It was nice in the north but I wasn't disappointed to be back in Kampala either – I'd liked the look and feel of this place the first time we were here and wasn't at all averse to spending a bit more time here. We checked in again to the Aponye Hotel, the greatest deal to be had anywhere on the planet, which is located on what is probably the hardest street to walk down on the planet – it's full of warehouses and small businesses and shopping arcades and, the whole day long, the road is jammed with parked trucks and the pavements are full of people walking around at high speed unloading these trucks. A walk down William Street is a full-time adrenaline rush as you weave through an obstacle course of high-speed sacks of cereal, metal bars, boxes of everything and anything, plastic tubes and many other things, all travelling as fast as the people carrying them can go. Much like the hippos we saw in Murchison Falls (although smaller, obviously) these guys stop for nothing and I suspect that if you purposefully put yourself on a collision course with one of them you'd end up as little more than small particles of dust. At least it's atmospheric!
The coffee was lovely, but the computer crashing after 6 hours losing all work done in the meantime was less so.
The life of a junkie!This stay in Kampala has been more business than pleasure though – M has been knee-deep in university papers again, we've had a lot of football to watch, and then there's been the case of the Rwanda visas. Given the history between France and Rwanda I wasn't expecting a perfectly smooth ride with these visas and so I was expecting the worst when we walked into the Rwandan embassy the day after we got back.
Us: “Hi, we've come to get visas, we're tourists”
Woman at desk: “OK, which nationality are you?”
M: Finland
Woman: Finland, OK (smiles at M) and you?
T: France
Woman: France? (glares at T) OK, take a seat.
Great. Another moment when I wished I'd got a passport from some small, globally irrelevant country which had never caused any harm to anyone. Like Andorra, for example. We sat for a while before another woman came out and explained that people on French passports couldn't apply for visas in embassies for the time being, and that I had to do it on their immigration department's website. Yup, you can apply for a visa online these days! By filling in all the info you would on a normal paper form, you get a response – print off the response and take it to the border, pay for your visas there and you have a streamlined operation including no waiting around at embassies! It's nice, it's advanced and it's futuristic and all that but half of the fun in getting the visas is going to the consulates and dealing with the people in a bad mood there. Besides, if the element of human contact was removed I wouldn't have been able to plead nicely with Mr. Asshole in the Sudanese Consulate in Cairo and that means I'd have been forced to spend the last 6 months in Egypt. Hmmhmm.
It's not much more poetic than Cairo, but it's still an improvementAfter struggling to get onto the website and to get it fully functioning, we managed to apply for the visas on Tuesday afternoon. By one hour later on Tuesday afternoon, M had her letter of confirmation. It's Saturday afternoon, and I still don't have mine. If it's not in my inbox by Tuesday, we'll go to Burundi through Tanzania instead (or through DRC, if I can manage to persuade M that it's a great idea, which I doubt will happen).
Our days in Kampala were spent writing 1% Fund reports, going through M's academic business at length (including one lovely episode where we worked for 6 hours solid only to have the computer crash on us and see all of our saved work disappear), watching football on TV and zipping around from cafe to bar to cafe on Kampala's infamous boda-bodas (motorcycle taxis). When you're on a quiet road, boda-bodas are a great way to get the wind in your hair and move from one part of Kampala to another on the cheap. On a busy road at a busy time (i.e. most roads, most of the time) the boda-bodas would give any rollercoaster ride in a world a run for its money – the drivers have an exact knowledge of the width of their bikes and can spot a gap in the traffic to the millimetre and go through it, although for the uninitiated like us, it seems like every second will be your last. Kampala is chaotic when it comes to traffic – boda-bodas go everywhere, cars go anywhere, the streets are littered with potholes and at this time of year it's pretty wet too. When there are two of you riding on the back of the bike, your legs have to spread further so that everyone can squeeze in and, especially if you're sat at the back of the bike, you have perpetual visions of leaving your knee-caps on one of Kampala's ubiquitous minibuses (whose drivers are seemingly as fatalistic as the boda-boda guys). However, we emerged from every ride intact, and kept taking them for three reasons. Firstly, you don't get stuck in traffic. Secondly, they're a lot cheaper than taxis. Thirdly... well... they're fun!!
Feeling the rush of a nighttime boda-boda ride!-------
Post-scriptum......
Having called the Rwandan foreign ministry I've found out why I don't have a visa – it's because I don't have an invitation. Telling them than M got her visa within the hour without an invitation didn't seem to make much of an impression so we've just decided to hop onto a bus to Kigali and see what happens. This departure was delayed by a few days thanks to M taking her turn at having a ride on the sickness train by contracting Giardia, but eventually we managed to get a ticket on an early morning bus to Kigali. The front pages of the Ugandan papers were covered with discussion on whether we would make it into Rwanda or not. Of course, exclusive coverage of what actually happens is only available right here. Stay tuned.
We came to "Bubbles O'Leary's" twice and the heavens opened both times. It's locally known as "The Irish Effect"
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