Avoiding mad drivers and watching birds

I could just see something hovering over masaka city, and wasn't sure whether it was a drone, or a raptor: it is a raptor and someone is just having a lot of fun with his landmower. (It is the expensive part of the city; I like enjoying relative luxury once in a while.)

Drivers in Uganda are crazy. Trucks barge past, leave you no room, and when I left to a sideroad (of very poor quality and constantly going up and down) the same thing was done by car drivers. I wave (sometimes rather frantically) at every single one to slow down and leave me space: I guess I am an unfriendly mzungu on the road but these people need to be taught how to drive; or at least leave me alive. They are friendly enough, just dangerous drivers. Although due to the constant alternation of climbing and descending, I got very tired of the constant "mzungu!", " how are you?!" (Sometimes with a weird emphasis on "you"), whistling, " hey hey!", etc... It's cool for a while but when I tired I want to just chill sometimes, which is difficult when around these people ^^. But somehow they stopped asking for money; maybe it is a regional thing.

I am also going through the last few days backward: I first went to lake mburo national park, where they again try to make money off of you any way they can. And those rangers just sit around all day doing fuck all. Entrance is 40$, but you cannot only have entrance normally, you also have to do an activity, which you have to organize, which costs extra, which... Fuck off I'll just go outside the park. I did get to do an amazing gravel ride blasting from a deserted gate to the main gate for 2 hours in between monkeys, antelopes, turacoes; but I didn't see any buffaloes or zebras or bisons as that, of course, costs extra. I'm not complaining, I am just saying these park people will charge for everything if they can. And I am a difficult one.

Also interesting is that I have been to two "fancier" lodges (for camping) here, and both are run by dutch people. For some reason only foreigners put their lodges on booking.com.

The amount of birds you see on the side of the roads is really amazing though. Uganda has lots and lots of different species, and the number of sounds and colours is really awesome; I am trying to learn to identify some but suck at it.

Other things you see along the road: pull-up or popup blood transfusion stations, announced by a loudspeaker, in open air. It is really weird to see 5 people sitting on the street getting blood transfusions. But I heard that in hospitals the situation is a lot more precurious, with lots of people being thrown in one room, some infectious, some with open wounds. I am not sure I want to see that: I just know things are not well organized in Uganda. (I have a good hunch where the development money goes—actually more than a hunch, as a Dutch couple on the campsite told me from direct experience that it disappeared.)Read more