I left at 5am the next day, quite why they have to have so many buses all leaving at the same tmie, all on the same route, all not considering about leaving until full and all driving around for 1+ hours after the ‘departure time’ is beyond me. If they left at fixed times people would be there or miss it. Pretty frustrating, but when you’re ready for the idea you just wait and dont get too pissed off, what can you do? At least the buses are big ones, so they rule the road and hopefully give you a figthing chnce if you crash. Most even have seatbelts if you can dig them uot from under the seats, you might have to bodge together a couple of belts to get them to work too :p I bought a ticket to Mbrara, which is about 2/3 of the way back to kampala and my ultimate destination was fort portal where i was planning on seeing the chimps in the nearby NP. I slept most of the way up there, put on your music and sleeping mask and try to ignoring the person hiting the back of your seat or hitting your window to sell you some deat animal on a stick. I jumped off the bus and had to find an ATM as priority no one. I wandered about town sweating in the midday sun with my backpack weighing heavily on me, but i was stinky anyway and couldn’t get any worse. I restocked my funds and then thought about going on to fort portal that afternoon, as it was only about 12.30pm and enough time. Back at the bus station I was told if I waited in a certain place a bus would come about 5pm… bit too vague for me. I could take a shared taxi, which was the worst option as they really pack them in and any accident is a deathtrap for all concerned. The only other choice was a bus next day at 6.30am, looked like it was a night in Mbrara then! I got a desperatley bad hotel room for a couple of quid, no shower, just a bath, but it was too late to move and the shower option was much worse. All the linen was numbered for the room, I was in room 21 and stole a towel from 23. I dont know where mine was. I soaked some of my clothes and went to find some food. I passed by the post office and went in to ask when the post bus went to Fort Portal, if at all. It was sitting outside about to leave. I had had a guy nearly shouting at me in the bus station telling me to go and get on a Matatu to get to Fort Portal, I guess he didn’t understand its nice to have some idea of options, ie spend the night and go the next day, instead he thought Im disrespecting him because I didn’t instantly go jump into a 4 wheeled coffin. Some other guy listening to him ranting helpfully told me I was in ‘Black Africa’. Didn’t I just know it :p So I missed the post bus and since it was saturday there would be no service the next day. Bah. I had half the lunch I wanted and then the power came back on and I could order the rest :} Power cuts and load shedding were a constant source of frustration and annoyance in Uganda, you never knew if you were going to be able to charge something up or just have the lights go out at the most inconvinient time. The town wasn’t much, I went looking for a brush to help clean my clothes, which was hampered by the general maliase on the part of the shop workers. ‘Do you have a smaller brush than this?’ ‘No, that is all we have’ /ponts to other shelf ‘Um, what about this one then?’ ‘Ah yes’ I guess most of them are just there to spot shoplifters, they dont do anything else. I did my laundry and it started raining, great. The petrol station over the road was having some kind of disco with a massive PA pumping out annoying music all day. It rained and rained, I went out for a quick meal and a PA on a truck parked up outside and played competing distorted musak with some ‘DJ’ yelling nonsense. I uploaded my blog in an internet cafe and hid in my room, still it rained. What a great saturday night…



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