November 12th, 2023
Leaving the
Nile River Explorers Resort, I took a boda boda to the main roundabout at the
north end of Jinja to grab a matatu to go to Mbale (pronounced “bal-eh”), a
small city near the Mount Elgon National Park on the east side of Uganda. From there I would figure out transportation
to get to my final destination of Sipi Falls, a common tourist spot with a one-hundred-meter
waterfall that you could rappel down (or abseil as they like to call it here).
As I now
know to expect, a matatu is almost always jam packed with people, a few more
bodies than any Westerner would expect could fit in the vehicle, and it stops
over and over and over again. Either
people are getting out, people getting on, and/or we’re stopping for a
multitude of vendors selling their food and drink or various other products
from headphones to watches to perfume.
About
halfway to Mbale, we stopped at one spot where a lady was involved in a
struggle with some man on the street.
They were wrestling over a backpack, and it was hard to tell whose it
was. The cash collector from our matatu
jumped out and got involved as did some other older gentleman wearing a
fluorescent orange vest. Our driver
pulled over to the other side of the intersection and continued slowly
forward. Eventually the woman hopped in,
with the backpack, as did the moneyman and we continued on. The woman sat beside me but since the whole
interaction was filled with shouting in the local Luganda language, I didn’t
know what had transpired.
Twenty
minutes later, I was told to exit the matatu and get in another one. I guess my original one wasn’t continuing on
to Mbale. I lucked out and got the front
seat, sitting beside a beautiful young woman.
At one stop, there was another young woman in a flowery dress with
shortish, straightened hair with brown highlights. She smiled at me and then got into the back
of the matatu…I didn’t think much of it, just that I was the only mzungu (white
man) around, so perhaps a bit of a novelty to her.
Half an
hour on, the woman beside me got out and then the woman in the flowery dress
hopped into the front, which now put me in the middle seat beside the driver (a
bit of a downgrade). In a very meek
voice, the woman asked me where I was going and I told her Sipi Falls, which
didn’t seem to register with her. I
politely questioned back where she was headed.
“Wherever you go.” Uh oh, red
flag. I left it at that, and we hardly
spoke for the remainder of the trip to Mbale.
Exiting the
matatu, I was swarmed by 3-4 boda boda drivers asking me where I wanted to
go. The toilet actually! I’ve learned not to drink much water on these
journeys as you don’t know how long they will take and there tends to be no
opportunity to relieve oneself. I also
wanted to get some lunch and some snacks at a grocery store. I talked with one driver, and he said he’d
take me to a restaurant and wait for me.
As I got on the back of the motorcycle, I noticed the woman get on a
boda boda right beside me, stating that she was coming with me. I politely said no, that I wasn’t looking for
company…but she followed me anyways.
We stopped
at a small local restaurant where I asked what the food was behind the glass
counter. It was mandazi, a form of fried
of bread, almost donut-like. I inquired
where the bathroom was. The waitress
escorted me out of the restaurant and down a back alley about 50 meters to the
public toilets which seemed to be non-gender specific as they were individual
stalls with squat toilets. As I exited,
the weird woman came in. I started
walking back with the waitress and caught her up on the situation, that this
woman was following me and that we should hurry. We picked up our pace and I hoped to buy a
couple of mandazis and take off on my boda boda before the woman returned.
Well, I
wasn’t fast enough, the woman appeared as I hopped on my motorcycle taxi. I told her once again that I didn’t want her
to follow me…but she did anyways. I told
my guy, Ronald, to take me to a grocery store.
We cruised about a kilometer down a main road with the woman on our
tail. We passed some small corner
stores, which I figured would do the trick, so I told Ronald to pull a u-turn
and we stopped at a shop.
There was
an old security guard at the entrance with some cubby hole shelves. He told me to put my two backpacks there
before entering the store. As I walked
down an aisle looking for biscuits, who would walk in, yup, the stalker
woman. I grabbed a pack of cookies and
proceeded to the counter to pay. While
the cashier was trying to find change for me, the woman walked up and put a
loaf of bread and something else on the counter. She told the cashier that I was paying for
it. “No I’m not”. “Yes you are”. This went back and forth a few times. I told the cashier lady that this woman was
not with me and that I didn’t know her.
The woman proceeded to grab a black plastic bag which was hanging by the
counter, put her items in it, and walked out of the store. “Stop! Stop!” the cashier yelled. She told the security guard to grab her, but
he was clueless. He must have figured
that she had paid since she had a plastic bag.
A man working in the store ran out and grabbed the woman by the arm and
I heard the word “police” mentioned by someone.
I saw my
opportunity to flee. I jumped on the
motorbike and told Ronald to leave quickly.
We continued down the main road, and it seemed that Ronald wasn’t
familiar with Sipi Falls, which was a bit surprising to me as it was only 50
kilometers away. Three to four minutes
later, I told him to pull into a gas station so I could show him where we were
going on my phone…and not surprisingly, he needed gasoline. It seems that everyone runs on empty in this
country.
While he
put in 10,000 shillings worth of gasoline, about 2 liters, who would pull up
beside us?!? Damn, we should have gone
further or pulled off on a side road.
Once again, the woman stated that she was coming with me. I categorically said that she wasn’t and
looked at her boda boda driver and told him that I was not paying for her. I think he finally clued in on the situation
as they no longer followed us as we left the gas station. Whew, I was glad that that was over.
On the road to Sipi Falls:
The 50-kilometer motorcycle ride was relatively nice. We got rained on for about 5 minutes, but it
wasn’t enough to worry about putting on a rain jacket. Since I had my main backpack (40 litres) on
my back, my butt got super sore. The
last 5-7 kilometers the road climbed up a mountain and the views of the Ugandan
plains were fantastic. Shockingly,
Ronald, who lives in Mbale, had never been to the area. That blew me away.
Starting the climb:
Looking out over the Ugandan plains:
We found my accommodation, Crow’s Nest Lodge, and Ronald asked for
10,000 more shillings due to the hill we had to climb (I was already paying him
40,000 – it’s about 2750 shillings to the Canadian dollar). I told him to meet me at 5,000 and he was
good with that. I met a guy named Simon
and a woman named Emily. Emily checked
me in, and Simon showed me the room. It
had a beautiful view across the valley to the lovely Sipi Falls. The resort was almost empty, with just one
other couple in the room next to me.
It looked like it was going to a be a peaceful few days.
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