Better Lake than Never

Tuesday, 14th August, Semliki Time: 7:08pm

Guess who’s back! Back again! Well. No prizes there. As you might have guessed, its me. I’m back! At least, back in a place with wireless internet. And Sofas.

I’m sure you’re all just dying to know what happened to me over the last week. In fact, the wait probably drove a few of you to an early grave. I’m afraid if you’re looking for anything in depth, you’re going to be a trifle disappointed – I’m completely out of it. I will, however, try to relate a few small bits ‘n’ pieces from my last week in the Mugiri jungle.

Perhaps the most startling affair was last Friday when I was desperately trying to get some important e-mails done with about 30% battery left in the middle of the night. Usually when I wrote e-mails outside the tent I’d be bothered by a couple of moths, and maybe a few hungry mossies, but nothing much more serious than that. On Friday, however, just as I’d pressed the ‘connect’ button, I was attacked by three or four translucent, diaphanous, swallow-shaped insects with huge wings. I put my torch on the table opposite me in order to draw them away, but within 30 seconds, there were not four or five, but about fifty swarming around the light. This number seemed to pretty much double every ten seconds and by the time I’d snapped the lapton shut and made a dive for the torch, I couldn’t actually get to it without grabbing a handful of the unidentified flying insects. When I’d finally managed to rescue the torch and restart the laptop indoors, the darn thing was so confused at being shut in the middle of the long ‘connection’ process, that it refused to link to the internet at all and all further efforts to sesnd e-mails were in vain. The insects themselves, a species that swarms every so often after heavy rain, continued to flutter around outside in their hundreds and, in the morning, we found about 300 dead insects which had each excreted a small dollop of green ooze. Ask no questions, get no answers. I swept them of the balcony. Unpleasant.

Other exciting happenstances from the last week? Well, I was sure there were some, but they’ve slipped my sleep deprived mind completely so I’ll make do with relating our journey to the ‘entebbe backpackers hostel’ where I’m now pleasantly ensconced. Our journey to Kampala from Fort Portal began rather well. We bought some tickets and threw our bags into a minibus with some pleasant smelling, though rather soupy incense sticks covering up some smell or another. They tried to charge us extra for our bags, but we pleasantly refused and settled down ton the cozy seats, waiting for the engine to start. About 20 minutes later, everyone else started getting off the buss. It turned out that another, better bus had arrived for Kampala and people had jumped ship. As the first bus was not going to leave with only two passengers, we untied our heavy bags and trudged to bus number two, which took us all the way to Kampala.

Instead of dropping us in the Kampala bus station, however, we were turfed out in a rather too heavily populated high street opposite Owena market. We were then mobbed by taxi drivers and, upon finding one who said he would convey us to Entebbe for 50,000 ugandan shillings, a pleasant chap seized both of my cripplingly heavy bags and balanced them on his head and sprinted off through the crowds. Dodging past fast moving motor bikes and throngs of people we managed to chase him all the way to the taxi.

At this point the offer of 50,000 UGS was repealed by the taxi driver – something I’d been expecting, and he asked us for 70,000. I smiled and offered 55. He suggested 60k and, as this was the price I expected to pay from the start, I cheerily agreed. We got in and were about to head off, when the guy who had carried the bags on his head also chipped in. I’d assumed he’d been in kahoots with the Taxi driver and was going to split the cost, but he thought otherwise. I told the taxi driver that the 5,000 that the bag-fellow was demanding would should certainly be included in our fare and, in future, to make this sort of thing very clear before the bags were carried. The taxi driver drove off with the poor bag man wailing in his wake. I felt rather guilty. When we finally arrived, we were harangued for the best part of 15 minutes for an extra 5k to pay our bag carrier and, eventually, he got tired and wandered off. As the normal fare to the airport is 52,000, I felt that our driver had got rather a good deal anyway.

Which, fairly much, brings us to now. I’ve been sitting in the lovely, cozy, Entebbe backpackers hostel sampling ‘Ugandan Sherry’ (The final verdict: Not that bad) and giving my laptop the charge of its life. Lake Victoria is lovely, as is the fact I’m sitting on a seat with a cushion and am about to eat something that isn’t beans.

Apologies for the above lack of cogent sentence structure, grammer and, lets face it, semantics. I’m really quite exhausted!