November 2nd-3rd, 2023
The night
before I was about to fly to Africa, I received an email stating that my scheduled
train for the morning was cancelled to do Storm Ciaran, which was coming in from
the southwest, bringing almost hurricane strength winds. I checked what my other travel options were
and it looked like a National Express bus at 9 am was my best bet. This would get me to the airport around 2 pm
and my flight wasn’t until 8 pm, but better early than late.
I woke up
at 7 am and booked my bus ticket online. Just before leaving Auntie Shirley’s house, I
double checked my ticket in my email inbox and it was for the following
morning, not today. Shit, did I mess up
the reservation? It was 8:40, so we
started driving to downtown Weymouth as I tried to rebook another bus ticket on
my phone. I received a new email and the
ticket was once again for the next day.
Oh dear. I figured I’d sort it
out with the bus driver.
The sky was
filled with dark, low clouds and it was a bit windy, but if you didn’t know
some big storm was imminent, you wouldn’t have thought that this was any
different than a typical rainy fall day in southern England. Auntie Shirley and I hung out under the bus
shelter as the time ticked past 9 am and there was no sign of a bus. Shirley questioned whether it would actually
arrive, so I quickly checked the train departures. Many trains were cancelled, but there was one
leaving for Bournemouth at 9:20. That
would get me about a third of the way to Heathrow.
I bid
Auntie Shirley farewell and hopped on the slightly delayed train. All trains were constrained by a slower speed
limit than usual due to the inclement weather but I arrived in Bournemouth shortly
after 10 am. As I walked along the
platform, I heard announcements stating that all trains headed to London were cancelled…damn. I went to the ticket counter and asked the
guy what my options were, and he fully refunded my train ticket, all 70 pounds. Nice!
I got a free train ride to Bournemouth.
Luckily, he also mentioned that the National Express bus terminal was
across the road, so I headed over there.
After explaining my purchases of two bus tickets a few hours earlier and
that the bus never arrived, a couple of very helpful employees helped me get on
the next bus, leaving 10 minutes later for only a cost of 5 pounds more, so at
least one of my tickets wasn’t wasted.
It looked
like I was going to arrive at Heathrow around 12:30, plenty early for my 8:10
pm flight. But that would not quite be
the case. As we arrived at the station
in Southampton, the bus driver told us that everyone would have to get off the
bus. The passenger side windshield wiper
was not working and with the rain and the wind, he could not properly see his
side view mirror which was considered dangerous. We waited for close to half an hour before a
new bus arrived. All the luggage was
loaded onto it as we boarded. Ten
minutes later, we were told that there was some issue with this bus and we had
to disembark once again. I could see
that mild panic was setting in with some passengers as they must have had
earlier flights than mine. There was
talk by the bus company’s staff that perhaps we would be loaded onto taxis to
get to the airport but after another half hour, the next bus from Bournemouth
arrived and it was about half full. I’m not
sure if everyone got on board from my original bus, but I did. We finally arrived at Heathrow, a trip that
normally takes about 3 hours took 6…I’m so glad that I left early!
It was a six
hour overnight flight to Doha, a four hour layover there and then it was going
to be another five and a half hours to Entebbe, a small city just south of Uganda’s
capital Kampala. I flew with Qatar Airlines
and felt like I was transported back to commercial flying of thirty plus years
ago, not in the quality of the plane, but the quality of the service. The flight attendants were super friendly and
helpful. There was no buying of meals,
buying of alcohol…and they were very generous with the alcohol as I’m sure that
my gin and tonic was at least a double, if not a bit more! Beside me was a 60 something year old
Malaysian woman with her British husband, en route to Malaysia and Australia to
visit family for a few months. She was very
friendly and even though we didn’t talk too much, she was a nice person to sit
beside on a long flight (this is foreshadowing for the next leg of my journey).
I’ve had a
layover in Doha before and it is quite the airport, which is still
expanding. It’s very modern, huge and is
fantastic for people watching. It’s chock
full of super fancy stores for the rich Middle Eastern clientele. Even with the help of moving sidewalks, it
took over twenty minutes to get near my gate.
I noticed a “Quiet Room” for men, next to it was one for women. I went in to lie down on a chaise longue to
see if I get catch a nap. With earplugs
in and sunglasses on, I started to doze off until three Chinese guys, a dad and
his twenty something year old sons, started talking. The dad was standing in front of his sons who
were reclining on the chairs. I figured
it would last for a couple of minutes but it went on for half an hour! I gave them glares, put my finger to my mouth
and shushed them but that didn’t work either.
Eventually I moved to another area as they just seemed clueless as to
what “Quiet Room” meant.
This statue in the airport was part of a kids' playground.
As I
boarded my 9:45 am flight, I was hoping to be seated next to a local Ugandan to
be able to learn a bit about their country, plus they just seem like such happy
people in general. During the boarding
process there were numerous outbursts of laughter and chit chat between
seemingly strangers. I had a window seat
and as I approached my row, my heart sunk.
There were two unfriendly looking Chinese men who looked like they were members
of a mafia gang like the Triads. I pointed
to my seat and instead of getting up to allow me in, they both slightly angled
their legs causing me to have a bit of difficulty getting past them. I smiled and said hi but that was not reciprocated.
Before
taking off, the guy besides me had already commandeered the armrest, which I
was okay with as I believe that is the privilege of the middle seat, but then just
before takeoff, he put down his tray table, reclined his seat and proceeded to
fall asleep. One flight attendant came
by, woke him up and told him to put up his tray. He didn’t seem to speak English but eventually
he understood and begrudgingly put it up.
Five minutes later, the same scenario played out with another attendant instructing
him to put his seat upright. Needless to
say, he looked a bit perturbed by it all.
Numerous times during the flight his elbow protruded past the armrest and
into my arm. He also turned towards me
to fall asleep so his face was less than a foot from mine and his knees even
invaded my space. He did not seem to care
that they were pressing hard against my legs…not a good airplane neighbor to
have that’s for sure! Oh well, this is
part of the “adventure” of travelling.
As we
landed in Entebbe, there was a loud cheer for joy by many of the Africans and
some were praising God. I guess it was a
big deal to them that we were safely on the ground. A woman across the aisle from me broke out
into song…I couldn’t help but smile.
After proceeding
through customs and getting my bag, I ordered a taxi for the 50 minute drive
into Kampala. It was sunny and in the
mid 20s, certainly didn’t seem like the rainy season I had expected. The highway was nice and smooth, the landscape
was lush and I got a few glimpses of Lake Victoria, the biggest lake in Africa. My driver had a bit of trouble finding my
hostel called Nyumba 591 (I have since learned that “nyumba” means “hello” in
Swahili) but we eventually found it. My
phone’s GPS seemed to be working better than his. I knew from my research that it was located
by Acacia Shopping Mall and up a bit of a hill.
About 50 meters before we reached it, the pavement turned into a hard,
red mud lane with shanty like abodes on the left side with kids playing, women
doing washing in buckets and men just sitting around. Hmm…not quite what I expected from the
pictures I had seen online of the hostel…but I was glad I had seen the pictures
as that was how I recognized the place from the painting on the metal gates, as
addresses on buildings are far and few between.
I was greeted
by one of the managers of the place, Richard, who was soft spoken and not
unfriendly, but not terribly inviting either.
He made my bed in a room with two wooden framed bunkbeds. Someone was occupying the other bottom bunk
and Richard mentioned that he was a long term guest. Turns out it was an Indian man of my age
named Dass who works at a nearby hotel that owns this hostel. The poor guy works 6 days a week, 12 hours a
day, to earn $1000 USD a month, most of which he sends back to his family in
India. Many Westerners don’t realize how
good we have it.
After an hour of settling in, I headed down to Acacia Mall to find some food for dinner and get a bit of a lay of the land. Now I’ve spent a lot of time in India, but it was still a bit of a shock about the hazards of being a pedestrian in this city. I took cues from a few other locals that you just have to pick an opening in the almost continuous stream of motorbikes and cars, walk at a predictable pace, and the motorists will wind around you. I tried in vain to find an Irish pub I had seen online which was supposed to be past the mall. I decided to backtrack to the mall and see what I could find for a restaurant there. It was a busy road with two lanes in each direction and a median. I thought my pedestrian skills were working well until I was almost hit by some motorbikes who were going the wrong way on the other side of the median! Oh, and I didn’t mention that they drive on the left side of the road, a hangover from being a British colony. Keep your head on a swivel Dave… I found some food and returned to the hostel for an early night...36 hours of travelling is a wee bit tiring.
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