Boda Boda

Today I am in Uganda! Uganda is so close to Kisumu that it's hard to believe that I am in an entirely different country. I traveled by bus, in "royal" class which means the bus only has 33 giant seats, but there were only about 7 people on it anyway. Luckily didn't miss the bus despite the greatest efforts of the people at the bus station, who kept telling me to wait, don't board yet, they would announce it, etc. However, I was paying attention and so noticed that the bus was about to pull away even though no one had made any type of announcement. We got to the border crossing in Busia after 2 sleepy hours, where I got off the bus, got stamped out of the country, paid $50 to get into Uganda, turned down a marriage proposal, and got back on the bus. They promptly put the big "royal" TV to use and so I got to enjoy one of the great American Christmas classic movies, Home Alone, immediately followed by the other great American Christmas classic, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. Four hours later we arrived in Kampala, just as it was getting dark. I asked the bus ticket seller guy how much I should pay for a taxi to my hotel, but then the low side of his range turned out to be the taxi driver's first offer. I was too surprised to negotiate, but whatever, it was less than $5, and we had to sit in traffic for a while to get to the hotel.

Now that I have bored you with excruciating details about my bus ride, I will offer some first-impression observations about the differences between Kenya and Uganda.

1. The roads in Uganda are way better than the roads in Kenya. A politician on the radio was talking about fixing the potholes in Kampala, but honestly we drove over one pothole on the way to Kampala, whereas the roads in Kenya are generally more pothole than road.
   
2. Uganda is cleaner than Kenya. The same politician was talking about how he set up a trash collection system in the district he's in charge of. Novel idea. Other than having fewer piles of trash on the side of the road, even all of the dirt looked swept smooth.
   
3. Uganda has a lot more trees than Kenya. I saw lots of big trees, native trees, jackfruit trees, crazy trees with giant hanging pods, and very few eucalyptus trees. I did, however, see water hyacinth in the Nile, so they are obviously not winning all the wars against invasive species.
   
4. Uganda has a lot more inflation than Kenya. Seriously, why keep all the extra zeroes on the bills? Maybe because it makes it hard for us tourists to differentiate between notes that say 5000 and 50000 at first glance.
   
5. Uganda has way different food from Kenya. I'm staying at a hotel which claims to also be a Greek restaurant, but the dinner buffet (15,000 shillings) was definitely Ugandan food – the waiter very enthusiastically recommended the matoke (mashed banana – in Kenya you can get matoke but it's never mashed) and peanut sauce (not as delicious as I expected, but still good, and it was nice to think that it's similar to what Doug is eating every day way over in West Africa) and there were of course a variety of other carbohydrate sources plus beans and cabbage (and meat).
   
6. The color that MTN paints buildings is ugly (drab yellowish) compared to the bright green of Safaricom. Luckily Zain (bright pink) and Orange (orange) are both in Uganda as well as Kenya.
   

Further contemplations about whether these differences are actually true and why that is the case (Less corruption? The tyrannical rule of Idi Amin?) are possibly still to come.