Busy Kampala
Trip Start
Feb 20, 2007
1
12
38
Trip End
Jun 2007
Kampala,
Uganda
Saturday, March 24, 2007
I went back to the hostel, grabbed my bags, and caught a matatu to Kampala, about two hour's drive away. Kampala is a bustling, busy, smoggy city which exudes life and energy, and I quickly grew very fond of it. Most pleasant about the place, from my Nairobi-influenced point of view, is that is quite safe. Walking about any part of the city by day is fine, and even at night the streets are busy (a sign of safety, and protection in itself). I found a pleasant Chinese-run hotel for myself and booked in for a few nights.
Most of my time in Kampala was spent taking care of boring issues such as visas and money. I had to get a Rwandan visa, and because of one of the most power-drunk, unpleasant, incompetent women I have ever encountered my experiences at the Rwandan embassy were very long, drawn out, and time consuming. After much arguing, failed charming attempts and refusals to pay a bribe I eventually got my visa two days later. The other big problem I had to face in Kampala was the fact that I may well not encounter another ATM machine until South Africa, so I had to stock up on cash, every day withdrawing my maximum allowed limit. This was not helped by the fact that Visa decided to block my card as they deemed a previous cash withdrawal in Uganda as suspicious enough to do so, understandable I suppose.
I got my hair cut here, which was such an unusual experience that I will briefly recount it here. I had to haggle the price before starting, and settled for about $2 (although I later learned I should have only paid about a quarter of that). It all started off normally enough, as he carefully shaved my head to a blade zero. Next, he started to shave my facial hair with the same razor, which I hadn't asked for, but I thought I might as well let him go ahead if it was part of the service. Then he started to shave my cheeks, and eventually he carefully shaved my whole forehead! Afterwards he rubbed a soapy solution on my hair, and wiped it all down with a hot, wet towel, before plastering me in cheap aftershave and spraying some sort of spray all over my head. All very bizarre, but well worth the overcharged price!
My overall impressions of this city were somewhat tainted by the area I stayed in, near the bus and matatu parks, which were noisy and bustling with people at all hours. Whenever I went for a walk I found myself negotiating my way through hoards of human traffic, many precariously balancing loads of several cardboard boxes or sacks of grain over their heads, unloading trucks. One had to dance around to avoid the people, muddy potholes in the dirt streets, the motorbikes and bicycles and cars. The whole thing reminded me of claustrophobic experiences in India.
Kampala appears (from my brief exposure to it) to be a city on the rise; the poverty didn't appear to be too bad (I never saw any slums or the like), there were some beggars, but not many, the buildings look well, and there was an atmosphere of business and briskness about the place that I didn't feel in either Nairobi or Addis. Uganda has pulled itself out of a particularly ugly post-colonial history, where dictators like Idi Amin ruled with an iron fist, murdering hundreds of thousands of people and causing the economy to crumble to nothing. The new president of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, has ruled for twenty years now, at first favouring a one-party democratic system as he believed (and I would agree) that if a multi-party system had been allowed then party politics would become a tribal power struggle, as has happened in other African countries. His reforms and visions for Uganda were commendable, although many now worry that he is perhaps drifting down the road of Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, in that he is refusing to allow his power slip away. In the elections of 2006 he was supposed to stand down, but in fact ran again, and was reelected, with allegations of vote-rigging. So, at the surface, to the tourist's eye, Uganda appears to have a bright future, but once one starts to dig a little and understand the politics of this country things don't look all that rosy any more.
I sampled a little of Kampala's nightlife with some Canadian friends. One bar, "Slow Boat", had a hilarious show on which involved singers (blatantly lip-synching) and dancers (often very erotic), and even a transvestite dance. The latter came as quite a shock, in most African countries being gay is not only extreme taboo, but actually illegal. Almost more interesting than the show itself was the audience, who all sat watching quietly and attentively, as if at the theatre and not a bar. We moved on to a disco of sorts, where (despite being two girls and two guys) we (the guys) were plagued by prostitutes proclaiming their love for us, asking for dances and company. It can be quite a nuisance as a man to go out in Africa, there seem to be prostitutes everywhere, and the ones in Kampala were by far the most persistent I have encountered thus far.
I visited Makarere University, Uganda's biggest, most famous University, which is situated north-west of the city. Paul Theroux lectured here in the sixties, and having read his somewhat bleak descriptions of revisiting the campus six years ago I wanted to see the place for myself. The whole campus is quite large, larger, say than that of UCC, and although the place looked a little run down, with paint peeling and buildings having lost their shine, I felt a certain energy about the place that was encouraging. Students milled around, always talking English to each other, going to and from class. Posters (all hand-made) advertised meetings about this and that, and I even saw a crowd of twenty or so shouting under a banner, protesting something. I missed what they were protesting, as the matatu I was leaving in pulled away too quickly, but the very fact that they were protesting something was good to see. I love visiting universities in developing countries, as one feels one is seeing the future of that country. Here were the future leaders of Uganda, be it in politics, industry or whatever. Education is the one thing that will allow Africa to develop most, and Uganda is very aware of that; President Museveni has introduced free primary education for all, and secondary education has been made much more financially accessible than before. The biggest problem, as always, is that those who gain a high level of education will usually leave the country in seek of riches, and not provide their services to their home, where they are most needed.
