Arrived in Kampala

August 23rd, 2007
Kampala, Uganda

I've arrived in Uganda safe and sound. All of the bags got here intact too. The flight to London was smooth, but I couldn't sleep at all. We took a 3 hour tour of London after hopping up on caffeine when we arrived. We walked around Buckingham Palace, Westminster, Parliament, and Big Ben. Waiting for the next plane still felt like forever though, since I still hadn't slept. It worked out because I slept the entire 8 hour flight to Entebbe, and now I feel fine.

Today at the airport we lashed the bike to the roof of a van, which drove to Hoima today, and has already dropped off the bike. Then we got some of our cash exchanged and deposited the rest into my moms account. That way we can take out a bit at a time at her bank.

We then drove into Kampala to buy some bicycle tools and parts. It was wild and crazy there, like NYC Canal St. but more chaos and less money. A beehive of taxis, motorcycles, cars, and people. White mini buses crammed full of passengers, motor scooters dodging in and out of traffic, bicycles with 50kg sacks of sugar or rice on the backs. Traffic laws didn’t seem to matter to anyone. The law of the land was, “if there’s space, move forward into it, fast” America looks so orderly, in line, and law-abiding now.

The bike shop was actually a lot, filled with bikes, some being assembled from scratch, wheels being built sitting on the steps, and little sheds filled to the ceiling with spare parts. We haggled for some parts and got tubes, multi wrenches, patch kits, chains and pumps. The prices were low, and I knew that we should haggle, since it’s part of the fun, but Americans aren’t much good at haggling since we don’t have much practice, and the last time I remember doing it was in Istanbul. Also, being 3 white people in the urban sea of Kampala meant that everyone was watching you, and everyone knew that you had money to spend.


I was expecting a lot of pushy and demanding salesman, trying to pull you into their shops to rip you off. But I didn’t see that at all. The salesmen were nice, eager, and relatively passive.

There was a lot of things that we couldn’t find at these bike shops. Like a chain tool, sets of box wrenches, cone wrenches, crank arm pullers, and any decent quality tool. We had to go to the “high end” department store (which looked like a wal-mart) to get some more tools. Wrenches, sockets, hammers, adjustable crescent wrenches, pliers, and screwdrivers. We also got a bunch of little toolboxes to present them in.

We just had a late lunch and checked into a hotel. We plan on visiting the university tomorrow.