievably nice Indian place. It was definitely out of my price range, but it was my last night in Uganda, and I’m not one to say no to Indian food. After dinner, we tried for probably a half-hour to find a ride back to our place (Dan and Anna lived near there as well) at a reasonable rate. This proved more difficult than we first thought, but we eventually prevailed and avoided taking a convoy of bodas. I said my farewells to Dan and Anna, and we crashed at Elspeth’s place.
Something like three hours later, my alarm rudely woke me from my light sleep and I grabbed my backpack. I slung all by belongings over my shoulder, tried not to wake anyone up, and I was off. At 4:45 in the morning I rolled up to the airport in Entebbe and I said goodbye to one of the most magnificent places that I have ever been. I didn’t really explore that much of Uganda, but what I saw was marvellous and unique in every way. This trip was intended to, among other things, teach me about myself (if that makes any sense) and I definitely made massive progress with that in Uganda. Without the restraints of volunteering or travelling with someone else, I did entirely what I wanted to, and for me it was perfect. I’ve been in South Africa for about two and a half weeks, and I think that I left a piece of my heart in Uganda. It’s intimidating for sure: corruption and crime are prevalent wherever you go, but that’s to be expected in any African country, especially one with such a tumultuous recent history. If you can get past that, and past the terribly frightening public transportation, a wonderfully unique culture and warm-hearted people await you. I’m not sure how many of you are keen to travel around Africa, but if it’s in your future plans, don’t miss Uganda. Everyone that’s been there agrees that it is one of the highlights of their travelling careers, and at this point I definitely agree.
That’s it for now, I’m nearly caught up. Next up will be my experience so far volunteering in Muizenberg, near Cape Town, and what an experience it has been. Stay tuned, and keep it classy.
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