During my independent travels, after I’d been to the Crater Lakes area and seen the witch doctor, I moved on to Queen Elizabeth National Park. Yes, named after the British monarch. This was my brief dabble in posh and luxury. I was a regular … well, queen! OK, perhaps only princess.  I shan’t bore you with the list of justifications as to why I so pampered myself; I will provide only the one truth that it was all about logistics rather than merely spoiling myself for the sake of spoilage. So, I had a private driver and stayed in a 5-star hotel with full board, and by luck, my room was directly off the pool which was an internet connection area, and it carried over inside my room. The beers from the poolside bar carried over quite nicely into my room as well, actually. This is the view from the pool balcony, a few steps from my porch (sunset):

My driver was a college kid; his dad owned the tour company I had hired. Fort Portal, where I hired, is a pretty ritzy town by Ugandan standards. In fact, the country kind of holds it up as a model city. And my driver, Fred, was quite well-to-do in this ritzy town. He was really the first person I had hung around who was dressed all fashionably in strategically-cut and acid-washed jeans hanging low, boxer shorts showing above the waist. I know, you hoped this was only an American fashion horror, but it is apparently global. Darkly shaded sunglasses, crisp plaid shirt.

Like everyone (and I mean everyone) in Uganda, with great conviction he pronounced me a liar for claiming my age exceeded the 20s age-bracket. For my dear readers who do not know how far off the mark this is, I will let you think this is only a mild stray.

Two things make him stand out from the Ugandan crowd:  (1) he was extremely punctual; I daresay the most punctual person in the entire country. By the time I got to him, I’d completely adjusted to and accepted Ugandan time. I think he was surprised at this mzungu for not adhering to American time. (2) he was the only person who received the information that I was married but chose not to have children with merely a high degree of surprise rather than profound shock. Perhaps his relatively cosmopolitan life has opened his mind a bit. He was quite kind to me. I have this strange feeling it was partially due to a nagging fear that I really was as old as I claimed, and it was ingrained in him to treat his maternally-aged elders with care.

Unlike being at the UWEC where Steph and I were about the only white people on the grounds, the hotel was more than half full with white people, which suddenly made me feel odd. But in a pretty wild coincidence, I ran into the Japanese woman who lived next to me at the zoo … there are three apartments joined together like townhouses, and I lived in the furthest one and she lived in the middle one … she was working at the UWEC for two years on some kind of exchange or something. And there she was at that swanky hotel! She had taken the weekend off and come with a group of Japanese people to see the park.

The road between the park entrance and the hotel, which we had to travel several times to reach other destinations, was teeming with elephants. Such a joy. I was tempted to ask Fred to just drive back and forth along this road for a couple hours. I always wonder whether to put my favorite photos at the beginning or the end of a post. There are many in this post that I quite adore. But as I am partial to elephants, I was giddy at seeing this tiny tot. So here ya go, right off:

After arrival at my swanky digs, I took a boat ride up the Kazinga Channel between two lakes encompassed by the park. My Jeeves drove me down to the boat launch and was there waiting to pick me up and drive me back the ½ mile to the hotel.  The boat ride was lovely. I didn't find the wide diversity of wildlife found in Murchison Falls NP, but there were still a lot of the big favorites. Lots of elephants and loads of hippos.

This was my third boat ride in Africa in which I was to see hippos, but the other two were a slight photographic disappointment in that I never got any good shots with the hippo mouths wide open. Always too slow on the draw. But this time, they were yawning in spades. And it was amusing, this one lady onboard took it upon herself to be the official hippo-yawn look-out. She was convinced she could tell when one was about to open their mouth wide and she would sound the alarm. She was right quite a lot, so I paid attention and swiveled around to wherever she was pointing.

Some cape buffalo. This seems unlikely, but somehow these seemed more attractive than the ones in South Africa. Maybe it's just because I wasn't facing off with them on the ground with my ranger rattling a rifle at them. 

Perhaps my favorite antelope species: the water buck.

There are 20-something fishing villages inside the park. Unlike Bwindi, when QENP was established, “pre-existing” people living on the lake shores and fishing for their livelihood were allowed to remain. (All pygmy tribes living within Bwindi were forcibly moved off their traditional hunting and gathering grounds.) The villagers were swimming in the waters.

After the large number of massive hippo mouths we’d seen plus several crocodiles, somebody asked the guide about how the villagers get on with the wildlife. Answer: not so well. The stats she gave for the last couple years were something like 3 people eaten by crocodile, 12 eaten by lion, 20-some killed by hippo, and I think an elephant caused a fatality as well. But this doesn’t alter their lifestyle one bit. To us it may seem strange and incredible they would keep living there like that. But I suppose it’s hardly different than Westerners continuing to live far away from their jobs and commuting on the highways 5 days a week when traffic fatalities occur regularly. Why do we keep living among all those cars when they kill people all the time?

The following day, Jeeves and I did two activities: one I already told you about in the post “Salt and Sex,” about the salt lake. The other was going on a game drive through the park by road. Again, not nearly the quantity or diversity of wildlife as in Murchison Falls, but it was a major score for me. What did I most want to see in the wild? The crowned crane. I did see some at the Crater Lakes in a field, but they were far away and the sighting was brief before they flew off.

Right away, two beautiful cranes came into view. I was very excited. The next bird I spotted was a bird we'd learned about in Kruger, South Africa, the saddlebill stork, and I didn’t even know they were here. I was excited when I recognized one. Fred said Ugandans particularly like these birds because their beaks have all the colors of the Uganda flag on them.

 Then we were driving along at a fairly good clip — a little faster than I felt was good for premium game sighting, to be honest — when something caught my eye. “Stop!” I practically yelled. 

“Did you see something?” Fred asked.

“I think so, back up.” So we rolled backward until I saw the tall white curve of a big cat’s tail held up in the air. That curve had stood out to me as a form not belonging with the surrounding flora. And not just a big cat, but a leopard! Score! Again! I had been excited about the leopards in the tree in Murchison, but they were only visible in patches among the tree branches. This guy was just sauntering across the field, calm as you please. Nobody was around but me and Jeeves, and he was very excited with my sighting. We watched the leopard for probably 10 minutes, leisurely walking along, occasionally we had to back the vehicle up more to keep beside the cat.

Imagine my disappointment when I found that I didn’t have my camera settings right for focusing in that condition, so even though I had prime perfect photo op, everything came out blurry. Now imagine how quickly I got over it when I thought about the fact I’d just watched a leopard in silence for 10 minutes.

Eventually he crouched down low and kept walking, as though he were half-heartedly stalking something. He disappeared into a stand of tall weeds where we could no longer see him. Just then a safari jeep full of tourists pulled up and we left, completely smug with our secret encounter while those shmucks looked about frantically, wondering what we had been watching. Oh, actually, the shmucks were my Japanese neighbor and friends. Ha ha.

These are the best pics I came up with. Posting here anyway, just so you don’t doubt my word that I witnessed this feline marvel intersecting my path.

So ends a lovely weekend of luxury and amazing animals.  Thanks, as always, for following along, and thanks for all your comments. Always feel free to contact me with the "contact" button above. 

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See some close-up leopard pics from Kenya!

When I decided on Uganda as my next travel destination, the first thing I knew I wanted to do outside the UWEC was see the gorillas in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest ... one of the last places on Earth where mountain gorillas still live in their natural habitat. There are three habituated groups in Bwindi (gorillas that have been conditioned to tolerate human presence). When I found out how much it costs to do this activity, I had to take a step backward. Whoa, Nelly. But I decided it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity; who knows if I will ever be in that neck of the woods again. In my financially unsavvy mind, this is exactly what credit is for. I will tell the story of how I got to the park in a roundabout way below, but if you just want to skip right to the gorillas, scroll down a bit to where the pictures start. 

So … because of the financial burden, I decided to place my trust in a fellow I “met” on couchsurfing and with whom I had arranged to stay at Lake Bunyoni during my independent travels. He claimed to have a different, backdoor method of securing me a permit, and that it would cost me more like $350 rather than the traditional $500 flat fee. He came to Entebbe once during my month there and we met and I hesitantly gave him a $200-cash deposit to secure my trek. … Well, after that, my FB friend who books gorilla treks and safaris for tourists expressed skepticism at the legitimacy of this, and as I tried to keep communication with my couchsurfing friend via email, all kinds of fishy-sounding delays and excuses came in for not yet having placed my deposit with the trekkers. Finally, I decided to accept that I’d misplaced my trust. I told this guy that I would accept the loss of my money, but to please come straight with me if he was going to keep it for himself so that I could try to obtain a legit permit elsewhere. It was more important to me to get the opportunity to see the gorillas than to get that $200 back. He insisted all was good, no worries, I’m set to go tracking.

So ... then I’m staying with him and the day arrives for my trek. He told me the night before that his contact at Bwindi texted him that the other people signed up to trek that day had all canceled, probably on account of the rainy weather that had prevailed all that week, but that I was still good to go, it would just cost me more money since I was the only one. Having been nickel-and-dimed nearly to death over the preceding few days, again my stomach turns at the sound of this unusual fishy news. But at that point, what can I do?

When my friend actually got up at 5:30 a.m. on the day of the trek and his cook and boatman, Bruce, handed us a sack lunch, I started to feel a little better. Even if I was going to be swindled for a fortune, surely he wouldn’t put on this charade if there was no real chance to trek. It’s a half-hour boat ride to where we could pick up a car to drive 2 hours to Bwindi. In absolute darkness, we stepped into the boat. Bruce started the motor and we puttered through the lake. Bruce obviously knows it and its narrow channels by heart. There is no electricity around the lake until you reach the far side and no light on the boat. The sky was clouded over. So I’m not exaggerating … we parted those cold waters in pitch blackness.

The drive to Bwindi was excruciatingly slow. There was a heavy fog, the road was very curvaceous, and my friend was not adept at taking the corners. So we crawled along through the fog. Already running late, he then tells me his brakes are barely working and he needs to stop to find out who can fix them. (“Now?” I'm thinking … “Really?”) So we stop at a lady’s house he says he knows. He gets back in and says he will pick up a guy on the way to Bwindi who will fix the brakes while I am trekking. We continue.

Finally the sun begins to thin the fog and we turn off the rare nicely-paved highway onto a dirt road. But now it’s only ½ hour before I am supposed to be at the park. He picks up speed to a rather alarming rate on the narrow rocky path laden with pedestrians and livestock who are sent scattering to the edges ahead of our honking horn. I’m somewhat confident now that he is truly trying to get me there in time for something. Sure enough, we stop and pick up a guy along the way. And we arrive at the gate ½ an hour later than planned, but in the nick of time for the rangers to still accept our arrival.

Still, despite the slightly epic travel to arrive there, I remained worried that I would  get to the desk and be told I’m not registered to go or that it’s going to cost me thousands of dollars. So, it turned out that yes, I was the only person to trek that day – highly unusual. And in the end, I believe it cost me more than $500, but less than $600, so nearly the same fee as a regular permit. I was thinking to myself, well I went through all this anxiety and stomach-aching to try to save money; I could have just bought a regular permit to begin with, and was feeling just a wee bit sour.

The sky had cleared completely by the time my ranger guide and I set out. The first thing he said to me was, “You are very lucky! Usually there are 8 people on a trek. You are the only one! This will be very good for you, you’ll have the gorillas all to yourself.” I immediately brightened up. And apparently, I learned, with the traditional permit, it was unlikely that you would be given a trek all to yourself. You have to wait until there are 7 or 8 people in the group. Same way they operate public transport … you only leave when it’s full.

My guide was pleased with my ability to keep up with him at a good pace. “You’re a good walker!” he said to me several times. We found the gorillas sooner by at least a couple hours than it would have taken with the typical group of 8. In case you’re wondering how impenetrable the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest really is … I refer you to my guide with his curved machete, walking in front of me like Captain Hook. The trails were muddy and slippery and sometimes so overgrown we weren’t even stepping on the ground.

The guide kept in contact with the actual trackers who had gone out early in the morning to find where the gorillas were and direct us over walkie-talkies. So at some point, at the tracker’s direction, we had to leave the trail and head overland. The gorillas were down in a ravine, so we headed straight down a steep slope, my guide hacking our way through. This was seriously an adventure in and of itself. This is the hillside across the ravine; we came down through that exact same density of forest on our side. It's hard for me to know if you are sufficiently impressed by how difficult it is to make your way down that slope.

My guide stopped abruptly and told me to put all food and water away and get out my camera. Then I heard the tracker in the bushes. We took a few more steps and my guide parted some leaves with his hook, and there they were! My first gorilla in the wild:

The first sighting included three gorillas and I couldn’t believe how close they were to us. We were literally right on top of them.

So now let me list all the lucky things about my experience as pointed out to me by my guide who was very pleased for me.

(1.) Quickly reached the gorillas. And after the allotted hour was up … all permits are good for only one hour of viewing … we got back to the park entrance quickly. This was good because (2.) It was clear sunny skies for precisely the period of time encasing my trek. Sun broke through as I began, first rain drops fell as I walked back into the base camp. 

(3.) I was taken to see the one group of gorillas that was completely habituated. (4.) Typically people only see one silverback; I saw two. And they are seriously impressive fellows. If one of those guys started running at me, I would pee my pants and probably faint. There's really no way to capture their heft and gravity in a photo, or even a video. 

(5.) The gorillas are usually more hidden among the impenetrable forest and the typical photo op involves only various body parts of the gorillas -- their heads or backs or arms; my gorillas had bedded down areas in the ravine and stretched out their whole bodies in full view. Can you spot the gorilla below? This is the more typical scene: 

(6.) I saw both the eldest member of the group, at 38 years, and the youngest member, at 3 months.

(7.) When my hour was up (shortest hour of my entire life), I got bonus time because just then a gorilla toppled part of a tree nearly on top of us and came ambling down to sit just in front of us. My guide and tracker let me stay another 5 minutes to commune with this fellow.

(8.)  Above all, being the only person allowed me unimpeded photographic access, without 7 other people vying for the prime shooting spots (or indeed, given the thick cover, vying for any shooting spot), and unprecedented “communion” time with the gorillas. Nobody else there making noise with their voices and their rustling clothes and their clicking cameras. Just me. My guide and trackers were silent and I spent as much time with my camera down as with it up, just silently soaking up the presence of these amazing creatures. The guide told me I can look them in the eyes except if one is charging … then absolutely do not do this.

As I mentioned in my post about the chimps as current-day postscript, at this time I had only a consumer-grade camera with a 250 lens and a polarizer a friend had given me without explaining when I should and should not use it, haha, so it slowed down my shutter speed in this dense setting and I could have gotten crisper photos without it. But oh well! I watched them groom each other and move their ponderous weight through the thick brush; munch munch munch on the leaves; young gorillas climb up the trees; and most precious of all, the mother suckling and cuddling her 3-month old.

First glimpse of the baby suckling. The mother is extraordinarily large. The guide says no one here has ever seen a female this large; she is the same size as a male. And then, mom is exhausted ... "what a day!" she's saying with her hand over her brow.

I love the baby's tiny feet sticking out underneath the mom's arm. Presumably the toddler beside her is her child also.

It almost makes me cry now to think back on how cool it all was, that hour that passed in a wide-eyed minute. Quite an incomparable experience.

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Just outside the park at Queen Elizabeth lie salt lakes where the locals extract salt from the water using one of two methods. Either they evaporate the water, or dig the rock salt up from the bottom of the lake. There are some rather interesting aspects to the "uniform," shall we call it, the workers must wear each day. It had never once occurred to me to wonder about the hazards of working in salty water. I have been inside the ancient and astounding Wieliczka salt mine in Poland, impressive beyond my already-high expectations in both its sheer size and its artistic interior, carved by workers who seldom ever surfaced from the mine. Supposedly, the air in the mine is actually a health benefit.

On the other side of the world, though, the impoverished villagers working the salt lakes in Uganda are plagued by numerous health problems. But let’s begin with a brief description of the lake. Villagers purchase plots of the lake to "harvest" (extraction by evaporation), just as one would purchase a plot of land for agriculture or livestock pasture. So different villagers have different-sized plots depending on their investment. They let several feet of water into their plot via a channel and let it sit stagnant. In the hot sun of the dry season, as the water evaporates, a film of salt soon evolves on the top. The villager then steps into the pond, waist-high in water, and skims the salt film off the top, collecting it in a sack. Easy as pie, really.

Plots on the salt lake.

In the rainy season, however, the villagers wane into destitution as the lake becomes too diluted with fresh rain water to be able to form a layer of salt. Kasim, my guide, tells me, “The only remedy is prayer. Pray for the rains to stop. Salt is their only source of income.”

The handful of structures on the lakeshore suffer constant corrosion, as do the bodies of the workers. Their skin becomes like crocodile skin and they suffer from dehydration. In recent years, as the government finally paid attention to the health issues, they have started a campaign to educate the workers on the measures they need to take to stay healthy.

A tourist cannot visit the salt lakes unaccompanied by a local guide. You stop at the tourist building, find the nearest adult or responsible-looking kid to go look for the guide on duty that day, wait in the sun for him to show up, and then he takes you around. The money you pay for this service provides the education and supplies the workers need to safeguard their health.

So … #1: drink lots and lots of water to combat dehydration, and do not drink alcohol before or during work.

#2: if you are a woman, wear a tampon. Salt water consistently entering a woman’s nether-regions causes her serious health problems. Of this, I had no idea! So “they must pack cotton into themselves,” Kasim tells me. Part of tourist-generated money buys this material.

#3: if you are a man, first, if you are not already, you are highly advised to get circumcised. Salt water consistently hanging out in the folds of this nether-region causes unfortunate problems as well. But even so, the man’s treasures remain endangered by consistent exposure to salt water. So, the natural course of action became to fit themselves with a condom each morning, and part of tourist money buys the condoms. “But the condom was invented for another type of activity,” Kasim reminds me. So how to put on this part of the worker’s uniform each day? At first, the recommendation was to pleasure one’s self sufficiently to ensure a proper fit. But when this is actually part of your daily job, apparently the novelty wears off and the men looked for an alternative. Kasim then performed for me a reenactment of how the men stuff their entire package, balls and all, into a condom and seal the top with a rubber band. This charade was completely hilarious. I would love the opportunity some day to be playing a charades game and to draw the card, “salt lake worker,” and perform Kasim’s rendition of stuffing my goodies into a teeny tiny bag.

The level of extra-marital promiscuity/sexual relations is quite high in Uganda. It’s been phrased to me as “the side dish.” You have your spouse – the main course – and then you sample the occasional side dish. One man told me that it can be a real problem when a Ugandan man dies, as suddenly two or three women besides the "formal" wife come out of the woodwork displaying their children they had with the man and staking a claim to his estate. One thing I thought about at the salt lake was that there would be no side dish activity going on during the work day!

Kasim shows me a bottle of the salt obtained by evaporation. And below that, slabs of rock salt dug up from the lake bed.

After this surprisingly entertaining tour of the local salt production, we went to another lake where the migrating flamingos were just arriving. Literally only the day before, the first ones fluttered in. Apparently, in a few more days, the lake would be completely covered by the flamingos’ annual Occupy The Lake movement – wall to wall feathers. Amusingly, there was one line moving in from the right side of the lake, and one line moving in from the left. In the middle of the lake they met, and turned to walk toward the back of the lake. I don’t know if there was any sense to this choreography, or if they were just milling about in a coincidentally organized way. I would love to have seen the full mass of birds, but it was still cool to watch the frontrunners arrive.

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A little postscript here ... Kasim asked to exchange email addresses and asked me to send him the photo I took of him, above. After I returned home, I did so. I never heard back, but wasn't surprised or disappointed ... I imagined his use of email was extraordinarily limited. About 6 months later, I got an email with the subject "from Kasim." I almost disregarded it as junk, and am so glad I didn't because it was Kasim writing me: "I just wanted to let you know that the flamingos have returned to the lake. Hope you are fine." I couldn't believe he'd remembered me and wrote to tell me of the flamingos! I was a bit touched.

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When I returned to the UWEC after traveling, I hadn’t showered in 3 days and hadn’t peed in 14 hours, having nibbled strategically throughout the day making the epic trek from Kabale back to Entebbe. When I traveled to Fort Portal with my local friend, he briefed me on what the experience would involve -- taking a taxi from Entebbe to Kampala and a bus from Kampala to Fort Portal. And he advised me with some supremely helpful warnings. One of them is that I would have to “hold it” for the duration of travel. “Do you think you can do this?” he asked me. A feeling not unlike dread came over me.

Unfortunately, that day traveling to Fort Portal turned out to be the day I fell sick with intense stomach pains and nausea. Robert was a trooper helping me get through the day, buying me a plastic bag from a food vendor for a barf bag, and such. (that action was the result of me asking him if he'd be embarrassed if I barfed out the window of the bus; "yes," he said) Thankfully, I never had to actually use that but I felt comforted knowing I had one in my possession. But anyway, there was actually one pee break on the bus out from Kampala, about an hour into the trip. Robert had informed me ahead of time what this break would be like … if I’d been by myself, I would have had no clue why a stampede of people suddenly exited the bus in the middle of nowhere and ran into the bushes.  This was the break:  everyone ran down a dirt road lined with bushes and staked out a little spot in the bushes to relieve themselves. Too funny. China was funny with the rows of bare bottoms lined up in the bathrooms (holes in the ground) of the train stations. But this was a row of bare bottoms lined up along the bushes outside.  Hopefully nobody lives down that road … doubt they’d appreciate a herd of people peeing along their driveway. Well, who knows ... “This is Uganda,” as everyone here is wont to say about all the Third World aspects. I suppose it might be par for the course.

When I told my friend that I’d ridden buses in Peru that had bathrooms inside them, and that long-distance buses in America had them, he was incredulous.

“Inside the bus??? You’re joking!”  Then a few minutes later he exclaimed again, “Inside the bus? Wow, I can’t believe that.”

I get a kick out of telling him about some of the comforts of the world beyond his, because he is so wide-eyed with wondrous disbelief. He said, “One time a mzungu told me that on airplanes there is a television on every seat for every passenger. Is this true?” As if it was a fable or legend.

But I have my own questions that elicit bemusement and outright laughter. As we were traveling (and I’d noticed this earlier traveling to/from Murchison), I noticed that there were many roadside shops selling wooden bed frames. But that was pretty much the only woodwork and the only furniture besides couches I saw (sitting next to the road, gathering dust while on display …). Never any tables or chairs, which seemed to me a natural thing to make from wood along with the bed frames. So I asked if people in Uganda had tables and chairs inside their houses. I knew this was a funny question when I asked it, but that’s the beauty of having friends here – you feel OK asking the most ridiculous questions. So of course my friend laughed, but actually the answer was “typically, no.” These items are pretty far down on the list of priorities for the average Ugandan family struggling just to keep themselves fed. So a bed frame is the first and often only furniture they purchase. Other things like pots, pans, spoons, clothing, etc. take much higher priority than tables and chairs. In fact, my friend claims that in his rented room in Entebbe, the bed is the only thing inhabiting its 4 walls, plus a radio and small cooking stove (like a camping stove). 

My one piece of personal advice to anyone traveling independently in Uganda, if you’re on a budget and have to make choices with your money as I do, spend it all on retaining a private driver ... sleep in shitholes and eat dirt (washed down with a Nile Special if you’re wealthy enough). Move over Chinese trains, Uganda is now my new source of transport anecdotes. Public transport here is doggone near one tick beyond the line of my personal tolerability index.

One way to amuse and distract myself while riding public transport after the paternal presence of my friend became a void in my subsequent travels, was to compose blog entries in my head to describe the host of personal inconveniences I was experiencing. The list would have been extensive, and, if I may say so, at least a little witty, but then I began noticing some strange events around me as the bus was making stops. Nearly every lap around me, in my row and the 2 in front (comprising a total of 11 seats), had a small child on it (and 2 older ones on the floor in the aisle), and I presumed this indicated a lot of parents were onboard with their respective children. But as adults started getting off at various stops, they collected children from all over the place before leaving. One time, the girl beside me who had been holding a sleeping child, held up the little boy to a woman who had extricated herself from the row to exit. I presumed the two women were traveling together and the one beside me handed her child off to her companion so she could also extricate herself from the seats. But no, the other woman held the child on her hip and got off the bus. The one beside me then turned to me and said, “I’m free!” In the end, there were only 3 mothers and they had farmed out their children to complete strangers to hold so all the seats could be filled with paying adults (as the bus conductor insisted).

Having gotten on at a midway point with only a few seats available on this particular leg, I had been stuffed by the conductor guy into the last available seat (“seat”), literally crammed into the middle seat on the back row. It was so tight that later when he came back to ask for my ticket, it was impossible for me to insert my hand between my thigh and the lady’s thigh next to me to fish it out of my pocket. As he saw me struggle in vain to find enough room in that back seat to accommodate one quite-dainty hand, he said, “It’s OK,” and moved on. If for some reason I had had a small hand glued to the outside of my thigh, I would not have fit into that seat. Anyway, add to that many other discomforts, but yet, I did not have to hold somebody else’s child on my lap for several hours. And this was obviously par for the course. Nobody was batting an eye over it.

Once in a taxi (which is a minivan used mainly for transport over short to medium distances) which was similarly crammed, two older children in the front seat were holding two younger children on their laps … again, I was to find out they were not related. The little girl on the lap was beside herself with boredom. She started playing with the stuffed rabbit hanging from the rearview mirror, but the taxi driver shooed her hand away from his talisman. Then she started putting her hands on the windshield, again to be shooed away. Then she played for an admirable amount of time with her fingers … don’t know what was running through her cute head while moving them up and down one by one, then all together, then clasping and unclasping, then waving in the air to no one. Finally, she took to staring at the mzungu behind her as a form of entertainment. I would have tried to play with her, but again, I was so smashed against the window, I literally couldn’t move.

So anyway, back to the beginning ... I knew the bus trip to return to Kampala from Kabale would be epic and void of bathrooms. Hence the dainty bites and sips carefully spaced apart, trying to keep my bladder empty. But it turned out to be even more epic than imagined, 14 hours to get from point A to point B, which is not super far in terms of road kilometers. But first you wait for enough people to buy tickets to fill up the bus before leaving, then stop after stop for exiting and entering passengers, then the palatial potholes to be navigated, the incessant speed humps in the road (as if the potholes were not sufficient speed reduction), the refueling stops for inexplicably long periods, the occasional stop beside roadside vendors to come up to the windows to sell you food which you have nowhere to pee out.

Actually the trip from Kabale was particularly interesting this way, because by the time we reached Kampala, most people had done their grocery shopping through the bus window. There were different regions that sold mostly one kind of food. So one time the whole town was buried in heaps of onions, everyone around me bought some bundles. Then another had bunches of bananas, another had cabbages, one potatoes, another sold exclusively milk in small jerricans. And the bus patrons, still imprisoned in their seats, pass money out the window as vendors pass the goods inside, arriving in Kampala with a virtual grocery cart of food beyond what they had bought to eat on the bus.

The bus driver in whose hands my life was entrusted from Kabale to Kampala happened to be a homicidal maniac (apparently no background check required for this job). But he was having a bad day, for despite his best efforts, to my knowledge no pedestrians were killed. When pulling over to the side of the road to let vendors sell us food or to let passengers off, he delighted in driving directly toward the crowd gathered on the road. They would watch the bus wide-eyed for a moment, like the proverbial deer in the headlights, then at the last second get their wits about them to literally sprint away, fleeing for their lives in all directions. One time we passed an overturned bus on the roadside, the passengers appeared to have gotten out somehow, despite the bus being on its side. They were obviously miserable and awaiting help. Two minutes later our bus came to a screeching halt as it came within a centimeter of rear-ending the bus our driver was tailgating. (I was sitting in the front row, privy to all his techniques.)

The thing I loved best about this ride is that the passengers broke out into spontaneous song. Clearly they were songs everyone knew, so one person just started singing loudly and scores of other passengers joined in. Like when John Candy starts singing "Flintstones, meet the Flintstones!" on the bus in Planes Trains and Automobiles.

On this trip from Kabale I was accompanied by my friend with whom I’d been staying at Lake Bunyoni (with no electricity and no running water, hence the un-showered state). When we arrived in Kampala, he had retained the services of a private driver. So we exited the bus at a random spot along the street before reaching the city center where one can get mired in 2-hour long traffic jams. We stood there with my luggage and his tree branch laden with bananas and large canvas sack of potatoes ... watching the cars, motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians pass by for about an hour before the driver arrived. But then it was posh driving back to Entebbe and to my home at the UWEC. As I closed the flat door behind me, luggage thrown inside, I starting singing, “I’m so happy to be home. I’m so happy to be home.” Then flipped on the water heater, stripped off my clothes, which left me still heavily clad in a layer of caked-on dirt and salty sweat. Probably nobody would have even noticed I was naked, encased in my dirt dress. haha. Anyway, blessed shower, water and soap, reveling in the luxury. Then fell into bed and slept without waking or even turning over until morning -- always the sign of an adventure well had, despite temporary discomforts.

It may be a little while before the next round of posts. If you know others who might be interested in these adventures, please share the website! Here are some more random scenes shot through the window of the moving bus ... small, if crooked, captures of life along the road.

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You can read my handy list of tips for surviving Uganda's public transportation.

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