Crossing into Uganda

  Kampala, Uganda
Tuesday, June 5, 2007

On day two, our goal was to cross the Ugandan border for a quick overnight stay in the capital city of Kampala.  By day two, our group had loosened up a bit.  We left Eldoret with our side windows rolled up so that we had great views of the African countryside.

b View from the point

Someone had offered up their IPod, so with music blaring and all of us still intrigued with life on the truck and camping, we set off.  Now is probably a good time to describe our group.  There are 15 of us, three Americans (the other guy graduated from Chico State, believe it or not...), two Irish, one German, one person from Holland, five English and three Australians.  Alan and Jane are from Dublin.  I describe them first because Alan has been a constant source of entertainment.  It is amazing what someone can get away with with an Irish accent.  Actually, he's a great guy, and listening to him curse his way through our trip has been really funny.  Konny is from Germany.   Konny shares Paul's affection for children and verbally expresses this on a regular basis.  Her statements are shocking and absolutely true!

We got to the Ugandan border and crossed out of Kenya fairly painlessly.  On the other side, however, our Ugandan visas took over two hours to secure, so we rolled into Uganda later than expected.  Right away we noticed a change.  The sun was out more, it was a bit more humid, and the crops and villages changed as well.  We drove through sugar cane fields, tea and coffee plantations and got our first glimpse of the mud huts that are built in the villages.  Most of the huts are round with thatched roofs.  It was bit surreal, as we had someone's IPod blaring as we sped toward Kampala.  Axel Rose was belting our "Knocking on Heaven's Door" (seemed a bit ironic to me actually...) as we leaned out of our windows and waved at the school children, who seemed even more excited to see us.  The kids' school uniforms changed as well.  The girls wore very bright pink dresses and the boys wore blue pants and pink sweaters.  I couldn't help but think about the movie, The Last King of Scotland, as we were entering Idi Amin's old stomping grounds.  Ugandan is usually described as the "Peal of Africa," and most of the population is highly educated and very curious about the outside world.  We found most people to be very polite, waving at us as we drove by.  The older men were typically dressed in pants, jackets, polo shirts or button downs and a hat.  The woman are always in skirts, (I've yet to see an African woman in shorts) which is usually some type of colorful sarong complimented by a scarf wrapped around their head and some type of scarf wrapped around their top as well.

 

d Veg

We stopped off at our first local market to pick up some supplies for dinner.  Paul's team (Cooking Team Number One) ran off with our dinner money to buy the meat and veggies needed for our meal.  He had planned on making a really nice pork recipe we learned in Vietnam.  Those of us that were not cooking hung out, buying "meat on a stick"

c Roadside "Meat on a Stick"

as a snack and checking out the variety of fruits and vegetables available.  After some hectic searching and bargaining for all of our ingredients, we all jumped back on the truck.  We were a bit late as we rolled into Kampala.  We were greeted by quite a bit of traffic, made one last stop at the local supermarket (which was very large and had a great selection) before we made our way to the Red Chili Camp Site.  It was already dark when we arrived.  Paul's cooking team rushed to prepare their meal while the rest of us set up our tents. 

At around 4 a.m., the sky opened up and it started to just dump on us.  Paul got up and secured our rain sheet (we had decided we didn't need it the night before), which was really nice as I stayed in the tent warm and dry.  Needless to say, our group was not very cheery as we all got up at 7 a.m., soaked, to wrap up our tents and get on the truck in time for an 8 a.m. departure.