I have just finished a
twelve-day work week, and let me tell you, I've been everywhere maaaaan.
My trip to Soroti, Eastern Uganda was a bit of surprise. I knew about Arua
and Masaka, but on the Monday, I was informed that I would be heading to the
East on the Wednesday.
This was an
interesting journey because it took me in a direction that I’ve never been in
before, and let me pass through Jinja, the source of the Nile ,
where I could see the large dam project, as well as the start of the raging
river.
The trip to Soroti was
relatively uneventful, outside of a 15-minute period or so of blinding rain,
where I swear our driver, Emma, was driving entirely by memory.
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| No, this isn't the salesman I was intimidated by. But it's so cute. |
I also discovered the
first thing about Uganda
that really challenges my comfort levels: the road-side food salesmen. We
briefly passed some on the way back from Pader, but I didn’t really get the
full experience. As soon as your car comes to a stop, all the windows were
rolled down and about 15 hands holding food and drink items – mostly speared
meat, roasted corn and Fanta – were jammed into your face. I occasionally have
anxiety with too many humans in my personal space and this definitely triggered
it. I almost got whacked repeatedly in the nose by meat-on-a-stick, and my
anxiety made any hunger I had promptly disappear. The salesmen are quite
persistent, and don’t really take a “no” for an answer, unless your window is
closed, or you’re driving off with their arm still in your vehicle (and even then
…) Over the next few days, we’ve made a few more of these stops, but each time,
I would just request my window stayed down. I will occasionally overcome this
anxiety, I’m sure, but not yet.
Soroti reminded me of
a town from an old Western, with wide dirt streets, and square buildings that
you’d expect Clint Eastwood to stride out of on his way to duel with the leader
of some gang. On the second evening in town, we decided to check out the town
with two of my co-workers, Abel and Bob. Our first stop was a “Pork Place ” – which
is exactly what it sounds like. Abel did the ordering for us and ordered “two
and a half” and I thought to myself “oh good, I can’t really eat more than half
a bit of pork”. Turns out the measurement was in kilograms … TWO AND A HALF
KILOS of pork was placed in front of us. My jaw dropped. It was all on a tray,
and we tackled it like it was a feed-trough as I certainly beat my personal
record for amount of meat consumed in a single sitting.
We walked around the
town for a bit, trying to find a place which served cold beer, had a crowd and
played some good music. We found one club (which you had to enter from a dark
alleyway) which would be more at home in Kampala ,
but the only people inside were the DJ and the bartenders. We found a place
which had the appropriately dingy feel to it – think Thunder
Bay ’s “Apollo,” or any place in Toronto that is open after 2 am – where the
drinks were cheap, cold, and frequently served. We listened to a nice selection
of classic Ugandan reggae, slow jams and reggae with a little bit of Lauryn
Hill and Ludakris mixed in for home comfort. I won’t detail how many Ugandan
Club beers were drank, but let me say: it was a good evening.
We went home via
Bodas, one per boda and it we almost had a misadventure, when we came across a
dubious road-block. Luckily our bodas decided to blaze through them without
stopping, because to quote Abel: “If we had stopped, we’d be in a hospital
right now”.
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| Some of the panhandling baboons that I've mentioned in previous entries. |
We took a scenic route
back to Kampala ,
dropping off Bob in Lira, and my supervisor just on the outskirtsKampala when our vehicle started to sputter …
and it was already dark. Getting stuck at night with vehicular issues is one of
those things you dream about when you are taking anti-malarials. It was
definitely not a situation I wanted to be in. Alas, our brief stop in Luwero
had caused the tank to settle and our Fuel arrow had dropped significantly (or
someone syphone off our gas). We came to a complete stop on a stretch of
highway undergoing construction and managed to get into the construction lane.
Our driver jumped out of the car and hitched a ride in the direction traffic
was going. We quickly realized that he had gone to a further gas-station after
speaking with a boda driver. There was a gas station about five-to-ten minutes
back from where we had come, rather than the thirty minutes that he had headed.
We must have been there for an hour and a half on the side of the road, as
people slowed down to look at us, and people walked by on their way home on the
side of the road. Luckily, we were not that isolated which made the situation a
little safer. Eventually, we were overjoyed to see the lights of a boda heading
towards us with Emma on the back. On we went; I got home just before midnight.
of Gulu. The
real adventure came about an hour outside of 
The trip to Arua was
breath-taking. Once you start heading West, it stops being meadowland, and
become rolling green hills with shrubbery and wild-life to be seen as far as
the eye can see, while the Nile traces it’s course through the distance with a
the occasional grass-hut village peppering the country side. It was beautiful.
We were going this direction as the sun was starting to set, and a storm was
coming in from the Congo .
We were in a hurry, so I couldn’t stop for photos … but it was like a National
Geographic photo. We however did stop for the elephants. Seeing the elephants
was probably the
the single most out-of-my-world experience that I have experienced
since here. You see them on tv, you see them in the zoo, but to see a dozen of
them just roaming in their natural habitat is something else altogether. They
were quietly eating, covered in dirt, with birds picking them clean, while we
spent about five minutes staring at them and taking some photos. If there was
ever any doubt in my mind that I was on a different continent, it had been
single-handedly been shattered. I definitely plan on going back to Arua and
checking out
The rest of the
journey was work-oriented, and you can read more about it in my forthcoming
professional blog, but after Arua, we returned to Kampala , before doing a day trip to nearby
Masaka, passing over the exact spot of the equator.
Including the two Kampala hospitals we
visited, I did 1800 km
in 9 days and went in three different directions.
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