I would like, if I may, to take you on a journey across Uganda. I went traveling this past weekend, and had a fantastic time, though I had to wrestle through a hundred of the small frustrations that traveling in Uganda entails. This post will be a therapeutic way of trying to look fondly upon those frustrations as classic African time: it drags us out of our preoccupation with the future and into the present moment, to fight it is a struggle the mzungu will never win.
My journey to Mbale started in the Iganga taxi park, at the sign marked “Mbale” where taxis to Mbale do, occasionally, depart. “Mbale?” I inquired of one of the conductors. “No, madame, you must go to the road.” Rather than being frustrated, I was heartened, because picking up a taxi from the road assures you that the taxi will be full and en route, rather than sitting lazily half empty for hours as children poke you through the open window and repeat “Some money. Some money. Please, some money.”
When I reached the road, several Ugandan men fell all over each other to find me a ride. “Madame, I will get you a taxi to Mbale! Just wait here!” Sure enough, within about 10 minutes, a taxi, stuffed to the gills with traveling Ugandans, pulled over and I was wedged into place at the end of a row of seats. “Madame! Here, you sit! Banange, a mzungu, let her sit! Let her sit!” Was this, in fact, a taxi to Mbale? No, but unless you are learned in the ways of Ugandan travel, you will not expect to question that the taxi you embark upon, in which everyone inside and out is crying “yes, Mbale! You sit!” is actually going to that place.
We traveled for a while, and then we stopped in a random town, and I was told to get off. It was not Mbale, not even close. “Mbale!” The conductor shouted. “You sit here.” I was put on another taxi, this one nearly empty, which gave me a sense of foreboding. When the engine started, we immediately veered off the highway and into an alleyway between two roadside shops. The taxi pulled into a schoolyard and drove across the grass, passing over stone paths indiscriminately and between crowds of children. “Where are we going?” I asked, nervously gripping the door. “We are collecting,” said the driver opaquely. We pulled up beside the school, where some sort of event was just finishing. The taxi was slowly loaded with amps and other sound equipment until the back seats filled. This took something like 40 minutes, during which a crowd of schoolchildren pointed and laughed at me, and dared each other to touch me. Every few minutes, one little girl would grab the other and try to pick her up and forcibly drive her towards me so that she might accidentally touch me, at which point the little girl would scream, and maybe if she got pushed far enough, start crying and run away.
Finally, we were loaded and zigzagged back to the highway and in the direction of Mbale, though we continued to “collect” by stopping every few minutes to try to urge more passengers aboard. I asked a well dressed man the best way to get to Sipi Falls, explaining that I had never been there before. The man gallantly hailed me a boda (motorcycle taxi). “Sipi Falls, do you know the place?” I asked the man several times. “Yes, I know it,” he assured me, smiling, and because the well dressed man looked like he would be otherwise offended, I climbed aboard, ignoring the boda man standing next to me who said “he doesn’t know the place. No, he doesn’t know it.” This motorcycle took me around the corner, and then stopped in front of a van. “You sit here,” he said. “Sipi Falls.” He then demanded a large sum as payment for transport. At this point I had had enough. “Sir, you have cheated me!” I yelled. “I could have walked that distance in one minute. You lied to me!” He obstinately stuck his hand in my face, saying “the money, madame.” I handed him a coin, shouting “even this is too much!” and the rest of the van broke out in giggles. “how far did he take you and how much did he want?” All the van passengers were intrigued. Finally, I was headed for my destination. Though I was crushed in a backseat with only a percentage of my thigh on a seat cushion, I still spent the drive relishing the idea of a day off.
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