Adventures of Sweet T & Pixi: Entebbe

Mom arrived late on the night of December 13^th.  I was so anxious and excited as I waited inside the airport for her to depart her plane. Looking more gorgeous than ever I got to run and hug my mother despite the gunned men standing and staring at me around the airport. Although it was late we had a nice bottle of wine awaiting us at Backpackers in Entebbe. We stayed for a short while chit chatting, but soon went to bed so mom could get some rest.  The next morning we had to depart for another hotel so I am sure mom did not get to sleep in as long as she would have liked, but we took her to our zoo and was soon overcome by tons of monkeys running around trying to steel our drinks and food. It worked out for the best because we got to stay at a bannda at the zoo, which was amazing. We arrived nice and early and were able to investigate the zoo, Entebbe town and the Botanical Gardens. It was nice to be able to start at more modern area of Uganda to ease my mother into the country. For example she got to take a nice hot shower after a long plane ride, and had (to me) delicious Americanized food. I also got to take advantage of having food other than Ugandan posho and beans for a couple of days!

            

The best part of her arrival was how proud she would have made my grandfather! She traveled so light it was unbelievable! (Heavy sarcasm if you are not catching this!) Of course it is all for me, and I would not complain either way, even if it was all her clothes for the trip. She had two HUGE suitcases (that she informed me that she bought one the day before her trip to pack even more for me!) that we got carry around Entebbe and then attempt to endure the public transit portion home.  I couldn’t do anything but giggle, because I have the best momma cheeks in the world! It was easy to get them from one hotel to the other, but the difficulty came later when we attempted to take them into the most hectic part of Kampala and bored a bus to Bushenyi. We took a private car into Kampala at least to avoid further and unnecessary difficulty with a Mutatu. (Which if you recall are the main means of transport, and I ALWAYS have the best of luck with them!) Our driver of this private hire was one interesting man.  We first had to convince him to decrease the ludicrous price he was trying to charge us to Kampala, because he didn’t realize that Galen and I actually lived in Uganda. Then we were battling him the whole way into Kampala, saying we weren’t going to pay 200 American dollars for him to take us all the way to Bushenyi. (That would be like being charged that amount from Hoffman Estates to Chicago.) Then while we were entering Kampala we had to remind him where the bus park was, and then which and where the bus we were taking to Bushenyi was. (Let me tell you that he told us at the beginning he knew where he was going because he traveled to Kampala all the time.) He went down multiple wrong roads, which took us forever to get the bus. And we went down the worst roads possible, circling around and around to end up back at the same place we started! I am absolutely laughing in the inside, because this is typical for me and when I travel, but looking over at my mother I felt slight pity as she started to get nervous.  The best (worst for my mother) was when the car got stuck in a huge pothole because the trunk was so heavy with our luggage and mom and Galen were getting ready to get out and push the car up over this mess. I could no longer handle it and started laughing, and tried to calm down Galen and my mom that it would be “No problem” and soon our car would get unstuck, probably with the help of other Ugandans because we were blocking and stopping all traffic.

            

We do finally arrive to our bus (an hour and half later, on a trip that would normally take 20 minutes, max) and have the fun game of trying to shove our huge suitcases onto the bus and convince the driver it wasn’t our fault he took the wrong way and he wasn’t going to get 50,000 extra shillings for his mistake. It was humorous for me, but not so much for the conductor and workers/other patrons who were riding this bus. We find two seats on the bus and watch the workers bring our bags and attempt to put them in the overhead compartments. It wasn’t going to happen, to say the least and eventually they stuffed them between our seats in the isles on a soon typically overcrowded bus.  (Which I am quite thankful for, because the put a smaller bag on top and of course through the bumps on the road it landed on my head, I could not imagine the concussion I would have endured if it was our suitcase!) We were “lucky” that this bus decided to over pack for the journey and the whole isle was littered with packages, suitcases and other random material, that everyone entering or leaving the bus had to walk on all the boxes. Good thing our suitcases had a hard outer cover. After sitting for about an hour to wait for the bus to fill, we finally took off to the “real” parts of Uganda. Again, all I could do is contain my laughter when the typical merchants came onto the bus to sell us anything and everything you ever wanted. They travel for a short ways before departing a bus and probably catching another heading in the other direction to do the same thing. This being normal for me, it didn’t catch me by surprise until I looked over to my mother to see her eyes widen and hear all her questions about what these men are doing and is this legal.  Unlike Honduras, these busses at least don’t really have “priests” come on to make you repent of all your sins the whole ride, so I don’t mind the minor annoyance. The best, though, was I let my mom have the window seat so every major stop she was bombarded with meat, biscuits, and splash being shoved in her face through the window. She could not understand it! And if you know my mother, you can imagine her expressions! As we were attempting to leave the bus, the men could not fathom what we had in our heavy bags and tried under a huff and a puff to get a Christmas present from the bags we unloaded. Yes mom, welcome to Uganda/a third world country. I could not have asked for a better way to start our adventures!