Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Ugandan girl in a simple flowery dress came to sit with us. It was a nice change to speak to
somebody who was not Boston; I could not remember the last time I had such an involved
conversation with a woman - and, as she finished her drink, she leant across the table and
asked if she could take my phone number.
'Nice girl,' I said, as we watched her leave, disappointed that she hadn't got it.
Boston leaned in across the table and grinned. 'You have a way with prostitutes, Lev.'
I looked after her, bemused. 'I thought she was just on her way to Church . . .'
'Maybe she was,' Boston shrugged. 'Even prostitutes have God, Lev.'
In the hills outside Kampala, the country suddenly burst open with activity and life.
Ten kilometres away from the city centre, the suburban sprawl grew up. Suddenly the dirt
tracks became roads, the roads sprouted pavements, and
boda-bodas
- the bicycle and mo-
torcycle taxis peculiar to this part of Africa - appeared everywhere.
We had come 35km already today, but entering the city limits gave me a newfound sense
of determination. Boston, meanwhile, needed no such encouragement. I heard only half of
what he was saying, but he was virtually frothing at the lips to tell me about the city's best
restaurants and hotels, the bustling Nakasero Market, the hangouts of all the hotchpotch
nationalities who made the city their home.
Walking into Kampala was like landing on the moon compared with my experience of
Uganda so far. It is wrong of me to say it felt like stepping from the past back into the
present, but that was what came to mind as we saw the first of the city's skyscrapers in
the distance and felt the crowds thickening around us. Boston had described the place with
such passion that I might have expected the streets to be paved in gold; right now, I would
have given all the gold in the world for the promise of a comfortable hotel bed.
Kampala is a teenager of a city - boisterous and messy, contradictory but naïve and
growing fast. As at the equator, the Ugandan press had been warned of our coming and,
as we trudged up to the central Kibuye roundabout, the crowd of faces waiting for us was
immense. Among them I saw Matthias again. It seemed as if half of the city had heard
about the
Tembula Muzungu
, and for the final few miles we were surrounded by a horde
of hacks, baying like so many hyenas, all shouting out for photographs and interviews. I
suddenly felt thoroughly self-conscious and embarrassed at the attention.
At the roundabout police had cordoned off the thoroughfare, halting all traffic, and Bo-
ston and I walked into the crowds to rapturous applause. From somewhere off to the left
there came a roaring of engines and, when I looked up, I could see a bank of motorcyc-
lists turning circles around the roundabout. There must have been twenty of them, local
Ugandan men dressed up like Hell's Angels from some dire '80s movie. Perhaps they had
been tempted down by the promise of getting their souped-up scooters and Harley-David-
sons on national television, but their presence lent our arrival an even more carnival air.
