....................So here we were not yet into Malaba, Uganda and had just discovered that our driver had no travel documents!! Does one get annoyed at this sheer ineptitude on the part of his employer or just grin and bear it? I can only say that our patience was now getting tested to the absolute limit!
The chaos on the Kenyan side of the border was not helping either. There are too many busybodies hanging about seeking to make a commision by fast tracking the process for groups such as ours, too many money changers most of whom cannot be identified other than by the wads of currency they hold, the only semblance of clean toilets are extremely filthy and you have to pay handsomely to use them.....and they close at 8.30 pm leaving you to god knows what devices should you suddenly cramp up and need a toilet fast!
The Ugandan side of the border is generally more orderly with a well built complex hosting a number of banks and official money changers dressed in yellow dust coats for visibility perhaps (but they make you think of the Nairobi City Council parking meter attendants instead)! The process of obtaining an entry stamp in your passport is generally less stressful then when exiting Kenya and the toilets while not generally the cleanest you will come across are free for use by all and were being vigorously cleaned by an attendant even at this late hour......and they are open 24 hours a day!!
Finally, two and a half hours later at 9.30 p.m passports stamped for all of us, vehicle export documents issued and signed, the drivers travel documents accepted in Uganda the last barrier at Malaba, Uganda was lifted and we were finally let into the country. It was now only a 210 km distance to Kampala and the end was in sight.............or so we thought until we hit another traffic gridlock of impatient, truck, bus and car drivers just inside Uganda but which mercifully released its stranglehold on us 30 minutes later.
So off into the night we sped through Tororo, Bugiri, Iganga many of us already in dreamland as a result of our long journey and the effects of the drinks we had partaken off. Then on through Jinja - the source of the Nile - and across the Owen Falls Dam then through the inky blackness of Mabira Forest mile upon mile of nothing but thick forest on both sides of the road. Then on through the towns of Lugazi and Mukono, famous for its skewered roast chicken and pork, and on towards Kampala and through the many sleeping suburbs of any great African capital city until sometime around 2.00 a.m many of us now fully awake we skirted the Nelson Mandela Stadium and swept into Kampala city centre still alive and vibrant at this time of the night. We were finally there after an exhausting 19 hour journey though not yet at our hotel destination some 20 kms south of the city on Entebbe Road where we arrived at 2.45 a.m waited for by our host whose welcoming dinner had long gone cold at the table but which we partook of with relish nonetheless. We had finally arrived!!
Taking stock of this extraordinary experience, it was apparent that we were victims of our own ignorance because had we thought this thing through, the least stressful option was to have left Nairobi the previous afternoon, broken our journey in Eldoret (this had been considered and thought uneccessary) and then start off early the next morning for our final drive to Kampala where we would have arrived refreshed and alert in the late afternoon rather than as the tired and hungover lot that arrived early in the morning. The heavy vehicular traffic as a result of the holiday vacation in two days time also did not help our cause as we came to realise later and neither did the lack of travel papers and lack of experience on the part of the driver who it seemed had never been to Uganda (or perhaps crossed any international border) help us at all.
Our lesson learnt that is exactly what we did a few days later choosing to start our journey a day earlier than intended (and forfeiting an extra night that was already paid for at our Kampala hotel) at 11.00 am, arriving in Eldoret at 7.30 p.m for an overnight stay at Sirikwa Hotel after an uneventful experience at the border and then leaving at 10.00 a.m the next morning for our second leg of the trip to arrive in Nairobi at 5.30 p.m.
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