A good decision
Trip Start
Apr 21, 2008
1
21
225
Trip End
Apr 20, 2009
Kampala,
Kampala,
Uganda
Monday, May 12, 2008
While I was having breakfast at my hostel and thinking about my next move, an English girl asked to see my guidebook. We started chatting and I found out that her and a friend were volunteering in a community camp by the Rwinzori Mountains. After describing the area she had been living in for the last few weeks, I was convinced that this was the next place for me to go visit. She said that if I wanted to go somewhere beautiful with no
other tourists around, this was a great option. Screw the islands. I was going to go see some mountains.
The only drawback was that it was going to be quite the trek to get there and it was already too late in
the day to leave in order to get to my destination before the sun went down. So I stayed in Kampala for
an extra day. It wasn't the end of the world. It gave me the chance to back up my pictures on my memory
stick, catch up on some emailing and successfully test the PIN on my CIBC Visa card.
One funny thing did happen to me today. After roaming through the chaotic Kampala streets, I grabbed a
matatu (mini bus) back to my hostel. The shitty thing about the matatus in Kampala is that they
have no sign telling people where they are going. A driver's aide just yells in the local language telling
people where they are going. So I just go around asking "Jinga Road?" until a driver nods and tells me
to get in. I did the same thing today. Normally the matatu ride to my hostel is about 15 minutes from the
city center. After about 30 minutes, I had no idea where I was. I figured he was just taking the long
way. Another 15 minutes past and I was in the bush. There was no city to seen. I then noticed a sign along the road that said "Jinga Highway". That's when I realized the driver misunderstood me. I wanted to go to Jinja Road. Not Jinja Highway. The busload of Ugandans had a nice laugh at the dumb mizungu (white person) when they understood what was going on. The driver stopped the minibus on the side of the road and told me to cross to the other side and wait for another bus. Of course he did not offer to give me back my money. It wasn't even worth asking. Luckily, a matatu appeared 5 minutes later. A ride that was supposed to take me 15 minutes to get home took me 2 hours. It ended up being a good thing. Through most of the ride, I saw a lot of interesting towns. To date, they were the poorest looking towns I have seen. Not quite the towns I would want to walk through during the evening.
Once I finally returned to my hostel, I met an English girl, Lynsey, in my dorm room. We started chatting and
I explained where I was going to next. She seemed interested in the area as well and asked if she could
join me. I sensed it was because she wasn't comfortable traveling on her own yet. I had no issues
with that so I told her she could come.
When I went to bed, I was feeling pretty good about my decision to skip the Ssese islands. I am trying my best to make sure that there is a point or a reason to going to every place I am visiting. I want to make
sure I am not just going through the motions.
I also came to the realization that I wasn't motivated about going to the islands because I was able to
predict what kind of experience it was going to be. At this point in my trip, I was willing to go somewhere
where I had no clue what it was going to be like rather than go somewhere where I could predict how the
whole experience was going to be. I am sure later in my trip I will go for the predictable experiences but
now isn't the time. Sometimes the choice with more questions is the better choice.
