KAMPALA, UGANDA and bus chasers

well i made it to kampala uganda, but it was a long trip. i left tabora, on dec 20th, and i boarded a bus with my friend shoghi, and 7 hours later we arrived in mwanza, it is a pretty town, in north western tanzania. we stayed the night in a nice hotel (30000 tsh for a double room) the next day we treked out into the pouring rain to see how we could catch a boat to bukoba then later catch a bus to kampala. it was pouring rain. we were soaked to the bone, but by this time all we wanted to do was get out of mwanza,

we went to the boat launch, and there were hundreds of people there, fighting for third class tickets, an armed guard forcefully was pushing people back. there were no more 2nd class tickets, and the boat that was leaving that day did not have first class.

we payed a taxi driver some money to try and take us to a bus station. he did , he actually found us a company that takes you to kampala. we were like wow, lets do it, but he mentioned we had to switchbusses in kenya. we said ok. the trip also would take 27 hours, which didnt bother us at first.

the first leg was long and the buses clutch kept grinding, so we stopped every hour or so it could cool down. we arrived at the border at around midnight, and most of you know what border towns are like so we had to be on guard. overall the border was not bad, until we got to the town where our drop off was. it was a small gas station filled with bus chasers.

Bus chasers, these are the guys that live at gas stations waiting for busses to pull in and out, so they can sell theirmerchandise to the people seated on the bus. they do this 24 hours a day, they only sleep when the alcohol they have consumed during the day or night forces them to pass out, and there were many passed out when we arived at 2 in the morning. the bus driver said your conecting bus will arrive at 5 AM. i was like what ????? so for three hours we crammed into the AKAMBA bus station/booth and tried to sleep, but everytime a bus rolled in, i could here drunk screams of hamsini (50) or mia (100) and people pretending to european footballers with empty plastic bottles.

The bus did not arrive at 5AM. it arrived after the sun rose at 7:30AM, but the good news is the rest of the trip was very uneventful, we arrived at the ugandan border by noon, and we made it into kampala at around 5:30pm, caught a taxi to the Baha'i House of Worship and thankedGod that we made it alive in one piece.

Lesson for everyone, by weary of any bustrips in Africa that take longer than 10 hours :)