22nd of January, 2018.
Walking towards the immigration of Uganda, I see a sign written Online Visas Application. I think I am in trouble. Then when I check the people on the line and all of them are holding a piece of paper in their hands, I definitely think I am in trouble. I did not apply for anything. In no one of the blogs I read about the East Africa Tourist Visa I read about applying online. They all just talk about arriving in one of the three countries (Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda) and asking for the Visa.
Talking with the nice lady behind me, she tranquillizes me saying that probably would not be a problem.
In the end, is even better! Those few people with the online papers have to wait in a different section, while I just keep going from where I am in the line and pretty quickly I am next. The application is the most quickly and easier one until now. The guy just ask for the 100 Dollars (Yes! Thanks Loki it is just the one hundred I remembered), take a picture and put the Visa sticker on the passport. No one single question about what I am going to do over there or where I would stay. Nothing.
With my backpack I am also so lucky: It is intact!
Still at the airport, I eat my sandwich, wash it up, rearrange my backpack and ask for a cardboard in a shop. I write “Kampala / Kasese” on it.
The sun is hard. I know the road it is not that far, something around three of four kilometres, but under that sun it could be lethal. Somebody stops and offer to drive me until a “bus stop” where all the local buses are going from Entebbe to Kampala. I kindly say thanks but explain to him that I would do the hitchhiking thing. He is the first Ugandan to say to me that nobody would take me for free.
I keep walking on the road, a busy one, and two cops are around. One of them come to me and ask – what is going on? After I explain everything he just say nobody will stop. Second Ugandan. He is not saying anything that could help me and almost make me lose the UN car when it passes. Lucky, they saw my sign and came back. But then the luck stops because after I say I am going to Kampala and need a ride but do not had any money with me, the guy who is in the back, a white man, just say ‘no’ and close the window on my face! What? What kind of jerk would do that? Are not those people supposed to be nice and help others? After a few moments of real anger, I though that maybe, maybe, he misunderstood what I said. If he did not get the first part of my explanation, when I was asking for a ride, when I said “I do not have any money” he could’ve think I was asking for money. Why I was reconsidering that? I was trying to believe that they might could be nice? I do not know. But even so, if he misunderstood me, why he was so rude and closed the window? Why he did not say one single nice word?
Walking a little more, I finally find a reasonable place for hitchhiking. After two or three more people passing and saying that nobody would stop (third, fourth and fifth Ugandan), a young man from a bus that had just passed a few minutes before, to whom I told not to have any money, comes back and say he would help me. I tell him again, a few times, that I have no money with me but he just repeat “It is OK, I will help you. Trust me.”
They drive me the whole way to Kampala and after everybody left, he drives me to a bus station. We talk a lot in the way and when I explain my plan to him he also says nobody would pick me up for free, that could be dangerous or I could stay there for a long time (sixth Ugandan). But the difference is that Jacob (how he is called) is a really nice person. He convince me to go to the Bus Companies and ask for them to take me for free since I do not have any money. I would definitely prefer to hitchhike because I would not feel that uncomfortable with the situation. After Jacob talks with two guys and they both refuse, we walk to the Post Bus, the one I read in all websites that should be the most trustful one. Before I talk with the manager, Jacob say he has to go, his bus is already waiting for him. He gives me two thousand Xelins (something around fifty cents) to buy a bottle of water and then he leaves.
The lady at Post Bus nice but she says their buses just leave in the morning. It is before one o’clock now. Would she let me take the next morning bus if I had said I could wait? I will never know. She advise me going to a company which has buses each hour. So I do.
The room of the manager it is full of men. Two of them, I am almost sure, are rich men. If any one of them offered to pay my ticket? Of course not.
After talking to the manager, who in the beginning looked like a nice man who could and would help me, I wait for over an hour until decide to leave with not even a real answer from him. It is after two o’clock now, from Kampala to Kasese it is over six hours, as a still unexperienced traveller, I don’t even think about trying to go as further as possible. I just decide to find a place to sleep, near to the road, and next morning get up early and try my luck. I do not know I am actually walking to one of the most disappointed “given help” experience until now.
10 Years Around the World 