And of course there was the Israeli special forces raid on Entebbe airport - the airport where I am sitting right now, even as I write this. The details of what happened are available in books, on websites and in at least one film. By all accounts it was extremely daring and well executed. One Ugandan friend told me that it only succeeded because their radar systems at the time were faulty and that ere is no way it could happen now. I wouldn't know. My observation is that it dented the national pride somewhat, even if it did occur during the tenure of a much hated dictator.
We flew in on Sunday evening on the direct flight from Johannesburg. I have taken it before and enjoy it because it is relatively short (4 hours) and because it seems invariably to arrive just as the sun is setting. As one is virtually plumb on the equator here, I guess that makes sense - sunset at 6pm and sunrise at 6 am all year round, or so I have been told. If you are lucky and there is not too much cloud around, you get some beautiful views of Lake Victoria and it's myriad islands as you make your final approach to Entebb airport, whose runway is right next to the shore.
Uganda is one of the countries where South Africans do require a visa, but you buy it for $50 when you arrive. The whole operation is quite efficient - that is, they have worked out how to relieve foreigners of $50 quite efficiently. Apart from handing over the money, the only other requirement is that you fill in one of those tedious but much loved by African bureaucracies immigration forms - yellow in Uganda, blue in Kenya, but all much the same - and smile politely as you say Habari and Asante. Oh, and they take digital scans of your finger prints on entry and exit, I guess to make sure it is the same person who comes and goes.
I am traveling with a colleague from Cape Town. It is his first trip, so I was able to provide some advice and information on what not to do. Don't mention the raid. Don't eat the salad. Don't walk in the road. Don't drink the tap water. Don't take pictures of official looking buildings. Don't give the presidential cavalcade the finger when it comes past - the basics of survival in Kampala. We collected our bags, cleared customs and found our shuttle driver. We were booked into the Metropole hotel, one of many in central Kampala. The distance from Entebbe is about 25km, I think, but it can take anything from 45 minutes to 3 hours to get there, a bit like Nairobi. The traffic is legendary. I was trying to describe the "jam" outside our hotel to a friend in an email and eventually resorted to "imagine all the cars on the N1 in rush hour trying to drive along Main Road from Muizenberg to Fish Hoek." The point being, for those not from my neck of the woods, that the N1 is a three lane highway, and Main Road is a single lane road which has been under construction / repair for over 3 years now. Picture that and you have, I think, a pretty good picture of Kampala in a "jam".
Our trip that evening took us about an hour - there were no major "jams". We sped along at a reasonable rate, dodging the odd motorcyclist, minibus or pedestrian. Traffic etiquette seemed to be fairly similar to what I have observed in other major African cities such as Maputo and Nairobi - size counts, pedestrians and cyclists have no rights, motorcyclists have half rights, driving on the pavement is allowed, pulling out in front of oncoming traffic is ok as long as you do so purposively and flash your lights, likewise overtaking on a blind rise ... you know, the usual stuff. I glanced across at my colleague to see what color his knuckles were and whether he had chewed through the seat belt yet and was surprised to see that he was fairly calm. When I asked him, he said that he had been driven around Rome a few times and that this was fairly tame in comparison! I guess the difference is that in Rome the average age of the vehicles is about ten years less than in Kampala and the roads are in better nick.
Our hotel, the Metropole, is what they call a boutique hotel, whatever that means. I could not fault it, except that it had no swimming pool. It is right next to the Uganda golf club, and close to the centre of town. My room was on the third floor and looked onto the course, separated from it by a stream with some very tall gum, banana and other trees on it's banks, which were the playground and possibly homes of several bird species - we heard or saw kingfishers, marabou storks, cuckoos and a number of others. The room was spacious and clean with a small balcony. I did not pay for the trip but was told the rate was $120/night for bed and breakfast, which is, comparatively speaking, not bad at all. At check in we were given a note from our American colleagues to say that one of them had gone to bed, the other was on the patio. We found our rooms, unpacked and made our way to the patio, which was on the first floor, also overlooking the golf course. We found our colleague, who was doing emails on her iPad, joined her table and ordered some beers. I remembered from my previous trips that one of the Ugandan beers is called a Nile. Someone once told me that they use the water from the Nile at Jinja to make it, but I have not been able to confirm the theory. Having been to Jinja and seen same water, I hope that it is incorrect! Another is called a "Club" and there is a third, whose name I forget now. Then one can also get Kenyan beers, for example Tusker malt or Tusker lager. They all come in 500ml bottles, which is 50% more than our standard pint or can in south Africa. They were surprisingly cheap - 4500 Ugandan shillings each, whichbis about $1.50. My colleague asked me which I suggested and I gave him my standard line: "there is no such thing as a bad African beer" which is probably not true, but I have always enjoyed sampling the local brews. A liter of beer each later we headed for bed. The most momentous decision to be made was whether to close the door and run the (rather noisy) air conditioner or leave the door open with just the screen door closed, and the air conditioner off. I opted for the former the first night but changed after that.
I woke to the shrill calls of the kingfishers in the trees. I thought briefly about going for a run but decided against it. Instead I had a leisurely shower, dressed and made my way to breakfast. I wore a tie and jacket, not sure how formal our meetings would be. Breakfast was a simple affair but quite pleasant. The coffee was strong and local, and what else matters?! I had some cereal and fruit, to assuage my conscience, and some toast and jam to fill a gap or two, but decided to skip the cooked offerings. I generally avoid red meat when traveling in Africa because one is never really sure what one is eating, and because I have had some really nasty sausages in my time.
The days were full of meetings, the details of which do not matter. Lunch was provided and consisted of banana (plantain), steamed in its own leaves, together with rice, beans and spinach, all of which i enjoy. I avoided the chicken option. Evenings were spent on the patio having extended sundowners and eating from the hotel kitchen. I had some excellent tilapia fish from the lake - tikka one night and red curry another. I think that if I lived in Kampala as an expat I might well get into that particular groove.
On the second morning we were picked up (or "picked" as they say in east Africa) by our host's driver in an elderly Land-cruiser. The traffic was particularly bad and we were concerned (as was he) that we would miss our meeting at 9 a.m. Accordingly, he hung a right and went careering down a side alley, up another and soon we were climbing one of Kampala's famous seven hills via a rather rudimentary looking mud track. I was sitting in what we used to call the "dog box" - the back section. Next moment we all heard a loud hissing noise from the back left tire and we ground to a lopsided halt. Puncture! We all got out and stood around making helpful comments while the driver changed the wheel. Then it started raining. To cut a long story short, we were offered a lift by the driver of another Land-cruiser who just happened to be taking the same short cut. It did however allow me a few minutes to explore the area and take a few pictures - see below.
On our second afternoon there, we had an hour or so in hand and so decided to try and burn some calories by going for a run. Not having a map, we opted to try and run around the golf course, which looked fairly sizable. We found a path which took us straight across it and followed it, looking out for flying golfballs as we ran. It took us to the main road which ran along the far side of the course. The pavement was not very wide, a bit broken and quite crowded, so we decided to run along the fairway, parallel to the road. Bad idea. A security guard came running after us, clapping his hands and motioning us to get off the course. So pavement it was. At this stage we were adopted by a stray dog, about the size of a Dalmatian. She ran with us for the full half hour and only left us when we disappeared back into our hotel. The course is long and narrow - I expect most golf courses are. The area around the bottom was taken up by a hideous hotel with a revolving restaurant on top of a tower - "soos 'n puisie op 'n perd se poephol" as they say in Afrikaans. Also a shopping mall called Garden City, but sans anything even vaguely resembling a garden. We were glad to leave the thronging main road and get back to the Metropole.
We attempted a second run the following day. I had consulted google maps, which was probably a mistake. I was sure there was a road around the top of the course which, if we took it, would spare us the bit past Garden City, dodging motorbikes and four wheel drives. We couldn't find the road so consulted a security guard (every second person in Kampala appears to be a security guard). He told us to turn left here, right there and so on. We ended up in a somewhat dodgy looking area and scrambled our way past shacks, over seriously muddy dirt roads until we found the main road again. Nothing like a bit of cross country. We had had enough, and my colleague's knee was playing up so we called it a day.
On the Tuesday night our hosts took us to dinner at an Indian restaurant. I gather it was north Indian. I think it was called something to do with New Delhi. We sat under a gazebo on a manicured lawn. The air was warm, there was no wind and no rain. I had bought myself and was wearing a very bright, collarless, patterned shirt, which I was assured was "traditional Ugandan" and a likewise traditional floppy brown hat made of "bark cloth" - looks a little like felt but rougher and drier, and is made from the bark of one of their trees - from the shop at the hospital which sells for the HIV infected mothers who bring their kids there. We sat and chatted, sipped our drinks, ate our Dahl and a good many other dishes - I know there was vegetarian, fish, goat (which they call mutton in Kampala, our host told us), and chicken. It was a delightful meal and evening and I thought I could get used to this...
This morning we were up at four to leave at four thirty. We had been advised that traffic to the airport was not something to take lightly, so we gave ourselves a reasonable cushion. Our plane was at 7.25. As it turned out, it was as well that we did. There was no problem with the traffic but the credit card machine at the hotel was giving hassles which took about 15 minutes to sort out. Always something! The drive itself was fairly uneventful - we just stopped once and that was to refill the windscreen washer bottle - the roads were very muddy after the rains. I was told that it has been raining just about every day since May which is very unusual and is confusing the farmers and ruining the cotton crop.
We were at the airport by 5.30. Check in, security and immigration were surprisingly hassle free. We made a brief sortie into the "duty free" to pick up some overpriced Ugandan coffee for my colleague, were declined entrance to the business lounge (one has to be Voyager gold) and finally sat down in the cafeteria just in time to be told to get up and go to the boarding gate. More scans and security checks and finally we were on board. Last minute SMS to herself, cell phone off, doors closed, safety video over and then we were hurtling down the runway. We seems to take forever to get airborne but I expect the pilot knew what she was doing. We rose above the lake and I looked down on an array of huts and beaches and little fishing craft and realized that this was the real Uganda, not the comfortable hotel, fancy restaurants, golf courses and erudite company I had spent three days enjoying.
Now we are cruising somewhere high above Tanzania, I expect. Soon we'll be touching down in Johannesburg and then on to Cape Town. I don't know when exactly I shall be back in Uganda. I would like to return and perhaps take a trip to some of the national parks which seem to be mainly in the West of the country, along the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I would like to bring my family and introduce them to the "Pearl" and to some of the nicest, warmest people I have the privilege of calling my friends. Maybe, one day ...
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