Intro

A year or so after writing the original intro to this blog I find myself in somewhat different circumstances. Having finished my studies in 2011, procrastination is no longer the driving factor behind my pieces. As it turns out, I have joined 3 friends from varsity, two of which left London last July, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for a trip home of a slightly different kind. A trip that allows me the luxury of not giving a continental about the fuel price but more about the direction of the wind and the gradient of the road as we endeavour to cycle back home to the city we all met, Cape Town . When time, money and UN's most recently added human right, internet access, is available I will be spending my time turning random notes, scribbles and possibly illustrations fit only for display in the age 5-7 category at the Bathurst Show in my leather-bound journal into readable content of varying natures. I'll do this to satisfy my own need to write crap as well as to ensure that memories made are never forgotten, much like the memories never remembered every weekend in my undergrad stint at UCT. If it turns out people read this and enjoy it...epic! My fellow adventurers can be followed on TomAndMattCycle.com and Along4TheCycle.blogspot.com.



Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Uganda: Welcome to Swaggerland


Another border, another country. It was country number three for me, four for Jim and nineteen for Tom and Matt. More notably, it was country number four for Frank, who remarkably made it to his first border alongside his posse of cyclists and, failing to disappoint, actually got through the border without being pushed, another first for the motorbike-sidecar combination that is threatening the mileage record for distance propelled by manpower - the current record being held by Fred Flinstone’s ‘Flintmobile’ (don’t blame me for the name, I googled it).

It hardly took an afternoon of cycling to provide us with fodder for comparisons between Kenya and Uganda, two countries that I naively thought would share a significant amount of similarities. As we cycled through thriving vegetation and dense forests of ‘The Pearl of Africa’, we immediately noticed a plethora of cyclists taking advantage of the flat terrain and brand new road; both resulting in eternal gratuity on our part. Mountains were all of a sudden a thing of the past, replaced by little conical hills that the roads easily bypassed. Bicycle taxis seemed the primary form of transport in the Busia border area and were made increasingly noticeable by the pink collared shirts worn by all the cyclists. Our afternoon ride was joined by what became a peloton of cyclists, the English speakers entertaining us by engaging in a bit of banter as we made our way west toward Jinja, our first significant stop. To add to the entertainment of the first day’s cycle, Chen and I were nudged off the road by a mental, monstrous truck only to be forced to swerve back onto the road to avoid a small family of baboons – one of those only-in-Africa moments. Our seven days of cycling in Uganda was a constant battle with mental bus drivers, a rather one-sided battle at that. It came to a head when a bus (filled with 50 or so passengers) decided to overtake a similar coach while the latter was overtaking me on a road that had little to no shoulder. With no traffic coming toward me, I didn’t bother to turn around to assess the situation, thinking it was just the solitary bus, only to be literally blown off the road by the bus that raced passed mere centimetres from my pannier bags without so much as a hoot of warning. Both busses (and every other passenger bus in the country for that matter) were emblazoned with massive stickers proclaiming: “Jesus is the answer”, and “God is good all the time”, giving off the impression that the drivers were in somewhat of a hurry to make their way upstairs and take a bit of a crowd with them.

The Ugandan roadside in general was littered with part-built brick houses, a testament to the completely different rural economic mindset, where the several step process of upgrading from earth houses is viewed as a manner to incentivize and channel any savings into investments toward their futures and that of their family while avoiding the short-termism that plagues those able to save only menial amounts on an irregular basis. The bit-part investment scheme of sorts is undertaken with disregard to the inefficiencies of the theory, sadly visible in the decaying brick walls of unroofed and unused houses.

Despite the unrivalled fertility of the land surrounding them (land that would grow a house if you planted a brick), the bulging stomachs of tiny children supported by skinny little legs portrayed a sad story. I say this with absolutely zero medical authority or experience (except for the knowledge that a combination of Zambuk and Panado works for anything and everything), but the problem of distension that would lead the superbly ignorant to wondering how the hell a 4-year-old boy became pregnant can only be a result of the poor nutritional intake of what must be the staple diet of Matoke and little else– a hard, green, starchy and ultimately tasteless banana that is grown anywhere and everywhere and with total disregard to the fact that the land would be better used by producing something that would find itself a bit better off on the demand-supply pricing scale. The distension could be a result of a number of other things, but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Matoke or the Ugandan version of pap were the standard accompaniments to badly cut, tough and bony pieces of goat meat or beans in the village restaurants offering a change from Kenya only in the naming of the food. If a restaurant, any restaurant, was lucky enough to have a menu (there must be a rule that if a restaurant does have a menu, they are not to have more than three in total) a patron would be looked at skeptically and dismissively if they were to expect that the restaurant had everything that was on the menu. Another lesson learnt; keep it simple, stupid.

Despite trying to learn the basics of conversing with rural Ugandans (The basics being; ‘hello’, ‘how are you’ and ‘thank-you’) we soon gave up in the wake of kids using the Swahili greeting of ‘jambo’ despite not knowing much else of the particular language, although for all we know our Swahili was simply too limited (kak) to understand what was going on. English greetings it was to be then, mixed with a touch of Swahili greetings and a pinch of the language endemic to the region unrecognisably mispronounced. Although not quite as impressive as Kenya, most Ugandans spoke some level of English which meant our lack of understanding of regional Ugandan languages wasn’t the end of the world.

At the risk of criminal generalization, the Ugandans themselves were noticeably more reserved than their Kenyan counterparts. Rather than labeling them more reserved, more normal would probably be more appropriate. From being surrounded by inquisitive and flabbergasted Ethiopians at every stop to being engaged and entertained by almost every Kenyan we came across, we were oft left to our own devices through Uganda, watched from afar until we made the effort to greet and chat to the locals. At that point the guard quickly dropped, just as quickly as a smile and a wave would transform a passive expression into an excited one, and individuals became just as friendly as any other. Never was the lack of communication hostile, skeptical or even unfriendly. In retrospect, the responses we got would have most probably gone unnoticed were it not for the extremes of Ethiopia and Kenya that we had just experienced.

Just as the crazy mzungu’s cycling around with bags draped over their bikes accompanied by a motorbike dragging along what was labeled a boat by most fascinated onlookers provided locals with a somewhat exclusive sighting, the reactions we received from the kids lining the roads provided ample reciprocation of the entertainment we were giving the locals. The enthusiasm of waving children overflowed into little dance numbers that included a child of barely two dancing around a pole holding on tightly so as to avoid toppling over in pure exhilaration and another simply bobbing his shoulders to the beat provided by a back-up choir of kids chanting “amazungu” in melodic unison. One kid was so overcome that he had one of those ‘why-did-I-do-that?’ moments; stretching his arms forward in a ‘V’ and resorting to incoherent screaming. Some kids managed to keep their cool (unlike their counterparts who depicted a crowd at a Justin Bieber parade through Disney World) and reacted in what had become identified as typical Ugandan swagger, the best example being a thumbs-up turned on its side – too casual. The swagger emanating from some of the older teenagers we came across became one of the most defining traits of the Ugandan people. Every so often you’d come across an absolute gangster (gangsta?) sporting some classy shades, MTV-Base-style jeans, subtle yet optimal bling and walking with a well-timed bounce in their step that would leave the white folk on ‘Pimp My Ride’ taking notes and drooling with jealousy.

Another noticeable trait, alongside the tentative friendliness and extreme swagger of Ugandans, was the use of an expression that was almost an imitation of the sound made by so many hefty, charismatic mama’s back home in South Africa. On hearing about the length and nature of our journey, men would take a small step back and exclaim in a high pitch: “EH! Uh aaaaah!” As has become a routine sight so far, it is the men who spend all day on their stoeps chatting or on a street corner looking like they’re looking for work and therefore generally the men that we end up chatting to. From reading The State of Africa (Don’t mistake me for an intellectual, I read a short Sherlock Holmes story between every chapter) I learnt that Uganda’s president, Museveni (not to be seen without his beige wide-brim hat), was cruising into his 25th year as head of state in what is no doubt a flourishing democracy (note: sarcasm). When we asked some locals about it on crossing the border, they simply laughed it off in a similar way that we laugh off Zuma’s six wives and twenty-one children. “We know it’s ridiculous but what can we do, he’s our president”.

In amongst the half-built houses and excitable children were sporadic lines of fruit stalls, all with similar, if not exactly the same fresh produce on offer. If any of these markets were near villages, they were always hidden behind a sea of vendors all wearing the same colour overall and vying aggressively for sales by shoving their cold cokes or dead-animal-on-a-stick kebabs into the windows of any trucks pulling over for a recess from terrorizing the roads of Uganda. The roads themselves were either brand new or absolutely torrid, the latter mostly currently or soon to be under construction. Despite bailout after bailout going on in Europe, the EU have commendably continued their undertaking to improve the battered roads that lead from Kampala to the new found oil reserves in the west of the country, a project that we benefited from by camping on the premises set up for the foreign engineers involved in the three-year process.

Our night camping was one of three on our trek through Uganda, the other two being in the town of Masaka where we slept on the property of a coffee trading company. Masaka had been preceded by a three night stay in Kampala where we saw nothing but the nightlife, a few nights with family friends of Jim’s near Jinja and a layover in a truck-stop town that is renowned for being one of the original HIV hotspots. Jinja is home to the source of the Nile, that lovely little stream that flows up to Egypt on which we forked out $125 to take part in our first seriously tourist-orientated activity. There’s little that can compare to the embarrassment the four of us felt as we headed along dirt roads through rural villages on our way to and from the base of Nile River Explorers’ white water rafting in an open back truck lined with benches. We were sat in amongst a group of NGO Americans on the return leg and cringed at the way they treated the scenery as a theme park ride - a lifetimes worth of “Oh MY God!” exclamations. The rafting itself was top notch even though two of the waterfalls on the route had been dammed up for hydro-electric purposes. After four rapids our boat was the laughing stock of the fleet as we capsized three times. It was probably no surprise that I was the laughing stock of the boat that was the laughing stock after I came out from under the raging water of the first rapid gasping for air and in a state of shock that had long since wiped out my air of bravado and “ag man, I’ve jumped off a bridge before” attitude. I can deal with water… as long as I can stand in it.

Uganda’s national bird is the Ugandan Crane, visible on their flag and a national treasure, the killing of which will land you a minimum seven years in prison. In a country where homosexuality is illegal, it is far more acceptable for someone to kill a gay guy than a bird with some red on its face and a sweet golden Mohawk. During the latter stages of our cycle through Uganda I noted to myself how the vegetation had, for the first time, turned into grazing lands from the rotations between dense bush and fields of matoke trees, sugar cane, onions, tea, coffee or maize. Deciding to point this out to Chen for lack of anything more interesting to say, I managed to point directly at what was to be our first sighting of Ugandan Cranes. This shocker, only a few weeks after naming a Crested Eagle a Fat Hoopoe, only helped to cement my place amongst the worst bird watchers of all time. Our last stop in Uganda was a relaxing weekend at a community-run eco-resort on an island in Lake Bunyonyi where we celebrated Jim joining the rest of us on the twenty-four year mark. The lake was a mere matter of kilometres from the Rwandan border and provided an idyllic yet impressively affordable end to our short Ugandan sojourn.

A lot of people ask us, “why the bikes?” and just as often I ask myself that, but the best aspect to taking our bikes is the ability to interact with almost every single person that we come to pass. With massive loads (and white skins) we have become more than just cyclists or travellers. Somehow the journey inspires a tremendous amount of goodwill from everyone we pass. The goodwill might come from some form of sympathy or possibly the eagerness to be involved in a story that, from the outside, seems like it could be an interesting one. Locals welcome us warmly and in some instances even cheer us on, the cheering and welcoming becoming more extreme the more ridiculous we seem – cycling with wifebeaters in the rain definitely won the fans over, a true underdog story. One guy went as far as calling me “smart and beautiful” before we had even exchanged names. Pure kindness is obviously a massive factor in why so many wonderful people have temporarily but unconditionally adopted us, but the ability to be part of the experience must be just as big, if not the deciding factor. In very few circumstances would one (myself included) accept four ragged, dirty, hungry strangers (one of which is sporting some horrid looking hairstyle almost resembling dreadlocks) into their homes, yet we have come into luck again and again. The trip is made by these moments of kindness, be it a local in the street guiding us toward the places we have no hope in finding or the folk that offer us a room, food and internet with a free laundry service to boot expecting absolutely nothing tangible in return. Every single person we have come across not only become part of our story, but has made the story a much easier read. As we headed out of Uganda toward Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, the sense of achievement of cycling through another country was overpowered by the excitement at having discovered and experienced yet another unique place on our extraordinarily diverse continent that offers so very much to every type of traveller. Far from having ticked something off, another line has been added to my bucket list.

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