One Year in Uganda

All good things must come to an end, and for me that end is on Friday when I pack my meager possessions and get on a plane bound for London. I originally came to Uganda for a four month volunteer stint and have ended up staying nearly a year…

But first a quick re-cap…

A lot has happened since I last wrote on here. Four of my best friends managed to find their way to Uganda in August from where we spent three amazing weeks tripping around the country (see below post). We had an awesome time and it was great to share the place I’ve come to call home with others.

Preceding the above I had a small drama, namely I nearly got deported a week before everyone turned up. Due to my status of volunteer-come-employee I never bothered with the palaver of obtaining a work permit and hence paid some fun-filled visits to the Immigration Department every couple of months. On my August visit I returned to collect my application, only to receive my forms back with some illegible writing across the top.

Note: Some of the pictures are just random to break up my ramblings

Upon asking what this meant I was informed I had been here too long and needed to get a work-permit or residency permit by the next day (even though this is impossible!). Upon asking if there were any alternatives to this I was referred to a sign on the wall advertising the current rates for deportation (contrary to popular opinion, deportation is not a free flight home!). Seeing as I was only here for a few more months and the application for a permit takes longer than that I was in somewhat of a pickle. Fortunately I knew a guy who knew a guy, and to cut a long story short, after three days of stress, chain smoking and sitting in a hot car outside immigration; corruption worked in my favor and I managed to “buy” myself another 3 months visa for the tidy sum of $400 (probably more than an entire month’s salary for the kindly individual who processed my visa!).

Problem A solved. Problem B: I no longer had a job, seeing as the government had successfully removed the Jane Goodall Institute from the chimp trekking site. This was good in the respect that I had free time to spend with my mates, bad in the respect that I was relying on using my company truck and employment in a National Park to save us all a whole lot of money on our trip. Fortunately I managed to cash in some brownie points at work to have use of the truck and the guys at the park gate weren’t any wiser to the fact I was no longer employed in there and we got in for free anyway!

Upon re-reading this it sounds as if I have turned into a rather dodgy individual, bending to the whims of corruption that I frequently vilify… What can I say? When in Rome…

The New Job

So. Holiday over I still had a couple of months left in Uganda. Luckily I managed to score a job working in the same National Park, this time up on the Nile River. I worked for a company called Wild Frontiers who run fishing trips, game drives and boat safaris on the Nile. I was originally contracted to do some financial spreadsheets but ended up doing a whole lot more from being the accountant to driving game safaris in a 1970’s model ex-army truck!

I never got round to taking a picture, but it looked a bit like this!

This really was a dream lifestyle. I worked with two awesome guys from Zimbabwe and Sweden, and if it was quiet in the afternoons we’d take a boat out and go fishing. The best spot to go was up at Murchison Falls itself. I’ve been to numerous beautiful places around the world, but I have to say that up in the gorge, surrounded by lush jungle with the falls powering down on one side and the sun setting on the other, has to be one of the most beautiful places on earth. To be able to go and fish there whenever we felt like it was a privilege I still don’t fully appreciate.

Now with all this fishing I felt confident that I could beat Geno’s record of a 34kg Nile Perch that he caught on our trip (see below post again). However during the full tenure of my employment, while people around me pulled in fish that weighed more than I did, I failed to catch anything more than “bait fish”. There were even some opinions floating around that I was just a bad fisherman! So on my last day of work me and some guys went out determined to get some fish.

As my luck would have it, ten minutes after we set out on the boat we encountered one of the worst storms I’ve seen in Africa, forcing us to pull the boat into the bank before it capsized. For the next hour we stood in the downpour, managing to catch some small bait fish (little fish you put on the hook to catch bigger fish), while watching the river turn a nice shade of mud, not the best conditions for catching big fish!

Enter rain.. Stage right!

The rain stopped and we motored out, finding the clearest bit of water possible. For the next half hour my bad luck from the last 6 weeks changed. Geno, your record stands; but I wasn’t unhappy with these three in thirty minutes!

War cries

Numero 2!

The Hatrick!

Of course life is never that easy. I had to contend with sleeping in a leaky tent during a wetter-than-usual wet season. Some nights I had to pull my mattress into the middle and sleep with all my valuables on top of me to keep them dry. Also, one night in what I would nearly call a typhoon, my tent decided to lift off and fly a few feet! Needless to say I installed some rocks around the sides the next day! Not to mention that with the wet season came the mosquitoes and my old nemesis the Tsetse fly… I’m all for the preservation of life, but with these two beasties, I make an exception!

Andy, a.k.a "Boss" doing his party tricks

The best thing on a hot day!

So a great couple of months, and to say thanks the company gave the missus and I a trip out to Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Lake Victoria. This is a place where chimpanzees rescued from the illegal pet trade get taken to rehabilitate. Even though I prefer to see them in the wild, it’s a great opportunity to see them up really close during feeding time, not to mention the idyllic location on a remote island on the lake!

Now gainfully unemployed, I’ve spent the last week doing the rounds and saying my goodbyes. Being low on cash and a bit retarded I decided to do another one of my walking missions, covering 70kms in 3 days, again to the bewilderment of the locals. However this time I took some water and had a good chance to think…

Kev Junior!!

Conclusion, Emotional Stuff and My Take on it All…

Winston Churchill visited Uganda in 1908 and called it “The Pearl of Africa”, a line now milked dry by every piece of tourism marketing material. Due to personal financial constraints and my torrid affair with the Immigration Department, I havnt actually traveled over the borders. I daren’t say that the rest of Africa is a pile of oyster gunk in comparison, but Winnie was pretty spot on when he came up with that one.

Uganda, geographically, really does have everything, from snow capped mountains to savannah to rain forests to the Nile to Lake Victoria. It’s one of the best countries in the word for primates (the main reason I came) as well as savannah animals like elephants, giraffes, lions and the rest.

As I mentioned earlier, I came here as a volunteer which would have meant quite a bit of time doing token work on a computer in the head office. Fortunately though, I was in the right place at the right time and found myself, from my perspective anyway, working in paradise; first in a tropical rainforest with chimpanzees, then on the river next to the savannah.

However, it hasn’t all been plain sailing. I worked in an isolated location, 30kms from the nearest town and 300kms from any decent medical care, shops or my unsupportive head office. If I was awake, then I was at work, which during peak season led to some pretty long days! It was a steep learning curve in autonomy; if something went wrong or broke I had to do my best to fix it. Also, living in rural Africa there are always complications: the petrol station is out of petrol, the road’s blocked by an over-turned lorry, the one cash machine in town is out of cash!

Driving a vehicle here has been an eye-opener. I reckon I’ve driven about 20,000kms in various vans, trucks and motorbikes, around 85% of that on dirt roads. A heavy rain can change a road completely, so you never know exactly what’s round the next corner. Among the various hazards on the road such as potholes, livestock and rogue people, the number one danger is Ugandan drivers. Driving on the left appears to be a formality, most cars are in bad condition and speed along with worn brakes that don’t exactly stop on a dime! It’s not un-common to drive down the highway and see a lorry on its’ roof. To validate my point, during my employment I was issued two company vehicles, both were rolled and written off within a week of me returning them to the office! A decent driving school wouldn’t go amiss in this place!!!

Yet, the most challenging aspect was working with Ugandan people. Coming from a completely different culture to myself, they have different perspectives on timeliness, common sense, honesty, quality of work… I wont go into detail, but lets just say that as a usually rather calm person, there have been times in this country that I’ve lost my rag completely! Being part of a local village community I’ve had to deal with some tricky personnel issues including: witch-craft, AIDS, malaria, child death, tribal clashes, just to mention a few! Fortunately the staff at my place were a fantastic bunch, and Im going to miss them!

The future for Uganda? From my perspective it’s a bit grim. A couple months ago there were riots in the capital. Over 50 “innocent” people died (that doesn’t include the undisclosed amount of rioters shot by the army). I daresay that as no white people were hurt this didn’t make much of a splash on the world news scene. Especially if Madonna was getting re-married or something equally as important happened. The riot (luckily I left town 12 hours before it broke out) was mainly a political protest against the government and is seen as a precursor to the elections in early 2011. On top of that, oil has been discovered in the west and there are already rumblings between the local tribes and the government over who gets what.

On a side note: one of the proposed drilling locations is on the delta in the National Park I worked in! All game drives are being re-routed, however no-one has figured out where yet!

In fact the drilling rig is going right about here...

While I don’t like to say it, I can see the proverbial shit hitting the fan by the time elections roll round in 15 months time. For the sake of all the fantastic friends I’ve made here I sincerely hope it doesn’t, but as the saying goes: TIA – This is Africa, we’ll just have to wait and see.

So that’s it. One year in Uganda. It’s been the hardest, most challenging but best year of my life. That sounds contradictory but it’s true. There are things I wont miss, but they’re far out-weighed by the things I will miss. All the amazing people I’ve met, the landscape, the sunrises and sunsets, the jungle, the river, the wildlife, the year-long summer, the freedom to live my life. The question everyone’s been asking me the last few weeks: Am I going to come back?

Definitely.