Adventures in Uganda

This month I had two weeks of vacation from teaching, as the school operates on a trimester system with breaks in April, July and the long break (the US equivalent of summer holiday) from November to early January. After attending the memorial on April 7th, my housemate Mary and I set off to spend a week in Uganda, visiting its capital city, Kampala, the so called “adventure capital” of East Africa, Jinja, and quaint Entebbe, nestled on the shores of Lake Victoria. Let me preface the trip by stating that, while we were very excited to go rafting on Nile, check-out the night life in Kampala, and hopefully meet some lively internationals and ex-pats along the way, the thing we looked forward to most about our trip to Uganda was the food. We were informed by some of our Ugandan-born colleagues that Kampala was known for its selection of tasty ethnic restaurants, and so in the weeks leading up to our trip, we poured over our Lonely Planet East Africa travel book, mouths-watering, in search of the best restaurants in town. Although Kigali has an excellent coffee shop, a few small Chinese restaurants, and some larger establishments serving continental fare (with prices to suit the diplomats and foreign investors they cater to), most of what I eat for lunch and dinner each day living at school in Nyamata is some combination of white rice, brown beans and a leafy-green and carrot vegetable sauce. The food at Maranyundo is by no means bad, but variety doesn’t generally come into play when it comes to meals. Having said that, you may find that a significant portion of my description that follows is devoted to my delight at visiting a place with LOTS of options for eating out.

The ten hour bus ride to Kampala was an experience in itself. Unlike the minibuses that shuttle between Nyamata and Kigali and cram five people in a row meant for three, the Onatracom bus that we took to Kampala was the size of an ordinary bus, with perhaps 30 or so rows and space below the cabin to store large luggage, as you would find on a Greyhound bus in the U.S. However while there was an aisle down the middle of the bus, seats were arranged in rows of two people on one side and three on another, which meant that for Mary and I, sandwiched between the window and a stranger in a three-seated configuration, it was just about as comfortable as the Sotra minibuses we take to get into Kigali. In any case, the prospect of us abashumba - village girls - finally making our break to the big city of Kampala, where Indian restaurants, a movie theatre and gelato awaited, was enough to keep our spirits up for the duration of the ride. When we arrived at the border about two hours into the drive, we sensed an immediate difference in the road structure and a gradual difference in landscape. As Uganda was a former British colony, our bus moved to the LEFT side of the road after crossing the border and the road itself also became much bumpier. In Rwanda, most of the major routes that buses take between main cities are fully paved…although some are potentially more dangerous, because they are so windy along its many steep hillsides. Uganda geographically gets much flatter as you move north and very few roads are fully paved; most are quite rocky with frequent potholes. We noticed that the countryside was also much less densely populated with people, homes and villages – Rwanda, where people live seemingly everywhere, is almost three times as dense per square kilometer. It was a pleasant surprise to find that all of the signs in Uganda were in English (because it is home to so many different tribal languages, English is the common denominator) and even more pleasant to learn that eating outside or on the bus was not taboo but quite common! We indulged in this new freedom to eat in public without breaking a social more as we passed through villages where locals sold piping hot chapatti, grilled meat on a spear, sugar cane, ripe bananas, Pepsi, Fanta and biscuits right to our bus window.

Upon arrival in Kampala Wednesday evening, we dropped our packs at our hostel, hopped on a boda-boda (a motorbike which, in Uganda, fits up to two behind the driver) and headed downtown to begin our culinary quest. Since Indian Khazana, a Kigali legend, had shut down just before my arrival in January, both Mary and I were seriously craving some butter nan, chicken tikka masala and samosas. Kampala is renowned for its variety of excellent Indian restaurants and we decided to try the Lonely Planet editor’s choice, which was also a recommendation of ex-pats we had met earlier that day. At Haandi, a swanky North Indian establishment, we feasted on butter and cheese nan, two chicken dishes, palak paneer and even Diet Coke, which hasn’t made it to Rwanda. The aroma and ambiance was exactly what we sought after our lengthy trek across central Africa. We planned our activities for the week ahead (most of which, in Kampala, revolved around eating out) and reveled in being on vacation in a place that offered so many choices that fit our volunteer budget.

The next morning we caught a 25 cent matatu (public minibus) into town from our hostel. About ten minutes into the ride to downtown, we had a veritable test of urban navigation skills after our packed matatu bounded into a giant pothole, sprung a flat tire and forced all 20 of us onto the street. Since it was our first time in Kampala in the daylight, we weren’t quite sure where we were headed, but followed our instincts and eventually made our way through the masses of people and vendors milling about the capital’s dirty, congested streets to the center. It was also there that our lunch excursion would begin. We never eat chicken at home in Rwanda, and as such, fully embraced every opportunity we had to order it in our new “favourite” city. We savored every bite of our spiced chicken wraps at Nando’s, an excellent Mozambican chicken spot that has recently spread to the US via DC. Although the side of chips were standard fare, and we were a bit disappointed in the lack of adequate ketchup (a thin, sweetened tomato sauce was the closest equivalent), we didn’t have to go far to order dessert. The delicious simplicity of chocolate vanilla swirl at a soft serve ice cream shop located the same block caught our eyes and sustained our taste buds. From there, we headed up the hill past a verdant urban park and Parliament to Garden City Center, an indoor shopping mall that housed a big screen movie theatre. The fact that we had our choice of four mediocre films that debuted in the US several months ago was of no consequence – we picked the one we presumed most action packed and hustled into an empty theatre. The movie we saw, The International, was a crime thriller set in various high profile global banking capitals. Despite the lackluster plot and the second line of all subtitles being projected too low to read, we had fun relaxing in a movie theatre that was ten times bigger and more permanent than the white sheet and projector set up in our living room in Nyamata. After the movie, we perused the shops of the mall, did some people watching, and really began to feeling displaced in time, like pre-teens again on any given Saturday in the USA. Once we felt our fair share of developed world nostalgia, we made our way over to Mamma Mia at the Speke Hotel, where we could choose from lasagna, ravioli, pizza and dozens of types of pasta/sauce combinations according to our culinary curiosity for the evening. I relished in every bite of my beef cannelloni plus dry white wine (a pairing faux-pas, I am aware), followed by a dish of pistachio, stracciatella and hazelnut gelato to lend a happy ending to a fantastically indulgent day.

The next morning we boarded the bus for Jinja, the town about 1.5 hours from Kampala where Lake Victoria meets the Nile River and the rapids are notoriously wild. Jinja is home to several white water rafting companies with excellent reputations, but when it came down to deciding, I was sold on one in particular after I read the following advertisement: “By Appointment to Her Majesty the Queen of England, Prince William is one of a number of royals who chose to raft with us. Adrift : unparalleled safety and excitement.” If gorgeous Prince William rafted with Adrift, then what was stopping me? I had been rafting in the U.S. a few times before, but had never traversed Class 5 rapids or experienced the force of the Nile. As luck would have it, we picked a lovely, sunny day to set out on our planned adventure. Once we were loaded into our 8 man raft and starting on our way down the Nile, I knew for sure that Prince William had used that very same paddle that I held in my hands (intuition is one of my many unexplainable talents).

Our boat of Americano British Canadians formed a motley crew of energized…terrified …exhilarated individuals determined to conquer the eleven major rapids of our course. We appreciated the calm flow of the Nile between bouts of enormous rapids at which we paddled strong through some parts and ducked all in at others. We were all thrown out of the boat on the third major rapid, which was a thrill and reality check that made us wiser for the ones that followed. When we weren’t in white water, we talked about life in Africa, shared jokes, swam alongside our raft, wrestled crocodiles with our bare hands….you get the picture. Although the day started out hot and sunny, at around 4PM - an hour or so from our final destination - Mother Nature turned against us with a vengeance in the form of a large scale thunderstorm. This was no ordinary storm, but one which progressed from a bit of rain and thunder to high speed winds, heavy downpour and eventually pelting hailstones that pushed us back from our destination in spite of our fervent paddling, and for moments even forced us to duck and cover inside the raft. What felt like the second coming lasted in reality a good 45 minutes, making everyone question why we chose to go rafting during the RAINY season. Somehow, we made it to the end of the course (alive), relieved to find warm towels, Nile Special beer and barbeque skewers greeting us at the finish line. It was by far the most exciting maritime adventure of my life.

But in fact, the adventure was just beginning. On the bus ride back to the Adrift base camp, still high off of adrenaline from finishing the course in such dire elements, Mary and I decided that we would make the most of our visit to Jinja and the Nile…by going bungee jumping over the river! Neither of us had been before, but it was precisely the kind of challenge we felt up for in light of our near-death experience rafting (perhaps a bit of an exaggeration). Although Mary deliberated a bit before deciding to go through with the jump, once I had made up my mind, there was no turning back. I felt courageous and eager as I signed my waiver form, watched new friends take their turns from the deck-side viewing spot, and even as I climbed the hundreds of stairs to the top of the tower. It was only seconds before the jump itself, when I shuffled up to the ledge and took a long, hard gander at the open expanse before me that I became totally freaked. I was standing 145 feet above the Nile, about to willingly throw myself off a ledge, with nothing but a series of thick ropes and bungee cord strapped to my ankles. It was then that I knew I had gone mad. But a part of me also knew that I would always regret it if I chickened out. When the instructor called, “3, 2, 1, bungee!” I braced myself, blocked out every inhibition in my body and JUMPED!

I’m not sure what I was expecting, but the free fall and subsequent dunk into the river was actually really scary! After I plunged into the water, I bounced back up and was flung around several times before I gained a sense of where I was in the world. Then I realized that I had survived my first bungee jump. That was enough to keep me smiling all night long, and even now I can’t help but laugh and grin a little every time I think back on that moment.

I awoke to the sounds of scattering steps across the roof of our sleeping quarters the next morning, and later discovered that it was some of the playful vervet monkeys who run around the grounds of the base camp in the early mornings and afternoons, when most people staying there are either sleeping or gone for the day. Seeing wild monkeys up close and as they exist in their natural habitat was a treat that I witnessed in Jinja and on my visit to the lush, verdant botanical gardens of Entebbe. The gardens boasted some excellent varieties of flora and fauna like mahogany and mango trees, sugar cane plants and bamboo shoots, but the most exciting part of the gardens was entering the dense, overgrown forest in which, according to our guide, the original Tarzan movie was filmed.

Lovely Entebbe, located south of Kampala along Lake Victoria, is also home to a large international airport which was the setting of a notorious plane hijack in 1976. At the height of Idi Amin’s reign of terror in Uganda, Palestinian and German terrorists hijacked Air France Flight 139 out of Tel Aviv, Israel, forced the landing at Entebbe and took all Israeli passengers hostage in order to blackmail the Israeli government. Despite Amin’s clandestine cooperation with the terrorists and the Palestinian cause, Israel, Germany and Kenya were able to stage a joint operation within a week of the hijacking in which the hostages were returned to safety, save for one unexplained casualty. This event has been the subject of multiple films, and also comes into play at the end of The Last King of Scotland, an excellent movie that portrays the madness and corruption inherent to Uganda’s most infamous dictator, Idi Amin.

Returning to Kampala after a weekend of adventure was enough to ready our appetites for some more culinary escapades. In Jinja, Mary and I had made friends with two American med students who were completing internships in Kampala that semester. While they had many great recommendations for places to eat in town, we learned that the best Chinese restaurant was a place called Fang Fang, which we quickly designated as the venue of our celebratory Easter Sunday dinner feast. The menu was extensive, and we exhausted it to the best of our ability by ordering miso soup, vegetable spring rolls, pork dumplings and sweet white wine, to start. Although wine is available in Rwanda, it is very expensive and quite rare – so in Uganda I seized every available opportunity to order this choice beverage. Next, I ordered sweet and sour fish, garnished with pineapple and red peppers, coupled with a heaping side of ginger rice. I wince a little every time I think of how delicious that rice tasted, especially when compared to the starchy white rice we eat on a daily basis at Maranyundo. Mary ordered sticky rice and cashew chicken – also fantastically delicious and impeccably presented. Mary spent a year living in China, and she said that this was some of the best Chinese food she had ever had! I easily concurred. Despite our best efforts, there was no way we could finish all of the food that we ordered. But we did save room for dessert. We selected what sounded like a Chinese-Ugandan fusion: fried balls of banana with vanilla ice cream. That, we finished in its entirety…which resulted in yet another boda-boda ride home in which our driver reprimanded us on how collectively fat we were, bounding through pothole after pothole of Kampala’s weathered streets.

We spent our last day in Uganda shopping around Kampala’s handmade craft stands, visiting the giant grocery store (which sold more than one variety of tea, more than two varieties of chocolate and more biscuits than you can ever imagine), and much of the afternoon relaxing in the garden seating of the Italian restaurant we had visited earlier in the week, sipping iced tea and eventually trying new flavors of gelato. We met up with our med student friends for dinner that evening at the Masala Chaat House, a small, inexpensive Indian eatery across from the National Theatre. It seemed as though our trip really came full circle, starting and ending with Indian food. We ordered different things at this place, of course – I tried the chapatti, samosas, vegetable korma and African tea - but we were just as content with the service and quality of food there as at the more pricey Haandi. The upstairs dining rooms filled with huge tables of Indian families reinforced our decision to spend our last night in Uganda at this understated gem.

Needless to say, Mary and I were a little sad to see an end to our week of indulgence in Uganda. We knew we would miss the variety in restaurants, generally lower prices (and more favorable exchange rate), existence of ATMs, and ease of communication due to the prevalence of English. But there were also many things about Rwanda that we valued in comparison: gorgeous landscapes, paved roads, safer and officially regulated moto rides (which – unlike Uganda - mandated helmets), cleaner streets, wonderfully friendly people and the challenge of working in a country that is becoming Anglophone. Although Kampala made Uganda seem much more developed, the two countries are rather comparable when it comes to the UN Human Development Index: Uganda ranks 156 and Rwanda ranks 165 out of 179 countries. In traversing Uganda we came across many houses, schools and other establishments that looked like they had been partially demolished decades ago, perhaps during the Amin years or the country’s civil wars in the 1980s, and totally abandoned since then.

On the flip side, both Uganda and Rwanda have made great strides in improving the health and welfare of its citizens, especially in combating the HIV/AIDS epidemic, with current infection rates around 3-5% in both countries, down from 15-20% at its height in the mid-nineties. Particularly in Kampala, the city and supporting groups (USAID included) have made nutrition and safe health practices a priority via advertising campaigns and paintings on schools that encourage children to eat yogurt and drink milk for strong bones, for example. Another relevant billboard shows a picture of a man in his fifties juxtaposed next to a teenage girl, asking, “Would you let your daughter date this man? …Then don’t be that person yourself.” In many regions of Africa, cross-generational relations are commonplace and a serious problem; this is one issue that Uganda’s government has been particularly adamant in fighting.



FYI this is a video of someone else on the bungee - but I did complete the very same jump!