We got up early so that my host's mother could visit her doctor.* Her appt was at 8am, so we left at 7:45am. We arrived at the clinic at 8:30am. No one seemed concerned. We dropped off grammy and headed to the office. A few seconds later, Nigel got a call from his mom saying the clinic was actually closed until 3pm. Oops. (Turns out calling ahead is unheard of here.)
* Nigel's mother is in town from Nebbi, the village where Nigel grew up. She's a very nice woman. Unfortunately the gender roles seem to be inhibiting my ability to get to know her.
Nigel had pulled over to take the call, but instead of turning around, he just threw the land rover into R and reversed down the opposite side of the street. Boda bodas were coming right at me with quizzical looks on their faces. One of them mouthed "what is he doing?" and I just shrugged my shoulders and smiled. We reversed for about 200 meters and pulled back into the clinic. I got dropped off and I'm not sure what happened with grams.
Later in the afternoon, Steve and I started planning our weekend safari in Murchison Falls National Park. I decided to call to check on reservations and was given a set of prices and told there were several rooms available. Perfect. I checked back with the group, got our priorities in order and made another call to get a real reservation. Well, in those 25 minutes, all the double rooms had been taken. WHAT! NOOOOOOOO. I was pissed.
I told the group and they were pissed. So we regrouped. Steve decided to make the next call (since I was still in shock) and got a different woman. Well, apparently this woman had access to the real list of rooms, because Steve was able to book 3 double rooms. Huh?
So we got the reservation on the phone, but were told we needed to find the reservation center to confirm everything. We were feeling proactive, so we asked if anyone in the coffee shop knew where it was. A gentleman drew us a small map on a napkin and said "it's 20 meters after Jinja road", so we took off.* We were both mighty skeptical that we'd find it, but hey, it was a
* My last words to Amelia were "we have no chance".
Well, unsurprisingly, were were epically unsuccessful. We quickly realized that there are no street signs on the roads of Kampala (as well as traffic signs). We followed the map to a T, but ended up in a gas station that didn't look promising. We asked a few locals for their thoughts. One told us to avoid taxis. One just kept walking. Cool. Then we went off in another direction. Then another. Then we saw 6th street (we were looking for 5th) and got a second wind. No 5th. Anywhere. Then we asked a boda boda driver where to go. He pointed us in the right direction. Then we found out that instead of saying "20 meters" our original map guy said "20 minutes". It was a 20 minute walk from a road near our starting point. Well, we had run out of time and needed to head back to meet our hosts. So we hopped on a boda boda and hung our heads in shame. Maybe tomorrow.
It just seemed like things didn't really work out the way they were supposed to for most of the day. Something we've gotten used to here in Uganda.
No comments:
Post a Comment