A lucky escape
Trip Start
Jan 22, 2009
1
19
33
Trip End
Jul 22, 2009
Kampala, Uganda
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
On Monday some friends and I are going to Zanzibar, so today I drove into town to buy my plane ticket. Like any capital city, parking in the centre of Kampala is a bit of a nightmare; however I spied a space by the side of the road just opposite the booking office and asked Andy, a new medical student who had come into town with me, to stay with the car. I left him the keys in case he needed to move it.
Many things are slow in Kampala but when it comes to parking offences, the police are not! About a minute after I left the car a police officer approached Andy.
"Where is the driver?"
"Oh she's just gone into that ticket office over there. Erm ... do you want me to move the car??"
He made to go over to the driver's side of the car but the police officer was quicker.
"I need to see your driving license."
Uh oh. I certainly hadn't factored that question into the equation! Andy tried to call me but, very unusually for me (!), I did not answer.
Of course you know what happens next: the policeman took away my car keys.
Andy called me again and thankfully, this time I did answer. I was just about to make my booking with a friend who needed to get back to work after her lunch break; however I thought that I would probably just need to move the car and hoped it would not take long. I left my passport at the Uganda Airways office so that the booking could be started.
The policeman was stood a short walk away from my car and he gave me my car keys back in return for my license. That part was easy. However as we walked back to the car, he followed. When we reached it, he got into the car.
"You drive!" He said. I didn't see that I had much choice.
As we started off into heavy traffic, it began to dawn on me that this was Uganda and I could potentially be in big trouble. I had parked illegally, albeit unwittingly, and then my companion had attempted to drive the car off without a license on his person; now there was a policeman in the back of my car! I began to wonder how we were going to get out of this situation.
About 30 seconds after we left, the door at the driver's seat swung open. My policeman was ecstatic.
"Oh you bad bad driver!!! You are bad driver! That is offence in driving test ... you fail for that!"
I was fairly sure that having my door swinging open whilst driving was not going to help my case much. I was beginning to feel decidedly apprehensive and decided to bite the bullet and ask where we were taking him.
"We go to central police station. You see magistrate there and pay fine."
I don't have to tell you that this was very bad news! I had left my passport and my friends at the booking office; both of them had places to be and going to the central police station in heavy traffic was not going to be a short excursion! I began to wonder whether what this policeman really wanted was a bribe and if so, exactly how much that bribe would be.
The policeman however, seemed to be more in the mood for small talk than discussing my parking offence. He asked what I'd been doing in the ticket office, where I was going and when. When he found out I was going to Tanzania soon, he said, "Oh I am inconveniencing you. This may not take some small time."
Of course when he said that, I thought ah here we go, it's bribe time! Thinking that this whole business looked likely to last for a good long while, I asked Andy to phone my friends at the Uganda Airways office; they thought I'd gone to move the car quickly and would be right back! However as I asked Andy to do this, the policeman seemed to have a rapid change of heart.
"Oh I can see I am inconveniencing you. Do not phone ..."
For a moment I was very confused; what exactly was he trying to say? I told Andy to phone Lindsey anyway so that she would at least know what was going on; meanwhile it turns out that my police officer no longer wanted to take us to the police station but was going to find us somewhere legal to park! It was no easy task but fortunately, a parking space came up relatively quickly.
A few of you may know that parking is not my favourite thing to do. Reverse parallel parking may, in fact, be the thing I dread most about driving. Now I was about to show off my skills to a police officer who had until recently, been threatening to take me to the central police station.
I am not really sure how to convey exactly how terrible my first attempt was. Perhaps if you can imagine trying to park in a busy city centre with 2-3 lanes of traffic moving beside you (therefore I single handedly held up one of the busiest roads in Kampala) whilst a policeman, a parking lady (who collects money for parking) and a USA medical student try to tell you that you're STILL at least a foot away from the side of the pavement and then almost bumping into the car in front in an attempt to move closer to the curb ... getting a picture? It certainly inspired the police officer to get out of my car ... In fact perhaps the police officer can sum it up for us:
"You are bad driver. Very very bad." If I tell you that he wanted Andy to take over the parking attempt, in spite of the fact that he knew by this point that Andy did not have a license on him, you will probably have a good idea of exactly how 'bad' the policeman thought my driving was.
When the car had finally been parked, I was sure that the inevitable moment had come: bribe time. I walked towards the policeman with a tight feeling in my stomach, wondering how to best deal with situation ... And was surprised that his face and body language seemed to dictate that the matter was finished. I tried to cover the awkward moment by asking the lady whether I should pay for parking now or at the end.
"At the end."
That was it! We walked away and I honestly was almost in hysterics, thinking about what a narrow miss we'd just had!
God has seriously got my back out here!
Comments
God's got somebody's back....
Sounds like he might have been watching more over your passengers my darling ;)
Haha, your blog is awesome, hope you don't mind me leaving some love,
mwah
Coralie