November 4th, 2023
While back
in Canada before the trip, I did a lot of research and inquiring about Mountain
Gorilla trekking. It is a super expensive
day, companies were quoting $1000-1200 USD, and you only spend about an hour
with the gorillas in their natural habitat, but a once in a lifetime activity…I
figured I had to do it. Seven hundred dollars
of that is for your permit from the government.
A lot of that money goes towards protecting the gorillas and some of it helps
the locals, fair enough. In Rwanda, the
government fees are at least $1200. I
didn’t end up committing to any company while still in Canada and I’m glad that
I didn’t. Turns out that the Uganda
Wildlife Authority, who issues the permits, was a five minute walk from my hostel. A German guy named David who was staying in
my room had gone down to the authority and had paid $720 to get a permit. The extra $20 was for a company to purchase
it on his behalf.
I ventured
down to the Wildlife Authority and after signing in at the sentry gate, I headed
up to the reservations office. There I
spoke to a very friendly and informative lady named Josephine. She told me that I was too close to the 1 pm Saturday
closing time but she answered a bunch of my questions and advised me to return
on Monday to get my permit. Perfect.
I returned to Acacia Mall in the late morning to buy a few things, like a baseball cap. After a bit of lunch at a shawarma place, across the road from the mall, I haggled for a ride to the Kabaka Palace for 6000 Uganda shillings, about two and a half Canadian dollars. This would be my first experience on a “boda boda”, a motorcycle taxi. I had read that it was wise to find a guy who had a hi-visibility vest that showed that he abided by, at least to some extent, regulations of how to drive safely as he was part of some association. I think you are rolling the dice no matter what on these roads, but hey, might as well try and improve your odds.
The palace
was about 5 km away and my driver seemed quite safe. Perhaps it’s from spending a lot of time in
India but the chaotic, yet fluid movement of motorbikes and cars on roads here doesn’t
seem alarming. Somehow it works…and I survived
my first boda boda ride!
The Kabaka
Palace is where many past kings of Uganda have resided, in fact “Kabaka” is the
title of the king of the Kingdom of Buganda which is the largest of the
traditional kingdoms in present day East Africa. The proper name of the royal compound is
Lubiri but I didn’t know this until writing up this blog entry, it wasn’t
mentioned on my tour.
The
building is rather modest and was built around the 1920s. Unfortunately on the tour, we weren’t able to
enter the palace. I asked my tour guide,
who was named Elvis (yes, named after that “king”), whether he had been inside
and he said no, hardly anyone has entered it.
The current king resides elsewhere in Kampala.
The palace:
And now the palace with my guide Elvis:
An interesting
fact that Elvis told me about the succession of the crown for the Kingdom of
Buganda is that it is not the first-born son of the king who is next in line
for the throne, it is in fact the second born son. The first-born acts as an advisor to his
younger brother. And should there be no
second son, then the crown may move over to the brother of the king.
A past king's wheels...in need of some TLC.
When Idi Amin
took over the country in 1971, he soon turned the compound of 200+ acres into
military barracks and an armoury. Later,
the subterranean concrete shelter was turned into a torture chamber for thousands
of political foes and certain ethnic groups which included religious leaders,
journalists, artists, senior bureaucrats, judges, intellectuals and foreign nationals. The armoury had three chambers where prisoners
were placed and the entrance to these concrete rooms was flooded with water
which could be electrified. This
prevented them from escaping, but was also one of the principle torture
methods. Elvis mentioned that not many
captives survived more than 3 days in those cells as they were given no water,
no food, there were no toilet facilities and they often slowly asphyxiated due
to lack of air flow…yikes.
The remnants of a gun that was used by Idi Amin's troops:
At the end
of the tour Elvis showed me into a small hut that was adorned with many
paintings on a canvas made of the bark of a fig tree. They would peel off the bark and then pound
it with a mallet for 5-7 hours to make it very supple. The fabric used to be sewn into clothing in
the past. Elvis had painted some of the
portraits, primarily of colorfully dressed women, and asked me if I was
interested in purchasing one. Being day
2 of a three month trip where I’m travelling light, I politely declined but gave
him a good tip for the tour.
Elvis had
told me earlier in the tour that the mile long rode descended the hill from the
entrance of the palace, only to rise up another, smaller hill to the Buganda Parliament
buildings. There was a prominent roundabout
at the dip of the road which sported a couple of large columns with a gap between
them. When the king headed to
parliament, he would just pass through the two columns in a straight line from
his palace to the house of government…nobody else was allowed to do this.
I walked
down to the roundabout to check it out and then grabbed another boda boda to
head back to Acacia Mall to buy a few things before heading back to the hostel. En route, I did a quick stop at the Kampala
Golf Course as I was considering playing there the following day so I inquired
about fees, renting clubs etc.
Not a bad first day in Kampala.
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