Policemen and thieves and how to travel through Uganda without hotel bills

Ole Samurai prepares to be lodgings for the night

“Are you going to leave at four or five?” asked the man with the gun and the Security Group hoodie.

I was lost for a bit there because all I had asked him was where I could find some reasonably priced accommodation in the neighbourhood of the petrol station he was guarding. “You just give me a thousand,” he added.

            “Uganda shillings?” I asked, finally catching his drift.

            “Yes, U shillings,” he confirmed with a self-satisfied grin. “You won’t be alone, see?” he went on and, pointing with the barrel of his gun at three cars, four matatus (communal taxis) and a luxury Toyota mini van. “There are people in those cars and they will continue to Kampala early tomorrow morning_____”

            “And of course we will be safe because you have a gun?” I asked, interrupting his pitch; why let the man continue preaching to the deaconry, right? “Here is two thousand,” I added to his delightful surprise, “one for your hospitality, the other for the idea.”

He beamed at me.

very thoughtfully, in case you need to freshen up .....

“And if you wish to freshen up before you sleep,” he said most hospitably, while leading me to where there was a long-snouted plastic container and basin, “you just come here.”

As promised by the askari with a gun, Ole Samurai and I spent a peaceful and rather uneventful night together (one inside the other, to be precise) at the Bugiri Petrol Station on the Malaba Kampala Highway.

The discovery early in the morning that there was a running tap under the water tank and even better, a working bathroom next to the tank, was purely accidental, but a welcome bonus.

My Ugandan friend in Kampala however didn’t seem impressed.

“It’s legal nowadays,” he said nonchalantly when I explained how I’d never waste money on hotel rooms again. “They changed the law just the other day to allow travellers to sleep in their cars. Otherwise you would have been arrested for jaywalking.”

Jaywalking indeed!

As if they would give a hoot! Except in the city of Kampala where my most organised always-travel-with-a-map brother Muthomi was once delayed for almost an hour for carrying an expired driving licence,  the policemen of Uganda are generally very well disposed towards people with Kenyan plates on their cars.

“Habari my friend,” said the first ever Ugandan highway patrolman to wave me down. ”How is Kenya?” he shouted as he hurried to catch up and come to my window.

“Kenya is good.”

“Wapi chai yangu?” (Where is my tea?).

Just like that, without even looking at my cracked windscreen, or scrutinising my then expired driver’s licence and insurance! The total lack of shame with which he uttered this last statement, despite the fact that tea is the oldest euphemism for a bribe in Kenya, is the true definition of impunity. So with a smile that said “no offense, officer but you’re being silly,” I let him have it.

 “Did someone inform you I was bringing it?”

 “These crazy Kenyans!” he exclaimed to no one in particular. He waved his hands wildly in the air in dismay at our craziness. “Have a safe journey,” he added as he waved me on, with a look almost of pity in his eyes.

Henceforth, I have adopted the retort “did someone say I was bringing it?” as standard response to anyone who asks me for “my tea.” Try it some time, but not on a Kenyan traffic policeman. The fines, both legal and illegal, can be too steep for that kind of talk – especially with the tough new laws.

But this is not about the Kenyan police. It the story of how I spent a restful night at Bugiri petrol Station during one uneventful journey through Uganda. On this trip, friends and neighbours, I was also to find out that Rwandan plates driving through Uganda do not command the same respect as Kenyan plates do. This may explain why, on reaching Kampala the next morning, I had to part with Ushs. 20,000 (Ksh 800) for making a simple S turn. (What? Never heard of an S turn? It’s when you make an illegal U turn, realise your mistake and make another to correct the first one.)

The male and female cop that caught me were friendly though, and made small talk about Paul Kagame and how he had fallen out with M7 for a long time until their wives orchestrated reconciliation. And after the cash had disappeared into their dark trench coats, they even wanted my phone number so we could keep in touch. I lied of course; gave them the wrong number by two digits!

Nothing amusing though about the next bunch of Ugandan cops that stopped me later that day. Having taken some time to have the old junk’s suspension checked, I had left Kampala at around seven pm and hoped to do at least four hours of the nine hour journey before finding a friendly petrol station to pitch camp at for the night. It happened on a rough stretch of road less than three hours after leaving the city.

It was a bit confusing and rather scary, not just because the “policemen,” just materialised out of the bushes and had no actual uniforms to speak of safe for worn out army issue jungle jackets, but because they were armed with only a torch with a watery weak beam and were not beneath pleading, nay, begging, for at least USh 2,000 (Ksh. 60)

“Ati leasti,” said one, meaning “at least” and playing the torch on the back seat of the jeep,”2000 will help us purchesi the batteries for thisi torchi. Iti is for your safety, ssebo.” He moved around to inspect my meagre cargo better. “Nobody cares abouti us out here,” he added getting back to my window.

Something, I realised, was not quite right.

But it didn’t hit me until just when I was handing over my USh 1000 donation for their Police Torch Fund. It was only then that I took off as fast as my 20 year old jeep could.

It was their furtive gestures, darting eye movements, faltering English and confidence levels that tended to rise and fall as we haggled that had set my hairs aflutter and set alarm bells in my head. Moments later, my intuition was proven right when out of the bushes came two big motorbikes with bad engines. They gave chase for about a kilometre then fell back.

“.... many highway robbers on that section of road,” said the armed guard at the next petrol station when I narrated my experience as I handed over my last 1000 U shillings for the overnight truck stop. 

As I settled for another uneventful night’s sleep, I couldn’t help feeling very lucky. Even luckier that the next day I would be in Kigali , Rwanda, kwa Paul Kagame, where a man can go unmolested anywhere, any time of day or night, and cops don’t ask for Chai for fear of dismissal and jail.

© Lloyd Igane; Nairobi 2012

kreative@earthling.net

Oil for the mind

“That’s so cool!!!” exclaimed my Ugandan friend Daniel Engole., BA, DJ, Copywriter, radio host, and one-time side-kick to an alleged Baganda Prince, when I told him that l had gone to Kampala last year to snoop around. But when I mentioned what I had gone to snoop around for - a quick oil dollar - he laughed out loud (lol).

a beautiful monument and garden in Kampala city.
Photo by Lloyd Igane

He lol’d even louder (LOL), when I told him exactly what I found instead: a city with campaign posters (mostly of NRM yellow – it was elections time) pasted on every available surface and garbage in most corners. Daniel and I were, as the more perceptive of you have deduced, chatting online, and, following Uganda’s and then Kenya’s announcement that we were East Africa’s overnight oil sheikdoms, oil was on our minds.

 “Pathetic,” he typed, of the garbage. Or it could have been about something else; you never know with these chats. You triumphantly hit “send” on a rather lengthy sentence you have painstakingly typed for two minutes, eyes glued on the keyboard, only to look up and find your nimble-fingered chat-mate has already answered all the questions you had so laboured to ask and moved on to other things so different and more important that you feel rather silly.

Pathetic, however, also turns out to be the situation you could be in trying to find some food in that most noble of East African cities after midnight.

“Try the lower side,” offered an armed guard at a Bata shop on William Street (where I thought was the lower side).

Now I have been to Kampala many times, all before the 50^th Independence Anniversary, I must add, and I have many lovely memories. I have eaten katogo for breakfast at many a restaurant, been spoilt with delicious, wholesome authentic Ugandan cuisine at Steak Out and hungrily gulped down juicy burgers and great coffee at various establishments of high repute; smoked a fake Sportsman under a deserted monument that, when later re-painted, turned out to be the Independence Monument, and gawped at M7’s amazing motorcade to the utter amazement of nonchalant Ugandans; made friends with a Crested Crane in the parking lot of a lakeside hotel in Entebbe, been a pilgrim at the GaddafiMosque, and among other things, pondered the cobblestones in front of the Parliament of Uganda building. I have also bribed my way (with impunity) through a double U turn and for inadvertently crossing the Nile at more than double the speed limit...

But nothing, friends and neighbours, had prepared me for that one night when I hit Kampala after midnight on one of my many uneventful trips through three countries in two days. Following the helpful watchman’s directions, I had pressed on, past a street corner where I had once bought a Ugandan maiden from Tororo two measures of live green insects (a delicacy, she had insisted), towards but not quite up to, the big central bus station. This, I realised, must be the side of town that my PR friend, John, had once described as “Any Time is Action Time street” and made me swear never to put a foot there or even say he told me.

Now I had put more than a foot there.

Unlike the relative stillness of the rest of the city, this had turned out to be a bubbling metropolis with a life all of its own. I was all of a sudden jostled from all angles by busy, highly active night people. Granted, some were lurking in dark corners and were not jostling anyone - probably because that’s how their business works - but even the lurking seemed active and darkly purposeful. Now I had heard talk in hushed tones of a Rock and a Garden on Nile Avenue, where the sun never sets etc and, for as little as USh 50k (Ksh. 150, Rwf. 17,000), or even nil, if he buys enough swallow and negotiates from the heart, a hard-up man can put down his load.  

I cannot swear by anyone’s milk that I was on said Nile Avenue, but I am not likely to forget the sights, smells and sounds: a most distinctly unsavoury smell wafted from a nearby garbage dump, fused easily with the general body odour/cheap perfume as the sensual background of what seemed to be scores of night clubs cum bars – all thumping and throbbing with an ear-splitting cacophony of high decibel sounds comparable only to the likes of Sabina Joy or the old Modern Green of Nairobi, Kigali’s Club Planet at the KBC and a certain Club in Nyamirambo to which Davie the Cow first took me on condition that I’d never say it by name in polite society.

Thus my hunt for a late night snack had progressively turned into an involuntary cruise of a shabbier version of Nairobi’s K Street, not just on a very busy night but with several Sabina Joys, MGs and Club Skys (oops!) thrown in. Business looked (and sounded) really good. Unfortunately for me, the only business seemed to be alcohol, illicit sax, who-knows-what-else, and then more.

            “Are you looking for a man?” asked a snake eyed man clad in tight blue jeans. He also looked anaemic and had very bad teeth.

            “No sir,” I managed to say through gritted teeth, “just a cup of tea, is all.”

            “And after that am all yours?” he persisted, batting his badly done eye-lashes at the night and bleakly flashing his tobacco-stained teeth – a trick that seemed to have backfired many times but which he was doggedly determined to perfect with practice. I wondered if he had a concealed knife but didn’t let it bother me.

            “After that,” I almost shouted, but didn’t, “you go suck a bee.”

When tottering on the brink of insanity in a strange neighbourhood, showing your emotions can only make things worse.

            But I digress, which is good, really. More presently, Danny boy was still LOL-ing about the yellow posters.  

            Me: Is it true that the posters were all gratis?”

Dan: Don’t know.

Me: But someone from a billboard company told me they had to donate some prime sites...

            Dan: Hahahahha. Dictator... do it or ...

            Me:  Try strategist.

            Dan: Poltergeist LOL. To M7, it’s still a war... always a war.

Me: Naa.

Dan: Deals?

Me: Correct. But I worry for Uganda.

Dan: We’ve got oil, dude!

Me: Especially that…

Dan:  ???

Me: Once the oil starts flowing, I fear the queues may suddenly appear at petrol stations like they do in Lagos.

 Dan: That’s the order of African legacies lately...

(Author’s Note: I’ll never put Daniel E in a story of mine again. He is too unpatriotic and passively negative.)

kreative@publicist.com