Another thing I had nearly forgotten about the Rwanda years is the drive to Kampala. I drove that road five or six times in my two years (I also flew a couple of times). At the beginning, I always made the trip with my colleague D., but by the end I drove it alone or with a few friends.
The drive from Kigali to the border with Uganda is all tight curves through green mountains, like most driving in Rwanda. The road runs along a valley, and the hills rising in front are round and full. Uganda begins the same way - the southwestern corner of Uganda is all rugged deep-green mountains blending into the volcanoes it shares with Rwanda and Congo. The mountains ease into rolling pale green hills studded with cattle, and then flatten to dry plains covered in thorn trees, with long, flat, empty roads where you can open up and see how fast a Prado really will go. And then, before Masaka, the bulrushes creep closer and closer to the road as things get wet again near Lake Victoria.
Don't ask me about the Masaka - Kampala section of the road. It's all a blur at the end of a long day of driving. When I drove up with S. and E., in the left-hand drive Prado on the left-hand side of the road, having driven all day, I got snappy by the end. Driving that road is difficult, especially when your driver's seat is over by the curb and you can't see how far your bumper extends on the side where passing vehicles are cutting too close. In Rwanda, a drive to and from Kigali was not complete unless you thought you were going to die at least once. The drive to Kampala is far worse. The tar road in Uganda is crumbling at the edge, making it too narrow for cars to pass one another in some places, and you share it with enormous vehicles: buses and lorries overloaded with people and goods. These big vehicles stay in the middle of the road. They do not give way for anyone. The only thing you can do is keep your eyes on the edge of the road and stay as far off the edge as possible without losing control in the crumble. If you dare look at that huge intercountry bus, or that lorry piled high with sacks of grain, passing three inches from your inner bumper, you will lose your sh1t.
I mean that literally.
The towns in Southern Uganda are short rows of colorful shops set back a dusty span from the road. They would flash past, except that each town has huge speed bumps before and after, and a few in the center of town for good measure. Humps, they call them, and if you drive with a Kenyan friend or colleague, you will hear the joke that they call them "sleeping policemen" in Kenya. (You will possibly hear this joke multiple times, depending on the particular colleague.) The humps in Uganda are gargantuan. Not even the largest of lorries can take them at full speed. Little cars inch over them as if up and over a hill.
My colleague D. had particular stopping points in each major town: the hotel up on the hill in Kabale if you are already tired enough to need chai after two hours of driving plus the border crossing, the hotel next to the lake in Mbarara when you are desperate for lunch, the rest area at the turn in Masaka for some samosas midafternoon. He knew people at each of them, and every stop was prolonged while he greeted them. He would talk, and I would wander off to look at the view, or to watch the music videos on the tv, or, in Masaka, to carefully hold up the legs of my trousers while I used the porcelain squatty-potties.
On my own, I rebelled, and I stopped in a tiny town in the middle of hours of nothing to buy a Ugandan sim card (to get a Ugandan phone number) for my mobile. The man behind the counter in the tiny green (I think it was green) shop looked up at me, the unexpected white girl, in surprise.
"I could live here," I would think, every time I drove through the light green hills. "Maybe I could buy some land, and some cows, and run a little school. I want to move here, and own a house."
Several police officers flagged me down on an unpopulated stretch of road. "Where are you going alone?" the nearest one asked, from under his helmet. "And why?" They ignored the sheets of paper I had painstakingly procured from multiple offices on each side of the border, permission to take the Prado out of one country and into another. "Why must you go alone? A woman, driving alone? It's good that you drive, you a woman, but not that you go alone."
I smiled, and drove on.
The drive from Kigali to the border with Uganda is all tight curves through green mountains, like most driving in Rwanda. The road runs along a valley, and the hills rising in front are round and full. Uganda begins the same way - the southwestern corner of Uganda is all rugged deep-green mountains blending into the volcanoes it shares with Rwanda and Congo. The mountains ease into rolling pale green hills studded with cattle, and then flatten to dry plains covered in thorn trees, with long, flat, empty roads where you can open up and see how fast a Prado really will go. And then, before Masaka, the bulrushes creep closer and closer to the road as things get wet again near Lake Victoria.
Don't ask me about the Masaka - Kampala section of the road. It's all a blur at the end of a long day of driving. When I drove up with S. and E., in the left-hand drive Prado on the left-hand side of the road, having driven all day, I got snappy by the end. Driving that road is difficult, especially when your driver's seat is over by the curb and you can't see how far your bumper extends on the side where passing vehicles are cutting too close. In Rwanda, a drive to and from Kigali was not complete unless you thought you were going to die at least once. The drive to Kampala is far worse. The tar road in Uganda is crumbling at the edge, making it too narrow for cars to pass one another in some places, and you share it with enormous vehicles: buses and lorries overloaded with people and goods. These big vehicles stay in the middle of the road. They do not give way for anyone. The only thing you can do is keep your eyes on the edge of the road and stay as far off the edge as possible without losing control in the crumble. If you dare look at that huge intercountry bus, or that lorry piled high with sacks of grain, passing three inches from your inner bumper, you will lose your sh1t.
I mean that literally.
The towns in Southern Uganda are short rows of colorful shops set back a dusty span from the road. They would flash past, except that each town has huge speed bumps before and after, and a few in the center of town for good measure. Humps, they call them, and if you drive with a Kenyan friend or colleague, you will hear the joke that they call them "sleeping policemen" in Kenya. (You will possibly hear this joke multiple times, depending on the particular colleague.) The humps in Uganda are gargantuan. Not even the largest of lorries can take them at full speed. Little cars inch over them as if up and over a hill.
My colleague D. had particular stopping points in each major town: the hotel up on the hill in Kabale if you are already tired enough to need chai after two hours of driving plus the border crossing, the hotel next to the lake in Mbarara when you are desperate for lunch, the rest area at the turn in Masaka for some samosas midafternoon. He knew people at each of them, and every stop was prolonged while he greeted them. He would talk, and I would wander off to look at the view, or to watch the music videos on the tv, or, in Masaka, to carefully hold up the legs of my trousers while I used the porcelain squatty-potties.
On my own, I rebelled, and I stopped in a tiny town in the middle of hours of nothing to buy a Ugandan sim card (to get a Ugandan phone number) for my mobile. The man behind the counter in the tiny green (I think it was green) shop looked up at me, the unexpected white girl, in surprise.
"I could live here," I would think, every time I drove through the light green hills. "Maybe I could buy some land, and some cows, and run a little school. I want to move here, and own a house."
Several police officers flagged me down on an unpopulated stretch of road. "Where are you going alone?" the nearest one asked, from under his helmet. "And why?" They ignored the sheets of paper I had painstakingly procured from multiple offices on each side of the border, permission to take the Prado out of one country and into another. "Why must you go alone? A woman, driving alone? It's good that you drive, you a woman, but not that you go alone."
I smiled, and drove on.
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