Kampala

Today was…intense…and…stressful. We went on a tour of Kampala today. Thankfully, current PCVs were showing us where to go, how to navigate the safety concerns, and just there for us. I already do not like big cities, but Kampala was a whole other beast. I do not have very many pictures, as we were trying not to look like tourists to avoid being targets of crime.

The first thing we did was find where the post office is. Apparently, when the mail runs, you can take the postal bus to your closest town (city… more on this in another blog), literally riding into town with the mail. The upside of this method of travel is that it leaves at a set time and, more or less, arrives at a set time. Unfortunately, it leaves really early in the morning, and for my region, it takes ALL day instead of just most of the day.

Next, we walked down to the taxi park. To fully understand this, you first need to understand what a taxi is in Uganda. In the US, a taxi is a car or van that you and your party pay to take you to a specific place. In Uganda, this is called a private (taxi). Taxis, on the other hand, are mini-busses that go from one stage (stop) to another, in a similar-but-still-different way as busses do in big cities. Here, though, taxis can drive for hours and hours before they get to their destination, or they can just drive around the city you are in. These are the safest and most reliable form of travel for PCVs in Uganda, and so it is crucial we learn how to use them.

So back to the taxi park. Many towns have taxi parks where, literally, taxis drive to and park. So when you go to Kampala, unless you ask to be let off in a different place, you will arrive in the taxi park. This is the best way to pick up a taxi that is not just driving around the city. You can pick them up on the side of the road as well, but you are not guaranteed they will actually go as far as they say they will if you pick them up from the side of the road. In Kampala, there are actually two taxi parks because there are so many taxis going in and out of the city. Imagine a mall-sized parking lot full of taxis and people, and then add about twice the amount of people. That is a taxi park. The bus yard was similar, although there are not as many buses since they are not as common.

We walked from the post office, which is on the main drag through Kampala to the taxi parks, and we also passed through an open-air Sunday market on the way. Our first time in Kampala, and we are shoved into the most stressful part of Kampala within ten minutes of arriving. It was terrifying. It was definitely not comforting when our trainers informed us that Sunday is an exceptionally slow day, and that we could expect to see double or triple the amount of people on other days of the week. Talk about stressful.

In a taxi!

After we went through the taxi parks, we found a taxi up to one of the malls in town and stopped for lunch. We had to go through a metal detector in order to get to the mall, but other than that, it was a very western mall. The mall had wifi, and more importantly, a cell phone store! YAY I HAVE DATA!! Then we walked to a hostel in town that PCVs frequently stay at, and then to the PC office. The office is super cool, and the view was SPECTACULAR. I might even like it more than the view from the training center. Maybe not…

This is the view from the other side of the mall.
The mall is very nice, western even, but just across the street is regular old Uganda.

We got a private from the PC office to another mall in town, which is actually two malls right next to each other. We didn’t really have to go through security for these because our trainers were talking to the guards in Luganda, and they were laughing so hard that they just waved us on. (This is actually fairly common for some reason. I guess we just talk funny.) Here we go frozen yogurt, went to a legit western supermarket, and met a kid named Jerimiah.

Jerimiah’s English is fantastic. You can tell he is well educated. My first instinct when he came up was to ignore him, but one of the PCTs in our group started talking to him, and it was actually very interesting to talk to him. He is an orphan; his father died in a boda boda accident. He just finished the first level of secondary school, but he cannot afford the second level. His view on the world is very interesting. He holds the common view that everything is easy in the US, and he asked us to adopt him. We all knew from the beginning this was likely a scam, but regardless, I am glad we got to talk to Jerimiah. Although we do not know whether his story was true or not, I know there really are orphans out there who have no family to adopt them and cannot afford food, let alone school. It really makes me wonder what I can do in order to help them. When I get to my site, I will remember Jerimiah. I will see if there are orphans in my village that I can help with because it was heart wrenching to hear Jerimiah tell he his dad had died in a boda boda accident, reinforcing the statistic that ten people die on boda bodas EVERY DAY.

After this, we walked to another hostel PCVS like to stay at and caught a taxi home. Overall, it was a long, stressful day, but the second half of the day was much better than the first. 

Kampala

The highest speed limit sign I've seen so far is 70 KPH (~45 MPH).

These are boda boda drivers.
They are incredibly dangerous, and we're not allowed to ride with them!