Bumps in the Road

I was supposed to be situated at the Nakivale Settlement yesterday, key phrase “supposed to be.” Whitney, Oliver (our advisor) and I went to the Refugee Desk Office in Mbarara to get our final permissions to enter the settlement. They welcomed us in and asked for our introduction letters, which we happily provided. The man in charge looked them over and then asked for the letters from the headquarters in Kampala… wait what?

A few weeks ago we were in Mbarara with our entire group, we were unable to enter the Nakivale Settlement because we hadn’t applied for permission early enough. We left with the impression that if we did want to go back towards the end of the trip during ISP time, then the permission would be ready by then. We thought wrong. After a number of frantic phone calls to program higher ups, as well as the head of Refugees in Western Uganda, it was determined that the only thing we could do was return to Kampala and go to the office there. Why the office in Mbarara couldn’t issue the permission letters in beyond me. We did everything in our power to try and convince them to have the permission faxed or something of the sort, but to no avail.

So we did the only thing we could do, a mere twelve hours after hopping off the bus from Kampala to Mbarara, we hopped on one going the other direction. This time our bus company of choice was “Swift Safari,” aptly titled indeed as we soared to Kampala. The suspension on the bus was down right terrible and we were bouncing the entire way their, which made sleeping and reading nearly impossible. For most of the ride I gazed out at the Western Ugandan landscape, very Lion King-esque, and did a lot of thinking about the absurdity of this kind of bureaucracy, what the heck we were going to do for the next few days, and about life back home. A lot of thinking got done on that five-hour bus ride.

We showed up in Kampala around 3 p.m. and made our way quickly to the Somali district of Kampala, which has a huge refugee population. Since Oliver, our advisor, is at this point in time at odds with the Refugee Office, he had us go with Victor, a fellow Rwandan refugee. We went in to the Office, were promptly searched by an armed guard, who asked if I was a Manchester United footballer (Paul Scholes), and if Whitney was my wife. When I responded to the negative about Whitney, he told me that I should certainly marry her to have an African bride.

We were directed to Miss. Stella after that to obtain our permission. She told us we couldn’t get it until Monday. We whined a bit and she said that we could get it by Friday but we had to be there in person to receive the letters. Again, faxing and phone calls would be valuable asset here and I saw both a phone and a fax machine. We had left all of our things in Mbarara as the office there told us that we would receive the permission the day of, no problem. That certainly wasn’t the case. So we grudgingly accepted the fact that there was nothing we could go, and in doing so learned the number one thing you need to have to survive with your sanity intact in the complex land of African Bureaucracy, flexibility.

We grabbed lunch at a Somali restaurant, with huge portions and stellar service, to talk over what we were going to do next. We formed a perfect plan. We had to head back to Mbarara that night because we had none of our things. The next day, Whitney was going to hop back on a bus to Kampala as she had some interviews she wanted to do there. She would stay the night Thursday, grab the letters on Friday, and head back on Friday night. I would stay in Mbarara and hold down the fort here while doing interviews with Refugees not in the settlement as well as with Refugee Settlement Officials. With this plan in mind we can hopefully make the best of a bad situation and still be productive. Unfortunately, it almost certainly means that we will miss Thanksgiving with the rest of the group in Gulu.

After lunch, we made our way back to the bus park and got on another bus to Mbarara for the five-hour trek back. It was 5 p.m. For two hours in Kampala we would have traveled a combined total of ten hours. Ick. But on the plus side, it meant that within twenty-four hours we had crossed the equator a total of three times. You don’t get to say that very often.

As bumpy as the ride was I fell asleep for the last thirty minutes, it had been a mentally and physically exhausting day. Whitney and I got back to our room and passed out. We woke up at 7, got ready, snagged breakfast, and then I walked Whitney to the bus park and saw her off. Time to start figuring our what I am going to do with my next few days.

-Muzungu currently in the Royal Price Hotel in Mbarara working through frustration on a number of fronts and trying to figure out my life for the next few days.