My Uganda Is Fantastic!

If you are a pale, slightly asthmatic, high-cholesterol westerner – and chances are big that you are – then you will be used to smoothly meandering highways that will take you to your destination as fast as your wallet can take you. It’s not like that in Uganda. Driving in Uganda is swerving around giant potholes where elephants go to die and training your buttcheek muscles on ferocious series of speed bumps that come like rounds of automatic gunfire. On a downward slope I managed to push the old Landcruiser to about 120 kph, but otherwise, the landscape passes you by at an average 90 kph on the really good roads. On the bad roads, you get overtaken by toothless but even so smiling grannies carrying a towering stack of bamboo, bananas or fresh cowdung (because grandpa sneezed a hole in the living room wall).

Not that you would want to speed through this country. It is breathtakingly beautiful. We spent a night at the enchanting Lake Bunyonyi, which offers you ecotourism in its purest form. In between the touristy cottages with a majestic sight are the numerous local fishermen, emptying the lake while singing epic songs about the old Buganda kings. Others, mostly kids employed by a smart Indian fat fuck, took to the stonecutting business, creating circumstances for avalanches that promise to be very entertaining if you happen to be around. And do try the crayfish in garlic sauce. A stressless atmosphere, outstanding food, very hospitable personnel and close to the ever-smiling locals, who remain cheerful despite often miserable conditions.

Kampala is something different than what we have seen so far of East Africa. It is big, it is smelly, it is dirty (did I mention the cleanliness of Kigali? It could equal Singapore if they would only put soot filters in cars here). The traffic is so gridlocked that Mister Japanese Car Manufacturer Man has a picture of it on his desk. And if you think city pigeons are a pest, wait until a Kampala marabou – an ugly, bald type of stork standing over one meter tall with a wingspan of about two meters – takes a shit from a tree above you.

I escaped the big city the next day to go whitewater rafting near the source of the Nile. In a raft with a company of Belgian and New-Zealanders, we paddled 30 kilometers via some spectacular Grade Five rapids, escorted by very skilled rescuing canoers. I was tired and sunburnt by the end of the day, but it was well worth it. Good fun.