Routines make me blind to my life, I stop paying attention once I’m settled in, and really everything seems normal in life right now. My in-joke with myself about “hey mama what’s for supper?” has faded somewhat, I only giggle to myself once in a while when I eat the mash of starches by the light of a lantern with my family occasionally speaking to each other (in Luganda) about the day. So on Friday when we got on the coaster headed for Kampala and ultimately Jinja, as soon as we got out of town I was bombarded by thoughts about life here. Part of it is the fact that sitting in the car staring out the window offers great thinking space, and secondly just the getting out of town out of my routine there makes me think. But first, how, you may be wondering, do you even get from Masaka to Jinja? what’s a coaster? (Sorry guys you’ll have to look on a map for yourself, Jinja is south of Kampala. Pretty much anytime I’ve talked to any Ugandan about Jinja they’re bound to say, “yeah, Jinja, the source of the Nile.”)

So, public transport in Uganda is sort of mysterious. Mainly there are “taxis” and “coasters.” Taxis are like mini-buses – the attached photo of the same name shows two taxis with a truck full of matooke between. They generally have that paint job and say “taxi” on a little sign on the roof, except sometimes you can’t see the sign if it’s covered by people’s stuff strapped on. Coasters are bigger than a mini-bus but smaller than an actual bus – they have things like charter buses too but I don’t know how to take one, if they’re private or what. The thing is, often a coaster and a taxi hold the same number of people, but in a coaster you get your own seat whereas in a taxi you’ll probably be smashed 4 or sometimes 5 to a row. A coaster is built to hold about 40 (each row with four permanent seats and 1 aisle fold-down) and a taxi has “licensed to hold 12” painted on the side but to hold so few is rare – technically each row with two permanent seats and one aisle fold-down. Gas is really expensive here, 2,600 shillings per liter which I think Cory and I calculated to be over $6 per gallon.

There are three main characters to know when taking a coaster or taxi. There’s the driver, of course, position self-explanatory; you never need to interact with him (it’s always a him). Then there’s the conductor, who sits by the sliding door of the van/bus. He takes the fare, helps relay “stop” messages up to the driver, and opens and closes the door for people. If the taxi is not full, he also leans out the window shouting the destination periodically so that if anyone on the side of the road wants to come they can wave it down. I love it when I’m walking in M-Town and a taxi zips by and the conductor yells “Muzungu let’s go!” when I have no idea where they’re headed and obviously they are zipping along and I’m not at all interested. Anyways. The third character is the tout for the taxi/coaster, to be explained below.

Instead of trying to flag down a zipping taxi, it’s easier to go to a taxi park where the trip begins. A taxi park is a gravel/dirt lot full of taxis. There are taxi parks in bigger cities – Masaka Town has one, Kampala has two… so to go to Jinja we went to the taxi park in M-Town Friday afternoon. The thing is, the taxi itself is never marked to show where it’s going. If the taxi park is big, there might be signs of town names in the general area of where the taxis going to that town will park, however whether you can read them is another matter. Luckily (sort of) there are the touts who come up to you all the time you are walking through saying “where are you going” in a wide range of pushy-to-polite. In M-Town it’s easy because probably you are either going to Mbarara or Kampala. Friday there was a coaster headed to Kampala already almost full so we hopped in. The touts are paid to fill the vehicle. There are no timetables for any transportation. When a taxi or coaster is full, it leaves and an empty one pulls in. When we went to Ssese Islands a few weekends ago we had to wait in the taxi for 1.5 hours in the Nyendo taxi park (town next to M-Town) until the taxi was full enough to suit the tout/conductor/driver to go. For us on Friday, it took only about ten minutes and we were off! The main drawback to being close to the last ones to board, you’re stuck in the aisle fold-down chairs, which have about ¼-inch of padding, ouch on these bumpy roads.

You don’t pay when you board. Instead, about a ¾ of the way through the journey, the conductor stands up or sort of turns around in his chair. Basically he starts making eye contact and people begin handing him money one by one but not in any certain order. If you forgot to ask what the fare is before you got on, it’s kind of awkward now because no one really talks at all during this time, it’s all done silently. At night they turn on the overhead light but it’s still quiet. People in the back hand their money up. On the way to Kampala I happened to be in that prime middle seat, about arms-length from the conductor, where I was handing a lot of money forward and then change backward. It’s all about eye contact and a few gestures: “here’s my money but I’m also paying for her” or “this change goes to that guy behind you to the left” sort of thing. The whole process is quite orderly; the conductor has an impressive memory to pay attention: who has paid, who needs to, whose change he’s given , and who still needs it back.

Another memorable moment is once per trip between Masaka and Kampala the taxi pulls off the road by basically a market, sort of. Instead of the travelers getting out to buy refreshments, the sellers basically mob the van. Bouquets of goat kebabs are shoved into the open windows, but then that guy’s arms are pushed over by the beverage-seller with a bottle water and soda, and also milling around are people with baskets of gonja (those delicious roasted bananas) or sometimes ndiizi, bunches of small sweet bananas. They are very forceful, and unless the passengers are vigilant, all the windows will be wide open and everyone will have food waved in front of their faces. In the taxi park this happens to an extent, but it is not quite so bad as far as pushiness goes. It is pretty hilarious what people peddle to passengers through the window of a taxi while waiting for it to fill up – “here, Muzungu, look at my selection of watches.” Airtime for cell phones is a popular item, but things like soccer balls, handkerchiefs, and screw drivers just don’t seem like impulse buys before traveling.

Since there are no official bus stops besides the taxi parks, when you want to be let off you just say “Stage” to the conductor. The conductor relays the message to the driver, who pulls over as soon as there is a reasonably safe place to do so. Safety is relative. It is quite handy to be able to be dropped off anywhere along the route, but it also slows up travel time… especially when the guy getting out is sitting in the back corner, and all of us in those fold-down chairs have to get out to let him out. Ah well.

It took about 2.5 hours to get to Kampala, which was pretty good time. We come in to the New Taxi Park. We wandered around to find the hotel where we had stayed that first weekend because we knew it had a clean free bathroom, and then we had to find the Old taxi park. They are happily quite close to each other so it’s not too hard. It is important when asking for directions to say “no we don’t need you to come along and show us, just point,” because then you’d have to figure out how much to pay them for it. So when you get to the taxi park in Kampala the fun really begins, if you see “K’la Old Taxi Park” photo. Wandering through there is intense, between taxi touts, people selling things, mud, and taxis driving around not ever yielding to their potential passengers. So eventually we come to the Jinja taxi and board, early hurray so a good window seat, which means you can control the window (amount of airflow) AND you get a better view.

It’s strange now that I don’t remember what I thought of Africa before I came. I can’t remember at all. I think I thought it was very empty of people, but in fact on the drive from Masaka to Kampala and K’la to Jinja you are constantly passing through towns or villages. The rural uplands that streak by are composed primarily of houses and their half-acre banana plantations mixed as they are with other fruit trees and a ground plane of sweet potatoes, corn, beans, peanuts… Occasionally you’ll pass through a government-protected forest, but they aren’t very big. The lowlands are all protected wetlands, so the only people you see there are washing their cars at the edges. But basically there are people everyone, walking, working, sitting.

People also don’t look black anymore. When I met Joel and Martin, two of the Ugandan FSD staff, on the first Saturday I was here, I couldn’t distinguish them – on the next Tuesday if you had asked me to pick them out of a room full of Ugandan men I would not have been able to. Now if I see a lighter Ugandan I think, oh, is that a Muzungu? — for a split second until I realize no, it’s not. The only mirror I have for daily use is the postcard-sized one I brought with me. Since I don’t really see myself very often I forget that I don’t look like everyone else here. The time that I remember is of course when people say “Muzungu how are you” as I pass. Either the staring has subsided or I am just used to it. In Jinja the people are so much more used to Muzungus that we didn’t get a second look at all, which was nice.

Jinja was also very expensive compared to Masaka as a consequence of the tourists. Friday night when we got in we went to an ex-pat-owned restaurant for pizza, where we met up with MaryKay and Peter, Cory’s cousin and husband who are on a month-long vacation from their year of work in Tanzania. It was good to hear about their work and talk about our experiences. They had been rafting on the Nile so had some good stories to tell. We ended up going to the hostel they were staying, about $7/night for a bunk bed and excellent hot shower. On Saturday we bid them adieu and went downtown for breakfast and shopping. Too much shopping, we were overwhelmed by the craft stores. Way-finding was difficult and we got turned around a lot – isn’t the place with the nice scarves just past that store with the banana fiber handbags and paintings? Ha. Which one?? Our friend/FSD staff Joel picked us up in his car around two and after some cheap local food we went to Bujagali Falls (of the Nile), which were very beautiful. The photo “Bujagali” has Krystal (at left), Pooja and I in front of one of the falls. This is the same place people go rafting. Intense and expensive. Instead we took a nice little boat ride around some islands for about an hour.

stephanie

Taxi & banana truck

Taxi park, nice and calm

The 3 FSD intern friends