18. A Hairy ride back to Kisiizi

Sunday 18th November

View from the Veranda

Sarah and Angela are going for a walk this morning at 7am with a local guide and the rest of us have decided to have a lazy Sunday morning. I don’t think I’ve mentioned that Angela has joined the group from the weekend. She’s is an anaesthetist from Peterborough who has been at Kisiizi for five weeks as part of a six month volunteer programme. She’s not yet had the chance to get away anywhere for the weekend so we were more than happy for her to join us when she asked earlier in the week.

 

I drew back the curtains to enjoy the most amazing view from our veranda. It’s just a pity we don’t have coffee making facilities in the room as I would have enjoyed sitting out with a cup, drinking in the view. However, no slacking allowed. I have work to do. I am days behind with my blog as there just hasn’t been any time since Wednesday night to put pen to paper so now is my chance. I decided not to bring my laptop with me for the weekend as there wasn’t a lot of space in the vehicle and I already looked like the bag lady with my haversack, bum bag, handbag and a small folding shopping bag, plus my waterproof and fleece carried separately as they wouldn’t fit in the (very small) haversack. So I am writing my blog longhand to type up when I get back.

 

Around 8.15am I get a shower, a lovely long warm, power shower with my Body Shop Papaya shower gel – it feels like a real luxury when compared to the shower back at Rose Cottage. I join Haley, Sam and Tom for breakfast and today choose the pancakes, crispy bacon and maple syrup option, plus juice fresh fruit and coffee. It is cloudy today so it’s not really ideal for sitting by the pool and we have to check out by 11am anyway. I decide to go and pack and then have a wander around the grounds. Haley and Tom have booked a massage in the Spa for 10am. There are so many opportunities for good photos – I am surprised my memory card is still holding out – I must remember to download the card when we get back to Kisiizi as I’m sure there can’t be much space left on it. I have a look in the gift shop, there’s not a lot to tempt me (I can hear Peter thinking...thank goodness!) but manage to purchase a couple of items – some wooden salad servers (which is something we do actually need) to serve as a souvenir of the trip - and a jar of locally made pineapple jam which I am hoping if well packed might survive the trip home in one piece.

 

We are staying for lunch before we leave at 2pm and I choose to have two starters and a banana split (I had looked enviously at Angela’s yesterday). Richard arrives on time and we pack up the vehicle, settle the drinks bill – ridiculously cheap – and hit the road. Tom doesn’t seem as keen to travel in the front as he had on the journey here, so I offer to take his place. Not quite sure if this is a good move or not. We hadn’t been going long when Angela’s phone rang. Apparently they had forgotten to add her boat trip to the bill, so could we either come back or pay the security guard at the exit gate. We choose the latter option. Five minutes later another phone call and this time they are trying to say Tom has not paid either. This is incorrect but because we had split the cost of two doubles and a single and shared it between the five of us, it had obviously confused the reception staff, so Sarah got on the phone and put them right politely, but firmly, as is her way, dear. We saw more animals on the way out and stopped at a craft shop outside the Park that Richard assured us was ‘very cheeeep’. We have a look around but the quality of the stuff is not great so nobody buys anything which seems to surprise him. Just as we get back in the rain starts so we have to close the roof. We drive over the bridge linking Lake Albert and Lake Edward and the photo we had hoped to get of both lakes was now not possible with the roof down. Never mind, we still have the picture of this spectacular sight in our minds. Once Richard puts his foot down we are moving pretty fast – I check the speedo at 80kms per hr – not sure what the speed limit is (or if there is one?) but on these roads that seems pretty fast. It’s not long before he is back on his horn, pretty much in the same way he was on the journey to Mweya. He’s using the horn to warn pedestrians, cars and bikes ahead to pull over as we are coming through and he is actually using it in a safe fashion, it just seems to us to be pretty excessive use - but perhaps this is the norm here? To be fair he is also on another mission – trying to get us to the place where we can see monkeys and chimps. However when we reach the spot there are none to be seen – I suspect they are all sheltering from the rain, which by now is fairly heavy.

 

Richard makes a few calls on the mobile, I obviously don’t understand what he is saying but from the tone of the conversation it would appear that there is some sort of problem he is trying to sort out.

 

We stop at a little village and immediately the van is surrounded by hoards of children holding up plates of all sorts of things for us to buy. We politely decline, apart from the char grilled corn on the con which looks and smells pretty delicious there is nothing else that looks remotely appealing. Richard purchases 2 cobs of corn and 2 kebabs of some sort of meat – it’s not obvious what it is. I ask him later and he says it is goat. I don’t know whether the white chunks in between the meat are bits of fat or onion, but he’s tucking in and clearly enjoying his lunch. I’m just a bit worried that if he brakes sharply again like he did earlier, then he is going to spear the roof of his mouth with the kebab stick, and you know how I am not good with blood. The mobile goes again and this time he has the steering wheel in his left hand and a large piece of corn and the mobile in his right. It’s quite an art that he manages to talk, eat corn and drive at the same time. The exchange between Richard and the caller is now getting more heated and at one point his hand comes of the steering wheel and he punches his fist into mid air, presumably in frustration at whatever he is hearing on the other end of the phone. The next thing I hear is “Hallo.... hallo...” the phone has obviously been put down on him. The phone calls continue on and off for about 30 minutes with him getting more and more irate. At one point he clicks off and says in English pointing at the phone, presumably for our benefit ... ”He is an Idiot”.

 

A bit later I try and make conversation with Richard which isn’t the easiest thing to do as his understanding of English isn’t great. He is a lovely guy, and is really funny without realising it – his mannerisms and his ‘not quite understanding our question’ expression on his face always makes us smile. He reminds me of Eddie Murphy. I ask him where he lives. He tells me the time. I ask again where he lives and eventually he understands and I learn he lives in Upper Kisiizi with his wife and three children. It takes almost 10 minutes to extract this little bit of information, so I decide to give the conversation a miss for now and start jotting a few thoughts about the weekend in my notebook for my next blog. Clearly Richard is curious about what I am doing. I realise after a while that he thinks I am making a report about his driving, especially when he apologises to me about having to use the phone so much. From then every time I see something out of the window that I note down, he thinks I am writing something about him. We stop to get petrol and on the waste ground to the side there are a group of boys aged about seven or eight having great fun playing with a football made out of rags.

 

Richard then starts chatting to me perhaps looking to get me on side, so that I give a good “report” about his driving ability. However the difficulty is every time he turns to me to ask something he is not looking at the road ahead. It’s a bit hairy and I am starting to see why Tom was keen to sit in the back

 

Driving along we see loads of people walking along the side of the road. Ladies carrying their baskets on their heads, men with huge piles of wood balanced precariously also on their heads, and a small boy with a stick keeping his herd of about 20 goats in check to stop them running out into the road. We pass all the banana and tea plantations again that we saw on Friday and before long we are driving off the tarmac road and on to an incredibly bumpy track. We will be on this for probably about an hour. Sam passes her bags of sweets around – what a lifesaver! I choose a drumstick which, instead of chomping in 30 seconds, as usual I manage to make last for about 10 minutes – Peter would be impressed! The track we are driving on has now become bright orange with the rain water mixing into the dust, and the streams of water flowing down through all the crevices in the track look the colour of rust. We see a group of young girls to our right at the side of the road washing their clothes in the rainwater.

 

Haley announces that she needs Richard to stop for the toilet. He enquires as to whether it is a ‘short call’ or a ‘long call’ she needs. Establishing it is the former, he starts to look for a suitable place to stop at the side of the road with some bush cover. There is nothing suitable and after about 10 minutes of keeping an eye out without success he tells Haley that there is a petrol station in about 20 minutes. Haley agrees she can hang on.

 

Another phone call comes through and this time Richard’s response is in English for some reason. “Not now, I am busy” he says and clicks the phone off. I remind Richard that Sam has mentioned earlier that she would like to try a Jack fruit which is a huge strangely shaped fruit that each time she has visited Kisiizi, she has forgotten to try. We ask Richard to stop on the way to get us one and he is pleased because his children like them too so he will get some for them. We stop 30 minutes later at another village and again all the plates of fruit and vegetables appear for sale and this time there is a small child carrying a sugar cane about twice his height which is also for sale. Angela gets two avocados for 100 shillings each (about 3p if I have not miscalculated) and Richard chooses us a Jack Fruit to take back to Rose Cottage for Phillip to prepare for us. Apparently there is a bit of a knack to getting them ready for eating.

We pass through several more villages on the way back to Kisiizi and they all have the same unlikely looking hotels and beauty salons amongst lots of other shops selling mobile phone tops ups, fruit vegetables and mattresses. People seem to just stand or sit outside the shops and their homes; they don’t appear to be engaged in conversation with each other, they just sit and watch the passing traffic and animals and keep an eye on their children playing close by. We pass a large football field and the scene is just like home with all the parents standing on the sidelines shouting words of encourage to the, would be, footballing stars of the future.

 

We get back at 7pm just in time for a quick wash and change before dinner. It’s been an amazing weekend, but it’s back to work tomorrow – I’m down to help out with some data entry relating to antibiotics – that should be interesting!