Driving licenses and shopping

Uganda (like Australia I hasten to add) prefers visitors who stay for a while to get national drivers licenses.  We were told by colleagues soon after we arrived that this was a requirement within 3 months of arrival.  We arrived less than 2 months ago so hadn’t got around to this yet.  

Last Wednesday we were stopped at the police checkpoint on the highway near our house turnoff.  The traffic policeman asked to see my license so I handed him my Victorian one.  “How long have you been in Uganda?” he asked.  “ A few weeks” I replied.  Other questions followed regarding the ownership of our car and where we lived.  I don’t think he believed us when we told hem we lived a few blocks away in semi-rural Buloba.  He let us go with a warning that to be a safe driver I must get a local license as soon as possible.  I asked him how to do this as I’d heard it was complicated.  He admitted he didn’t know!

So today (Friday) I risked another year off my life and ventured into Kampala in search of a license.  One of the most important people working for School for Life here is Bosco.  Bosco knows pretty much how everything works here and he has been so helpful to us.  He found our house, sorted out our temporary accommodation and supervised our purchase of the car (which is going well - touch wood).  Bosco wasn’t sure how to get licenses for us either but off we went with him to the issuing office.

The first chap we spoke to told us we couldn’t get a license because we didn’t have work permits.  He said we could only drive on our Australian licenses for three months (this would take us to the end of December only).  We have 6 month business visas so don’t qualify for a license.  At this stage I was thinking we can’t manage without driving so we’d have to abandon our stay here.  We persuaded him to bump it up to a more senior staffer.  She contradicted everything we’d been led to believe by saying that we could keep using our Australian licences while our visas were current and to tell any police that challenged us that this was the case.

So, we will continue to operate as we have been to date.  We keep laminated copies of our licenses, passports and visas in the car at all times.  Hopefully any future encounters with the police will be smooth.

On the whole it was a highly successful trip into the city today.  Apart from saving 120,000 shillings ($44) on the license thing we had a long shopping list and managed to get nearly everything on it.  Food items for westerners can be a bit hard to find out here in the regions so we stocked up on crunchy peanut butter, chicken breast fillets, beef mince and nice bread.  Our local supermarket has the basics but does not yet cater fully for the only wazungu in the village.

<<< UPDATE:  Our electricity went off in the wee hours of Saturday morning and didn't come back on until 0630 Monday morning.  Our meat has been thrown out.  >>>

Our local supermarket (occupies less than half of this building).

The drive in was ridiculously easy for some unknown reason.  I think I only cursed a couple of times.  We left to come home in pouring rain which meant the motorbikes and pedestrians were mostly off the roads and it was also fairly easy - and with minimal profanity.