My Travel Adventures

The night before leaving for Burundi, I had an interesting conversation with a political scientist from Nigeria. I had asked him why French and British Africa were so different, and why much stronger connections exist between Paris and its former colonies than is the case for London. For all their faults, my political scientist friend said, the British had gone much further than the French in building lasting institutions and educating the general populace. Not only that: the British colonial venture involved a broader segment of society and faced somewhat more democratic scrutiny. He pointed to the former colonies of Belgium as a case in point for how autocratic colonialism destroyed society. It was in Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi that some of the worst violence broke out in the decades after independence.

When I boarded my flight to Entebbe, I politely asked the flight attendant whether she could help me make my next flight, which was scheduled to leave for Bujumbura just forty-five minutes after our arrival. Much to my surprise, she said yes, and sat me in the row right behind business class. The plane took off five minutes ahead of schedule, and it arrived by the gate in Entebbe a full ten minutes ahead too. Still, I felt stressed, so when the business class passengers started leaving, I asked another flight attendant to let me leave with them. In the blazing Ugandan sun, I rushed across the tarmac into the airport building where the airport staff already stood waiting for people transferring for their Bujumbura-bound flight. They sped me through customs and up towards the departure gate in no time.

Having pushed ourselves to the limit over the past three days, we made a late and leisurely start on the day of my departure. Our initial arrangement was that I would meet Victoria and Steve at nine o’clock, but this eventually changed to nine thirty, and we did not leave until after ten. The night before, Steve had driven his sister home and stepped in dog poo on the way to his hotel room, so he and Victoria did not fall asleep until after two: they were busy cleaning up the messy floor.

In an unforeseen turn of events, it was our group and not the hotel that ended up running on “African time” in the morning. I woke up at half past six to eat our seven o’clock breakfast and embark on our seven-thirty tour of the three Sipi Waterfalls. However, a combination of missed alarms and uncompromising attitudes towards eating leisurely breakfasts resulted in a delay of over half an hour.

We woke up at a leisurely half past seven, as we were told that the Nyero Rock Paintings would not be accessible until after eight o’clock. This may well have been true, but from what I gathered, the staff at our guesthouse simply did not want to wake up early to cook food, as more guests had arrived at midnight. We ate our breakfast in a small room within the main building of the guesthouse, which was still being constructed. It had no windows and consisted of a tightly packed dining table with four chairs and a side table with all the food laid out. The whole concept struck me as the way I would build a hotel if I had never visited a hotel in my life.  

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.