Finally made it...with a few accidents on the way!

Having obtained my visa, completed the medical card and done all the admin I was so nervous about, I reached the baggage section to stand there for about half an hour, watching the same bags go round and around, noticing that the men had stopped loading bags on but still hoping that maybe I'd forgotten what my bag looked like or it was hiding. But alas that was not to be the case and so I eventually logged it as missing and in the typical african way was told it might arrive tomorrow!

Despite having constantly feared when going on holiday that I wouldn't receive my bag I remained surprisingly calm! I made my way out to arrivals and found Benji (our rep guy) and three other girls, all friends from Southern Ireland and we made it to the car...minus my bag and all my clothes...crammed ourselves into the back of a hot and stuffy car and were then approached by a police guard who advised that there was too many of us in the back. But in true africa style, a few words were said and then it didn't really matter and we were off.

The journey should have taken about three hours but proceeded to take a lot longer when we hit the capital city, Kampala, and knocked a man over! There seems to be no real way of driving over here, no real way to cross the road...just look, run and pray...and evidently no law! When we hit the man we hit him pretty hard as he cracked the windscreen and the sound was quite loud. Our driver looked like he was ready to keep on driving but Benji told him to stop as already there were people shouting at us in the car and coming up on motorbikes. Having stopped, we locked the doors and the car then became instantly surrounded by people shouting - we were later told they were debating on whether to kill us or just burn the car - whether this is true though I'm still not sure...a number of you know how gullable I am!

At the time it seemed to go on for a while and we didn't really know what was happening but the police eventually came and we were told to get out the car, that we were safe and that another car would come and get us in a bit. Our driver then proceeded to drive the injured man to the hospital, who seemed ok, and we waited for a car. Benji paid for the police to stay with us...if you have money here you're pretty sorted it would appear!

We were then driven to a backpackers place where we stayed for a few hours until we could get a car to pick us up. This arrived about 3 hours later. When we arrived at the house, having collected pizza, we arrived to a candle lit house given that the power had gone...

Could our arrival day have been any worse?!

written by  Laura_Smith on June 6, 2009 from Jinja, Uganda
from the travel blog: Laura's little summer break
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