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  • Day 62

    Uganda - Final Impressions

    March 3, 2016 in Kenya ⋅ ☀️ 12 °C

    I don't want to leave! Like my last country conclusion inputs, here are some short points that I will remember about Uganda.

    I feel like we went through Uganda too quickly... We had 3 weeks in mind for Uganda, yet made our way through in 18 days. 18, mostly, wonderful days. Jack was just asking what I would have done differently or where I would have wanted the extra time. It's easy to look back with the information you have now and "perfect" the itinerary, but I really think we did Uganda justice. I may have spent an extra day hanging out in Masaka since I liked the feel of the town quite a bit. An extra night in Jinja would have been nice, it was beautiful and we finally got to swim in the river (bilharzia in most of the water)! And I would have stayed an extra night in Fort Portal, mostly for the Duchess restaurant, lol, but also to do a tea plantation tour during the day. Like I said, easy to look back, but I don't regret anything.

    I saw chimps here! It was our first wild life experience, and it was of course amazing. Same thing with our day at Murchison Falls. What these two days have taught us though, is Uganda is not made for independant travellers. At least not when it comes to activities. Transportation is easy to manage. Food easy to find. Plenty of English speakers to help out if needed. But without big ticket safari tours, it's hard to have access to parks. Hiring a private driver or staying at ridiculously expensive lodges were our only solutions.

    And parks are expensive in Uganda! An average of 40$US just to set foot in the park, with obligatory guides. We had to be quite picky as to which parks to visit. Jack was unfortunately too picky, and didn't end up hiking. She's having a lot of trouble finding a company that will organize overnight hikes for a decent price. I think Ethiopia screwed us, and we're expecting the same pricing here, which isn't even close to happening.

    As for a more original experience, we got to see the country during elections, something that only happens every 5 years. I didn't want to mention this while we were in Uganda, as to not make anyone too nervous... Or rather not to give my dad his first heart attack. But when we were in Kasese, we were wondering why the streets were so empty... We finally found a little local restaurant that was open (everything was closed and it was 7pm ish). They were all watching the news, and we saw videos of a riot and police intervening with tear gas... We finally see the tag line "Chaos in Kasese". Yep, in the town we were staying, streets were empty because people were staying away from chaos. The good thing is the riot was in front of the polling office which was slightly outside of town, so no violence or anything was seen from where we were. On the bus out of town we drove by this same place, with protesters lining across the street, still yelling. Apparently the office received two ballet boxes that they thought was filled with preticked ballets, yet were later discovered to be empty, so the people thought the elections office was corrupt... Anywho! Safe and sound, writing from Kenya. There were so, so many election signs covering all the public walls, every household had a sign up. Most of the signs were of Museveni (in power for the last 30 years, just reelected) with his beige safari hat, lol. All the conversations in bars revolved around who voted for who. We obviously didn't volunteer our opinions. For a whole week after the elections, things seemed to be closed or slowed down, less buses running, all because of the elections (they vote for local elections a few days after national elections). Of course after the winner was announced, the conversation became was it free and fair. External EU observers did not use the words free and fair when rapporting on their observations, leading some people to conclude it was rigged. The newspaper front page was Besigye (Museveni's main opposition) getting arrested or on home arrest constantly... The head police officer who kept arresting Besigye responded to the question "why do you keep arresting him" with "soon you will know"... How creepy, lol. These arrests are said to be the reason Besigye was not able to file an official appeal of the votes within his 10 day limit. This all gave me an interesting perspective on the country.

    Food in Uganda was repetitive... Pretty much all the locals geared restaurants served what they actually call "food". I even saw it on a menu! It was written food with fish, food with chicken, food with g-nut sauce... G-nut sauce is something we discovered too late in our journey. It's a wonderful peanut sauce they serve either on its own, or with fish in it. And so what this "food" consists of if, if they have it, white rice, matoke, posho and cooked spinach. Matoke is fried plantains, which winds up having the texture of mashed potatoes, only less mushy, kind of like old mashed potatoes... Tasting obviously like plantain. I actually really like matoke. Posho, not so much. It's made with maize, and the consistency is thus rubbery, chewy mashed potato thing... Anywho, we always asked for food with no posho, and switched it up mostly between beans and fish. The chicken was always on the bone and impossibly dry and the beef isn't chewable. It was cheap and easy. But it was a daily thing, sometimes twice a day, hence why a nicer western restaurant was so welcomed every now and then. The timing of local food was also something difficult to manage. If you're too early, food isn't ready. If you're too late, there's no more (they make batches and sell what they have). Right as the sun sets is what we gathered as the perfect time.

    Another conclusion of my Ugandan experience, one I have previously spoken about, is the excessive drinking in rural areas. Unfortunately, this was part of my experience and it is a reality in Uganda. The men sit around in circles and drink banana beer or straight out of mickeys, or even these little vodka or gin pouches, much like the little juice pouches you can get. The unemployment rate is high, men have difficulty finding work, life is harder, so they find something they can all do together, and that's drink. They could at times be loud when speaking to us, approach us not so skillfully to try and start conversations, question us not so respectively, and sometimes simply laugh at everything and anything, including the muzungas. This was much less obvious in larger cities.

    Now the people! Best for last. Ugandans are friendly outgoing people. Always willing to chat. Always willing to help out. Even the ones asking for more money then they should, we could joke around with them and we'd all be laughing by the end of negotiations. Most of the Ugandans who would say hi to us were genuine in their attempts. There's obviously the odd jerk who would keep bothering us, or laugh at us for whatever reason, the "muzunga" yellers who were just trying to get a reaction... But for the most part, absolutely lovely people.

    I realize I've only got 3 africain countries done, but this one tops the list. And as much as the activities were expensive, we still managed to average 66$CAD each. That's 41$US each per day, and our trusty travel book states a cheap budget is under 50$US. Nailed it! That being said, we lived wonderfully, didn't stop myself from splurging when I wanted to, ate all the food I needed, and had a great time!
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