We never really planned on being in Kabale. It just kind of happened.
The day started with a panic, as it so often does. Firstly, M realised that she didn't have the printout of her acceptance letter from Rwanda. Secondly, we also realised that we didn't have enough money to last for 2 weeks in Rwanda and Burundi, where we didn't believe that there were any ATMs. Thirdly, it was 8.10am, 50 minutes before the bus was supposed to leave, and it was rush hour. In Kampala, that means that you don't go anywhere very quickly. Consequently we hatched a plan where M would take a taxi to the “Jaguar Executive Coach” bus park with our mountains of luggage, and I would run around trying to get whatever else we needed and hop onto a boda-boda to the bus station and everything would be fine. As I waved M off at 8.15, I ran off through the pouring rain to find an internet cafe where I hoped to print off M's letter, and transfer some money over to her account so that I could draw it out (my card is broken, and I'm going to pick up a new one in Burundi). The fourth place I found was just opening although I had to sit and wait while the system warmed up before I could finally use the prehistoric computer to actually do anything. By 8.35, the letter was printed and the money transferred.
By 8.36, I realised that I'd been running around in this busy district of Kampala enough to have got completely lost and so couldn't work out where our regular ATM was and went to a KBC bank instead. It didn't work. The security guys pointed me in the direction of another bank which delightfully also refused to work. I resisted the urge to swear at it and ran back out into the rain to find another. Suddenly I came upon our regular, blew kisses at the sky and ran in. Of all mornings of course, this had to be the morning where one of the machines didn't work and the second would only dish out a pathetically small amount of money. I took it anyway, changed the lot and hopped on a boda-boda to meet up with M at the bus station. It turns out that the boda-boda guy not only asked a fair price for the ride (which is rare enough for a muzungu to experience) but was also a cross-breed of a superhuman and a cat, weaving his way through the traffic with a millimetre-perfect accuracy that I hadn't seen before. Once again, I staggered off the bike half surprised at the fact that I still had four limbs and tried my hardest to put on a cool swagger as I walked towards the bus. “Told ya I'd be on time didn't I!” I told M. It was 8.59am.
"It reminds me of the Care Bears", said MThe ride towards Rwanda is a beautiful one – as green as anywhere in Uganda but covered in hills, banana tree plantations and small villages. The hours flew by like minutes for both of us – for me because I was gazing out of the window and for M because she was sleeping off her Giardia bugs. She eventually woke up having shaken off the nausea that she's been living with for quite a few days now, and we rolled for the last few hours to Katuna, on the Rwandan border. Getting out of Uganda was slow but easy. Getting into Rwanda however, would have been a quick process had it worked, but it turned out that this wasn't our day. “If you don't have this letter of acceptance” the guy told me, “you can't enter Rwanda”. Aha. “But your embassy in Addis Ababa told me that I can get a visa on the border?!” I told him. The last time I'd tried this line was in Gambia 4 years ago and it had worked like a charm. I was hopeful. “No. That is not true”. He seemed firm, and I was a beaten man. We grabbed our bags from the bus, trudged back over the bridge to Uganda and got our exit stamps cancelled. It was disappointing, but to be honest it wasn't completely unexpected and I would have been quite surprised to be writing this in Kigali, where we had hoped to be tonight. Next on the agenda was getting somewhere from the border, and we spotted our chance with 2 muzungus getting into a car just over the road from us. M ran over and had a word with them, and then called me over. We squeezed in. It turns out that they were only going to Kabale, the closest town to the border, but it was fine for us. The guy was British, the girl was Australian, the guy driving them was their pastor, and they had a “Jesus Has All The Answers” sticker (or something similar) in the front windscreen. We were hitching a lift in a bible-wagon.
“So what brought you to Uganda?” I asked, making conversation with the guy who, strangely, spoke to the Ugandan pastor/driver with an African accent yet spoke to his girlfriend (or wife, I suppose) in a broad cockney accent. He was pensive for a second. “God...” he finally declared. “Ah. And why did he bring you to Uganda, and not to any other country?”. “Well... I suppose because he thought that this is where I should be, where I would mature the most”. I considered asking if God had put him on His own private plane or a on a commercial airliner but thought that maybe this was where I should draw the line. Meanwhile, M was being interrogated on her Christian beliefs by the pastor in the front seat. “Well... I am Christian yes, in that I belong to the church. Although... well... I can't remember what that church is called in English”. It seemed like a good thing that we weren't going any more than 30km, as grateful as we were for the ride.
Kabale the beautifulKabale slowly crept into view, and our cortège dropped us off at the Skyline Hotel (which I suppose is an ironic name given that the place is only on one level) and our new friend the pastor gave us his Burundian number and instructed us to call him next weekend as he would be in Bujumbura. We told him we'd get him a beer there and his beaming expression suggested to us that here was a Christian who was not afraid of a tipple or two. We said goodbye with smiles and thanks and settled in to our new and, typically for Uganda, friendly home. We're aiming to get over the border to Tanzania tomorrow so it seems like an early morning rise to try and get a bus to Masaka (about halfway back to Kampala), from where we'll try and get a bus to Bukoba in Tanzania, then to Nyakanazi, and finally over to Burundi, hopefully in two days. At least we have all the visas we need this time...
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