It's been a long time between blogs, but I feel like this should be finished, for my own sake if nothing else so that I have something to look back to in 10 years time and understand how I saw the world in 2010. Africa was a special place and I did actually write a physical diary for all of it so I might as well do this.
I'll probably put my england emails/updates on this as well which should be interesting..
Maybe someone will even read it!
So back to Uganda...
Day 1 - Kampala Continued...
Looking back, the trip to the hostel was completely uneventful, and perfectly safe in every way. It just didn't feel like it at the time. Arriving at the hostel, I still remember feeling out of my depth, the first time in a long time when travelling. I was alone, the people didn't really speak english, it was Africa and I had no idea where I was, i didn't even have a lonely planet!
I don't know if I have written much about the tour, but its time to give a bit of a plug - The tour was with Tucan - over 65 days from Kampala to Cape Town. Total costs was about $5800 for the tour and if you take the options I did, plus all the discretionary spending its probably another 2-3k on top. The tour is quite basic - some of the comparable tours have cooks - we didn't, and we spend about 60 of the 65 days camping in tents (as opposed to staying in a dorm).
The last time I had camped in a tent was probably in South America on the Inca trail.. now I don't consider myself a princess, but camping isnt my first choice option, and I had no idea how I would handle sleeping on the ground for the next 2 months..
I arrived quite early, about 9am and so I put my bag into the 'luggage room' which was basically like a small concrete recess - about 2m x 2m x 1m crammed full of bags and dirty, secured by a metal door with a padlock.. This Is Africa (from now on known as TIA.) I sat down for a 'big breakfast' very average eggs, beans toast and sausages... it wasn't exactly brunch at Bills :D but even though most of you think im a food snob, i actually eat pretty much anything so eat i did..
In the dining room was an older Couple - Dave and Mary who seemed quite nice and turned out to be on the same tour - i was a bit suprised cos these guys must have been at least 60 - they seed fairly fit, but I thought the tour was sposed to be for 18-45? Anyway, we get to talking and they explain their plans for the day, which involved going to some museum... but more importantly, Dave told me that to get into Rwanda I needed a Visa (yes Bahn, you did try to warn me to look more closely into this) which I didn't have.
So after about 2 hrs in Africa, I had my first major scare - if I couldn't get into Rwanda, I can't go to see the Gorilla's which was a major reason for coming to Africa in the first place.. So when Dave and Mary decide to hop into a cab (when I say cab, its more of the same, just a random guy with a car who turns up when someone gives him a call..) which turns up outside our guarded gates and takes us to the Rwandan embassy - I have no idea where we are, but I don;t remember going through the city... I get off and promise to pay Dave and Mary back (i actually never did ... oops!) and head into the embassy where I'm told I have to leave my passport there for a few days... now, i'm not that stupid so I asked if there was another option - they said there was a form I could fill out online and they could get me a reference number that I could use use to get a visa at the border...
So I walk out of the embassy - which is not in the city itself, in fact its just a large building next a dirt road.
I am now in an interesting situaton.. I need to get to somewhere with intenet (it wasnt working in the hostel - TIA). I have map, but there are no street signs and the embassy isnt marked, I have no idea which direction the city or the hostel is and there are no taxis. All I know is that you can catch these vans (toyota hiaces) which are called 'mutatus' which you just hail.. but they don't have signs as far as I can tell, don't runon a fixed route, have no preorganised stops, and don't speak English.. So.... I start walking... hoping I'll hit something useful.. a hotel, some shops, the city, a street sign.. anything...
So here I am, a random asian, clearly a tourist with a backpack, walking randomly in the outskirts of Kampala, Uganda... I head into a few shops/buildings, try to work out which direction the city is or where i can even get Internet.. I have no idea if people understood me, but I got some contradictory responses... I eventually end up in a kind of shanty market, where something resembles a street with small shops on both sides.
I walk into a phone shop (there are lot of these in Africa, and are the same as in Sydney, just a shop with phones, accesories etc, but obviously they arent selling iphones..) where I get the first useful information of the day.. there is a mutatu that comes up the street that goes into the city...
they look like this...
So I stand outside the shop for about 10 minutes and a mutatu comes by which I hail.. it pulls over and i say 'City?' to which the man nods and slides open the door for me... at this point there are already about 6 africans in the van - there are 7 seats, and I take the last one, right in the back right corner. There is no payment, I can only assume you pay when you get out..
As the bus lumbers down the street, I can only hope they are actually going into the city.. but after about 15mins it doesnt seem like it... I ask the passenger next to me - 'city?' to which he nods.. so i'm reassured.. slightly.... When it begins to get busier (more traffic) i am a bit more comfortable, at least I'm heading into town...
Along the way I've been trying to work out what people are paying to get out and what the process, and it looks like a 1000 shilling note, and someone says shouts something a minute or so before they want to stop, they pass the guy at the front some money and they may or may not get change...
When the mutatu stops in some pretty serious traffic, the guy next to me gets out, and i assume that this is close enough to the city (i have no idea what the city is supposed to be like). I hand the guy a note - and get a coin in return, I can only assume I haven't been ripped off .. the total trip cost 500 shillings. (25cents).
I'm not quite in the city but I'm fairly close... so after wandering around for a few minutes I get to an area that looks appropriately busy and after randomly asking people for the internet, actually manage to find an internet cafe... but the internet isnt working.. apparently the national ISP is down.. TIA.. and they arent sure when it will be back.. Its about midday at this point, and I don't have to be back at the hostel to start the tour until about 7pm.. so I wander around the main city.. and walk into a photo shop.. (because i realise that I don't even have spare passport photos for visa.. and i figure i should get some) i guess the best way to describe what they do is that they take photos and frame them.. mostly wedding shots i guess and they do photo passport photos. The most important thing about this place is that it was run by Chinese! The first Chinese I have seen in Africa.. They speak mandarin - which I don't really but we manage to communicate through a mixture of really poor cantonese on their part and really poor mandarin on my part.. They are a really friendly group - they invite me to have a lunch with them, which is rice with some sort of chinese style chicken stew and who am i to turn down a free meal from my fellow countrymen!
At this point i should mention that during our broken conversation, i gathered that they werent in Africa by choice.. and that some of then couldnt go back to China.. i'll let you guys work it out.. they gave me the combination
Several funny things happened here at this store...(besides our lack of understanding of each other often causign misunderstandings)..
1. They treat their customers badly - they kept telling these guys to wait saying they were busy but all they were doing was having lunch and chatting to me...
2. They had this safe which they couldnt get to work, it just wouldnt lock.. and they asked me to help.. - i promised that i would forget it..considering what I had assumed about their past...3
3. They had like a quasi receptionist, who was a local girl who made me write down the name of her baby and her phone number and promise to take her with me when I went back to Australia..Im pretty sure I was non commital.. but i still have her number in my diary if anyone wants to adopt an african child named 'brandy'.
I went back to the internet cafe and lo and behold, the internet was working, albiet extremely slowly. I managed to apply for my visa, and hoped that it would be enough..
I went back to the photoshop, hung out with the boys for a bit and took this photo... and made promises to drop by when I was next in Kampala.. or when they came to Sydney...
(actually, one of the guys - vincent - second from the right, emailed me yesterday! he's returned to China, and the shop is closed.. they are doing 'other business' whatever that means...)
The receptionist walked me to the area where the mutatus stopped and found me a mutatu that supposedly went in the right direction...I tried to explain where my hostel was.. I thought that the driver understood, and they even gave me the front seat.. At this point it had statarted to rain... so off we went... I was quite paranoid about being lost and going to the wrong place and crawling through traffic for about 30 mins I realised that I saw road sign that told me I was going in the wrong direction.. so I hopped off the mutatu at a biggish intersection and wandered towards the motorbike taxis, where you pay the rider and sit behind him and he takes to specifically where you need to go...
I walked up to a group of about 10 riders and told them where I wanted to go, and the price - I think it ended up being like 2000-4000 shillings.. i was in a rush after all.. and one guy accepted.. It was actually quite scary.. the pick was small - probably in the range of 125cc and it was raining, slippery and wet. Keep in mind the roads dont have tarmac on them so its just slippery mud and I was seriously concerned we would slip and fall off.
To his credit, we made it back in one piece to the hostel where i was extremely grateful and just in time for the Tucan tour meet up... where I would meet the rest of the group....
This has become way longer than I expected, it was quite the eventful first day.. So i'll continue this in the next post where I introduce the cast of characters that I would be spending time with over the next 2 months...
Stay tuned...
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