Tombs and Traffic

Day one in Africa, and I have learned many things already. After the huge breakfast discussed in my last post we sort of hung around the house and just settled in for a while. Really, I’m glad there was no rush to go anywhere because I had a difficult enough time pulling myself out of bed at 9:30am, I’m not sure I would have been good for anything before that. I pulled out my sketchbook and practiced with my oil pastels, really just killing time while we waited for Zoe to come back from her sleepover so we could go visit the Kasubi Tombs. Zoe eventually called and said she’d be staying another night, so we went to the Tombs without her.
Now, please understand that by ‘Tombs’ what is really meant is ‘tomb’. We drove no longer than 10 minutes (during which I got my first real taste of Ugandan traffic, we will come back to this) and were admitted through a chained-off drive to a dusty red half-loop of road where we were to park. The entrance to the tombs was dramatic enough, with a large, round grass… house? Hut? Structure? That you walked through to get to the next house/hut/structure where you were to pay and meet your guide. Being as this was a sacred tomb Brenda and I were not allowed to go in wearing jeans and shorts as we were, so they lent us orange sarongs to tie on over our other clothes. I think the issue was more that we were in pants and not skirts vs. any sort of indecency (ex: entering the Vatican) because both of us had on tank tops and that didn’t seem to be a problem.
Skirts on, we met our guide and he led us out of the little area surrounded by grass fence and out into an open area that resembled a moonscape. The ground was all black and grey and gravel except for a stone path that led us to a supersized version of the previous hut/house/structure. Inside there were women in bright dresses and one or two very small children dressed similarly. I never did find out what exactly the women did but I will hazard a guess that it had something to do with the sacred-ness.
Our guide talked to us about the four kings that reined over the Kingdom of Buganda, and taught us how to play a counting game called Omweso. It’s also referred to as Bo by another tribe, but the word in Lugandu is the translation of the word ‘checked’ in English (checked as in a ‘checked shirt’, or ‘checker board’). That was fun, we watched him and William play a round and got to a reasonable understanding of the rules. While I’m here, I’d like to pick up a game board so that I can bring it home. It’s a little confusing to learn at first, but fun. They don’t call it ‘playing against one another’, here it’s referred to as ‘battle’.
After the game our guide gestured to a leopard with a richly beaded collar that had been stuffed and mounted in a glass case. The leopard was shorter than I thought it would be, its head only reached my hip, but its teeth and claws were more than enough to inflict damage. The leopard had been the pet of the second of the Kings and was named River (Mayaja) because it used to cross the rivers and bodies of water with the King when he went on journeys. The Lugandu word for river has two meanings though, apparently it is more accurately translated as ‘big water’, so ‘to travel on a river or body of water’ uses the same word as ‘over seas’. To keep the leopard tame they fed it a goat and two buckets of blood a day. I imagine just about anything would be tame if it was fed that much daily.
After its owner, the second King died, the leopard apparently went mad with grief and killed people until at last the third King had to have it killed.
We also discussed a little bit about the history of Uganda and the surrounding countries, and it didn’t take long at all before we realized our guide was very extremist. He stated quite openly that he used to hate the whites and do all sort of radical deeds to deter them coming. He then began to talk about how the British were really behind all of Africa’s problems, the issue Uganda is having with East Indian workers stealing all the work that should belong to the citizens of Uganda. Then he covered the topic of refugees from places like Somalia, and how Idiamindada (a.k.a the last king of Scotland) was the best President Uganda ever had because he united the people. Only… gah… I have certainly never heard anything good about Amin, and Brenda and Fred certainly don’t care for him because it sounds like he was charismatic but somewhat insane and very brutal. I’m not local, so my understanding is all very textbook but whoa, that was an eye opener.
Apparently tribalism is still a big problem in Africa and many of the ideas this fellow was spouting sound suspiciously like they would aggravate that. Think Europe before the assassination of Franz Ferdinand.
After the tombs we drove down to Phillip’s mom’s place and met her. The school that was rebuilt last year really is like… right in her backyard.
I played with the kids for a while and looked in all the classrooms. Most of them are divided in half so that there is enough room to have two grades present. Everything was very colourful, they really did a good job on it. With Lily’s done we headed up the hill to Backpackers so that I could see it and get an internet connection for a bit. There are plenty of Muzungu’s at Backpackers. Muzungu’s being the slang term used by the locals for ‘white person’. Fred, being only slightly less white than me, likes to pull it out around the house all the time, hahaha. The compound at Backpackers really was very well put together, and there were plenty of other kids my age who looked quite happy there. The fellow who runs it is ex-military and responsible for the security in that side of town, so the gate is guarded by two men in uniform, and while I only saw one gun, it was plenty intimidating on its own. Previously (when the country was less stable) apparently they had an incident where a group trying to destabilize the government threw a grenade into Backpackers because of the high concentration of foreign whites there. No deaths, but one high profile injury later and armed guards were posted.
I am definitely not in Kansas anymore.
After Backpackers we piled back in the red 1994 Toyota Previa (it lives!) and went down to pick up some meat for dinner at the local meat shop. The meat just sort of hangs in the window, out in the open, un-refrigerated. Plenty tasty though, we made it into spaghetti.
Now, back to the driving style in Africa.
Driving in Africa is like… no, there is no metaphor, driving in Africa is insane. First, they drive on the left-hand side because of the British colonial influence. The roads kind of blend in with the dirt on the sides because everything is dusty, so everything is red-ish. So now we’re on the opposite side of the road and there are no lines and no edges. Now we add traffic. Traffic is special. The bumper-to-bumper is comparable to New York city at rush hour, and the whole area reeks of diesel. No one gives anybody else an inch of space to enter traffic and pedestrians are free game, there doesn’t seem to be any sort of right-of-way law. Now between all the vans and cars and trucks transporting loads of goods put boda-bodas. If there is a two foot wide gap between cars that’s all a boda-boda (motorcycle) needs to squeak through and zip up further in the lines of vans and cars. Not a single boda-boda driver wears a helmet, and they often end up going far faster than the cars because of how much more efficiently they weave through traffic. More often than not I’d look out the window and see two or three of these boda-bodas pressed against the side of the Previa and still moving. Aiya!
SO! The roads are packed and everyone is at speed. You’d think traffic accidents were quite common. Well, not between cars. Cars just run into each other and dent and scratch. Boda-bodas however are in accidents all the time. As we were driving between the Kasubi Tombs and Lily Kindergarten and Primary I saw my first traffic accident. There isn’t really an ambulance system in Uganda because medicine is not socialized, so when a car hits a boda-boda, it’s up to the locals to deal with it. The driver usually drives off so that they can’t be held responsible, and anyone who stops is giving voluntary first aid. The first aid tends to be things like placing a blanket under the head of the person who flew farthest and hit hardest assuming they are still alive. It could also be helping someone who is injured and not at a high level of consciousness onto the back of another boda-boda to get them to a hospital. It’s surreal, driving past a scene like that. We did not get out to help as there were plenty of people there who were quite intent on helping. Also, apparently if you are in the car and you bring someone into the hospital because of an accident, the hospital will actually hold you until someone can declare that you were helping, and weren’t responsible for injuring the person.
Once you’re in the hospital the waits are supposed to be incredible. In excess of 24 hours. The motto of this story is don’t get into any medical trouble in Uganda.
The temperature is amazing though! It’s just cool enough at night that you can lay on top of your sheets and doze off, and during the days it’s hot in the sun but not in any unbearable way. The water has a kind of soil-y taste, but Brenda and Fred boil it all day on the stove before storing it in jugs in the fridge. Cleaning is done every day to keep down the dust and the tiles are deliciously cool beneath your feet. Oh, and the ants are big, I do a double-take every time I see an ant wandering around. All in all though, I’m really enjoying myself. The hospitality is incredible.
I’ll be sure to update again soon!

The Mysterious Terminal 4 and Accompanying Adventures

Alright! I’ve made it!
I’m in the suburbs of Kampala, Uganda with Phil’s sister Brenda, her husband Fred and their son William. They also have a daughter named Zoe, but I’ve yet to meet her. It was a late night; I wasn’t in bed until past 1am local time. Both Fred and Brenda came to pick me up from the airport and I’m very thankful that they did, it was a long drive and finding a cab didn’t look like it was particularly easy. I slept like a log, and woke up this morning to breakfast in the kitchen. Wow, I have not had a breakfast like this in… a very long time. Two eggs on a gigantic piece of toast, a great big spatula full of fried potatoes and onion, a split hotdog and a mug of tea. I don’t know that I’ll be hungry for lunch.
Anyway, getting here was a bit of an adventure. I did manage to find the Antigallican and tag up with Chris and Greg for a few hours. Chris was asleep most of the time I was there, but Greg and I wandered the area and had dinner. Sleep was short, 3 hours and then I was up to catch the bus to Heathrow for a 6:30am departure. There was a transfer between the two busses, and I’m glad that London is still fairly populated at 3am because I think I asked directions from just about every person I met. Caught the second bus, was confused as to why so many drunk people were getting on the bus, then realized it was a Friday night.
Got to Heathrow and discovered that the bus didn’t go to the only one of the five terminals I needed to get to. The bus runs to terminals 1, 2, 3 and 5, but not 4. Very silly. So I wandered the airport and found a train that ran to terminal 4, but didn’t open to the public until 5am. Hm… not great. There were two other backpackers from the Czech republic waiting by the doors who had never flown before, and I wasn’t sure how long it would take us to get through security being as I’ve only ever heard horror stories of Heathrow. We tagged up and decided to see if we could find some other way to get to the mysterious terminal 4. We headed up to terminal 2, as apparently they’d been told they could take taxi to terminal 4 but couldn’t afford one between the two of them with the number of pounds they had left (and in all fairness, I couldn’t either). Up at terminal 2 we found more people trying to get to terminal 4! There was a British couple, and all of us were on the same flight to Amsterdam.
We did catch a taxi, and the British couple paid the 15 pound fee. Glad that we’d arrived at terminal 4 we hurried down to the check in. It wasn’t as slow as we’d thought it would be, but just the number of people being processed made it slow. The luggage was loaded and we walked the two Czech backpackers through check in and getting their luggage on the plane. I was confused when I turned around in line and they’d pulled out a beer. No, really. So in line they happily gulped down the beer (to some very disapproving looks from the airport staff) and we handed over our luggage.
The first flight to Amsterdam was short, but I was so tired I slept through the whole thing. Even after breakfast at this great little café called Costa. Oh man, the muffins… they had all the normal muffin-ish flavours, and then there were two Epic Muffins. Epic Muffin #1 was an orange and lemon muffin with lemon icing. More like a dessert, but deliciously citrus. Then there was Epic Muffin #2. If I were a muffin, I would be this muffin. It was blackcurrent and white chocolate with macadamia bits. Oh… glorious muffin… we will meet again upon my return to Heathrow. So yeah… Breakfast was good, then I slept. Amsterdam was busy and stuffed full of people, which was frustrating. I’m sure if I’d had more sleep I would have liked it better. They have everything in that airport! Not just your standard duty free shopping, but a museum, a few kids play places, restaurant chains, I may have even seen a sign for some sort of water feature or wading pool. Crazy. They put some sort of effort into that.
At the gate there was a group of high schoolers with Canadian flags scattered across their carry on bags. Turns out they’re a group with Save the Children going to build a school in Kenya. Chatted with them for a bit, they were from all over; a few from Vancouver, Toronto, Calgary (of course) and then a smattering of kids from the States. Then I slept for almost the whole flight to Nairobi, and kept waking up to food in front of me. I think I might have been fed three times on that flight, it was very odd, but all acceptably tasty. The layover in Nairobi was longer than I thought it would be, but I snoozed through most of that too. The last flight was with Kenya Air down to Entebbe. I have to say, even though KLM has all sorts of entertainment and seatback screens, their seats are really, really uncomfortable. Kenya Air totally wins that encounter.
Anyway, I’m here now and it’s a nice spot. The drive back was interesting in that I got a more local view of Kampala. So… for example things that we would normally close roads for in Canada - like huge holes - are referred to as speed bumps, or potholes. There’s also a big cement wall around the house that serves as a fence. On top of the wall is a layer of broken glass, electric wire, and razor wire for extra-deterrence. There are windows all over, and on the inside are bars. Nice bars, but bars.
I think it will take a day or so to get used to how things are done here.
Jambo to Africa!

The Great Escape!

That's right, I'm here! London is busy, smells kind of like diesel all the time and has beautiful architecture that ranges from your standard old fashioned buildings like Big Ben, Parliament and Westminster Abbey right up to their super modern bee-hive city hall. I am also impressed at how far my £'s are going to get me. Food is so inexpensive here! Even with the exchange rate I got lunch today for super cheap, £2.27. Wow, awesome, I am impressed. The fruit is still pricey, but fruit's expensive everywhere so we'll just ignore that.
On Wednesday evening I was dropped off at the airport and made my way through security nice and early. The gate wasn't terribly full of people, so the flight wasn't crowded. Even though I didn't sleep it didn't feel like it was terribly long. I had two empty seats next to me and I was in the middle aisle so there was plenty of room to spread out. The food was impressive too! Admittedly I was surprised when they served beans with their eggs for breakfast but it was all hot and it was all real-tasting. Thomas Cook airlines has put Air Canada to shame. I don't think they were quite excellent enough to beat Air New Zealand, but Thomas Cook is a close second, I'd fly with them again in a heartbeat.
We had a one hour stopover in Glasgow, Scotland and I had a good time chatting with a mother and son who were headed home from a trip to visit family in Saskatchewan. I couldn't help but giggle at some of the things they were surprised at. No, you can't buy liquor everywhere. It's in special stores (he does have a point though, with the barred windows, they do look a bit like jails). There isn't a lot to do during the day in Sask unless you happen to be working. We do call it a trunk, not a boot. We do say 'eh' more often than I think we realise.
But at the same time, I've been doing the same thing over here all day. It still makes me smile when I think of the 'bins' on the streets marked 'rubbish'. Or when you hear someone Scottish say 'aye'. Or when the police officers on the street have on a standard looking uniform with a bulletproof vest but added the helmet-like Scotland Yard caps. There are still portly fellows at the train platforms with whistles that hold up some sort of small round plastic sign - white on one side, black on the other. Even just how often they use phrases like 'top up', 'mind the gap' and 'bits' makes me happy.
Anyway. I arrived at Gatwick and got off the plane to find myself in a horrifically long customs line. I had not encountered the likes of this for a good while. One of the guys on the flight who stayed through until Gatwick (TJ) and I were next to eachother in line, so we took turns bettering on how long it would take us to work our way through. Initially I guessed 27min and 30 sec, and TJ guessed 47 min. Now, in all fairness we only saw half of the line when we took our guesses. For the portion of the line we could see, my guess was only a minute off. For the portion we could not see...
1 hour and 57 minutes later we had cleared customs and gone on to find our checked bags. It was TJ's first time out of the country, so he brought a lot, but after tramping around London with me for the better part of the day I don't know that he'll be travelling with that much again next time.
Once we had our luggage we purchased some postcards and some 'quid' (£'s, I don't know where the nickname 'quid' came from) and caught the gatwick express into town. We walked from London Bridge Station down to Tower Bridge, and promptly napped on the grass because we were both exhausted. Then there was some debate about how he was going to get to Edinbourgh, so we cleared that up with several of the no-nonsense train station attendents and I decided to work my way towards Big Ben.
I had a classic tourist moment, when you emerge from the Westminster station Big Ben is litterally right on top of you. I did the classic lost tourist thing and looked all over the sky line except above me. It made for some fun times when I did finally ask someone where the elusive clock tower was.
Aside from being crowded, London has a very clean, prompt train system. It's wonderful. With it I've also seen Trafalgar Square today, and tried my hand at oil pastelling Big Ben, but I'm not fine enough with them yet to take on complicated structures with little details like Ben.
Even though it's only 7:30pm here, I think my day will end soon if I can manage to track down the boys. I'm hoping to catch some sleep before I train it back out to Heathrow and leave for Amsterdam. As it is, I keep nodding off in front of the monitor.
Zzzzz.....

Plan B:

The passport has arrived! With a confirmed visa! Yes!
It's really a bit of an anticlimactic little piece of paper stuck in my passport, next to the International Certificate of Vaccination or Prophylaxis. Despite myself I giggled when I saw the name of the Issuing officer. It seems to be written out as 'Aeeeeeebeeeel'; but I may have mistaken the 'b' for an 'le' that are very close together.
Alright, time to revert to Plan B!
Between Canadapost and myself we came to the conclusion that it would be best for me to leave Wednesday, for very little money ($225.05), than last night, for $1400.oo. It helps that I didn't get my hands on the passport until about 5:30pm yesterday, and the flight I was looking at left at about 2pm that afternoon.
The result of all of this is that I will be missing almost the entire UK portion of my trip, and arrive Thursday just before noon, then leave very, very early Friday morning. While this is incredibly disappointing it is better to miss the London bit than the Africa bit, neh? Also, it sounds like the boys are having an excellent time. As we speak, they could be bonding over footy and a pint in the neighbourhood pub.
So, the total cost of my learning experience becomes missing London, and being out about $500 worth of flights. All considered, that could have been significantly worse. The greatest difficulty was finding things to keep myself preoccupied with. The condo is now quite clean.
The good news is that I fly out tomorrow night at 5:45pm. I have my ticket (in my hand), my passport (in my hand), my visa (in my passport in my hand) and everything is still packed being as I did not unpack.
Cue the celebratory music! I'm on my way!

Not as Advertised

As you may have guessed due to the time and date of this post, I should be on a plane travelling ridiculously fast over the Atlantic ocean right now on my way to an island that likes to wrap fish and chips in news paper. However, that is not where I am. Where I am is at my friend Chelsea's house baking chocolate delicious. The reason for this is a cascading set of mistakes and so forth by the High Commission, Canada Post, and myself.
The first mistake was made by me, I did not understand the difference between Xpresspost and Priority. The difference is 24 hours, which is the amount by which I have missed my passport.
The second mistake is on the part of Canada Post, for telling me that Xpresspost delivers within 48 hours of recieving the package. This is totally, 100%, undeniably not true. Priority delivers for the following morning.
The third mistake was a drawn out process by the High Commission. Bureaucracy is frustrating to deal with in developed countries, it is impossible to deal with in undeveloped countries that don't really want you in their country in the first place. They were under the impression that I was stealing jobs from their labourers by volunteering... and possibly up to no good because the volunteering involved an educational institute; a.k.a. a library.
So, being as these three mistakes all happened together my passport with the approved visa is somewhere within the Canada Post mailing system, and they cannot tell me where it is. Their hours are also so short that by the time I realized there was an issue, there was not a single living person I could call, e-mail, or messenger pidgeon for help. Did you know Canada post has five different numbers that you can contact about your package and where it happens to be? I did not, but they all have exactly the same message recorded. Awesome.
I have learned my lesson quite well from all of this, and the cost of my learning is more than I would like it to be.

Lesson 1: Do not use Canada Post. Use FedEx, or possibly UPS, they deliver every day of the week and have a significantly more accurate and informative tracking system. They also have someone you can call who is not a machine.

Lesson 2: There is a system for dealing with High Commissions that don't like you. You must call, pester, bother, remind, leave all information six times and promise to call back within the hour to check they have done what you asked. It also helps to have a citizen of said High Commission's home country doing exactly the same thing, with all of your information handy.

Lesson 3: Make sure that when you want something there the following morning, you make that clear at the post office. "This needs to be in Ottawa as fast as possible." apparently elicites a different response from "This needs to be in Ottawa tomorrow."

So, with all these lessons in hand, some cashed savings bonds, and a little bit of luck, I will have my passport by 10am on Monday morning and will by flying out by five. It would be kind of a cool flight, being as I would be routed through Minneapolis and Iceland. Never been to Iceland, so that would be exciting. The nice people at Air Transat also offered me a flight out on Wednesday for $300. However this would mean I get to London, have a strange 20 hour layover, and then get on a plane bound for Africa. So... I would miss the entire London component.
This decision will be made shortly.
In other happier news I saw Greg and Chris off at the airport and they were excited to be on their way. Here's hoping they're not too bored on their flight and that the hostel they booked is as good as advertised. Have fun guys, I'm sure I'll catch up!
Kenna out.

Ready for take off? Actually... no...

So, having not left yet I've already run into trouble, hahaha!
The High Commission of the Republic of Uganda and I do not get along terribly well it seems. They didn’t like that I sent them Canadian money; fine, sent them more money of the American variety. Then they wanted a letter of invitation and introduction explaining that I was indeed wanted in their country and that I was not pilfering jobs from their labourers; alright, letters sent within 8 hours of the request. Now, after a week without my passport, a significant amount of stress and many phone calls my passport - with my completed visa and my unwanted Canadian money - is on its way home. Only... there's a hitch with that too. The passport is coming home on Xpresspost, which is not as quick as a priority courier, which means that my passport will be arriving - in theory - within hours of my currently scheduled departure flight. Which is tomorrow.
This should be interesting.
Welcome to Africa?
All of the passport and visa issues aside, I am half way through packing and I am impressed with how nice and light my pack is going to be this trip. Here's hoping for sunshine in London and a passport by noon tomorrow!