#19 - June 25th 2007 – Southwestern Uganda Trip – Queen Elizabeth Park

Back to the fifties…

It had now been some time since I’ve returned from my trip, most memories good, some scary, some bad. Let’s start with the good. It seemed to take forever for me to actually get to the park, so upon arrival I ordered a Nile and tried to relax. I met up with some friends and we ate a buffet dinner that consisted of an unimaginable array of African and Western foods. I began to notice people filling their plates, bypassing the staff who were trying to explain the local dishes. I looked around at the tables in the Mweya Lodge Restaurant , where again Muzungus were ignoring the servers. I watched as the staff bowed every time they delivered a drink, their voices softly uttering niceties, Muzungus oblivious, joking loudly with their friends. I felt the complete disconnect between the staff and the guests, more pronounced that I’d ever noticed before. I felt like I’d been thrown back into the fifties. At the buffet table I met Tophil, one of the cooks, his father is the head chef. I greeted him in Luganda and we became fast friends. The food they had prepared was beyond fantastic. After trying just about every dish, I grabbed another Nile and headed into the lobby where again it was segregation-city. I ended up being the “crazy” Muzungu who chose to hang out with the staff instead of comparing vehicle sizes and paychecks with my friends.

A white South African man bought me a drink and took it upon himself to tell me about how he is infuriated about the BEE (Black Economic Empowerment) program in his country. BEE is a program designed to ensure South African companies hire a certain percentage of black Africans. If you know anything about the torrid history of South Africa you should understand why these types of policies might be necessary. This man then went off about how his company only hires whites and that other businesses seek him out for “certain reasons”. I politely excused myself and went back to Tophil, who chose not to lambast an entire nation of people in one sentence. Without going into excruciating detail, I can tell you that the rest of my stay at the park was filled with similar experiences. I ended up eating all of my meals with the staff and avoiding the lodge in general.

The animals certainly made up for most of my experiences with people. My friends and I left for our game drive at 6:30am the morning after my arrival. Almost immediately after departing, we were stopped by a family of elephants. You are probably picturing an elephant in your mind now – enlarge it. These animals are colossal, like I never imagined. They are small houses. Magnificent, and very dangerous. Tip: when your guide gets nervous, you should be on the verge of terrified. A father and his baby (the size of a small car) stood in front of our Landrover; the father flapped his ears and stomped his feet, forcing our driver to throw the vehicle in reverse. Unfortunately, the rest of the family had surrounded us from behind. It is not unheard of for cars to be completely flattened by elephants that feel threatened; visions of our pancaked car flashed before my eyes. Thankfully ten minutes was all the time needed for these giants to become bored of our motionless presence and they wondered away. Once my heartbeat returned to normal I was able to enjoy the water buffalo, Ugandan Kobs, cranes, hippos, and most importantly, lions. We searched for the beautiful cats all day and it wasn’t until we were about to leave the park that we discovered seven of them lying low in the grass quite a good distance from the road. Too far for pictures. After gazing in awe for several minutes our guide rushed us into the car and took off at top speed across the grass, directly to where the lions lay. We were terrified. He yelled “photo, photo, photo” and we snapped away as he reversed back to the road. Risky, but worth every minute. Back at the lodge that night, we were warned that there had been lion sightings around the building the night before and told to take a vehicle back to our rooms. Unfortunately a gigantic hippo was grazing beside our only form of transportation. After several minutes he moved on, but when we reached our room, another hippo was by our door! Surprisingly these seemingly slow, fat animals are actually quite quick and dangerous so we took caution and waited for him to finish his midnight snack before we crept past.

After a lazy Sunday morning it was time to head back to Kampala. Rogers, a Ugandan special hire driver from the city, had driven my friends out to the park then spent two nights in a near-by hotel waiting to drive them back. I’ve used Rogers as a driver many times before, a very quiet, well-spoken, kind man with a very interesting background and a good heart. I was amazed that he’d been willing to drive all the way out to the park, about a seven hour drive, wait two days, and drive back (paid of course), but was thankful that I wouldn’t have to brave one of the buses. The two friends that I had visited the park with, whom I had previously met in Kampala, had not enjoyed their initial journey to the park. They complained that Rogers was depressing and slow, that his car stunk of pollution, and that he had over-charged them. I found this strange, as I had always known Rogers to be overly fair and quite charming. I agreed to sit in the front so they wouldn’t have to “listen to him complain” the whole way home. The trip started smoothly enough, Rogers became very interested in learning about my degree once I told him I had taken African history and politics. We traded stories about my academic pursuits and his real-life adventures. Sadly, his father was killed in the Luwerto uprising, a conflict I studied in school. His parents had a dozen children that were then forced to fend for themselves. He had been witness to many tragedies in his lifetime and was only now able to make a decent living for his family by becoming a special hire. While we were talking, I could hear my friends in the backseat snickering and gossiping about Rogers’ supposed “complaining”. To them he was just a silly man complaining to a white, but I saw it differently. It was two friends sharing experiences. I am beginning to notice more and more that two people can be saying exactly the same thing or acting in the same manner and depending on whether they are black or white, people make entirely different judgments. It was as if he was the driver and therefore should have kept quiet.

Halfway through the trip my friends asked if we could make a detour to a park where there were often Zebra sightings, about 40km out of our way. Keep in mind that fuel is quite expensive here, more so than in Canada, and time is money to special hire drivers. Rogers did not hesitate to comply and even got us a deal at the park gate. The real ‘fun’ began when Rogers wanted to stop to buy some matoke at a road-side market a couple of hours later. My friends, who as you may have guessed will remain nameless, had an absolute fit. Apparently they weren’t paying for Rogers to “grocery shop”. I really hoped at that point that Rogers couldn’t understand English swear words. I sunk low in my seat and hoped I wouldn’t be associated with them in his mind. Unsuccessful in finding what he needed, Rogers hopped back in the car and off we went, not two minutes later. In Luganda he said to me he would try again at a different place. I said a silent prayer my friends wouldn’t kick up another fuss. Alas, my prayer went unanswered and at the next stop they were yelling and not so secretively calling him retarded. I was beyond embarrassed and apologized to Rogers in Luganda so they wouldn’t understand. It continued to get worse from there and by the end of the seven hour drive Rogers looked more like an abused animal than the bubbly man he usually is. My friends refused to pay him extra for the Zebra side-trip, accused him of stealing, told him they were already paying an “astronomical” amount, “more than you guys make in a month”. They stormed into the house with their fists shaking, their faces red and fuming. I was left to apologize profusely, pay an appropriate amount for the side-trip, and thank Rogers for the three days he dedicated to the trip.

I think it goes without saying that I was desperate to forget the situation and even more anxious to see the boys, whom I knew would instantly make me feel completely at ease.

The reunion still to come…

~Nicole