Jinja, Uganda

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I’m trying to avoid sounding like a stuck record, banging on about contrasts, but have I experienced some over the past 24 hours!! Joburg to Entebbe, Uganda’s airport, is only a four-hour flight north, so I was glad of the check-in time at the start to process some of my experiences and prepare for the next stage of the adventure. And by huge, astonishing coincidence, I bumped into Carolyn, a friend from Hampstead Quaker Meeting, queuing for the flight! She was on her way to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) with two African colleagues and is working for Peace Direct, a charity which supports local peace-building initiatives in a number of African countries. Her journey makes mine seem very tame - she’s visiting projects in Mozambique, DRC and Sudan.

Arrived at around 7pm last night as a sultry and humid dusk settled over Lake Victoria, to be greeted by immigration paperwork and masked Red Cross workers checking new arrivals for signs of swine flu. Of all the possible dangers of tropical Africa, this is definitely low on my list of worries!

The car drive to Jinja, around 90km east of Entebbe, took three hours and cost the princely sum of $50, about the cost of a cab home from the centre of London. The rules of the road in Uganda, as promised by those who’ve been here, seem to involve an exhilarating/terrifying mixture of assertiveness, judgement, madness and sheer bloody luck.

Moses, my driver, pointed out places of interest and we chatted about family as we hurtled through the smoky, dusty darkness listening to a mixture of Ugandan pop music and American hip-hop. Peering through the cracked windscreen we wove through the dense traffic of Kampala; past Friday-night-busy towns, bars and markets (with stalls lit by candlelight), dodging endless minibus-taxis and lorries into oncoming streams of cyclists, pedestrians, cows, goats and dogs; through miles of tropical rainforest and finally up a heavily-rutted dirt track to Bujagali Falls.

In the UK I would be totally freaked out by this experience but somehow tiredness, the pace of change, the newness of it all (and the fact that Moses gets regular work from Soft Power) lulled me enough to enjoy the journey and trust in his skills to get both us and the car home in one piece!

I was led by torchlight by Fred the proprietor straight to my little banda, Number 5 in a row of one-room lodgings/sheds with verandas at the front and a loo and tap behind a half door at the back. I have a double bed with huge mozzie net, some shelves and a hanging rail, and the delightful company of a couple of geckos. I was extremely glad that the electricity was working so I could unpack and get used to it all: I have to say that it was all a little overwhelming and I had a somewhat restless night listening to the various chirruping, squawking and scuttling sounds, sweating in the humid dark and wondering what on earth I’d got myself into.

This morning, waking to the vibrant tropical greens of the campsite and the red earth, with Weetabix, bananas and tea for breakfast in the thatched main building in the company of a friendly group of Aussies, it all made sense again. There are loads of people here working with Soft Power and several lone travellers who’ve been here a few days already, know the ropes and are more than willing to bring me up to speed.

Naomi (from the UK) and Dave (from Canada) have taken great care of me today, introduced me to Kibii (pronounced ‘Chibi’) who coordinates the volunteers up here at Bujagali, shown me the education and health centres in the village, taken me down into dusty, bustling Jinja on a boda-boda (motorbike-taxi - every bit as dangerous, scary and fun as it sounds) and introduced me to good places to get food, drink, mobile phone airtime and bananas. To those of you who know my horror of bananas - yep, I’m learning to love them if only because they conform to the ‘Peel it, cook it or forget it’ food safety rule!

Although a good few people here must be employed by the factories (including the Coke and beer bottling plants down the road) and by the larger local shops and businesses, many earn a living through small enterprises, either taxiing people around on bikes and in cars, or through selling things from tiny stalls at the side of the road. I’m learning to haggle and have been glad of advice on local prices, as it seems customary (and fair game, to be honest!) to start at double the going rate for an innocent-looking muzungu (white person).

To give you an idea, there are roughly 3,000 Ugandan shillings (UGS) to the pound; a boda-boda into town (9km) costs UGS 2,500-3,000 while a banana is UGS 100, a whole pineapple 1000 and a litre of water (essential as the tap water isn’t safe for drinking) 1,500. Lunch and coffee for four at a pricey, western-style café was UGS 33,000 but a local fish supper tonight will be about 4,000 each, plus 2,000 for a beer. Chapatis from the stall outside the campsite (filled with various combinations of egg, meat, banana, honey, Nutella or veggies, including delicious local avocados) range from 700 to 1500.

However, this prices need to be contrasted with the fact that here UGS 40,000 (or $200) per month is a good wage. Moses, my driver last night, is putting a younger brother and sister through school at a cost of $200 each a term.

I’ll let the photos do some more talking (when I'm able to upload them) and rattle on again in a couple of days when I’ve spent some time with the kids and at the education centre.

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Comments

[Chantelle]

Hey Bekka. It's sounds like your African adventure is everything you hoped it would be and more! Wow . . . truly amazing . . . please continue to keep us updated. xx Chantelle