Tuesday August 3, 2010. Driving in Kampala

Tuesday August 3, 2010. Driving in Kampala

Today I started my holiday. A driver picked me up at 9:00 to go to the car rental office, which I would NEVER have found on my own. Right on Bombo Road close to where I stay at the university, but in a labyrinth of a building with no external sign that I could see. Douglas had everything ready for me, including a totally accurate list of all the “extras” we discussed and several copies of the paperwork I need to take the vehicle to Rwanda. He even offered to send a driver off with me while I got used to driving in Kampala, but I declined. Total immersion was the way to go. So off I set down Kampala road, the timing planned to miss the peak of the traffic. The first while was a bit nerve-wracking, keep left, watch out for pedestrians, bodas behaving totally erratically, and taxis hitting the brakes and pulling off with no warning to pick up passengers. All my taxi rides in and out of town had paid off though, and I actually knew where I was going and how to get there which made it so much easier, driving and checking a map might have been disastrous. So – shopping was the order of the day – some basic foodstuffs, some basic kitchen stuff, mosquito nets in case some of the places we stay don’t have them (always a possibility and not good to sleep without nets), and a trip to the Forex office to obtain a ridiculous number of shillings (being a multi-millionaire is easy here). I splurged and bought two cheap pillows, which I then had a street tailor cut in half and re-seam so we all have tiny perfect pillows for the car ride and for camping, plus a spare. No need to rest our precious heads on the hard ground ;-) I even bought three rather unsuitable cheap folding chairs because the guy who sold suitable folding chairs doubled the price. Goodbyes to the people at PREDICT, most of whom were off doing a One Health Conference in town, and then a final pickup of my stuff and goodbye to Betty, who has come down with malaria and is feeling pretty grotty. And then the open road!! OK, the really busy semi-industrial road to Entebbe but that doesn’t sound quite as romantic.

We are booked in to stay at the zoo. The Uganda Wildlife Education Centre has bandas right in the zoo – one has to drive by the exhibits to get there. Apparently if the lions are feeling feisty they can be heard in the bandas. Apart from the zoo animals, hopefully staying where put, there are troops of free-ranging vervet monkeys and a lot of birds. We’ll stay two nights to get the girls a bit acclimated. So after unpacking a bit and organizing a bit, I had tea and samoosas in the zoo restaurant on the terrace looking out over the lake, and now I’m at the airport, too early of course, waiting for the plane carrying the girls!



Today I started my holiday. A driver picked me up at 9:00 to go to the car rental office, which I would NEVER have found on my own. Right on Bombo Road close to where I stay at the university, but in a labyrinth of a building with no external sign that I could see. Douglas had everything ready for me, including a totally accurate list of all the “extras” we discussed and several copies of the paperwork I need to take the vehicle to Rwanda. He even offered to send a driver off with me while I got used to driving in Kampala, but I declined. Total immersion was the way to go. So off I set down Kampala road, the timing planned to miss the peak of the traffic. The first while was a bit nerve-wracking, keep left, watch out for pedestrians, bodas behaving totally erratically, and taxis hitting the brakes and pulling off with no warning to pick up passengers. All my taxi rides in and out of town had paid off though, and I actually knew where I was going and how to get there which made it so much easier, driving and checking a map might have been disastrous. So – shopping was the order of the day – some basic foodstuffs, some basic kitchen stuff, mosquito nets in case some of the places we stay don’t have them (always a possibility and not good to sleep without nets), and a trip to the Forex office to obtain a ridiculous number of shillings (being a multi-millionaire is easy here). I splurged and bought two cheap pillows, which I then had a street tailor cut in half and re-seam so we all have tiny perfect pillows for the car ride and for camping, plus a spare. No need to rest our precious heads on the hard ground ;-) I even bought three rather unsuitable cheap folding chairs because the guy who sold suitable folding chairs doubled the price. Goodbyes to the people at PREDICT, most of whom were off doing a One Health Conference in town, and then a final pickup of my stuff and goodbye to Betty, who has come down with malaria and is feeling pretty grotty. And then the open road!! OK, the really busy semi-industrial road to Entebbe but that doesn’t sound quite as romantic.

We are booked in to stay at the zoo. The Uganda Wildlife Education Centre has bandas right in the zoo – one has to drive by the exhibits to get there. Apparently if the lions are feeling feisty they can be heard in the bandas. Apart from the zoo animals, hopefully staying where put, there are troops of free-ranging vervet monkeys and a lot of birds. We’ll stay two nights to get the girls a bit acclimated. So after unpacking a bit and organizing a bit, I had tea and samoosas in the zoo restaurant on the terrace looking out over the lake, and now I’m at the airport, too early of course, waiting for the plane carrying the girls!