A group of women stand on the banks of the Nile River watching a man jump into the river just above the Bujanga Falls. The "jerry can man" is tied to a jerry can to keep him afloat while he shoots down the falls. We spent 10 minutes debating whether to pay him as our group feels its inhumane to pay people to risk their lives for our entertainment - but in the end we contribute, as we know he will ride the falls for the other tourists and we will watch him ride the white waters in any case. As it grows dark, I hear fish eagles cry and see at least two.
I'm sorry to leave the Nile River and to fly back to South Africa early the next morning. I envy the tourists camping nearby who will fall asleep to the sound of rushing waters. My blissful week of participating in a Femrite writing residency with 15 African women writers, staying at the Hotel International Muyenga outside Kampala, is almost over.
I will miss Uganda, with its pleasant, relaxing weather and friendly people. It's on the equator, so it doesn't have seasons as we know them. Nights are cooler and sitting on the terrace of the hotel overlooking the hills of Kampala and Lake Victoria in the distance was heavenly. We tried the local beers - Nile, Club, Bell and the Kenyan beer, Trader.
Some evenings we drank shandies, mixing the beer with Stoney ginger beer or Dry Lemon, not something I'd thought to try before.
Water seems to be an issue in Uganda, I heard talk of water trucks and, as you drive around the city of Kampala, you see people carrying water containers of all shapes and sizes. They use ingenious means of strapping them to bicycles and scooters, or loaded onto handmade wheelbarrows.
Enormous caribou storks live in the palm trees around the hotel, and as they settle in at night you hear them rustling in the foliage. Storks and kites swoop and circle as we eat our lunch on the terrace.
Lunches are large hot meals, and each day we are treated to generous Ugandan hospitality, matooke (cooked green bananas) served with a ground nut sauce, goat stew, chicken curry, rice, boiled potatoes (called "Irish" by one of our contingent from Rwanda).
Dessert is modest - fruit in one form or another, usually fresh and whole.
A large buffet breakfast is served on the terrace from about 6.30am - omelettes, cooked beans, sausages that look like Russians, bananas, pineapple, flasks of coffee, African tea (milky tea with ginger in it), regular tea, cake, a sweetish white bread and plum jam.
I didn't have what I would consider a decent cup of coffee in Uganda, so if you are dependent on coffee, you may want to take your own small plunger and supply of coffee. If you stop over in Nairobi you might be able to buy decent coffee at highly inflated prices at the duty-free.
My bedroom is an enormous, well proportioned, corner room overlooking the hills of Kampala and the lake in the distance. The two layers of mosquito netting turned the bed into a romantic canopy. Uganda is in a high risk malaria area, so you have to watch out for mozzies. Yellow fever vaccinations are compulsory, otherwise on your return to South Africa you'll be made to have one before you're allowed to re-enter.
As I am involved in a writing residency, I don't have the same kind of time to explore the city as other tourists might. However, thanks to my luggage taking two days to get to me, I have to go down to the shops to buy undies and something to wear.
My host takes me to the Craft Market at the National Theatre. I buy a green bou bou and felt fabulously cool and appropriately dressed in it. The Craft Market is a good place for buying gifts, you'll find handmade clothes, toys, beads, shoes, wonderful earthenware bowls, pots and teapots. I'm lucky enough to return to the market twice more, so I really have time to browse.
November is grasshopper season, a great delicacy in Uganda and I see several grasshopper men carrying large Tupperware style containers plying their trade at the market and in the streets of Kampala. Apparently grasshoppers are quite expensive. I'm not tempted to try them.
All sorts of foods are sold on the streets, including gooseberries still in their papery shells, roasted nuts and grains, roasted robusta coffee beans wrapped in palm leaf envelopes.
On our last day we head out to a nearby tourist attraction, the Source of the Nile River and the Bujanga Falls.
We pile into a rented mini-bus taxi and set off to the town of Ginja, "only an hour or so away" our Ugandan host optimistically tells us.
Two-and-a-half hours later, we finally get there. It takes just as long to get back in the dark. A puncture, and the "jam" on Saturday evening add to the excitement. On the way to Ginja, the taxi stops at the Ugandan equivalent of a "drive-thru take-away", and we are mobbed by people at the taxi windows selling bottles of water, Miranda Grape, beef/goat kebabs, chicken kebabs, roasted plantains (hard green relatives of the banana that can only be eaten cooked - either roasted or fried I was told). I buy a roasted plantain takeaway - which gives me three, I share the other two with my travelling companions. I don't love it, but it is edible and filling.
Most of the roads are potholed and poorly maintained, due I think to Uganda still largely being a subsistence economy, and the population thus not providing much of a tax base for the state. The rules of the road are practical in their application and at times we drive three abreast up a hill, however there seems to be a kindly use of the indicator by the vehicle in front, I don't notice road rage in Uganda, drivers seem more laid back than here.
The traffic is like a river moving in two directions, with a great deal of give and take. But all the Ugandans speak of avoiding "jam", the tight congestion at peak hours.
The Source of the Nile River is lovely, wide and soothing, little boats putter about on it, taking people to see the actual Source where it exits Lake Victoria. We eat our hotel-packed lunch near the Gandhi memorial. Gandhi requested that his ashes be scattered at the Source of the Nile, I can understand why.
Visible too is a plinth in memory of John Hanning Speke who was the first European to "discover the Nile".
Unlike tourist attractions I've visited in South Africa, most visitors to the Source are black. Although I see several tall blonde youths in Uganda at touristy places wearing T-shirts emblazoned "Mzungu" (a swahili word meaning "white person").
Uganda is both familiar and strange to me, it is green and lush, the streets are colourful and crowded with people going about their business, peacefully and cheerfully. Kampala's streets jostle with pedestrians, bicycles, scooter taxis (called boda bodas - as they used to go to Kenya during lean times to smuggle goods across the borders, according to our hosts), 4x4s, buses, and trucks. People sell everything from beds, velvety upholstered armchairs, shoes, huge piles of green bananas, car exhausts, to nursery plants on the side of the roads. I notice billboards campaigning against intergenerational sexual relations and for HIV testing all over the place. Tiny, colourfully painted shops line almost every road you drive along, and the air smells of open fire smoke, grilled meat and diesel fumes.
If I ever have another chance to visit Uganda I would like to go into the mountains, and stay at one of the many lodges there and see the gorillas.