Thanksgiving – Queen and I, Farming and Boda-Boda Ride
Thanksgiving Day had Pamela and I back in Kampala with a full day of activites scheduled. We walked to a hotel and hired a cab (not to be confused with a taxi which we learned earlier in the week only refered to a matatu or mini-bus form of mass transportation) to take us around. Pam wanted to buy shoes to take back to Kenya to sell (prices in Kenya are much higher than Uganda) and I needed to pick up a suitcase and a box from the hotel that we stayed at the weekend prior and then mail the box home. We then planned to go and visit the family that I lived with last year when I volunteered for their farm. The day became much more exciting than I could have imagined ending with a simple dinner of warmed up pizza at the apartment we had rented since we were exhausted.
I did not want to shop for women’s shoes so we dropped off Pam near the new taxi park where we had seen arcades which specialized in shoes. Charles (a perfect name for my driver although I did not know that at this time) and I drove to the Serena Hotel (former site of Nile Mansion where Idi Amin’s henchmen were executed and thrown in a mass grave and where the president after Amin, a friend of Queen Elizabeth from what I have been told, tortured Ugandans). This is where The Queen herself was staying. Oh, I must digress… The first two days we had in Kampala before going to see the chimpanzees (story to come) were spent at the nicest hotel I have ever stayed in – Serena. From Kenya, I started contacting hotels in Kampala and found that they were all charging twice what they charged last year. I discovered that CHOGM (Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting) would be going on the following week and because so many VIPs would be in town on tax payer money, they all decided to gouge. I contacted the Serena and choked on their fees (probably normal and not jacked up) and told them I would pay about half. They accepted and I believe this was due to the fact that CHOGM had killed a lot of normal business even before it started. I can’t say enough good things about the Serena including its rooms, facilities, beauty and employees). I tried to rent the room again for the last two nights, but The Queen had reserved the top two floors and the rest was sold out. I would not be surprised if she was shelling out $30-50,000 a night on all those rooms. Sunday morning we were greeted with a letter under the door that told us we needed to be out by 10 AM because the government was taking over the hotel two days before her arrival! Sure enough the place was filled with roaming troops and the top two floors were inaccessible when we left at 8:30 AM. I left the box and suitcase behind and we headed off for chimps. Note: The Serena’s brochure does not mention the property’s illustrious past filled with torture and murder and mass graves so I am not sure The Queen understands.
I knew there would be problems with The Queen’s visit and especially with picking up the box. We were stopped four blocks from the hotel and we walked the rest of the way. The drive over went well in a city with some crazy traffic, but that was mainly due to the holiday that had been declared so that The Queen would not get stuck in traffic. (Note: Uganda spent maybe $200 million on this visit and they spent it on fixing roads The Queen would use, cleaning up areas she might view, fixing her clock that was dedicated in the 1950s during her first and only prior visit – $200 million for a country that could have used that money for many other things for Ugandans…crazy!) During the walk, we were stopped and questioned a number of times. I kept showing my passport (the golden key) and the storage receipts and we were allowed to proceed. At the driveway gate, it took some time to convince security, but they finally got the right guy and he told me to go up to the hotel and get the items. I never imagined they would send me up and figured they would deliver them to the gate. On my walk up, I noticed a gaggle of women in ridiculous hats getting into some of the many vehicles at the hotel circle. I realized that they were part of her entourage and I bet she would be coming out soon. I went immediately into pole-pole (slow, slow) mode and wiggled my way past the front door to the bellmen door. Then I realized that was the door The Queen would be using. A bellman asked me what I was doing and I showed him the receipts and he told me he was waiting for her, too. I was behind an official Ugandan woman and she eventually turned around and eyed me in my crummy clothes (everyone else dressed up) and missing CHOGM Official tag with her nose in the air. She asked what I was doing and I knew the gig was up. She pointed me to the line of other people and so I backed up five meters to fade in with them. Well, hardly fade since I stuck out like a sore thumb and was getting many looks.
And then she quickly appeared and got into an SUV. The Queen, all four-and-a-half feet of her, dressed in a god-awful lime green dress with a matching hat that made her six feet tall looked pretty good if not a bit ridiculous for an 81 year old. Well-tended, I suppose. Later, I saw her giving a speech on TV and she sounded quite strong. I wanted to clap for her even though she is not my queen and I don’t think much about queens, but no one clapped and I hated to bring more attention to myself. I asked why no one clapped and I was told everyone except a couple of British talking heads and their cameraman was security.
After getting the box, I tried to mail it, but it was a holiday! Also, the government called a holiday for the following day – my last in Uganda – so I had to thank The Queen for messing up well thought plans. And then they started shutting down all kinds of roads so The Queen could sail around and we found that we had many things to thank The Queen for! Charles and I barely got back in time due to the first traffic issues and he then had to take us back to the apartment to drop off things. We knew going back into the city would be a big problem so he took us to the village with the farm and dropped us off.
Pamela and I first visited Robinah at her hair salon in the tiny African village “center”. We then walked down the road to the home. Bob saw the mzungu coming and greeted us with a big smile. It was nice to re-visit a place that was a struggle last year and see that the family was doing OK. School was out because of the holiday so we got to spend time with the kids – Go Queen. We walked around the farm and Pamela and Bob spoke a lot about farming – the differences and similarities between Mt Kenya and Uganda farming. We may return next year and bring Riungu for an exchange program and maybe get Bob over to Mt Kenya for the opposite exchange. Again, it was nice seeing Africans meeting each other and sharing experiences. Except for the bit about owls being a bad omen! We ate some food – basically a stew of beans and eggplant – and then caught a taxi back to Kampala. This visit had me realize how much I have changed since my original visit. I was such a virgin mzungu at that time and let so many things bother me that would never bother me today. If we return next year, we will camp in the yard and not stay in the house and I think it might be a very good experience especially compared to last year. I might still be a mzungu, but I am certainly more Africanized.
The taxi could not get to the new taxi park due to The Queen. So, we were dropped off in the city. We started to walk until we ran into closed roads. We checked with boda-boda (motorbike taxis) drivers and they told us that they could get us to where we wanted to go (back to the shoe place to get handbags for Kenya). We were soon stopped by police and the drivers resorted to going some very weird route that included going up a huge embankment over railroad tracks and pushing the bike over a concrete footbridge. My driver was about to go up the embankment, but a taxi and a million people were coming down. So, he stopped and then tried to go again. We got to the top and then like out of a cartoon, the momentum was lost and the bike started going backwards with the front wheel coming up so that we were about to flip. I thought “oh shit” and probably prayed a bit. We did a slow motion crash with me taking the full brunt and my camera taking more than that. We survived, though. The crowd thought it was pretty funny and I suppose the site of fat mzungu pulling the motorcycle back down the hill was just that. They cheered and I laughed and waved as we went off again. The route taken was insane with night falling and pedestrians getting out of work everywhere. We went through markets that smelled of the day’s rotted produce and slaughtered animals as well as over the bridge filled with pedestrians and other motorbikes. As with every boda-boda ride in Kampala, we nearly crashed a dozen times. But I was used to these rides and kept my eyes open and waved to everyone surprised by my ride and yelling “mzungu!!!!”. The smells, scenes and sounds of this ride were pure Africa at its craziest and best and I loved it. Uganda and especially Kampala is really a great place even with their monumental problems.
Just one more thing… I had a lot of fun with The Queen’s visit. I brought it up with everyone. I asked every taxi driver if he would be taking the queen around. They would look at me like I was crazy, see my big smile and break out laughing (something Ugandans do better than anyone else). Oh the would hoot! After she arrived, I asked them how the drive from the airport to the city with The Queen went and they would hoot louder. I asked the hotel folks all about the pressures, wished them lots of luck with their big VIP and they would all love it. The chef from the hotel came out our last night and I asked him if he was ready. He was beaming when he told us all about the big dinner he was preparing and the waitress showed us where The Queen would be seated. “Are You Ready?” was the slogan being used by Kampalans for the CHOGM event and it was evident that they were more than ready. One thing I know for sure, The Queen had to meet a lot of friendly, smiling Ugandans during her visit.
Tags: Africa, kenya, Travel
vagabondrick
What a nice unplanned experience by being in the right plce at the right time – I bet it is rare to have such a close up view of the Queen by tourists in Africa!