Day 1 in Uganda: By the roadside in Kampala with a dead chicken

For the long weekend of Eid, I decided to visit my friend Victoria in Uganda. I arrived from Nairobi on Thursday evening: Victoria and her partner Steve insisted they pick me up at the airport and drive me to their compound in Entebbe. I did not think this necessary, but by being with me, they were able to let the guard know when to chase the dogs back into their kennel. Victoria and Steve had been surprised multiple times by the unexpected appearance of this ferocious pair of German shepherds, who are probably quite good at scaring away robbers but cannot tell robbers apart from visitors.

We woke up to a rainy and windy morning. In the lulls between showers, the air filled with lake flies – harmless critters that look similar to mosquitoes but are completely innocuous. As lake flies are said to have a lifespan of a day, many places such as airport buses and bathrooms with bright lights become veritable graveyards during the wet season when these insects are the most active. I did not have many adventures with the lake flies, however, as I had to telework until the early afternoon, following which we left the vicinity of Lake Victoria for our weekend trip.

Victoria had made a detailed plan of how the two of us would join up with Steve and his sister in Kampala, but for some reason or another, the plan went upside down, and the two of us found ourselves waiting for the pair at a very rudimentary restaurant on the outskirts of the city. It consisted of a dusty yard with three tables and a pay-to-play pool table, which were shielded by a patchy roof of corrugated metal. The kitchen, mercifully hidden behind a brick wall, was also outside, though the waitress had to look for our bottle of ginger ale inside another adjoining building. Beside us, there were two other patrons, who were already pounding down alcohol at one in the afternoon. In the corner opposite them, two Maasai men were taking a break from selling shoes and belts in the street. They were tall, lean, and had their checkered red cloaks draped around their shoulders.

Initially, we were unsure whether we would order anything and risk contracting diarrhoea. However, Victoria’s hunger and my sense of politeness won out, and we ended up ordering some sweet potato, matoke, rice, greens, and bean and pepper stew. The food was surprisingly tasty except for the matoke, which fulfilled its main function of not having any taste and serving as a medium for stew. The whole combination seemed relatively safe, at least until some water dripped on it from a pipe running under the metal roof, and I lost my appetite. It was rather remarkable that I had an appetite in the first place, as the first thing I had noticed about the restaurant was a dead chicken hanging from the fence outside.

Steve and his sister took some time, but thanks to the long set of instructions belted down the phone by a restaurant employee, they found the restaurant easily. From there, we began our long drive eastwards, heading away from Kampala and passing by the lakeside town of Jinja before finally arriving in Kumi at around eight in the evening. On the way, the landscape and roadside sights kept changing. As we drove out of Kampala, we passed by the poorer parts of town, where flimsy houses and dirt roads had been built on top of a marsh. Humans have not yet succeeded in displacing the original fauna in those parts, and the banks there are patrolled by giant marabous.

Farther out of civilisation, we drove along huge fields of papyrus and sugar cane. I am told that papyrus is used to build the thatched roofs of traditional houses. Judging by the abundant offerings of the roadside stalls, mangoes and oranges are currently in season, though almost every fruit, vegetable, and root can be purchased there as well. Unlike central Kenya, where donkeys are the animals most commonly seen along the roads, this stretch of the Ugandan countryside is full of goats – a fact partly explained by the numerous Muslim population.  

We were less than an hour away from our destination when the sky became completely dark and it started to rain. In trying to contact our hotel online, Victoria realised that she had made the reservation for the wrong day, so she began scrambling through her contacts to see if she could find another accommodation. Fortunately, the hotel she had mistakenly booked for another day eventually returned her call and confirmed that they still had rooms. Learning this, however, was only half the battle: the greater challenge was finding it. Driving down the pitch-black road in the pouring rain, we exchanged several calls with the hotel manager, who eventually drove his car to an intersection we would pass and led us along the narrow dirt road from there.

Our hotel was much like it had looked in the pictures: a group of circular houses with thatched roofs, inside which a haphazard collection of furniture could not help looking awkward trying to fit itself next to a curved wall. Predictably, there was no hot water, though I was surprised to find a Wi-Fi generator. Unfortunately, the password on the appliance was so heavily effaced that I could not make it out and I could not be bothered, either, to ask anyone for help.

A dead chicken hanging from a fence