Only in Uganda!

This week, with our trip to Europe still fresh at the back of my mind, I was going around town and reflecting about things that I have only found or seen here in Uganda/Kampala since living here in the last few months.

- Boda-bodas
Well, not only they are unique, the name is quite unique too. These are the motorbikes that fill Kampala's landscape, often carrying one, two, three clients... besides the driver! Whole families can get on board of these motorbikes sometimes, the funny thing is that they are not so different to the vespas and the motorbikes anywhere else, so one really wonders how can they get on so many people. One also wonders how they survive the traffic... drivers in Kampala are often not looking out for others, specially when trying to avoid potholes! I just feel it must be pretty daring to ride one, let alone to drive it all day long.

- Police dressed in white
Can you believe it? Policemen/policewomen are dressed in white here... humm, that has to be a highly impractical colour for a a country with bad roads and lots of dust. My husband told me at the beginning that apparently they changed from dark uniform to white because the Kampalan drivers were complaining about not been able to see them. Maybe it's because of the chaotic traffic...

- An ice latte without ice
This is an interesting one... I remember the first time that I asked for an 'ice latte' at Cafe Pap. What they brought was a latte at room temperature... when I enquired the waitress regarding where was the ice in the 'ice latte', she reassured me that this was an ice latte, and that this ws the way it was served normally. I told her, ok, let's forget about that definition of ice latte for a moment and bring me a big glass, filled with ice, and to pour the 'room temperature latte' into that glass to make a real 'ice latte'. My ice latte was then refreshingly cold and fantastic.

- Sweet bread
Can you imagine the concept of sweet bread... and I don't mean bread which doesn't have a lot of contents in salt... I mean really SWEET bread, with sugar, properly! This was a new concept that my taste buds were not quite ready for... so I was so happy that I decided to bring a bread-making machine from Europe, as the quality of the bread is not too great here, and the sweet business was not my thing.

- Items sold in traffic
It is no secret that traffic in Kampala can get really hectic... well, that is not too unique or only happening here as other cities are also quite known for that, however what I think it is interesting is the amount of salesmen that will come around offering sometimes the most bizarre items, like for instance tea towels. Humm, why would I want to buy tea towels on the queue up to my house... Let me think, maybe I don't have enough tea towels in my kitchen and actually the best is to buy them there and then... Other items can be more useful or interesting, for instance mobile chargers to plug in your car (now, this makes a lot more sense: traffic, battery getting used...), but to be honest there is a whole lot of other stuff that will be offered like maps of Uganda and East Africa, other car accessories, sugar cane for a snack, chewing gum, cards to load your pay-as-you-go mobile phone, etc.

- 'Gorillas in the mist'
Of course, this is not totally unique to Uganda as you can also see the mountain gorillas from the Democratic Republic of Congo and from Rwuanda, but I do feel that in the overall worldwide picture gorillas are pretty unique, so they make it to my list of unique things in Uganda. If you want to see the gorillas you need to get yourself to the West side of Uganda, along the border with the two mentioned countries. You will also end up spending a pretty unique amount of money in this expedition as rumour has it that one has to pay up to USD 500 per day to enter the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest national park in the first place, without accommodation, transporting yourself there etc... But those who have done it say that this is once in a lifetime experience, so maybe I should consider it seriously.